From this
To this
Collaged in music and people then some proper fingerpainting.
Real, visceral, icky fingerpainting. You want to play now too, don’t you?
The whole process reminds me of weaving: layers show through in places. In and out. Each one adds.
Collage, colour, paint & words. That’s all.
As always (to me) the beauty’s in the details…………………….
I shared recently how sometimes I’ll drop into the future and leave myself a note. Turns out I’d done it again for last week’s page:
“Each morning I am born again. What I do today is what matters most.” Last week hadn’t kicked off to the best start, so it was maybe just what I needed to read. (Well done me-in-the-recent past). That in mind, collage on:
Hey, d’u remember the whole paper-dying obsession I had a while back? (it continues, I just don’t go on about it so much these days). Of all the scrap paper I LOVE to make use of, I really like to use envelopes.
What is it? Idk, maybe how they’re so readily discarded, they appeal to the rescuer part of my character.
Also, so often have such pretty patterns hidden inside. So junk mail arrived this week and it was inside one of may fav prettily-insided style envelopes.
I’m aware that’s quite a niche in geekiness to have a fav prettily-insided style envelopes.
This week the page as a whole left me a little Meh, but if anything saved it from it’s feel of half-arsed mediocrity, it’s this tiny honeycomb patterns.
So here’s how the page evolved….
I feel like it isn’t really ‘done‘ and that’s why I don’t feel happy with it. But whatever, it’s last week and in the past now. I like the colours and the honeycomb and sometimes that just has to be enough.
Onward and upward!
I’m sluggish in the cold, I’m part hibernating, and sleepiness seems to be the theme. So to counter this, I’m pushing a lot of energy into brightness and optimism.
The new (super) moon at the start of the week prompted me to set some new moon intentions, which are glued onto the Bagua vision board .
To accompany my makings, I’ve been listening to the podcasts of Zig Ziglar this week… (I’m reminded of Reverend Lovejoy from the Simpsons by his accent which informed my mental image to begin, but that’s fading as I’m getting more familiar with his style) which has an old fashioned, down to earth, honesty of common sense and untarnished positivity with a very wholesome feel. He’s kept me buoyant.
As one week folds into another the temperature drops some more, I’m upping the colour volume some more. I’m not usually a heartsy kinda girl, but they keep showing up, so this week has a big heart at its heart.
Wordage supplied by bits and things I’ve picked up along the way…. I was especially taken by this quote, which brings together themes I’ve been speaking about lately
“Whatever your gig or deal,
If you spend your time and your focus
and your emotion on creating and manifesting that,
There isn’t anything that can stop you.”
[Gina Devee]
manifesto ~ manifest ~ manifestation
What do I want to manifest this year? I forget now where the idea came from, but I was mulling over these words….Yes, I’m still inhabiting that whole new year, new, newy nonsense. Excuse me if it’s beginning to grate. It will wear off (perhaps) ………….. but y’know I started out 2015 with some fairly specific wants which (and this might be why I’m perpetuating the thing) are panning out pretty well so far.
Targetted, focussed, my most defined wish was to deadlift (at least) 60kg, I was doing 30kg at the end of December. This week I did 40kg. The goal posts are closer than I reckoned on. For context, at the start of October 2014 I laughed at the suggestion of doing weights. ‘I’m not sporty, I just want to be a bit stronger, and bit less, y’know… wobbly and pathetic, maybe tone up a little…’ whilst firmly fixed in my head was the knowledge that lifting weights is a thing that other people do.
And then I tried.
And then I switched over to being one of those other people.
Some amount of sweat, aches and grim determination later, I’ve progressed from someone who lifts the tiniest weights available, a bit more each time.
I’m just using this by way of illustration.
Doing something in one area of life can open the mind in all the others.
This is a lesson I learnt in art school: Separating not being able to do something from not having done that something before.
Or not being good at it, to being not good at it yet.
The same thing, but from a very slightly changed viewpoint, is not exactly the same. Subtle distinctions. Nuances.
I LOVE nuances.
So I set about listing (the power of the written word) the essence of my intentions and what I want to manifest.
My manifesto for 2015:
Then as an aside……..
I read an article recently, it was along the lines of how the physical act of writing something embues it with a power, seeing those words written in your own handwriting reinforces something at a very primal level, it is exclusively connected to the writer. Darn it I wish I remebered where this was so I could link you. But, in the small search I made for it, I found this instead. If you have any interest in the whole manifestary musings, take a mo to see this.
So my manifesto is embedded in my psyche, and sits on the opposing page to my vision board/bagua map. As I close the book they smoosh up against each other, and can embue each other with magic as the book rests. Meanwhile, watch this space for future manifestations!
I was pondering this thought: a sacred space doesn’t have to be a physical space.
It can be a space in my day, a number of minutes I hold back from everyday use.
A little bit of room in the day to release some thoughts into the ether.
And ask the rhetorical questions.
A few moments to flick water at a book and not care if you get ink splashes on your face.
Time to draw round the edges of that beige smeary paint. Because you like the sensation of pencil over grainy gesso. Also, just because.
These times the what and the why don’t matter. Only the doing matters. And the allowing the chance to do that matters most. This is a sacred space.
My weeks now begin (as this year did) on a Thursday. I like this! It breaks up the week/weekend pattern in a refreshing fashion and in a way seems to make time stretch. I’m a busy person, this is enormously helpful! Week 2 of this year started out on a drainy-grainy grey day and I really needed to counteract that, so I did in the only way I know how: with colors.
I began with a wash over white gesso with Pebeo Colorex chartreuse ink I LOVE this color! This is my happy color! although it gets covered over through the week, little bits are still shining through.
The page already had a smeary something (acrylic paint? I forget already) on the right page which discolored to a nasty beige with the ink smears. But no matter, it’ll be obscured with stuff before long. To begin with, the same three strange eye-fish as last week. I can’t really explain them yet, I’ll come back to them later.
Swimming through the inks.
Slipping behind the doodled-on beige paint slick. The eye-fish do their thing…
Then it got some washes and splashes in Adirondack Stream. Close and open the book for a bitova Rorschach style ink spreading manoeuvre.
That puddly wet ink was just crying out for something a bit more lively and vibrant, so on with the Derwent Inktense
I love the variety of marks you can get scribbling on splashed paper, the wet and dry work well for doodling into with a fine paintbrush and water.
So that’s where my week began, It’s progressing a bit more each day so check back soon to see the next transitions 🙂
Do you guys know Jane Davies? I’ve just watched this video of hers. Really simple black and white mark making, so vibrant and lively and really ‘in the moment’. It made me think how great this would be as a kick-start when I can’t get going. A reminder: don’t try and make something just do.
I was reminded of the stuckness all us artistfolk get somewhile.
It’s a bitch: that art-void head space. Can’t think, can’t make, creatively constipated.
It’s tiresome, it’s draining, it’s vexacious, and until you’ve gotten through it a few times, it can scare the pants off you: “What if it’s all gone? Dried up? Never coming back?…”
When I finished school last June I got struck down by it big time, and it didn’t let up for AGES. Months.
I tried to to coax my mojo back into being by sorting out my art making space. I tidied and reshuffled and organised… I even had a fantastic commission to get on with, but I was stubbornly standing in my own way and refusing to budge.
So I waited it out, I lined up ideas in my head and on paper and physically in little heaps about the place. (I think the 2 years of intensive study and practice running in parallel with some big life shifts in my personal world had just run the tank dry and I needed this long while to regroup.) So I used the time to seek out and absorb new influences. I played more with words than colors. I began to enjoy the world outside the confines of my head.
I haven’t entirely got back in the art-swing still yet. Doesn’t seem to be an ON / OFF, more a growing appetite. But everyday I’m feeding the spirit with the nourishing goodness on tap here in the online community and in the books I’ve acquired over the years; The simple beauties around and about in nature and people-made-stuff.
Today I’m beginning a new year long project – a page a week art journal/sketchbook. I feel sore and rusty in the art-muscles, but it’s coming back. (I also bought a bunch of new colours to play with in the sales!)
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