change – Mixy's Art Blog

Squirrelling, Busying & some Re-jig.

Hi folks, I hope you’re enjoying your summer (or winter to those who reside on the other side of this little blue ball).

What’s new with you? I’ve been busy squirrelling away on so many things and I haven’t been over here in wordpress world to share them with you.

I’ve been preparing my class I’m teaching in the 21 Secrets online program that’s out for pre-sale now, releasing in September. That kept me reeeeally busy for a while! I’ll show you some little snips of it here and there pre-launch – like this…………..

Ooooh! All those colors!!

AND busy busily busying art journalling as usual, but not in my usual fashion. <GASP!>

I believe it’s good to shake stuff up, re-jig, re-orient and sometimes reinvent ourselves. The world and its contents keep evolving and the only alternative is stagnation. And that’s no fun at all. Uck!

Art-journal-wise I’ve shaken things up this time. No nice new sketchbook, no repurposed new book, this was a tatty old ledger I found in among my dad’s old papers and desk whatnots, boxed away for years in storage. From the pencilled pre-decimal price inside the back cover I would date it around 1950-something. About a third of the pages had been torn out, the remainder were a little yellowed, but blank. Fresh for painting and collaging and doodling and whatevering all over.

My usual strategy is to progress page by page as one finishes I flip the page and start again.

This time I’ve been opening the book randomly and splashing, doodling, writing and out-pouring with no regard to any sense of the linear.

If you’re in a rut, this is a great shake up. As a process it ripples out into life as little shifts make dramatic differences.

In the case of an art journal, it meant for a few weeks there was nothing aesthetically worth sharing, all oddments of scribble, stark paint scrapings, lonely fragments.

Then all of a sudden faces started to emerge

The pages are filling up and feeling closer to completed. Coherency emerges.

This is the third journal I’ve been working in this year and they appear to be following the seasons, this one fully in the season of summer.

A few weeks time I’ll be ready to begin my book of autumn, I’m already looking forward to that.

Doubt and self deception

the question I keep re-asking myself this morning is: how is better not better?

Huh? I mean, if a change is for the better, indisputably, measurably improved, better, then what reason would there to be to doubt it? Sure there’s a compromise, isn’t there always? But the net is gain.

So what’s with the doubt?

Will it all fall apart despite the big life-shift?

Will it turn out that now I’m on the other side of the paradigm the grass is the same muddy colour?

Could it be the part of me that wants to pretend the uncomfortable bits aren’t worth it and revert to the full time discomfort of the old life?

Thoughts for the morning…..

Life…

spare change?

Another day, another doodle. Boiled down to its rawest essence, that is my life.

Paper shapes, lurid hues, tiny detail. Different mix of familiar ingredients.

The common threads tying together the rickety vessel in which I navigate my days.

The only certainty is uncertainty.

All things must change.