collage – Page 11 – Mixy's Art Blog

Newest Obsession: Chapter One

Since way back in the earliest days of exploring mixed media online, through the vast and wondrous wealth of blogs, the treasures and techniques that ppl share on YouTube, I’ve often come across folks doing this thing called altered books.

I’m going to lay it on the line here: it’s made me think Huh?

Sure there are some glorious creations, some splendid transformations, some real delights.

But it hasn’t ever struck me as a thing I’d find myself doing. (Although I watched a good few YouTube things on how it’s done. I gleaned information, and unbeknown to me, my brain squirreled it away.) Okay, so, fast forward to a couple of weeks ago.

The strangest thing: I must have reached one of those tipping points, inspiration had hit critical mass and I had to begin this new project. There was a sense of driven urgency that was singing in my head:

Find me a knackered book, I am compelled to bring it new life!!

One of my rescue books – too shabby to donate and yet somehow too good for the recycling bin – I’d maybe thought I’d read it some day, but I’ve got to be a realist just sometimes. I love books, I have many, but the pile waiting to be read is growing faster than the rate I consume them.

So the lonely third volume of Somerset Maugham’s short stories was about to be re-purposed into my newest obsession full of colour and faces and meanings.

I’ll show you how it’s coming on over the next while.

Meanwhile here’s a little peak ….

the other side of the ugly (18/52)

Yesterday I was sharing about the ugly side of creativity. When it’s in that worse before it gets better zone.

The only way outa here is forward: Charge on forward through this zone.

If you can’t carry on right now, let it rest.Let it settle.

When you come back it’s going to look different:
—If it looks better – let this spur you on in hope.
—If it looks worse – take the nothing left to lose impetus to make changes:

Whatever you’re creating, from a painting to a song, a novel or a dance, a dress or a manifesto, try any variations of these things:

Paint over it.
Mix up the harmonies.
Cut it up and reconfigure the bits together in a new shape.
Record over sections of it.
Photograph it from obtuse angles: review it through the viewfinder, on screen, through squinting eyes, or print its negative.
Speed it up, slow it down, add trumpets.
Change two of the colours.
Stitch, glue, staple, splice. Rinse and repeat.
Play it backwards / turn it upside down / inside out.
Take out every other word, or every other adjective, or swap about all the words beginning with vowels.
Pick it up by the ears and shake it hard.

Do some radical dismantling, recreate with hope and a conscious understanding it’s only wrong at the moment; it’s maybe uncomfortable but it isn’t doomed.

Know that you’re through the worst because if you’re moving you’re making progress: It was the ugliest thing in existence, so by logical deduction it must be getting better, right?

Right. Then keep on going. If the bigger picture is freaking you out,

Just look at the detail…

Find some solace there, some shhhhh…some calm

Befriend the details. Examine them closely for inexplicable creatures.

The only thing not to do is sit and dwell on how a different course of action somewhere in the past would have made it different. That then is gone. Focus on the now of it.

Then see where you find yourself, recombobulate, know the process works, and carry on.

midweek mayhem (18/52)

Y’know when you hear about a new thing, then you hear about it again within a really short time, and you think:
Hey, Universe, are you trying to tell me something here?

Well, this week I’ve read in more than 2 places the suggestion of freeing up your creative mojo by drawing freestyle, playing about at mark making, with your non dominant hand. It kicks the brain into action in a way doing the usual things in the usual way just can’t.

So with some degree of awkwardness I set about some cack-handed doodles. Scribbles. Scraping of pencil across page.

Not pretty, not descriptive, but after a bit of warming up the eye-brain-hand coordination came together a little better and it did at least begin to look and feel a bit more deliberate. And it’s only a first layer. With some more colour it’s already becoming much more backgroundier.

There it goes, merging behind, blending away.

Some collaged layers begin to add structure and I’m back to my usual right-fisted chaos. But…….

The other reason I’m posting these stages is to make the point that pages can go through really ugly phases; totally scrappy and uncohesive. I mean really, really URGH. Really WTF is going on, ‘I honestly thought I could make pretty, creative, loveliness…. then I go n do this thing and it’s just so… just so… I can’t even look at it….’ <sob>

The key to getting through this is to keep on going! Don’t stop here!! It’s just a phase. It’s easy to get despondent looking at such an incoherent ugliness. It’s a shambles. But it’s only a shambles at the moment.

It’s a very rare art that can’t be pulled back from the edge of ugly in some fashion or other.

I’ll be back tomorrow with how this got saved, there is ART after URGH.

Note to Self: 17/52

Sometimes I’ll hear or read something I like, I have to write it down. Write it down quick before it escapes. Trap it. The weekly art journal is often to hand, and when the current week is getting full, I’ll drop in these new words somewhere in the future pages. Then when that week rolls around it’s there to remind me. This week remembered to me of this truth:

“Everything I need is already within me.”

I took this photo for fear of the words getting buried. I wanted to show them to you. I love the simple truth of it. We’re so much more resourceful that we think, much of the time.

In this much collage there’s a risk of word burial.

I’ve still got the collage bug big time.

I love the build up of layers, the intensification of imagery.

As it turned out, those words just got bolder. Then became surrounded with eyes. (of course!)

Here We Go … 16/52

This week, and how it took shape, began with these elephants who dropped through my letterbox on a leaflet for the zoo.

Amongst all the hoarded nonsense and clutter that accumulates our lives …. This week I found a box of old sheet music, and a bunch of books, all way too tatty and damaged to donate, but too much like art materials to discard.

But….Y’know, unless its actually contaminated with something that can’t be cleaned off or can make me ill / kill me, it’s almost always got a future as art materials. And if it’s paper, it’s collagable.

Still on the collage buzz (that’s here for a while. I reduced a knee high pile of magazines to 4 boxes of awe inspiring faces, backgrounds, patterns, colours and words recently. There’s a LOAD more of this to come!)

The elephants’ environment mainly consists the scraps on my table leftover from another little doing I’m working on in parallel. I’ll show you how that’s coming on soon. I like how fate and synchronicity get to choose the ingredients sometimes. It lets me off the hook, and they usually do a fine job.

I’ve found a Feeding Fascination: Feed My Soul ~ Feed My Heart ~ Feed My Being.

I’m so nourished by my art, and as of this week I’m also on a literal nourishment adventure too, I’m on a keto kick. I’m gonna give it a month and see how it pans out – day 5 is too soon to comment! – so watch this space.

weekly art journalling 15/52

From the start of this year I’ve been art journaling on a weekly basis. And it’s thrown up all kind of interesting thoughts I wouldn’t have pre-guessed.

Like how some patterns recur through so much I do and make. This checkerboard effect is an old fav. Especially this sort made up from snippy bits of text.

And the subconscious recurrences. There’s definitely an eye peering over from behind these guys. I only saw that in this photo just now! Since I chose Focus as my word for the year, I don’t think a week has gone by this year without eyes featuring to some extent.

Primarily it’s a place to doodle, spill words and thoughts, splash color with free abandon, and dabble about with techniques. I’m on mahoosive collage trip right now!

Collage and doodles. It’s my therapy de jour. I get utterly lost in the layers of cut out images, paint, doodle, ink splash….

This week’s page has been a really involved evolution.

Yes, there have been some important things I should have been doing. This book is a mirror of my procrastionationability

“The Creative Flow”

Set with the challenge to create two works – any media, any format – with the dual themes of Water and The Creative Process. If you’ve been following the story that started out a few weeks ago, then you’ll know I finally reached the point I’m calling these paintings finished!

I loved the way they evolved. I made it my mission to let go of any fixed idea of final outcome, and let the creative process flow like water. You know me, I love a metaphor! Would I do anything differently if I did this again? sure I would! But that’s why it’s called a practice, right?

Anyhoo… you’ve read enough words, now for the pictures!

Water in Parallel: Bring in the Deities

The two Water paintings have been progressing along since I last showed you. The biggest development has been that they are now populated with deities.

I’ve invited in the spirits of some gods and goddesses from all parts of our history and mythology.

In keeping with the themes, these are rulers of water and creativity.

Over the last couple of weeks they’ve merged into the swirls. As they become part of their environment and with the water theme very much established I’ve released the color rule of only blues. And zing doesn’t the blue become suddenly so much bluer!

As soon as I can coordinate some good lighting with the camera and paintings in the same place at the same time I’ll show you the finished pieces.

Grace (14/52)

Have you ever been followed about by a word?

Not a new word, just a word you haven’t noticed much before… then it seems to crop up all over the place? It keeps dropping into conversation and reading.

See, there she is again. I wanted to check against my imagination… is this really happening?

But when she’s there again, on the facing page when you open up the remains of a dictionary you began to dye and dismantle more than 2 years ago.

Well ….

So there she is, Grace, large as life. She was part of my week in all senses.

Water In Parallel (part 4)

The story so far, has lead us to this point

Now, if you know me at all, you’ll understand that I need colour like I need coffee, sleep and oxygen.

So while the peeling back process had restored some of the original brightness, it’s not enough for me. I’m getting hungry for colour and there’s only one remedy there: throw some ink at it:

Swished with water as well (yeh – Water theme – Water literally. It’s the method acting school of artistry)

Plus some black for more contrast, and some lime green and chartreuse for good measure (and for the fact they’re colours I adore)

If I were to try and define my process as a shape, it would be zig-zag: No sooner had I reinstated the brightness, I felt a call to white a load of it out. I know – don’t ask – I’ve stopped trying to second guess where I’m going, I’m just hanging on for the ride now. So I feel like wavy shapes will bring in more Water-y feeling (that I just can’t see now it’s ink drenched). I neeed more wateryness!

This is a 50-50 mix of white acrylic and matt medium for a semi-transparency. painted on and dabbed about with a cloth for a dabbled bubbly sea wave froth look.

Yeh? maybe not so, but I still like the effect. On a roll with the wave shapes, along came some more collaging from scraps that got in the path of the flying ink a few days earlier. (No paper ever goes to waste here!)