Hi friends!
Here we are, after much squirreling around I’m delighted to let you know: TWELVTY is now on sale!
TWELVTY is a brand new program I’m launching today, it will run from January through December 2017 and it’s all about color!
Intrigued? Find out more here
All I had was this two word note that me-in-the-past had dropped in time, for me-in-the-future to happen upon and to investigate further.
A while ago I found a scrap of paper in my studio, on it was scribbled the name Neil Harbisson. Neil who? I don’t think I know any Neils these days… my mind wanders back in time to past acquaintances, the connections, the links, the friends of friends…
No. No Neils there.
Some times passes, some weeks, I go on my usual drifty way blundering through my days, cherishing my studio time.
Another day, while rooting round for just the right scraps to collage into my art journal, the color that pings, the shape that blends, that one piece that harmonizes and unifies and completes.
And I see him again, this Neil I don’t know, scribbled on a scrap, and my memory rolls back in: the thought process that produced this scribble.
I was listening to the radio in the studio, and this guy – Neil – he’d either been in an interview, or the presenter had spoken about him, enough to make me want to find out more.
But more what? The memories weren’t stretching that far and they didn’t hold any content.
All I had was this two word note that me-in-the-past had dropped in time for me-in-the-future to happen upon and to investigate further.
(More time passed.)
Then on one of those days when I must’ve had a deadline so close, a task so pressing, so so much, that I was on the brink of shutdown.
Those times when the overwhelming emergency of it all is so loud all I can think to do is nap or run away.
And the easiest run away of the moment was to dive down one of the rabbit holes on the internets and hide out there until bedtime. Or a little later.
And I remembered this name. I visualised the scrap. I recalled the recall.
I urgently wanted to know what was so fascinating I couldn’t let it float by in the past. I’d anchored that moment for a reason, and I was going to find out why.
I smiled at the notion of becoming fascinated with something so very visual I’d heard about on the radio. The magical crossover of hearing and seeing was repeated, overlapped in a pleasingly elegant irony.
So why am I remembering this to you? Why here and now?
And where exactly are we here and now anyway?
We’re back in my art journal, the one of the moment. This is the place my mental fallout lands.
I began it on the last Equinox a couple of months ago and I figure it will be my art-ing abode until solstice. (I’m alligning my makings this year, it seems out be working out well)
And when are we?
We’re (well, I am – and you seem to be here with me too) riding the rapids of thoughts and ideas that unless I take these diversions I’ll be utterly swept away.
I’m putting together a program all about color, so previously explored rabbit holes like these are the mileposts along my journey.
And I figured you might find this interesting too.
And if you like this, you’ll almost certainly want to play with me next year in my TWELVTY program. If you haven’t already – sign up here and you’ll be the first to hear all about it.
(Your email is absolutely safe with me, I’ll just pop by and check up on it time to time, feed it biscuits, plump up its cushions, that sort of thing.)
I’ve got big plans brewing and I want to tell you all about them!
Beginning with (drum roll and accompanying cooing noises, if you will)
ok, that’s a working title… I’ll tell you a little more about it and perhaps you’ll have some better ideas on a name!
So here’s the thing: 5 years ago I did this personal project called 12 in 12 and it looked like this:
It’s an art journal of mixed media, painting and doodles, collage, stitching and things that I worked on all through the year. Each month had a 2 or 3 pages, but just one colour. Beginning in January with Red-Purply-Magenta, I cycled around the colour wheel landing back to Red in December. 12 colours in 12 months.
I loved it for so many reasons. While I continued to play with all the colors in my other art, I kept focussed on the month’s ONE COLOR in this book. All month long.
It was a discipline. And it made me reach for the other colors more mindfully in the rest of my work.
Even now, years on, I look back through it and those pages flood my mind with ideas and inspiration.
It also tuned my eyes into color in my surrounding much more keenly. Look around you now: how many blue things can you see? Look again. Are they brighter now you’re actively noticing them? It’s so simple, so effective.The more we look, the more we see.
I revisited this idea recently in my 21 Secrets class Take Nine. And it’s awoken something in me that’s just overflowing with ideas.
At least a yearful of them.
So, here we go:
This time it’s going to extend beyond one art journal. It’s going to include all the aspects of art making I use and incorporate everything new I pick up in the year, off the top of my head I already know it will have:
Each month I’ll record what I’m making and share these videos with you, AND at the end of the month I’ll be selling the pieces I make in my (soon to be opened) Etsy Store.
AND There will be giveaways and prize draws through the year too. I’m formulating the details and honing the plans all the while: there will be much more on all of this soon!
I’d love to hear your thoughts and suggestions. Meanwhile, I wish you all a fabulous, bright and colorful week!
Much love X
If you only had one color to use, which would it be?
Or how about just two or three? Do you find you have a handful of colors that you tend to stick with? The colors your comfort zone is decorated in?
Ever fancied straying outside this palette but not known where to begin? How about an encouraging nudge to open up a wealth of new opportunities, or a little tweak to liven up your regular practice?
Well folks, that’s right where I can help you!
In just a couple of weeks the new 21 Secrets COLOR COLOR COLOR! program is launched, where I and another fab 23 teachers take you into our creative world to share some color inspiration.
If you’re intrigued at the thought of tuning up the range of colors you use, or joining in some fun exercises and projects involving looking at color in a new way:
* CLICK RIGHT HERE *
to sign yourself up for a feast of delicious colorfulness!
My class “Take Nine” explores new ways to combine a simple palette of the primaries, secondaries with three neutral shades, and then sets you up with lots of exciting ideas to develop from here!
In the interests of full disclosure this posts contains affiliate links: at no extra cost to the customer I receive a small commission on sales of the 21 Secrets Fall 2016 program made through this post. Big thanks in advance if you choose to join in here
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…………………….
Close up, week 29 looked like this…
A lot of layers, a lot of buried words. A lot of rich, warm colour
Did you see the face?
Just sometimes I can’t settle and be at peace with a painting.
It’s out there somewhere, or tucked away in a book, and it’s niggling me.
It’s cropping up in my thoughts and interfering in my whatever’s-happening-next-ness.
Last week’s page of the page-a-week project was one of them.
Look, here she is. She looks mis-coloured.
What’s a page with no yellow? No warmth?
No.
Where’s her depth? Can’t leave her cold like this.
Bring on the warm tones!
(I’m happy now!)
Week 8 of the page a week looked like this:
And it must be the most colourful yet. It’s also the most full of subconscious tells – I’m only starting seeing now I look back from a few days later. Like the green mermaid/peacock – I didn’t draw her but she emerged from a funny little cross-leggedy figure and the phrase ‘move toward’ and some doodles.
I’ve got no idea at all what that means (yet).
There’s a lot of scribbly writing on this week, from an outpouring of encouraging words & phrases I was trying to sooth my brain with. You’ll catch glimpses of them here n there altho a lot are now buried under drawing.
She believed she could and she did.
Cos gosh darn it if that hasn’t been the case recently! And I’ve still riding that wave, so it goes down in the book as a marker of the time I’m in.
Move Toward. If I had a strategy for life, it would be that. As opposed to the alternates: running away from, or worse: sitting in stagnation. I’ve tried both of these approaches in the past. The results haven’t been so good.
Since I began this page-a-week game I’ve become aware how often the opportunity for another list of intentions comes up – it’s almost weekly!
Since forever it’s been a thing I do at the start of a month, and on a New Moon. The big ones are New Year (often I begin this at Winter Solstice), and there’s Chinese (Lunar) New Year which fell last week.
You see what I mean?
No wonder I’m so often listing the same things.
So for the record, here are my intentions for Year of the Goat/Sheep/Ram/Ovicaprid
These flooded out in a sorta stream of consciousness so I can’t offer much by way of explanation for them. More I hope will become apparent in the course of time. Hey – they’ve got a year to puzzle themselves into fruition!
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