eye-fish – Mixy's Art Blog

What the eye-fish?

It might look like I’ve been deliberately obtuse about the eye-fish thing…

What can I say, they appear in groups of three, and so far 2 of the 3 weeks of this new year’s book have hosted a set.

Yeh, really, they aren’t eyes, they aren’t fish. Eyes and fish are quite different things, and tbh, this one looks like it’s sprouted backward facing legs with which to march, tail first into the unknown.

But that’s just my drawing style – everything piled up on each other style. It’s really a trick of perspective. The eye-fish is, in actuality, some way off in the distance, and hugely bigger than the foreground scribbley yogini attempting to master Warrior 1 pose.

But if you know me at all, you’ll know, it’s not in my nature to be cryptic. So this is as baffling to me as it is to you.

Here are the facts as I understand them to be:

I draw what arrives in my head when I stop thinking.
Eye shape and fish shape are largely interchangable to me.
I think that thinking about the word Focus has had a bearing on my subconcious. (This doesn’t account for the fish)
They hang out in threes, cos having drawn the traditional arrangement of two, I have to (recent compulsion) add a third. I’ve been getting a lot of dreams involving third eyes (more on that another time).
The third eye is a thing. I didn’t make this up. It’s just not a literal viewing hole in the face (mostly anyhow)

So there we are, more info and less sense. It’s all a big brain-dump. Making sense is an improbable ask.

Color and Eye-Fish 2/52

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 🙂

week by week 1/52

There’s something so deliciously enlivening about the start of a new thing

…a new year

…a new book

…a new project

In past years I’ve played with different art journaling projects, from page a day to a page a month. This time around it’s a page a week.

So, 2015, here we go!

Week 1 has been a painty brain-dump.

The only thing I had in mind to start was colour: I’m in a big ole red/magenta/turquoise vibe this week. Look at them ZING!

I primed the pages with gesso and began with some dollopy finger-painting. This process was fun but produced a textured surface so crunchy it really precluded writing with anything finer than a big soft marker. So the words are big n few.

I found some phrases through the week which stuck in my head:

Focus (my word for the year)

Let down your guard and Trust (I’ve read this in more than one place. So it’s a sign, right?)

Stand in your Light (I’ve heard myself say I’ve been standing in my own way a few times, this is a better place for me to be!)

Speak your Truth (it doesn’t have a meaning I can grasp at the moment, but I sense I might come back to this one later and see what I can’t see right now – ‘the woods for the trees’ maybe. What the hey, good solid advice.)

I wrote out the Holstee Manifesto. It’s mostly buried under layers of paint now. But I know it’s in there….the line “Some opportunities only come once, seize them” is just showing enough still to remind me: I want to compose a 2015 manifesto for myself.