day 9: 12 days of Twelvty

The 12 colors:12 months project of 2017 plays back in the last 12 days of the year. Today: Red

Twelvty-Nine: Red

Rich reds, ruby, raspberry, crimson, claret and cherry

“Red is the ultimate cure for sadness”.
~ Bill Blass

Color is an integral part to all types of creativity, it influences our moods and emotions, it’s linked with memories. Colors have been assigned meanings and connections throughout history and around the world.

When we tune our eyes in to notice the colors around us, life becomes brighter and more vibrant.

Through 2017 I’ve been exploring these aspects of color in a year long visual adventure: one color each month.

This month I played with some paper sculpture ideas (still a work in progress), and I explored digital collage from found objects (wow there’s a lot of red things out there!)

And each month I continued adding more single color pages to this mixed media art journal.

Over the last 12 days of the year I want to show you a glimpse of this project.

Starting out in Yellow, then Yellow-Green, Green, Blue-Green, Blue and Blue-Violet, next Violet, then Red-Violet. Tomorrow we’ll step around to Twelvty-Ten: Red-Orange.

If you’re interested in understanding more about color, get my ebook A Year full of Color as well as regular monthly updates on my latest colorful antics, delivered right to your inbox:

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Your email is utterly safe to me. I’ll bring it tea if it wakes up, then sing it back to sleep.

TWELVTY is adventure you can join too.

By exploring the color wheel and each of the 12 colors, I share my creative process plus a feast of resources about color I’ve collected for you.

You’ll learn about the history of how color has been used, not just by artists, but as part of different cultures around the world. You’ll discover the meanings linked to the colors, how there are connections through the ages and around the world.

There are even playlists of songs and music relating to each of the colors! (I said it was thorough, right?)

In 2018 I’m introducing a new element to TWELVTY – a shared creative project that we’ll work on together as we traverse the color wheel.

Find out more here

Registration for TWELVTY 2018 is open now!
Find out more & join here

day 8: 12 days of Twelvty

2017 is my year full of color, the last 12 days I look back at the 12 colors in 12 months that was TWELVTY. Today: Red-Violet

Twelvty-Eight: Red-Violet

From maroon to magenta, pomegranate to plum.

“Mauve? Mauve is just pink trying to be purple.”

~ James Abbot McNeill Whistler,
American Painter and Printmaker, 1834-1903

I love color, and I’m fascinated by the way it appears in life, how it interacts, how it’s assigned meaning.

Throughout 2017 I explored color on a much deeper level in a year long visual adventure, ‘TWELVTY’, a trip around the color wheel exploring one color each month.

I shared the adventure with a group of artists and creatives in the form of an online program. It was the most fun, compiling resources and information on each of the 12 colors.

When we tune our eyes in to notice the colors around us, life becomes brighter and more vibrant.

Each month I played just with the one color the was focus for the month, pushing my imagination to find new ways to create within these boundaries, by adding more single color pages to this mixed media art journal.

Over the last 12 days of the year I want to show you a glimpse of this project.

We began with Yellow, Yellow-Green, then Green, Blue-Green, Blue and Blue-Violet, yesterday we looked at Violet. Tomorrow we’ll step around to Twelvty-Nine: Red

If you’re interested in understanding more about color, get my ebook A Year full of Color as well as regular monthly updates on my latest colorful antics, delivered right to your inbox:

<a href="https://mixygecko.wufoo.com/forms/z1pfxfus0jq7ftl/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Fill out my Wufoo form!</a>

Your email is utterly safe to me. It will not be sold or traded for magic beans. I promise.

TWELVTY is adventure you can join too.

By exploring the color wheel and each of the 12 colors, I share my creative process plus a feast of resources about color I’ve collected for you.

There are even playlists of songs and music relating to each of the colors! (I said it was thorough, right?)

In 2018 I’m introducing a new element to TWELVTY – a shared creative project that we’ll work on together as we traverse the color wheel.

Find out more here

Registration for TWELVTY 2018 is open now!
Find out more & join here

The magic of magenta

2017 is my year full of color, each month I dedicate to a new color: 12 colors in 12 months, a trip around the color wheel. And what a trip!

July has been a feast of violet purples.

2017 is my year full of color, each month I dedicate to a new color: “TWELVTY” – 12 colors in 12 months, is a trip around the color wheel. And what a trip!

In August we explored red-violet: the magic of magenta, mauve & maroon!

Each month gets a few pages in the TWELVTY art journal, where I dive deep into pattern making and monochrome mixed media doodling.

Here’s how August’s pages turned out ….

In September we explored the color Red — I’ll catch you up on this month soon!

Meanwhile, I’m fine tuning the details for the 2018 iteration of Twelvty. Yikes!

Are you interested in exploring the color wheel with us next year?

If you’re even a little bit intrigued, why not hop on my mail list today. I’ll send you my eBook all about color to give you a flavour of the program, AND you’ll be first to hear about the launch closer to the time.

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More Focus & Trust 1/52

So last night I polished off the first week of my 2015 week by week art journal. Little tweaks and changes…. more emphasis on Trust – I gotta trust in this process,

and more focus on the word Focus. Got me thinking about focusing on what this week has meant to me.

The big silvery full moon (which kept me awake Sunday & Monday nights) is now shining from the top of the page. Full moons symbolise the stage of a cycle which is full on, full volume: intensity. As the peak of night brightness passes and the moon wanes the power subsides but I feel like it’s added strength to my convictions and spirited up my wishes.

Y’know I told you about my goals for 2015… I’ve been working on weight training and this week I upped my eek-I-can-just-about-lift-it weight by another 5kg. Little by little I’m realising that dream! The incentive behind my desire to get stronger is to improve my yoga practice. I’d so love to be able to do this. (and so much more… but this would make me happy for a start!)

Thanks to the darling Adriene, of ‘Yoga with Adriene‘, from this week I’ve been practicing with a new found daily discipline. I love her gentle, easy going style, she’s doing this wonderful 30 day program on YouTube. If you’re even a little bit interested in yoga, go check this out, it’s so lovely!

So that’s where I’m at for now; Now onto week 2/52!

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.

Then there’s the three eye-fish. I’ll talk about them another day 😉

Meanwhile it’s day 7 of week1… I wanna get home and get my last bit of painting done for this page. I’ll post the finished version tomorrow.

Til then, g’night folks – sleep like kittens and dream of joyful things X

Three Colour Challenge

Nuvofelt’s challenge was just what I needed this evening.

After a day of getting on with some long put off jobs about the nest, my reward for myself was an hour or so of de-rusting my painting skills.

The three colours I chose (without a lot of thought) were Magenta, Gold Ochre & Purple. Which for someone who has been in a rut of bluey greens for a loooong time, was probably a well balanced choice.

One at a time, on with the colour!

The artificial light doesn’t do the colour justice. It might be a work in progress or maybe a done thing, I’ll review it in the cold light of morning. Either way it was fun to do, I recommend it as a way to break colour habits!

for the love of paper

Isn’t there something irresistable about paper? this page is centred around play with handmade paper. Not made by me I hasten to add – that’s a game I haven’t played (yet)!

It lends itself so well to roughly torn edgery, and as I discovered this week, tearing it when wet makes for even fluffier edges. Now I don’t remember what this paper is made from, it’s (I beleive) Indian and has super-long fibres. I painted it with Koh-I-Noor dye paints then gently tore it while it was still soggy.

The contrast on the magenta page really ZINGS!

I did the cut-out thing with a scalpel, the out-cut-bits then glued on top making multi-levelled layered shape, surrounded by doodle. With some more of the hairy edged paper and dyed envelopes glued to the underside of the page to show through the cut out holes, the next page was starting to take shape too. But more of that later.

now…. where was I ?

All that giddy excitement from last weekend (or some such excuse) meant I’ve not kept you updated on the page a day project – but I’ve not been so remiss as to let it slide!

Ready for a 10 day/page binge? Ok, here they come!

Day 29 (chronologically this day fell between Contrast (with buttons) and Quality Time)

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Although there are parts of this page I like – the colors and some parts of the composition, it has an overall feel of hurried chaos. Something too bitty and scrappy, but isn’t that the way of some days?!

Onward and upward to day 30!