Letting go of the butterfly

It’s curious to relive the visual journey. There’s nothing like filming the process to relive the ‘why did I do that?’ moments.

Time Lapse Compilation: part 3

If you’ve been here before, you’ll know that lately I’ve been documenting my art journaling process through a series of time lapse videos.

It’s curious to relive a visual journey. There’s nothing like filming the process to relive the ‘why did I do that?’ moments. These came up a lot early on but I’m noticing a desensitising effect with practice, and letting go of expectations. Process is process.

Nonetheless, the push and pull of loving/hating the direction it’s taking remains real. It took a really long time for me to catch on where this one wanted me to lead it.

*The irony of the words that fell onto this page is not lost on me, from an interview with*
Sabrina Ward Harrison: **“Splendidly Imperfect and Alive”.**

This video is a compilation of little time lapse videos taken over a few weeks of back-and-forth-ing on this spread.

The more time I spend in art making, the more I find parallels between a creative practice and all the other everyday-everythings. Seems to me, how we make tends to mirror how we live – bravely – messily – stubbornly – inconsistently… all of these are here!

Releasing the butterfly

This particular spread got so sticky because I reeeally didn’t want to lose that butterfly. I painted and drew around him until I had such a mess there was no other option, ultimately burying him under a new layer of paint to ease the intensity of so much going on. I was resisting letting go.

I’ll post the next in this series soon. To catch it ahead of everyone else + get monthly-ish updates on my other colorful studio antics, join up for my newsletter here.

Processing…

Success! You're on the list.

Whoops! There was an error and we couldn't process your subscription. Please reload the page and try again.

Time Shrinkage

Today we reached the quarter way mark, day 25 of the #100dayproject.

To celebrate I’ve joined up the videos of the first layers of the first canvas I began working on. It’s still a work in progress, but already it’s been through so many evolutions.

The 100 Day Project 2018

I like an outrageously crazy challenge as much as the next person.

I’ve been known to dive into some over ambitious projects without thinking it all the way through (for risk of talking myself all the way out in the process).

But even I know while I’m not in my studio every day, finding time for painting every day for 100 days isn’t realistic. I listened to my inner adult, and together we came up with a plan:

My 100 day project is to paint as often as I can, and post an update every day for 100 days.

To make that possible and prepare I let these paintings take over a long weekend at the start of the month in order to get ahead.

(Best. Weekend. Ever!)

If you haven’t seen the posts, I’ve been time-lapsing the process to share on Instagram.

This filming shrinks down the rate of progress to just 10%, making a half hour of painting flash by in 30 seconds! It’s fascinating to watch it back, to literally watch over my own shoulder as I paint. I follow my instincts and don’t plan what I’ll paint, so the images evolve out of nowhere, and then recede back under the newer layers.

Today we reached the quarter way mark, day 25.

To celebrate I’ve joined up the videos of the first layers of the first canvas I began working on. It’s still a work in progress, but already it’s been through so many evolutions.

I’ll be making little videos like these for all 5 paintings as I go along.

If you’d like an exclusive preview of these, and other things I’m making, join up for my email newsletters. At the time of typing, they go out just once or twice a month, so I won’t be flooding our inbox!

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

Flashback: Color, Color, Color!

Last year I had the great pleasure of producing an online class for 21 Secrets all about color. (If you know my art – you’ll know this is my thing!)

In the class I teach you how to make a really fun variation on a color wheel, using collage and mixed media painting techniques, to inspire new ways of combining colors in your mixed media art. This would be fab as a school holiday project for creative little ones!

And another 23 teachers (yes – this time there are more than the usual 21) share how they use color in their art.

This week there’s a Flashback Sale!

From 1am PST on Monday July 3rd
(CLICK HERE for time zone conversion)
to 11:59pm PST on Wednesday, July 5th

You can grab Color, Color, Color! For just $77
(a discount of $21).

Click Here & Enter Coupon Code: FLASHBACK

(By purchasing through the links in this post, I receive a small commission at no extra cost to you.)

All through this summer I’m offering a special discount in my Etsy Shop to all the folks on my mailing list – so clickety-hop aboard today if you want to snag a bargain!

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

(and I’ll send you my ebook A Year full of Color as a thank you for joining)

What 3 months of color looks like…

These are the art journal pages from the first three months of Twelvty: This is the story so far.

January: Yellow

When I look at these pages I’m whisked back the to adventures and explorations of the first month of this year long adventure. Using just one color brings out nuances and subtleties too quiet to hear above the sound of other colors.

I chose yellow as a starting place in the color wheel because it is simple, it is small.

There’s not much space or contrast in yellow – take it darker and you have shades of ochre, tan into browns. Only a smidge lighter before you hit white. No room to step either way before falling into yellow-orange or yellow-green, and they have their own months in Twevlty.

Yellow is compact with well defined parameters.

February: Yellow-Green

Yellow-green: the first tertiary color we explored – and suddenly there’s a depth of tone to play with. Luscious lime to opulent olive. Chartreuse. Char-freaking-treuse, people!

And here’s the beginning of the “is it or isn’t it?” questions that will bob up all through this year. When does it stop being yellow and start being green? Where’s the spot in the middle? We’re navigating a continuum, there are no strict boundaries. It’s all part of the fun 😉

March: Green

Another month, another step round, deeper into greens. Each collage scrap and cut out shape here has a story and will serve to remind me of ideas that were born and then took a turn I didn’t foresee. I’m only the vehicle through which these ideas come to being, sometimes I forget this and try to control them. But, like water, they find their own way.

This book is the place a leave seeds of ideas to incubate: reminders to a me-in-the-future. We’re nearing the end of a month of blue-green as I type this to you, and about to dive into the ocean of blue for May. Check back to see the cool bluey loveliness that emerges!

Would you like to get sporadic updates on my thoughts and drawings delivered right to your inbox? Hop onto my email list right here.

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

(and I’ll send you my ebook A Year full of Color as a thank you for joining)

Your email is utterly safe to me. It will be wrapped up in blankets. I will bring it tea and biscuits on Wednesdays.

that time again! (1 of 2)

Looking back at things I made in 12 months makes the year stretch back further. January feels like a lifetime ago now…

My 2016 in art journalling has looked like this

The tail of the year, the time to look back & look forward, funny cos in so many ways it’s an arbitrary number, tomorrow will still be tomorrow whatever we call it. But I enjoy the process of evaluating where I am in this life from time to time, so now’s as good as any!

Join me tomorrow and I’ll show you the second half of my 2016 in art journaling.

Want to make 2017 brighter and more colorful?

Join me in TWELVTY! beginning January 1st.

Can’t wait that long? sign up below and get a lovingly hand crafted ebook all about color right now!!

…then join TWELVTY…obvs! 😉

yearfullofcolorbypenngregory_page_01

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

Be well, my friends, Much love to you all X

**********************************

(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.)

New Color Fuelled Excitements!

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)

“TWELVTY”

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:

edit20121217_0595 — GASP! I know! it was so much fun to make!

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.

color_penngregory_01 — Take Nine: 21 Secrets Color, Color, Color !

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:

I’m going to re-imagine this project in 2017 and I’d love you to join me.

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:

painting & drawing
photography & video
textiles, stitching, beadwork
sculpture & 3D makings
…. oooh! we’ll have to wait and see what else!

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!

Sign up here for updates by email if you want to keep in the loop with all things TWELVTY

Edit:: It’s here!! Find out more HERE & SIGN UP if you want to join the adventure!!

I’d love to hear your thoughts and suggestions. Meanwhile, I wish you all a fabulous, bright and colorful week!

Much love X

knowing when

I’ve heard it said the key to painting is knowing when to stop.

Conversely, it’s also important (to my mind) to know when to keep going.

How many abandoned sketches and paintings are there in the world? I would guess a great many more than those that finished (or past that point).

My current art journal is teaching me this more than I already knew.

The nature of dipping in and out of a book means most of the pages are, for a long time, just scraps of whims, streaks of paint, isolated doodles and jottings. And they are quite loud and ugly.

In a book of no intrinsic value, it means nothing to open it up and find a space to wipe off my paint brush, to test out an old pen, to blurt and vent some spleen. A dumping ground for bits of thing laying scattered on my work table. Cut outs and scraps, they all go in.

Nothing to lose. Some would argue (shhh — they don’t understand), nothing to be gained.

We know different, right?

Again I remember, how it’s all a metaphor for life. Keep pushing through, it’s ugly now but keep going, it’s a phase. If you have that strength of belief to carry you through it can come good.

At no point in this process do I have an idea of finished – what it will look like or when it may happen. (or if… tbh there’s always an if)

Then I catch a little corner, in my eye or my camera, and I know it will be ok.

Colour bomb 28/52

This week was full of colour.
Dabs and daubs.
Layer on layer on layer on layer on layer…

Eyes and spirals and circles and more…
Building up over and over and over and more and deeper and lusher and more.

That’s the sorta week it was.

reflecting ‘so much more’ 27/52

Every week I create something.

Some weeks I create more.

In fact – most days I create loads – but in terms of the tangible, the painty reality, every week of this year I am creating at least one something: One page of One book of One year

I’m over half way in now, and I’m detecting more and more patterns all the time, every one a metaphor for the unfolding times in which they’re made:

Some weeks start on the first day and incrementally develop a little at a time.
Some weeks are a flurry of fervour, forced into focus in a short few days: blurting out in totality at the start, or squished up against the finishing hours.

They all reflect some underlying aspects, some current cares and the modality of the moment:
Words and feelings ooze in and out.. You might not hear them, but we both know they are there.

Weaving in the elements: internal and external.

There’s what rests on the surface, and there’s so much more.

The surface reflects to you what you project out.
For everyone it’s something personal and new.

Each page, each week, each is contained within a season of interest with the cast of supporting characters who meander about and around my days. These recent weeks have been populated by some images that I printed more than I needed for a project I’ve since finished. Smiling, familiar faces from within the framework that structures these times. Left over faces smile out of these times.

Here from the perspective of a photo I see all that I’d like to do to ‘finish’ the image. But that week has passed so it’s another that I’ll leave as it is, almost ready, a little soft in the middle and a bit raw in places. It’s all ok.
Time pushes on, I’m over the other side of this one now.

The Gestalt is Revealed 24/52

“To see patterns is to understand.”

Do you know Jason Silva?
He’s media artist, futurist, philosopher,
he’s a ball of frenetic energy and enthusiasm and with a magnificent mastery of descriptive language he spills this energy out into the internet in Shots of Awe.