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:

<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. 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

Happy landings, shininess

a few days ago I landed in Seattle, and I fell in love with the place.

Not least for the Seattle Center which includes the Experience Music Project – the EMP Museum – the most amazingly shiny building I’ve ever encountered – which I spent a good hour or so just circling and photographing while oohing and ahing.

Designed by Frank O Gehry, this extraordinary building has colours that seem to shift as you walk round, and the wobbly surface make for funky reflections. Get these…

And Chihuly Garden and Glass —oh my days!! —If you’re like me and get giddy on shiny things, this is a place that will make your heart sing!

Check back soon — I’ll post up the pics from there once I’ve filtered through them. (I took approx a gazillionty-hundred-and-twelve… watch this space!!)

derailed logic

You know me well enough by now – you know not to expect a simple train of logic, don’t you?

When I found this anonymous model, the leopardskin, that sultry seductive look, and all the glamour of the 1940’s ‘do — and I don’t remember the exact connecting train of thought that same next –– I just straight away thought mermaid.

Of course, right? <welcome to my world!>

Create Your Own Map (22/52)

This recurring instruction: Create Your Own Map.
It’s what I’m endeavoring to do.
I’m mapping my way as I go.
I document when I remember,
I share when I think it might help.

Starting out in the usual fashion:

Colours and curls,
Cut outs, collaging the inconsequential,
daubs, dabs, smudgy smear.

State the intention.

Then populate:

Look up, look down. Look around

Remember it’s the journey not the destination.

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!)

butterfly overflow (9/52)

Week 9 of this year is made out of the colours of Spring, honoring the sense of Spring as the world comes back to life after her quiet dormant months. And some of last week’s butterflies have flitted across into this week too. I had a big old tidy up after finishing that project and all the left over butterflies have landed here. (I say all of them… a few got away as you’ll see on the next page).

The week fell on the crossover from February to March, so warranted another list. Seems like there’s a reason for a list pretty much every week now. It’s in the background, but it can germinate there. I’ll patiently await the first shoots of development as the month wears on.

Another week, another meme:

When you do what you fear the most you can do anything.

Ok, yeh, I can take that on as a challenge. I’ve crossed some metaphorical bridges lately, and my metaphorical-bridge-crossing skills are notably sharper as a result. I’ve also come to realise I can’t always tell the difference between the pit-of-the-guts anxiety feeling and its close cousin, the visceral buzz of anticipation feeling.

So I’ve actively decided that henceforth, if I’m in any doubt, I’ll assume its the latter.

It is the feeling of butterflies.

New Beginnings

It’s that time of year, time of life, time of day.. it’s also the name of an exhibition I have some work in.

The title is open to interpretation but it got me thinking about the saying What the caterpillar calls the end, the rest of the world calls a butterfly.

an untidy desk is the sign of... — an untidy desk is the sign of…

So with my fav kind of glorious inky messy, the divinely joyous, the snipping up of little bits of paper, the gluing bits accidentally to my sleeves, hair, floor… and the itsy small doodles on the wings… the magical making process, another project began to unfurl.

I remembered how I hadn’t done this for so long – let the inner kid out to play without any rules or boundaries – well, one – just do butterflies. We jumped in with both feet!

I began with 3 different butterfly images, digitally reduced to grey-scale, then high contrast mono before printing in a few different sizes. Some flipped over to fly in the opposite direction.

Enough of the tidy digital world, enough of the pristine pixel arrangement. Time for IK to make a mess with layers of inky goodness before cutting out the little beasties for collaging, and extra doodles.

So far there are 2 framed collages, and a series of cards. I’m in the process of setting them up over on DeviantArt so prints are available too ……….. and I’ve got another little side project where they’ll be flitting through too -> watch this space!