exclusive youtube preview & the story of this art journal.
Today’s the day my September newsletter flies out!
Get an exclusive preview of my latest art journal flip through + the story of how this book evolved.
Sign up below if you haven’t already 🙂
For a little over a year I’ve been adding a weekly spread to this ginormous sketchbook. This is what’s happened…
Here is the latest flip through of my Book of Days 🙂
find out all about the project here
The next flip through will exclusively preview to my newsletter subscribers.
Sign up below if you haven’t already 🙂
For a little over a year I’ve been adding a weekly spread to this ginormous sketchbook.
Because of the ginormity of this book (600 pages!) it’s going to span the course of a few years to come, and I’m excited about that. To see what appears in these pages is as much of a surprise to me as it is anyone else.
You can see a flip through of the first pages and a second update from early 2021 here on my youtube channel
Since then more creatures and people have shown up on the pages.
They populate the spaces in between the thought scribbles, color swatches and the occasional off-cuts of the projects that happen along the way.
The latest flip through catches us up with from January to July of this year, it’s exclusively previewing this weekend to my newsletter subscribers.
Sign up below if you haven’t already 🙂
We’ve all agreed that time isn’t real, right? because I’m fully embracing that in my reality now.
All that to say, World Collage Day was in May. I posted some photos of my collages in June, I’m writing this in July August, and you could be reading it any time after I hit publish 😉
In my world, I’m somewhere in Collage Season.
Step one: make space on the floor, spread out all the bits so see what you have to play with.
Starting out with a bundle of collage images – mostly cut out from magazines and book pages + a few abstract patterned papers – kindly supplied by the Arizona Collage Collective + some from my own collection, I began with some swapping of heads.
Gradually these newly imagined characters formed together in groups, in turn finding their home in the pages of my Book of Days
I’ll be posting a flip through of the latest pages in this book where you can see this, and the rest of the collages. For an exclusive preview you’ll need to get my next newsletter.
Since last summer I’ve made a new 2 page spread in my ‘Book of Days’ every week. It’s become a mishmash of notes from podcasts, quotes and song lyrics, accompanied by sketches …
It’s been a few weeks since I began reorganising my studio space and I’m still in the “where did I put that” aftermath.
This has meant a pause in creating time, and in turn caused me to take a pause from online doings. And this, naturally, is also part of the global pause/chaos. How are you doing, are you still afloat?
One thing that has not paused is my ‘Book of Days’, this ginormous book of doodles, which is keeping me grounded throughout.
Quite literally – at 600 pages this thing weighs a ton! but also in the sense that it’s a consistent element accompanying a slow plod through winter.
Since last summer I’ve made a new 2 page spread every week. (sometimes I go ‘back in time’ to add extra doodles and details to earlier pages.)
It’s become a mishmash of notes from podcasts, quotes and song lyrics, accompanied by sketches of people, places, memories & dreams, with patterns to fill the in between bits. There are swatches from new paints and pens acquired, even the paints I used when I was painting some furniture last year. It’s a visual dumping ground, an abstract diary documenting these discombobulated times.
It will, all going well, be with me for a few years to come.
I’ll show you how it’s coming on, the first pages are here
This flip thru took us to some time around October, and I’ve continued a spread a week ever since.
To catch up to date with the latest pages, be sure to see my next newsletter, it’s out tomorrow 🙂
There’s a place to sign up at the tail of this post.
here’s what (almost) a year of doodles looks like, page by page.
Just about a year ago I began this art journal.
It’s a monster of a thing at around 100 pages.
I bought two of these books because I was bewitched by the delightfully bright covers, this one in magenta, another in cherry red.
It took almost a year to doodle my way through this book from cover to cover.
I took a while to get used to the pages.
At first I was at odds with the paper which didn’t take ink and watercolor well.
Gessoing or collaging more ink friendly paper to the pages was bulking it up too much to be manageable.
Over the months I found the best solution was to tear out some pages and recycle them into other projects.
Some of these pages went on to become part of the junk journal I’m using for this year’s 100 day project.
I like the idea that this book seeded a brand new book, allowing ideas to overflow between the two.
Finally I reached the point at which the book felt done, ready to set aside to focus my attention on other things. There’s always an overlap with my art journals – I began playing with the second of these books earlier this year – so maybe we can expect a flip through of that one next spring!
Meanwhile, here’s what (almost) a year of doodles looks like, page by page.
These are the pages that have been brightening up my long dark days of winter. As we’ve reached the shortest day I’m calling this project finished and ready to move on to all that comes next. I can’t tell you how much fun I had with this book.
This is my 3rd year of taking part in The Sketchbook Project.
(You can see my previous books here & here)
I fill these pages in the spare bits of time in between other things, so they become a visual stream of consciousness, garnished with bits of stuff, collaged scraps of whatever’s on my desk, they come to represent a snapshot of the season’s projects and ideas.
I scribble down words I hear in song lyrics, audio books and podcasts, there are phrases and words snipped from magazines, landing together to create found poetry and serendipitous sentences.
Faces emerge from the blobs of color, the torn paper shapes and the negative space in between.
It’s weird, it shouldn’t work, but it all seems to come together in a way I never could have predicted.
I can’t tell you how much fun I had with this book.
These are the pages that have been brightening up my long dark days of winter. As we’ve reached the shortest day I’m calling this project finished and ready to move on to all that comes next.
I’ll be sharing a full flip through video + a SPECIAL HOLIDAY GIFT that this book inspired with all the lovely peeps who get my newsletter this weekend.
Sign up here if you haven’t already done so (and then do check your spam hole cos sometimes the good stuff gets swept up into there by mistake)
How many ways can one simple patterns look so many kinds of different in different media, in contrast and colors, in scale and size?
A pattern is defined as the repeated or regular way in which something is done.
An arrangement of lines or shapes,
a design in which the same shape is repeated
at regular internals over a surface.
A pattern is an arrangement of form,
of natural or chance configurations,
a regularity in the world,
in human made design
or in abstract ideas.
Our psyches are plumbed in such a way to seek out and construct patterns.
We organise and categorise our ways into behavior patterns.
Patterns are as much about the arrangement of the component parts as they are the parts – the shape of the space in between.
I was quite entranced by these thoughts on holiday recently.
I had this little sketchbook and just a few colors. As I noticed the repeating patterns around me I began to play, when I got home I continued to fill up this little book with more variations.
I explored a similar idea before, but now I want to carry it on further – with simpler forms – maybe a circle or a square – maybe in just one color – just to see what’s possible.
If you’d like to see more ideas like this and find out what’s been inspiring me, sign up for my monthly studio musings newsletter here.
You’ll get a confirmation email when you sign up (check you junk mail folder – cos sometimes the good stuff gets swept away by mistake).
I’ll pop into your inbox about once a month with news on what I’m up to in my colorful little corner of the universe and what’s been inspiring me.
Do you notice the patterns around you? once you start to look you can notice them everywhere.
A few years ago I took an art class where we focused on grid patterns. Beginning with one grid pattern we developed it in different media in a sketchbook.
I started out with this photo of palm leaves in front of the grid pattern of window panes.
Once you begin exploring an idea like this it’s amazing how many iterations appear.
While I was on holiday last month I accidentally found myself repeating this idea, but this time with the patterns I kept finding in the rocks and stone buildings.
The more I looked I saw similar shapes in other places, variations in this theme were everywhere. Even the shadows and light presented the patterns again in another ephemeral layer.
Now I’m back home I’m filling the rest of the book with variations on this theme.
Catch my latest newsletter to see a flip through of this work in progress sketchbook, and I’ll tell you more about these ideas.
3 weeks is a long time (too long) to be away from my studio, so I bundled up some necessaries for the trip and took a bit of time every morning to move some color about.
The first time I visited Cyprus was almost 20 years ago, and as I stepped off the plane, it felt like I’d come home. Something feels really familiar in the smell of hot dusty air. There were sounds and senses that did not seem at all foreign despite being 2000 miles from the place I’ve lived all my life.
Over the years I’ve been back many times, and never lost this home from home feeling.This year I wangled a way to spend 3 weeks here, and had time to really soak myself into the surroundings: the rich vivid colours & heady scents of bougainvillea & jasmine – the sand between my toes – luxuriating like the the cats that roam and loll around every corner.
But 3 weeks is a long time away from my studio routines, so I bundled up some necessaries for the trip and took a bit of time every morning to move some color about.
These are colors I chose to take (mostly Daniel Smith’s watercolors – decanted into half pans in a little tin box).
I second guessed my choice after I swatched them out here – why so many colors so similar? but as it turned out they were just what I needed, vivid blues & magentas amid the warm stony earth tones..
I’m not much of a landscape painter – my camera is for catching actual views – leaving my sketchbook as the place for playing with ideas.
The ideas I found myself playing with was the similarities and echoing patterns, repeating undulations, the ripples in the water with the curve of the waves, the textures in rocks and stones, the shifting shapes of shadows in the early autumn breeze. Mixing and remixing, folding ideas together into an endless series of permutations.
I feel I’m like returning a bit at a time after a long trip away – this time it took almost a week to really gather myself together into one place. What eased the transition was the pages in this book that overlapped the geography. The patterns of the travels merged into the patterns of usual daily doings & the edges between the two worlds blurred.
Catch this month’s newsletter to see a flip through of these pages to find out where this little collection of images leads next!
Mixy's Art Blog 