12 things about TWELVTY

Want to brighten up your 2017, meet creatives, see color in a whole new way? Join TWELVTY!

Unlike other online art programs, in TWELVTY each segment is all about one color. There are no assignments or structured projects, just a feast of content to inspire you!
TWELVTY is designed to integrate in your existing creative practice, if you use color, you can use TWELVTY! Every month begins a new color so it’s super adaptable and every month you get to start over!
We’re journeying round 12-part color wheel, this means every second color is a tertiary “inbetweeny” color (think yellow-green, turquoise, magenta…) Personally these are my favs, but if you skip over these you’ll still have a complete spectrum of art by the end of the year.
TWELVTY is a brilliant way to make use of the art supplies you neglected in the past, explore colours you wouldn’t usually use, especially the things you only have cos they were part of a set!
Working in just one color is a great solution to blank canvas overwhelm. Begin with a paint splodge, wash or doodle, a collage scrap or an abstract photo of found color. Or just give some thought to what that color means to you…The ideas will follow close behind! Overcome this challenge and open up to a world of creative possibility!
TWELVTY is also a community of likeminded people from around the world and with a wide range of creative backgrounds. Join our tribe and share ideas and inspiration, even collaborate together.
Then there’s our collection of online color resources which you get immediate access to. And I’m constantly adding to it!
Every month you’ll receive a 20+ page ebook especially for TWELVTY. It’s full of illustrations, photos & juicy rich content about the month’s color. From the history of how it’s used, to connections and meanings attached to the color around the world, as well as art & design.
I invite you to join me as I work just in the month’s color. Every Monday I send you a newsletter where I share my creative process through video & photo galleries of works in progress. This content is only for TWELVTY members and is available in the TWELVTY archives all year long.
At the end of each month the art I made as part of TWELVTY will go in my online shop. There are special discounts just for TWELVTY members.
Looking out for color invites you to observe the world around you on a new level. It adds to the richness of the everyday places and things, and brings back a childlike sense of fun and wonder.
All of this works out at just £12 a month! That’s about the equivalent of one fancy cup of coffee once a week. (I’d make my own coffee once a week for all this, wouldn’t you?) 😉

Ready to jump in, or intrigued and want to find out more?

TWELVTY 2017 is here!

I made this little ebook all about color if you’d like to get an taste of TWELVTY.
It’s all yours when you hop on my newsletter list here.

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

Dawn

This morning I launched my newest project – a year full of color – “TWELVTY” All as scheduled, 9am my time, so the early wee hours for the cross-pond recipients.

Each month this year has it’s own color: January is yellow, and it’s flooding my thoughts.

It’s the sunrise of a new project.

01yellow-33-copy — each month I’ll be making art in just one color for TWELVTY: yellows gathered in readiness!

The idea came to me just a couple of months ago when I was on holiday. Bumbling about taking photos… as one does.

I notice color everywhere.

I had a moment of profound realisation when I found myself taking photos of a group of tourists emerging from their (red & blue) coach, just because almost all of them seemed to be dressed to match in some shades of red & blue….

I had one of those moments: Do other people see this too?

Like the fish who doesn’t know it’s swimming in water, my ideas have only swum in my mind, I’ve got no comparison unless I step away and try to look in from outside.

I mentioned the tourists & matching coach to someone a few days later – with gushing enthusiasm – but was met with blank nothingness. Not even the edge of a WTF? response I sometimes get when I share arty revelations like this, just a totally empty, disinterested blankness.

That was the moment I knew: I need to connect up with others who see & appreciate what I see & appreciate. My tribe. We need each other.

We need each other in a world of unknown areas of empty, disinterested blankness, a world with WTF? reactions to gushing arty revelations.

We need to reflect back to each other the magic of seeing some crazy spontaneous colour synchronicity, of seeing some beautifully matched chance happening, some little something somewhere that gets overlooked by most but makes our hearts sing just because of its orangeness, or blueness, or purpleypink, or whateverness.

I love how the idea is resonating among the folks who’ve joined already, the excitement bubbling up, and most of all the anticipation of what will emerge from this group as the year unfolds.

12in12in12

It’s going to be bright and glorious and I love it!

Want to make your 2017 brighter and more colorful?

Sign up below for more news on my doings & makings through the year, and get a lovingly hand crafted ebook all about color

…oh, and you can join TWELVTY too !

yearfullofcolorbypenngregory_page_01

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

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(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.)

A Solstice Gift

Hello dear friends!

Depending on the hemisphere you call home, today is either the shortest or longest day of the year. I like to set aside some time this week to set intentions and bundle up any loose ends so these last days of December are a gradual transition into the new year.

This year I’m super busy combobulating things in readiness for the start of TWELVTY in just a little over a week! I’m so excited!! And to celebrate the holidays, I’ve made you a little gift!

a delightfully illustrated, hand-crafted ebook all about color. Just for you!

This ebook is all yours when you join my newsletter for irregular (once or twice a month usually) updates on my doings & makings.

<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

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(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.)

The more I look…

…the more I see.

I was in London all day Saturday. A rainy grey day, the view from our second floor window crossed over a patch of garden to the grey stonework and concrete of the buildings opposite. These short December days barely get light and the wet and wind dulled out any colours.

The only life on view from up here was a solitary grey squirrel scampering along the spindly limbs of the near naked tree-tops.

But amid the gloom was the last remaining brightness of the season: with every gust of wind a few remaining golden yellow leaves danced about, tumbling, sprinkling, shining.

I was transfixed.

My mind is full of color, it is my ‘thing’.

And as I’m focussed on yellow in the prepration of the first chapter of TWELVTY I suppose it’s no wonder I was so captivated. But it made me ask myself if that’s why: would I have noticed so keenly? Would I have seen it in such glory? Would it have held that measure of magic?

I have no control group of me, no comparison, so these questions are unanswerable

But I have come to observe that the more I actively look, the more I absorb, and the richer my life becomes. When there’s so much enjoyment available from the everyday and mundane, life is lusher and days are fuller.

I’m so full of ideas for TWELVTY, I’m almost bursting! so much so I’m waking up in the night and having to write stuff down. I’m literally dreaming about it! It’s filling all the corners of my mind.

The program begins in the new year with shiny bright yellow so I’ve been warming up my drawing-and-painting-in-just-yellow vibes in readiness.

I love to use just one color (I love using ALL THE COLORS!) but one-at-a-time has a really special quality. This is one of the big things that I want to share and explore further with you.

I’m putting together a Q&A

If you want to know more about what TWELVTY’s all about comment below to let me know 🙂

What would you like to know?
What would you like to learn?
What really lights you up about some colours, and not others?

Read all about TWELVTY & sign up here

Yellow…

Twelvty begins in January 2017.

It’s a 12 month journey through 12 colours: exploring, experimenting, collaborating, painting, playing.

Each month is dedicated to its own single color, and January is all about YELLOW.

We start here… you wanna come along? It’s going to be so much fun 🙂

Join up now only £144 for the whole year.

The 11th hour

Hi friends 🙂

Doesn’t time hurtle away when while we’re busy?

It seems like moments ago I was telling you about the launch of TWELVTY. It feels like just a day or so since the ideas began to come together and I started putting this program together, but in fact that’s just another instance of time being tricksy with us.

So I’m just putting this out there – if you have haven’t yet signed up and are planning to, there’s just about 11 hours to catch the Special Deal whereby you get 2 months FREE.

No heavy sales pitch: I genuinely don’t want you to miss out. For real.

It’s only £12 a month. [at the time of posting that’s close to $15 USD] That’s a bit less than £3 a week, which in the big scheme of modern expenses doesn’t buy a lot of ‘stuff’. Maybe a fancy coffee, but probably not the slice of cake to go with it 😦

As a special gift to you, I’m giving two of these months to you for no charge when you sign up this week. £24 off the whole year. Now that would buy a substantial amount of cake. (Don’t eat it all at once though)

With TWELVTY you get to join a tribe of like minded creatives and explore the way color appears in our lives. We’re going to look at ways to play with color and integrate it in our art. We’re going to have a lot of fun. Find out more HERE

If you want to catch the bargain: Sign up Here Quickity-Flip cos it’s back to full-12-month-price as the clock strikes Midnight GMT on Friday 2nd December!

Twelvty launch!

Hi friends!

Here we are, after much squirreling around I’m delighted to let you know: TWELVTY is now on sale!

I am SO excited!

To celebrate I’m offering a 2 month discount off the year long program if you sign up this week

TWELVTY is a brand new program I’m launching today, it will run from January through December 2017 and it’s all about color!

Intrigued? Find out more here

twelvtycover1200x600

Color in connection

All I had was this two word note that me-in-the-past had dropped in time, for me-in-the-future to happen upon and to investigate further.

A while ago I found a scrap of paper in my studio, on it was scribbled the name Neil Harbisson. Neil who? I don’t think I know any Neils these days… my mind wanders back in time to past acquaintances, the connections, the links, the friends of friends…

No. No Neils there.

Some times passes, some weeks, I go on my usual drifty way blundering through my days, cherishing my studio time.

Another day, while rooting round for just the right scraps to collage into my art journal, the color that pings, the shape that blends, that one piece that harmonizes and unifies and completes.

And I see him again, this Neil I don’t know, scribbled on a scrap, and my memory rolls back in: the thought process that produced this scribble.

I was listening to the radio in the studio, and this guy – Neil – he’d either been in an interview, or the presenter had spoken about him, enough to make me want to find out more.

But more what? The memories weren’t stretching that far and they didn’t hold any content.

All I had was this two word note that me-in-the-past had dropped in time for me-in-the-future to happen upon and to investigate further.

(More time passed.)

Then on one of those days when I must’ve had a deadline so close, a task so pressing, so so much, that I was on the brink of shutdown.

Those times when the overwhelming emergency of it all is so loud all I can think to do is nap or run away.

And the easiest run away of the moment was to dive down one of the rabbit holes on the internets and hide out there until bedtime. Or a little later.

And I remembered this name. I visualised the scrap. I recalled the recall.

I urgently wanted to know what was so fascinating I couldn’t let it float by in the past. I’d anchored that moment for a reason, and I was going to find out why.

And here is what I found:

I smiled at the notion of becoming fascinated with something so very visual I’d heard about on the radio. The magical crossover of hearing and seeing was repeated, overlapped in a pleasingly elegant irony.

So why am I remembering this to you? Why here and now?

And where exactly are we here and now anyway?

We’re back in my art journal, the one of the moment. This is the place my mental fallout lands.

I began it on the last Equinox a couple of months ago and I figure it will be my art-ing abode until solstice. (I’m alligning my makings this year, it seems out be working out well)

And when are we?

We’re (well, I am – and you seem to be here with me too) riding the rapids of thoughts and ideas that unless I take these diversions I’ll be utterly swept away.

I’m putting together a program all about color, so previously explored rabbit holes like these are the mileposts along my journey.

And I figured you might find this interesting too.

And if you like this, you’ll almost certainly want to play with me next year in my TWELVTY program. If you haven’t already – sign up here and you’ll be the first to hear all about it.

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(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!