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.
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.)
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?
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
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.
(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.)
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 12and it looked like this:
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.
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!
