I’ve been taking a few online classes lately. Exploring areas I already feel comfortable – mixed media, collage, watercolours – and adding to my range with the help of some fabulous teachers.
What I was not expecting from this, is how it’s encouraged me to revisit some older pieces that I’d got stuck with.
To find out more – catch my newsletter out today (sign up below if you’re not already registered)
Hi – I’m Mixy!
This is Mixy 🙂
I’m a mixed media & textile artist from London, UK.
I love to share what I’m making, and I hope it brings some inspiration to your creative time.
You can see what I’m making on this blog, and in these places too
Reporting in from half way through the 100 day project, I am up to my eyes in part-done paintings!
Because this time I’ve chosen to make my 100 pieces all at once instead of one per day, it’s proving tricky to see how far it’s progressing.
I’ve posted daily snippets of progress over on IG, including short videos & time-lapses showing some of the ways I’ve been keeping on top of this ridiculous number of works!
Adding a layer to a bunch of paintings all at once by drawing across them as one was fun. The spaces and shapes the big abstract squiggle made on each piece connects them, and also makes a individual drawing on each.
Filling in the gaps in between made these sweet sibling painting pairs.
Whole families of similarly colored pieces began forming, and this whole endeavor feels like a new community forming.
I look at these and consider: would a less complicated person call these finished?
Which leads me to wonder if an unconscious part of me decided to tackle the project this was a way to work on the art of knowing when something’s done.
One thing’s for sure, I don’t want to spend days 98 & 99 in a mad scramble of adding last touches to dozens of paintings. That sounds like such a ‘me’ thing to do.
So I’m thinking the second half of this marathon should focus on the process of final layers and finishings.
This is the where we are at, day 50, the end of the beginnings snd the beginnings of the the endings.
I’ll be back soon with news on the other doings and goings on in my studio. Meanwhile, to be first to see what I make and find out the thinking behind it, do sign up for my monthly-ish newsletters.
Follow me on Instagram for daily updates 🙂 #100daysofQuietColor
Hi – I’m Mixy!
This is Mixy 🙂
I’m a mixed media & textile artist from London, UK.
I love to share what I’m making, and I hope it brings some inspiration to your creative time.
You can see what I’m making on this blog, and in these places too
How ridiculous would it be to begin 100 paintings all at once? Let me show you…
We are 6 weeks into the 100 day project and I’m really loving this challenge.
Every day I post snippets of progress on IG, photos, videos & time-lapses of the layers adding up.
There’s a box on my desk homing the 100 started paintings, and at any one, time several are scattered across every flat surface around me as the newest layers dry!
Here are a few of the pieces I’ve been playing with this week.
So far I’ve used watercolours, acrylics and inks for larger blocks of color and graphite, charcoal, markers and fine liners for the details.
Is that all? It’s been a dizzying blur (but in the best possible way)
Yeh, then there was some potato printing & stamping with a recycled hot water bottle. I’m feeling like some collage elements could be showing up soon, and maybe some stitching too. watch this space! 😉
Next Sunday marks day 50, so I’ll be back next week with a special post at the half way point.
Follow me on Instagram for daily updates 🙂 #100daysofQuietColor
Hi – I’m Mixy!
This is Mixy 🙂
I’m a mixed media & textile artist from London, UK.
I love to share what I’m making, and I hope it brings some inspiration to your creative time.
You can see what I’m making on this blog, and in these places too
Twenty days in to the 100 day project, here’s where I’m at.
On 31 January I set myself the task to create 100 paintings in 100 days (see how it came about here).
I’ve been experimenting with different media and techniques, adding a little bit to a bunch of these paintings every day. Part of this challenge is to keep the colours quiet and muted, which doesn’t come naturally to me.
A few blue backgrounds were looking a little too vivid so I toned them down with grey to get back on track 😉
A bonus I did not expect from working in this whole new palette is that I’m getting much more of a buzz from the other (full volume color) projects that I’m working on at the same time.
To fully mix my metaphors, it feels like I’m getting a more balanced diet visually speaking, and I’m loving the contrast in flavours.
(I just finished a particularly colorful project, which I’ll tell you all about next week)
I enjoy using text in my art.
Either beginning with a word that fills the page and ornamenting it into something new, or using scribbled thoughts and chunks of wordage to fill blocks and shapes.
In the last few days I’ve been adding some time lapse videos of the process to the Instagram posts – I love re-watching the way pieces like this take shape as black ink squiggles about on wet paper.
To keep track of how many paintings I’ve started I began numbering them, which lead me to listing some words & thoughts on the back (As inspired by the great artist & teacher, Jesse Reno). Sometimes it’s a color I want to remember, or a thought that’s shown up (future me might bury that under more paint, so I’ve left her a note just in case).
As the layers build up, the lists will grow. Every painting will have its own little chronology. Some might become a poem, or a name for the painting might emerge. We’ll have to wait and see 😉
Follow me on Instagram for daily updates 🙂 #100daysofQuietColor
Hi – I’m Mixy!
This is Mixy 🙂
I’m a mixed media & textile artist from London, UK.
I love to share what I’m making, and I hope it brings some inspiration to your creative time.
You can see what I’m making on this blog, and in these places too
10 days into the 100 days project, laying down the first layers of 100 paintings.
Ten days into the 100 day project, already I’m amassing a satisfying stack of paintings-to-be with first layers down.
My strategy this year is not to make a complete painting every day, but still to make 100 paintings in 100 days.
Because the way I work best is to have lots of pieces on the go at any time. I hop about between them and the ideas cross pollinate. These 100 days of Quiet Color are taking a familiar route, spiraling through layers and iterations of pattern.
Right now I’m all about watercolor and ink in swirly shapes (beginning with words which quickly evolve into more abstract shapes). Some already have a lot of tiny details,
(while these first colors are drying I move onto another one)
While others are washes and blobs of color – just a very beginning.
The quiet colors de jour are Payne’s Grey, Indigo & Sepia with a bit of Black & White gouache.
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.
Re-entry
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!
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When I’ve got just a few minutes to spare I go to my art journal, find a blank page or a space, and doodle.
These are the background layers that inspire what comes next.
This is how I fill the scraps of time while I’m waiting for paint to dry, or a file to upload, or just waiting for ideas to land.
There’s a real freedom in knowing it will get covered in sketches or collage, more doodles and scribbles. I don’t plan this, I don’t even choose the colors, I use whatever pens, paints and brushes are there on my desk.
Sometimes you just got to let art happen.
Be first to see what I’m doing and making in the studio by signing up to my newsletter. Once a month or so I’ll drop in your inbox with more colorful tales!
This Tiny Book is part of the #TinyBookCollective from Hope Fitzgerald over on Instagram. Check out her posts to see more itsy weeny books like this, and find out how to take part.
Colors & doodles from me, words from Marianne Williamson:
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves,
who am I to be brilliant,
gorgeous, talented and fabulous?
Actually,
who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world.
There’s nothing enlightened
about shrinking so that other people
won’t feel insecure around you.
We were born to make manifest
the glory of God that is within us.
It’s not just in some of us;
it’s in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine,
we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear,
Our presence automatically liberates others.”
This Tiny Book is part of the#TinyBookCollective from Hope Fitzgerald over on Instagram. Check out her posts to see more itsy weeny books like this, and find out how to take part.
If you’d like to be first to see the latest projects I’m working on & exclusive insights into the thoughts behind the splashy doodles, hop onto my email list for monthly-ish updates direct to your inbox:
I had a really clear idea what I wanted to do with this book from (almost) the outset last year – a rambling whirl of doodles, a stream of consciousness running through the pages.
The Sketchbook Project
It’s been a while since I checked in with you guys on this project, I’ve had to overcome a few obstacles along the way.
I had a really clear idea what I wanted to do with this book from (almost) the outset last year – a rambling whirl of doodles, a stream of consciousness running through the pages. Then I got ill, and the heavy duty pain medication I had in hospital inspired me with a really clear visual I wanted to recreate. As best I could, two-dimensionally on paper.
I began the line work back during Inktober, and looking back I remember at the time being aware of just how thin and flimsy the paper is in the book. I mean, super thin. It would hold up well to gentle care but I’m heavy handed and (because it’s all I had to hand and impatience is my biggest motivator in all I do) I used ballpoint pen. So my pages were already crinkling from the indentation of the lines.
That’s cool – it adds character – it’s my ‘style’ – go with it, I thought.
Then the holidays, then life, then I finally began.
this paper soaks up watercolor like a sponge.
Oh. My. Days!
You do NOT wanna use watercolors on this paper. Of course if I hadn’t been so hung up on the combination of:
This Sketchbook Project + These Colors + These Paints = Exactly What I Want To Do
then perhaps I wouldn’t have been temporarily blind the reality of:
This Medium + This Paper = A Certain Soggy Mess.
Soaked right through to the other side 😦
Damnit!
Ok, I’m an adaptable kinda person, I pride myself on being able to change direction, to adjust and adapt.
Acrylics, I thought. Acrylics are the answer. They will sit on top of the paper and give it a bit more substance as well.
Look at that paper curl! It seems I have angered the book now.
Nope. Not only is it a streaky mess, but the pages are actually curling up in disgust.
What do they want from me? light, delicate pencil? Do they know me AT ALL??
I heard a distant memory jangling about in the back of my mind – are there rules on what media we’re to use? – checking the website: sure, acrylics & gesso are discouraged because the pages get sticky and … yes, yes, I know all this…
So, my first plan of watercolor was back on the table – because, when I read on – we are allowed to rebind the book. I can use actual watercolor paper!
Now that time was getting squeezed, that forever-away-distant deadline was getting closer… I decided that keeping it simple was the best way forward. The elaborate plans I had to begin are on hold for a separate project later in the year, meanwhile I’m back with what I know best for the pages of this book: the idea that is fuelling my creativity and has done for a long while now: an adventure in 12 colors!
After all, it’s my thing, right?
My pages are complete and ready for binding, I’ll show the finished book as soon as I get some good light for photos – then it’ll be winging it’s way off to Brooklyn Art Library
If you want to be first to see what I’m making, and get exclusive discounts on these things, clickety-hop aboard my email list right here.
(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 snug and nestled with a hot water bottle & a kitten until the spring arrives.
Yesterpost I showed you a black & white photo of a paint doodle and asked for guesses what the ‘real’ colors are.
I kept you waiting longer than I intended, only cos sometimes the days gallop by and all of a sudden it’s much later. So here we are, and here it is!
Yesterpost I showed you a black & white photo of a paint doodle and asked for guesses what the ‘real’ colors are.
I kept you waiting longer than I intended, only cos sometimes the days gallop by and all of a sudden it’s much later. So here we are, and here it is!
If you guessed red or green then you can consider yourself correct and I’ll message you with a link to claim your prize! 😀 YAY!
Thanks for playing along- it was really interesting to know what colors you ‘saw’.
Color is a real fascination of mine, and the more I learn the more intrigued I become.
This painting is one of a series which I made for a little ecourse all about color combinations: TWELVTY XTRA which I’m offering as a gift to folks on my email list. It will be available in a few weeks, so if you’re interested, join up now, and I’ll email you as soon as it launches.
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