I Love You For What You Can Do

The prompt for this week's Journal 52 page was to incorporate hands into your page.  You can read more about the prompt HERE.  

I will admit that I was a little reluctant about this prompt...and that I had a momentary lapse of sanity in regards to it...  Because hands are hard to draw...at least for me...and that's my go to answer to all prompts...I will draw my way out of this.  But that answer just wasn't jiving with this prompt.  I didn't want to do a collage, because fancy cutting gives me the hives, and all the magazines I have are comprised of tiny people with even tinier hands...it was a scissor-phobe's worst nightmare.  At one point, I even thought about doing a hand print turkey like a kindergartner...I was getting desperate.

Suddenly, I realized that, if I did trace my hand, I didn't have to use my whole hand.  I thought maybe I could make mountains by tracing my fingertips and then draw a person standing on them.  I felt like a genius.  But once I started tracing my fingers, I liked how they looked, so I just kept tracing.  Fingertips up the sides of the page.  And then I felt like less of a genius.  I had traced myself into a corner.

But I persevered.  I painted them green.  I liked the color, but still had no clue where to go from there. Then, I decided it couldn't get much worse, so maybe I'd just draw doodles in the fingertips.  I am not a natural doodler, so I was taking another chance.  But, as I have learned, if it gets too bad, a coat of gesso fixes everything...I could always start over.

But as luck would have it, I didn't have to gesso the page out of existence.  I actually thought it looked pretty groovy.  And that's when I decided to get REALLY bold...and traced my whole hand in the middle of the page.  And here's what I ended up with:

I ♥ U 4 what you can do

The thing about my hands is that I am very mean to them.  I call them my "actual man hands"...as in they are beefy and thick-fingered.  The rest of me is pretty thick and beefy as well, so at least we match.

But, as I looked at my chubby hand outline surrounded by those green tangled fingers, I thought to myself, "Wow, hands, look what you can do!"  My little sausage fingers will probably never play the piano, or send text messages without hitting forty letters I didn't mean to hit, but they do enable me to make some really cool art!  They are my fat little translators, taking what my brain says and passing it onto the page with ever-growing skill!  

I was suddenly very proud of my actual man hands...and so I decided to write the journaling: "I love you for what you can do."  I finished up my spread and gave my hands a treat in the form of some cobalt blue fingernail polish.  Which I promptly got gesso on...  But the thought was there, and that's what counts.  

Another thing my hands finished up recently was this spread:

"Who I am comes in waves."

I want to say a big THANK YOU to my friend, Boo, for the fish napkin that inspired this page.  She sent me a plethora of different napkins, which I keep on my desk and pet when I need a pick-me-up.  But I realized I can't just keep petting them forever...I need to use them!  So I picked the one with those colorful fishes and went to town in my gigantic Dylusions journal.

This picture is more true to color than the other...plus, look at me, with my fancy art shot!
It made me feel fancy anyway...

Those colorful fishes totally needed a mermaid to go with them.  I don't know what it is about mermaids, but that's two in close succession...I just did an adorable chubby mermaid for last week's Journal 52 spread (which you can see HERE)!  Apparently mermaids are currently rocking my world...

One last thing my glorious man hands do (in conjunction with my weird brain) is write this blog.  As of this post, my busy little fingers have written 200 posts!  I have 49 followers in total (still makes me feel like a cult leader to say "followers").  

And, thanks to you and your amazing hands, I have 14,865 page views.  That's completely insane to me!  I just want to say a big, humongous THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!! to all of you who made that happen.  Your support and encouragement give me so much happiness that I can't even express it in words.  All I can do is say thank you again (and again and again) for coming to see me, taking the time to leave comments, and for subscribing to my blog.  You all make me feel so proud and excited and extremely lucky and grateful to be a part of the online art community.  Thank you. ♥♥♥

The Size And Shape - Why I Make Art

The prompt for this week's Journal 52 (HERE) page was "create art for a cause", and asked 'Why do you make art?' or 'create a page for a cause you're passionate about'.

For most of my life, I was a person who didn't have any emotions...or at least a person who denied them to an extreme.  One day, seemingly out of nowhere, that changed for me.  Suddenly, I had all these emotions that were completely out of control.  For most people, you learn as a child how to keep a handle on your emotions...but I didn't have any practice doing that.  I had no idea how to stop myself from feeling certain ways.  I didn't know how to make them be quiet...to be in the back of my mind.  So when I had an extremely hard thing to deal with, the suicide of my very dear friend, I was pretty much at my wits end.  It was all I could think about.  It was all I could talk about.  It was the only thing that ever happened and nothing else mattered.  I couldn't function.  I couldn't live my life without feeling guilt and sadness to the point where I was really close to giving up.  It was as if they closed the casket on me the day he died.  And it was at this super desperate point that I found art.  I thought maybe it would just be a welcome distraction, but it turned out to be so so much more than that.

At first, I think I just wanted to make pretty pictures...to make things 'correctly'...so I practiced my fingers to the bone.  And then I practiced some more (and continue to practice...).  And I found out that I could stop my brain from spiraling, if only for the time I spent practicing...

And one day, it came to me...the phrase is 'art journal'...I was doing the art end, sure...but where was the journal part?  I was making pretty pictures, but they had very little meaning for me personally.  So I made it my goal to put myself in the page, so to speak.  I didn't want to make generic pretty pictures anymore.  I wanted to make my pictures.  Whether they were pretty or not, didn't matter as much...I wanted someone to be able to look at my pages and get an idea of who I was and how I felt.

The hard part about it was that I wasn't really sure who I was...and the things that I felt were so tightly bottled up in me that they mashed into one big, messy glob.  I couldn't control my feelings, and I had a really hard time separating one from another.  So, the only thing I could think of was to start with what I knew.  And I knew I was mourning the loss of my friend...it was the only thing I knew for sure...so I started with that.

Once I started to put my true feelings on the page, I found that they got out of my head...not just while I was creating the page, but afterwards too.  When I put them on the page, I could look at my thoughts, understand what they were and what was behind them...and I started to feel like they were real and valid...that my thoughts mattered, how I felt mattered.  Not only that, but I could see that this feeling was different from that feeling...they were not all connected together in an insurmountable mass.  And when I realized that, it was suddenly possible to change... to not be such a helpless mess!  I could look at what I'd done on the spread, understand what it meant and choose to work to make things different.

All that didn't happen overnight...but it did happen.

I've changed.  I'm not the same person I was when I first picked up that pencil to make art.  That girl was sad and scared and on the verge of insanity or worse.  She didn't know who she was and didn't think she was worth the knowledge.  Art made me aware of myself.  Not in an egotistical way, but in a way where I actually matter.  I learned that I have a heart and art showed me that my heart doesn't have to beat so loud that it drowns everything else out.  Art showed me that it's ok to 'wear your sorrow, but come morning, change your clothes'...in other words, feel what you feel but don't let yourself be consumed by it.  That's huge.

It's not only internal changes that have been happening for me.  This feeling of being in control has changed my interactions with other people too.  I saw that what I was putting out into the world was not the person I really was.  Making art helped me figure out who I am and that all those weird little random bits that make me who I am are totally ok.  I'd always felt like such a weirdo...that I couldn't be the real me, because no one would like me then.  Art made me realize that no one could really love me if I didn't let them know the real me.  Through the art, I've gotten to learn who I am, who I really am (because I honestly didn't know).  I find that people respond to me differently, because I am different now.  And, even better than that, I no longer worry myself sick over whether people like me or not...because I like me...and that's way more important than anyone else's opinion on the matter...

If you would have told me, when I first started making art, that all this would happen just because I picked up a pencil or a paintbrush or some water soluble crayons, I never would have believed you.  But it has! Every little mark I made on the page has moved me forward and I feel like...while I'm still moving forward, still learning and growing and changing...I'm finally at a place of some kind of normalcy and not so completely estranged from everyone and everything around me.  I finally feel connections: to myself, to my emotions and thoughts, and to other people as well.

For me, the reason behind why I create art makes art a cause that I am passionate about.  If you knew me before I started creating pages and spreads,  if you knew how much those little marks on the page changed me for the better, then you'd know that it could do the same for anyone.  It healed me more than any medicine I've ever heard of.  It gave me more knowledge of myself and other human beings than any doctor or philosopher ever could.  It connected me to the world around me better than any other meditative practice I've tried.  I could talk about it all day, everyday, to anyone who would listen.  It sounds melodramatic to say it, but art saved my life and gave me myself.  All that from some marks on a page...

"It's so much bigger than I thought and it just keeps growing."

Monsters and Found Poetry

Today, I've got both the Journal 52 (read more about J52 HERE) and Documented Life (DL is HERE) spreads ready to share with you.

The J52 prompt was "Found Poetry" and here's what I came up with:

"flickering ribbons of life; I have to face facts.  I'm not like them.
Her words felt like weights.
There is indeed something: a moment, a knowing.
He'll lose her if he doesn't learn to talk.
I was just letting you be."

I used a kids book that I got from my nephew for this page.  He was right...the book was 'pretty lame'...so I didn't mind cutting it up.  There was some pretty interesting phrasing happening in there though and it made good fodder for found poetry.  I used the scraps of the book page I had used and a few other back up pages I had for the background...we don't waste the written word in this house! :)

For DL, the prompt was "Collage something you recycled." and here's what I made:

"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster." -Nietzsche
"Being against evil doesn't make you good." -Hemingway

I was kind of sad to cover up the paper I had for the background; it was awesome...but I am forcing myself to go in order in my DL journal...so I painted the pages red.  I feel a little like the heartless Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland now..."Off with their heads!"  ("Painting the roses red...We're painting the roses red." ...you get a long-distance high five if you started singing those lyrics from the old animated Alice...and a double high-five if you changed 'roses' to 'pages')

I used some gauze I had from my many dentist visits as my 'recycled' bits...important side note: these were NOT in my mouth at any point...I wasn't willing to go that far with recycling!  I sprayed them with Dylusions to color them.  I also used the dried up paint that forms around the tops of my tubes...that's what those little circles are (well, mostly circles...some of them broke).

Before I put the gauze down, I used a mask I had from Maya Road (the wing), traced around it and colored it in, then flipped it over and did the same on the other page.  I really like the way the gauze looks over the wing on the right page.

"I am gonna love. I'm gonna overcome."  -John Butler
I mentioned last time (the 'flap on flap prompt) that my original calendar flap was on the next page, and so there it is above.    I like my monster, but she is also extra creepy...

Somewhere in my brain, deep down, I like to believe that I'm fighting the good fight.  In my case, the 'good fight' is against the general douchebaggery of others and my own tendencies towards being a one.  It's kind of easy to be a jerk to people who are jerks, you know what I mean?  But I try not to let that happen...not because I'm an angel or anything, but more because of what Mark Twain said: 

It's true...It's so true...

Sometimes the jerk side of me wins though.  I can actually be a really good jerk when I let myself be one.  I think the key to being a really good jerk is to bide your time and observe...because then you can be a truthful jerk!  If you're patient, people will give you huge amounts of ammunition which they have no defense against, because it's the truth.

I got called a BAD WORD at work this week.  Actually two bad words...or one bad word with a descriptive bad word to accompany it...I don't know how to quantify it...but swear words (or "square" words, as one of my nephews used to call them) were said about me at work.  Just for the record, if you don't want someone to hear you say something, make sure you're not saying it someplace where the walls are thin ( if you hear your name being said, you kinda stop and listen to the conversation before interrupting it...).  But I didn't get mad, it was actually kind of funny...because if I'm a B----, then the person who said this about me is my queen...

I've been called a lot of things in my life...and really, I don't mind it...I mean, people are going to say and think things about you and you don't control that...and I'd rather they talk bad about me than talk bad about somebody who cares what they say...But, for Pete's sake, be an adult and say it to my face.  Honestly, I've worked with high school students who were more mature...sheesh.  The best part was, I wasn't even being a B----!  Don't get me wrong, I'm positive I have my days...but this particular instance, I'm pretty sure, was not one of them.   

 Ok...the actual best part was that the person who was doing the 'listening' to the rant about me didn't agree with the one who said it...despite the many attempts to get her to agree...and then later, she told me the conversation...she had no clue I had already heard.  That actually makes me feel really good.  To me, it's worth being called ugly names if only because you get to know who has your back.

So now I have my little angel and devil sitting on my shoulders, telling me what they think.  On the one hand, let it go...always the good and moral thing to do, I suppose...because eventually a bad person's actions catch up with them...  On the opposite side, hold a grudge...bide your time...continue to keep your eyes open and your mouth shut...because maybe someday the universe will let you be the 'karma' implementer...and if that's the case, you should be adequately prepared...

Normally, my little halo-wearer wins...but, honestly, I get a little tired of being the good guy.  I don't want to be the pleasant doormat.  I want to be the BRINGER OF DOOM!!!  My little conscience is tired of having situations come up where she has to be the bigger person...I think even she might be secretly rooting for me to be the smaller person and exact well-implemented revenge.

That's what this week's DL spread is really about, I guess.  If my good side is telling me to be bad, I figure I should make my bad side, my little monster, tell me to be good.  Love and overcome. 

Hmm...I don't know if I can muster love...but I'm pretty sure I can at least not jab anyone with my horns...just yet...

Journal 52, Week 4 - Building Character

First, I just want to thank everybody for taking the time to leave such sweet and heartfelt comments on the last post.  I remind myself over and over that when something is hard to talk about, that's the thing I need to say the most.  You reward me with your kind words and lift up my spirits.  Thank you all so much. <3

Today, I just want to share my Journal 52 page for this week.  You can read more about J52 HERE.  The prompt this time was to create your own character for your art journal, and here's what I made:

"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow.  The shadow is what we think of it, the tree is the real thing."
-Abraham Lincoln

I have to admit that after having such a bad time this past week, I was initially just going to draw horns on my girl and say something to the effect of "being the hero of your own story might make you come across as the villain in someone else's"...but I thought better of it.

For a while now, I've been dealing with a frustrating situation at my job.  For the most part, I can handle it and not lose my temper, but with being stressed out and emotional over Nu Nu...well, you can only deal with so much before you start to crack...I feel like I'm at my breaking point.

I have a co-worker...or I should say a person who sits in the same office as I do all day long without doing much actual work...and I hate her.  My other co-workers also have...let's say...very low opinions of her.  I do my best to keep quiet at work about how I feel about this woman, but not everyone else tries to practice "if you don't have anything nice to say..."  I try to maintain a professional attitude, one, because I was raised that way, and two, because if I do say something off hand, I will be the person that gets caught and probably fired over it.  I might have a big butt, but I always keep it covered...

I'm sure everybody either works with someone like her or did at one point.  The person who does the least work, that complains the most about how hard they work...  The person who makes the most money, but complains to the others about how much she 'struggles' to make ends meet...  The person who always tries to one-up everyone else...if you broke your arm, she knows someone who had both their arms bitten off by a shark...  The person to whom you just want to say "I'm sorry, did the middle of my sentence interrupt the beginning of yours?"   All these great things and more are wrapped up into one evil succubus at my job.

And since I'm ranting, she lies...she lies about things that don't matter.  She lies to garner attention.  And the worst part of all is she doesn't do it well.  I personally am a fantastic liar...my own mother can't tell when I'm lying.  I try not to lie, I'm not proud of the fact that I'm so good at such a bad thing, but for Pete's sake, if you're going to do something, do it right!  And the second to worst part of all is that she believes her own lies.  The woman is completely delusional.

The really frustrating part for me is that, at first, everyone loves her.  "Oh, she's so sweet..."  Gag.  The only good part about it is that eventually, people see through her act...  My father was like this to a tee...I think it's a big part of the reason I really can't stand my co-worker.  Just because you know someone is going to get their just desserts eventually, it doesn't necessarily make it any easier to deal with at the time...

And I was thinking about this when I started to make my character page this week.  How my co-worker has the reputation of being a nice, sweet old lady but the reality of it is she's a lazy, racist jerk of an old woman... Shadow vs. Tree.  People eventually see it, but it takes them a while sometimes.

The original journaling, which sound pretty negative, actually describes the situation really well.  In my story, I'm the hero, of course (I mean, it is my story...come on!), having to silently combat this frustrating situation day after day, without a resolution in sight.  

On the other hand, this woman is the hero in her mind...which makes me her villain.  In her mind, she works hard and struggles to make ends meet and she wants attention and praise and sympathy and pity.  By being the way she is, she doesn't get the things she wants...she constantly fishes for it and if people do give her the reaction she's hoping for, it's only because she's backed them into the corner about it.  I really did try to pity her for a long time, because she's constantly defeating her own purposes.  If she could just be a decent person, she'd get all the things she wants...or else, she wouldn't want them anymore.  But she's not a decent person, so much so that I've quit trying to pity her, and am reduced to trying not to throw a computer monitor at her face...anymore, that's all the energy I can muster in this fight.

The extra funny thing about it is that, as her villain, I'm getting all the things she wants.  For the most part, my co-workers like me, they joke with me, they offer to help me without being asked...because they know I do the same for them.  I get commended because of my good work by my boss...because instead of talking about how much I do, I just do it!  I totally understand that as an employee, I'm not doing anyone any favors.  They PAY me to do my job.  I also understand that no one is irreplaceable.  I work hard because I need a job, and it's part of the deal...I work, they give me money to buy art supplies (and, to a lesser extent, food)...  I am not there to get praised, I'm there to make money, but I get praised because I actually do work.  No matter what it is, work wise or socially (or artistically even), I do the best that I can...that's the most anyone can do.  If you want to see the least anyone can do, I invite you to come meet my evil co-worker...

I didn't mean to have such a rant today about this.  I really do try not to talk bad about other people...I don't always succeed as much as I'd like, but I do TRY!  I just had to get it out, before steam started shooting from my ears, making steam engine whistle sounds like in the cartoons...  

What do you do to deal with the 'villain' in your story?  Do you think someone looks at you like you're the bad guy in their story?  Are you the bad guy in someone's story (you naughty monkey!)?

Panned out a little so you can see the edges of the page...the first layer of this page was various book pages, including a word search...you can see on the left hand side that "journal" was one of the words in the word search...I was very excited by that, and had to leave it showing...  There, now I feel like that was a more positive way to end a post... :)

Documented Life Week 4...Too Severe To Be Easily Forgotten

Have you ever had something happen to you...something you never thought bothered you...and all of the sudden, this thing hits you like a ton of bricks?  And you're so completely taken back by this thing...this stupid thing that never mattered before...that it's all you can think about?

It happened to me this week, and it's what's my Documented Life spread for today is about.  (You can read more about DL HERE.)

Do you remember being at school, and a group of the 'cool' kids would be talking and some kid would walk by and one of them would say to the other, "Look, Jeremy, there's your girlfriend.",  and it was always the dorkiest, grossest, 'loser' kid in the school?  I know you know what I'm talking about.

Well, more or less, that happened to me at work...I was the 'girlfriend'.

Now, when forced to think about my appearance, I tend to take a realistic view.  I know I'm not the hottest thing on the block...I know I'm not stopping traffic or getting cat calls or whistles or whatever it is that babes get these days...*cough...herpes...cough...cough*  But, I'm also not a total hideous beast-monster...nobody's eyeballs start spouting blood when they look at me or anything like that.

Additionally, I'm 30... I work at a factory...theoretically, with other 'adults'...should I even have to be talking about this?  Seriously...

My less...noble...side wants to divert attention to someone else and say 'You think I'm the worst looking person in this place?  Have you seen that girl...at least I cover my shame.'  ...I'm not proud of that...but it's true... 

'secretly, deep inside' (acrylic over writing, colored pencil, canvas stickers)

The stupid thing about it is that I always thought I didn't care how people felt about my looks.  Why should I care?  I have basically no control over it.  I mean think about it, barring plastic surgery, what am I supposed to do?  Besides, I'm an awesome person...that should totally make up for whatever I lack in the looks department.

Generally, I would just laugh things like this off...heck, I'd probably be the first one making the joke about myself.  But when faced with the thought that I am the most hideous person someone can point out in a building full of people...well, I guess my pride felt a line was crossed.

'I forget if I love you or not' (acrylic over writing, multiple stencils, canvas stickers, die-cuts, book pages,and Heidi Swapp ColorShine spray)

The whole thing just brought up a bunch of weird feelings for me.  Not that I go around thinking I'm a gorgeous super model or anything, but this situation made me feel ugly.  

I know the important thing is how I view myself...but the thing is, I never think of myself in terms of 'pretty' or 'ugly'...I look in the mirror and I see someone who is smart and funny and kind...I don't think about it the other way.  And I love that about myself!  And really, I always kind of figured it was up to other people to decide if I'm good looking or not.  I mean, 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder', right?  I know its my job to make sure I'm pretty on the inside...and I try really hard to accomplish that!  But as far as the outside...once I shower and brush my hair and make sure I don't have any visible boogers in my nose or something stuck in my teeth, I feel like my job is pretty much done...  But whatever small amount of vanity I have never thought I'd be on the receiving end of a "Jeremy's girlfriend" comment either...

I guess now we know for sure...

My husband finds this whole thing hilarious...and I say "Yuck it up, you're the one who married my ugly butt!"  He always calls me 'low-maintenance', but after being hit by a barrage of "do you think I'm cute?" all week, he might be forced to reexamine that theory...

This is all a little silly, really, and I know it.  But the project is to document life, right?  And life is the good and the bad and all the in-between stuff.  I don't know why I let it bother me so bad...I'm pretty well over it now...I guess the only thing I'm really certain of...is that I am NOT Jeremy's girlfriend.

Obscure...Face 14 of 29

Face 14 of 29:

"to obscure emotion was becoming a natural reflex; it helped sometimes not to feel at all"...paraphrase from
Truman Capote

I tore a page out of Other Voices, Other Rooms (by Truman Capote) early in the morning today...I couldn't sleep and at 3 in the morning, I finally just got up, figuring I might as well do something relatively constructive.  I didn't get my quiet time last night and BLARG!  I am really ready for quiet time.  I guess 3 AM art kind of qualifies, but I was extremely tired and mostly out of it (like a zombie...a sleepy, sleepy zombie), so it really doesn't...  

I used my faux gelatos on this girl, and it made me remember how much I like those things!  I should use them more often.  I was having trouble seeing the pencil marks on this book page last night, so I think my gal is a little wonky looking...but I do like the colors around her eyes.  The purple and pink and blue look pretty cool.  I stuck her into my Gregg journal with some scrapbook paper to differentiate the words on her page from the words on Gregg's page...and then, of course, some washi tape to stick it all together.

I've got to get working on a piece for a friend of mine from one of the Facebook groups I'm in.  She sent a piece of paper she made a background on, and I'm making something to go on the background and then I'll send it back to her.  I think all the ladies in this particular group are doing this, so when she gets all the pieces back, she's definitely going to have something very special!  I think I am the procrastinator of the group, so I've got to get a move on!  Well, really, I'm not a procrastinator...I just wanted to make the exact right thing for her background and it took me several days of staring at the beautiful background she had made before I could decide what I wanted to make.  But I finally picked, and now it's drawn and just needs colored in and then I can send it on it's merry way.  So I'm off to spritz my watercolors and get them ready for action.  <3