Swept Away

The prompt for Journal 52 this week was to make a weather related page.  You can read more about J52 HERE.  I just could NOT get inspired by the weather prompt!  Nothing came to mind...NOTHING!  

Last night, I was fooling around with my pens and just started scribbling...random pen check to see which ones were running out of ink.  It ended up looking a little like a tornado to me, and I thought BOOM!  Weather related page...and here's what I ended up with:

"I have always been the calm at the eye of the storm...I get tired of the chaos around me.  Sometimes I wish I would let myself be swept away in it."

Simple pages count too I guess, right?  I just cut out a Marry Poppins silhouette and wrote the words and I was done.  On the opposite side, I hate 'fussy' cutting...so it did take me a minute to snip out Mary.

I usually have...what to call it...fish bowl syndrome (?)...I often feel like I am on the outside looking in on things.  People around me have a lot going on in their lives...there's a lot of craziness occurring.

Don't get me wrong, I'm do appreciate the relative calmness of my life.  I know I'm happy to avoid drama whenever I can.  And I know that most of the action happening in the lives of people around me is negative...self-inflicted, negative chaos.  ...why is it so easy to see the solutions to other people's problems, but our own seem so insurmountable?  ...I guess it's because we have no stake in the fight...the end result doesn't affect us, so we can have a free and easy opinion...that's what I think anyway.  But I digress...

Despite the fact that I appreciate the calm, I do have to admit that there is a small part of me that wishes for some fun excitement...or at least for a little positive change.  

I sometimes mentally bemoan the feeling I get that all the interesting things that are going to happen in my life have already happened.  Now it's just a slow, downward trudging to the grave...OK, OK, maybe that's a little hammy...but the less dramatic thought behind it rings true...

Maybe the fact that my younger years played out like a poorly executed novel has something to do with my partial dismay over the current lack of excitement.  I went from Cajun food to plain white rice over the years...and sometimes I miss the spice...

Now when I see chaos around me, I have mixed feelings.  Part of me wants to say these people are old enough to know better...but there is a teeny tiny voice that tells me I'm just jealous.  I'm sure that the excitement would get old pretty fast, but for a day or so...it'd be GREAT!  

Oh well, I guess for now I'll just sit back and watch the soap opera that's happening around me and enjoy the show.  Besides, nobody knows what's around the corner...maybe in a little while, I'll be in the throws of an adventure...wishing I was right back here in the calm...

And on that note, I'm off to work.  But before I go, here's the art for today's fake journal entry:

"She knew how she felt."

You can check out the diary entry that goes along with the art HERE if you'd like...or just enjoy the art...

I hope wherever you are in the world, you'll enjoy your calm or your chaos...because somewhere out there, someone's wishing for whichever one you have...

A Gigantic Thank You or In Between Tissues

Last time, I think I mentioned that my husband gave me a cold, but that I didn't feel that bad.  Why do I always have to tempt fate?  The next day I woke up feeling horrible and wimpy.  Ugh.

So I got a little off track with my Morning Pages, but I'm going to play catch-up today and make it all better.  Before I do that, I'll work on my Journal 52 spread, which is not done either...but will be by the end of the day.

But I wasn't a complete slacker...oh no!  I farted around with some just-for-fun stuff instead...

Still trying to use up the less-than-desirable-papered journals, I made this owl and the pussy cat spread, mostly with Inktense pencils.  I thought the outstretched wings on the owl made him look like he was saying 'the fish was this BIG'...so I added that bit to the journaling.

My poor Gregg journal has been sorely neglected for far too long, so I made a double page spread in him...I got the idea for this spread from one of the Root prompts...basically 'what would your inner wise woman say?'  Apparently mine would quote Gloria Steinem: "Far too many people are looking for the right person, instead of trying to be the right person."  My inner wise woman would tell me that in order for change to happen, you have to change first...and that I should continue my quest to be the right person.  This spread is Inktense pencils, Pitt Artist Big Brush pens and washi tape.

Partway through the week, when I was my sickliest and wimpiest, I wanted to create but nothing good was happening...no inspiration at all.  So I decided to try somethings I don't usually do, like use stencils with acrylic paint and see what happened.  Not my favorite page by far, but it got the creative juices flowing...and led me to the idea of a journal specifically for doing things differently, or for when I don't know what to do.  I think it will be known as my Inspirationless Journal...as a play on Donna Downey's beautiful Inspiration Journals.  I had a little binder style scrapbook lying around that was a perfect place to keep such imperfect messes...

This page happened next, also in my new Inspirationless Journal, and I was much happier with the results of playing around this time.  The journaling part says "The heart keeps on beating and constantly reaching for something worth holding onto, something worth going through the thing that we go through." which is a line from a poem which you can read HERE in its entirety.

Then there's this face...or start of a face.  I tried something different for her eyes, and I really like how they came out...now if I can just convince myself to go ahead and keep working on her.  Mostly, I just look at this page and say 'your eyes...your special eyes...' over and over.

And lastly, there's this girl, done in Aquamarkers...she's very...I don't know...cartoony or something...she kind of looks like a muppet to me.  I waver between liking her and feeling meh about her...but like the cheek shading...

Most importantly of all, I want to say a BIG HUGE GIGANTIC ENORMOUS THANK YOU!!! to Jackie, my honey, for the two (TWO!!!) humongous (HUMONGOUS!!!) care packages she sent me!  My kitchen table was literally overflowing with goodies!  Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU, Jackie!!!  There is so much good fun stuff that I just can't wait to get playing and arting with!  Squeal of delight!  SQUEAL OF DELIGHT!  Thank you so much! <3<3<3  You made me go from a sickly, wimpy, whiny mess to a shrieking, jumping, ball of happiness in 2.2 seconds!  Thank you.  :)

And on that EXTRA happy note, I am off to finish my Journal 52 page, get caught up on my Morning Pages, and then have a good play with my new presents!

Viewpoints

So last post (the extra talky one) I mentioned that I had some art to share, and so here's one of the things I did during my 12 day blogging hiatus:

"Try looking at it another way..."

Of course, she is in my beloved Gregg journal, stuck in the page with some scrapbook paper bits and some washi tape.  You will be surprised (I am!) that I actually like how the writing on this page looks...that NEVER happens!  I don't know why I like it...I just do.

I got the line for this page from James and the Giant Peach...I'll admit it: the movie version.  I don't know that I've ever actually read the book!  That seems an awful shame too, because I think of it as a classic kids book.  And I LOVE kids books!  If you've never seen the movie version, though, it's worth a viewing, even for an adult with no kids.  It's a little naughty, but my favorite part of the movie is when the grasshopper and the centipede get into a fight and the grasshopper says "You, sir, are an ass!"  I'm giggling even now thinking about it...

Anywho, even though I love that line "Try looking at it another way..." and I think it's very good advice, it doesn't really apply to this piece.  I like her quite a lot upside down, which is how I added her to the book.  But if you turn her the other way, I don't like her nearly as much!

See what I mean:

I think if you look at her this way she looks like a creepy version of Julie Andrews.  It must be that haircut...

I do really like her pose though...head all the way back staring up at you like she is.  It's different than what I've done before with faces.  

After 29 Faces was over, I thought I was ready for something other than a face/line drawing...and I was...for a whole five days!  Actually, I didn't do any art for that whole five days, so I guess I was just a little burnt out on all things artistic...for those five days.

I did get the book Creating Art at the Speed of Life that I had the giveaway for, and I've been enjoying looking at it and doing the first couple lessons in it.  It's pretty interesting.  I like how it is set up, teaching a lesson (the first few are on color and that's what I've done so far) and then asking you to evaluate your own work.  I'm a big fan of realistic self-critique (e.g.- seeing what needs improvement without overlooking the good), so it's one of the things I like about this book.  I'm not very far into it yet, but I have enjoyed what I've done and I've learned things even in the first lessons.  Here's the link for the book if you want to check it out:

As far as recent art, I'm actually still not being very prolific.  I've been doing a little hooky hooky with crochet and a tiny bit of artsy fartsy, but more often, I've been cleaning.  I KNOW!!!  Gross.  I don't know why, but when the urge hits, I gotta go with it...because it comes so seldom.  And of course, I've been having fun with Fusco the drop-off wonder dog.  He's an interesting character for sure.  I am still working on my pieces for my friend Anna, who I'm sure thinks I'm the most procrastinating procrastinator EVER!  Soon, my Anna, so soon!!!

And on that note, I'm off to take Fusco for a walk and come back and work on Anna's pieces some more.  Until next time, my darlings...

Inner Excavations Week 2

Ok...so you know my usual disdain for the hippy dippy/emotions/hard stuff...well, fair warning...  Be prepared for the opposite side of that today...also for a lot of talking...

Chapter 2 in the Inner Excavations book (IE) is called "I seek".  It deals with looking into the past, but it also talks about our senses and noticing the details around us in any given moment.  

These days, I'm pretty good at noticing the details around me.  For instance, this morning I was noticing that the ceiling fan was casting shadows on the wall that circled around me like a mini strobe light.  It's still doing it, and it's very distracting now that I mentioned it...  I heard the scratching sound my favorite pen makes when I was writing some journaling.  I can smell this little tiny left-over smell of cinnamon from an almost empty plug-in air freshener in the kitchen.  

The hard part about this chapter for me was looking into the past.  I don't have a lot of memories about my childhood.  If I think about it really hard, or if I talk about it with other members of my family, then I can remember specific details of my childhood.  I can pick out pieces of certain days that were good.  

There are also a lot of unpleasant things that come up.  I've learned to deal with these things over time.  I choose not to dwell on the bad stuff that happened to me as a kid. Maybe one day, when there's money for a therapist, then yes...but for the most part, I've got a handle on it. I know what's there, and I know that I didn't deserve it (no one deserves bad things...not even bad people...but especially not children) or cause it.  I also recognize that, at a certain point, you can't use these things as an excuse anymore.  Of course I've been shaped by the things I went through, but I'm an adult, and, as such, I am the one responsible for my actions now.  It's taken me a long time to come to terms with that.  It's something I still struggle with.  But I do struggle, I do try.

Of all the things that bother me about my childhood, the thing that bothers me the most is that there wasn't a permanent place where I felt safe to be myself.  There was a lot of "this is right" and "that is wrong", which isn't bad in and of itself.  The hypocrisy that I grew up with, however, was very wrong.  It was confusing to a child and caused a lot of resentment later on.  I learned to be fake at a very early age.  No one can know the truth.  People don't need to know our business.  People don't like sad people, so you just have to be happy all the time.  It doesn't matter whether you're actually happy or not.  These are things I still have a hard time with.  I feel the need to conceal my feelings about certain things.  I feel the need to smile even when I'm a wreck.  If it does manage to seep out, I apologize for it.  

I think it's one of the reasons I like this blog so much.  Because I can just be myself.  If people like me, that's great.  If not, that's fine too.  I am working to make my real life, the day to day person I am, more like that.  It's hard, because online I've met a lot of really supportive people.  I can say what I need to say and they aren't telling me I should think a different way or be a different person.  I don't feel like I've really got that as much in my real life.  I feel like I can't share things.  I get the eye rolls when I talk about certain ambitions of mine.  There are things I've learned not to share because they are judged harshly.  I've heard 'you wouldn't care if you didn't know it was wrong' more times than I can count.  The thing is, sometimes I'm not ashamed of these things, but I don't want the other person to be ashamed of me either.  And that doesn't work, because we have different outlooks.  It's not anybody's fault, it's just how things are.  

So when I thought about all of that, it occurred to me that I'm looking for my 'home'.  I'm longing for a place where I can be entirely myself and be appreciated and encouraged, instead of feeling like I'm squashed into the mold of another person's ideals.  And I think that most people are looking for that 'home' in some form or another.  Maybe a few very lucky people already have it, but I think that, for the most part, it's a place that doesn't actually exist.  Because we want that 'home' to be perfect, and it's just not going to be.  We either have to take what we've got and learn to live with it or we've got to find a way to make what we've got change into what we need or else we've got to leave what we have where it's at and start looking for something more.  

I had all that in mind when I made the assemblage piece for this weeks chapter in IE: 

On the inside, I'm just a crusty, bearded, weather-worn sea captain wanting to go home.

When I went to do my journal spread for this chapter, I had a slight shift.  I was thinking about this evasive 'home' I long for and realized that I feel like I've had it and lost it.

There are a lot of extra details I won't go into here, but I'll give you the gist of it.  

I had a very dear friend, Leonard, who was this home for me.  He was smart, funny, kind, insightful, and a million other things that made him precious to me.  He was the first person, the only person to date, that made me feel accepted for exactly who I was.  There were no outside reasons for him to like me, he had nothing to gain from liking me, he didn't have to like me.  But he did, simply because I was me.  And I believed it.  It's pretty much the only time in my life I've ever felt that way about someone...everyone else has a reason, everyone else has something to gain by befriending me...not Leonard.  

And he was a great friend.  He could be obnoxious and arrogant, he fought his demons but sometimes he quit fighting and let them reign over him.  Even then, he was the best friend I've ever had.  He would listen, actually listen, when I talked.  When I asked for it, he would give me good advise, tell me all the pros and cons of the different choices, and then tell me to go do what I wanted.  He'd make fun of things I'd do and in the same sentence he'd tell me he was proud of what I'd done.  He didn't make me feel inferior or that I was wrong for doing, saying, or thinking a certain way.  And he was the only person I have ever known that would ALWAYS tell me the truth.  Even when I didn't want to hear it, even when it was hard and I hated him for it, he never once lied to me.  I think it was my favorite thing about him.

Three years and a few months ago, Leonard killed himself.  There are a lot of extra details that come in to play that I won't be talking about here, to save the feelings of those that remain and because, frankly, I've cried enough this week.  

Looking back now, I think that there were things I should have noticed.  But you never really believe someone you know will do something like that...even once it's done, you can't believe it.  It takes a long time to accept it as the truth and so, so long to get to a place where you feel like you can breath again.  But then you have bad days and good days...I still do, and I think I will for the rest of my life.  Everything I do has his ghost in it.  I wish I could tell him things.  I wish I could hear his voice giving me good advise.  I wish he could see and experience all the things I see and all the things that happen in life.  He lost so much.

When it gets really bad, I write him.  Sometimes, they're long and sprawling letters.  Other times, they're just a sentence or a snip of a thought I'm having.  It helps though, either way, to get it out of my head.  I thought I would share the most recent thing I wrote (before I did the journal spread): 

"Sometimes I still catch glimpses of you, even though you've been gone for so long now.  It's hard to think about how life goes on in all the insignificant ways, how I get older and you never will.  I know I see you with rose-colored glasses, that my memory of you has become hazed over with half-truths and even entire lies and that no one would ever be able to live up to that harsh standard of perfection you've set by dying before your time.  And I hate so much that this knowledge is in my head, crammed down deep, next to the strong desire to find someone like you, when the truth is no one will ever be all of the things I know you were and all of the things I have imagined you had been.  And I feel the years and I feel the weight I carry and the burden that you've forced me to take possession of and this hollow person you've made me become: trying to find this beautiful thing that will never be found again, that was really never there at all."

I know that I'm not the only one who lost him.  I know that he touched the lives of many people.  And, honestly, the whole world is less for having lost him.  For all his flaws, he was a good person; there aren't a lot of those left.  

After he died, I started looking for someone like him.  To take his place, I guess, or to make up for what I lost, or to make it easier at least.  I look for pieces of him in every person I see.  And that's not fair.  No one will ever be what he was.  Because even he wasn't the person that is in my mind now.  His flaws are glossed over to the point where they never existed...and he was flawed, everybody is.  That's the way we are, and I'm sad that I've lost those pieces of him.

That's what was on my mind when I worked on this week's spread:

Inner Excavations, Week 2: "I seek"

Left page, close up:

This poem is by Lang Leav, and it fits the way I feel.  It's entitled "Closure":

Like time suspended,
a wound unmended-
you and I.

We had no ending,
no said goodbye,

For all my life,
I'll wonder why.

Right page, close up: 

The diagonal journaling that goes across the two pages is just some free writing I did.  This is a painting I did of Leonard, which doesn't do him justice (he was a very handsome man and I am an unskilled amateur at painting), but it does give me the impression of him over all.  The black shirt is actually a tip-in (I think that's what they call them), and you can see that in the picture below.

The black shirt lifts up in this way.  There is more journaling on the page, and then on the back of the tip-in, I wrote the poem I had written for this weeks prompts (basically memories and senses), which you can read below.

This is the 'memories and senses' poem I wrote:

I hear him say my name

and the words "I love you" rolling off his tongue

like his was the only mouth I was ever meant to hear it from.

I taste the cold on his lips 

and the warmth that radiated from within

like all the good in the world came from him.

I feel his hands running up and down,

slowly, over the length of my arms

like he was the only thing keeping me safe from harm.

I see the electric light

pulsing in his throat under the skin

like this was the moment we would always live in.

I smell his shirt:

lightly cologne and laundry soap so clean

like he was the innocence in this world so mean.

I know that life must teach us things

but life keeps showing me again and again

that beautiful things cannot last, as if I didn't know it then.

The thing about the past is this: it's over.  Whatever happened, it can't be undone, only dealt with.  The hard truth is that no one knows what consequences their actions might lead to.  Kind people consider the options before acting.  Foolish people either don't consider this or they do and simply don't care what the results will be.  And then there are people who are so afraid to make a move, afraid of what their actions will cause that they do nothing.  These people are basically martyrs.  I mean this in that they sacrifice something of great value over principal.  They suffer for it.  They end up being victims.  Because time and other people's actions make the choices for you if you don't decide for yourself.  I've been all three types of people.

These days, I feel like a martyr and a fool.  I have all these thoughts in my head, things I'd like to do, ways I'd like to be, but I'm so afraid to make the move.  Then I get resentful and I jump into doing stupid things that I don't really care about just to be able to say I did something.  Or in the end, because I don't choose, someone else chooses for me.  Time keeps ticking.  Opportunity passes with every second.  Going with the flow is fine, but if you never swim against the current, you end up in an ocean of someone else's troubles.  

And I hate it.  It's stupid and it's weak.  I only get one life.  I don't want to come to the end of it and regret that I live someone else's version of my life.  I want to live MY life.  I want to live it for me alone.  And I want to live it so that I can be proud of it and so that the people who have helped me along the way can be proud of me.  I want to live it so that if Leonard was watching he'd be proud.  He'd know I've learned the smart and beautiful lessons he taught me while he was here.  

I've spent too much time thinking about what I don't want, who I don't want to be.  Time has been wasted not being myself, hiding myself away.  I'm done with that.  The time has come to start being the person I am and thinking about the things I do want.  And not just thinking about them, but actually working to make them happen.  

ICAD, Art Journal and Canvas Hooray!

First, a big thanks to everybody for helping me hit 3,000 page views!  You guys made me do the happy dance today!  It wasn't too long ago that I was doing the happy dance over 2,000...I am going to have to start thinking about some kind of giveaway for when I hit 5,000...it's going to creep up on me and I'll be unprepared if I'm not careful!  If anybody has any ideas on that, I'm open to suggestions...

So I got to do some artsy stuff today, and I'm super excited about it!  I'm always super excited, aren't I?  It's like I'm bipolar, but only ever visit the one pole, you know what I mean?  

Up first is my ICAD card, which I'm cheating on and doing two prompts in one card, because I messed up my order royally and now I'm just confused and scared!  Help!  Help!  

This card is 3x5 and the prompts were 'your name in block letters' and 'logo':

I think I failed at block letters...I don't think there are supposed to be curves in block letters...but I didn't research that first, and so I ended up with this.   I did get to use some of my FANTABULOUS Silks acrylic glazes to color it in...I am not one for glittery things usually, but EGADS! I love those things so much!  This whole week for ICAD is bound to be a do-over, because I just went cuckoo or something.  The 'logo' part is my stylized little red clover.  I've used it before, hit and miss, but I like it quite a lot and I think it will be my signature from now on, mostly because it keeps me from having to sign my name in my terrible 12-year-old boy handwriting...  (Who am I kidding?  Even 12-year-old boys have better handwriting than me!)

Next I did a page (or really a two-page spread) in one of my art journals:

This is not my usual thing...  The colors and the collage-y look are both out of the norm for me.  This was kind of an experiment page.  I used some muslin I had painted black (I painted the muslin forever ago, testing out some textile medium I had bought.)  On the right page, behind the stamped image (the one that is not torn) is the scrap piece of paper I used underneath the muslin when I painted it...isn't that a neat effect how the paint came through all randomly?  I think it's a pretty nifty pattern!  The stamped images were also me testing things out.  Same stamp, in different inks (some images then covered in perfect pearls) on pages from my old Spanish/English dictionary.  I colored some of the pages using alcohol inks as well to make them look more aged...they were already pretty old, but not quite as darkly antique colored as they are now.  The journaling says: "I think somewhere along the way I have been torn apart and I must spend the rest of my life piecing myself back together." 

And finally, the thing I am REALLY super excited about:

Woo Hoo!!!   My bird at sunrise painting!  He's on an 8x10 canvas.  I would just like to mention that I do NOT like working on canvases.  I know it's because I'm just not used to them, but ARG!  I much prefer my safe and easy watercolor paper!  ...but I will keep practicing on the canvases.   One day, I will probably look back at this post and say what a weenie I was for not liking to work on canvas.  As much as I disdained working on the canvas, I am so very, very happy with how the painting turned out!  And look, I even used my little red clover to sign it with!  Squeeee!  It makes me so happy!

I did the painting along with the completely awesome (and very nice) Marc Charles from Painting with Marc on YouTube.  Some darling amigas from one of the Facebook groups I am in suggested watching his first video (I made an ICAD card using what I learned in the video...you can see the result in my last post).  Now, I am HOOKED!  

Here is the video for your viewing pleasure...and listening pleasure (I LOVE his accent!  *sigh*  It's just delicious, I swear I could listen to him read the dictionary!):

He does such a great job of teaching you how to do things!  I am enamored with him and his art and his style of teaching!  He kindly accepted a Facebook friending from me, and, let me just say, he is such a sweetie pie!  So go subscribe to his channel on YouTube and go friend him (and me, of course!) on Facebook and see just how wonderful he really is!  I think I am going to end up doing all of his tutorials, so be forewarned: You will be hearing about Marc again!

So those are my major accomplishments for the day...what did you get into?

Page at last and icad too

I finally did an art journal page last night.  FINALLY!  From start to finish (thanks to my beloved industrial strength heat gun)!  And, I suppose, technically two pages.  *insert gigantic sigh of relief here*

I decided that I would start to watch some videos for art journaling and see if I could learn some new techniques, be reminded of ones I've not used for a while, and even to see if I saw something that would inspire me to create a brilliant technique of my own.  

So, last night I sat down and queued up Pinterest and started searching...and then ingeniously forgot to pin the video I watched, so I sadly can't share it with you.  When I stumble across that video again, I promise I will put up the link...and I'll remember to pin the video next time so I can share it with you right away!

At any rate, I watched a video (it was a lady who did a Dyan Reavely inspired video, using Dyan's products/style)and then tried to copy what the woman in the video did.  She did some things I didn't/couldn't do (because I didn't have all the supplies she did) and I added in my own touches as well to get the pages to be 'finished' and more my style.  And here they are:

Started off by spaying the page with fresh lime and black marble Dylusions (I notice people using this color combo a lot, and it looks good when they do it, but I HATE it when I try it...)  Then I used one of Dyan's stencils (which I do have, but don't know the name of...it's the one with the flower edge and dots in the middle) and sprayed through it with the same color dylusions as above.  And then I decided (she did not do this in the video) to use some white acrylic paint and went through the stencil with it as well (because the page was VERY dark in places, and I didn't like that.   Then, in the video, the woman uses one of Dyan Reavely's stamps on a separate piece of paper, and then glues it on the page, but I don't have any of her stamps, so I just drew a girl instead, colored her in with Dylusions and pasted her in.  I used postbox red Dylusions sprayed through the same stencil on the left page to tie in with the headband of the girl. Then I used the mini "Mixed Up Alphabet" stencil and traced out the letters on the left page ("You gotta be kidding me"), with Pitt pen and then colored it in with acrylic paints in yellow and in turquoise to try to tie in the girl a little better...she was sticking out like a sore thumb pretty badly.  Then I took some black acrylic paint and added in the words on the right page ("Can I just be over it now?") because there was too much white going on.  Then I added the dots with turquoise and black acrylic in some random places, outlined some stuff as well.  I used black faux-latos around the girl and then a sparkly peachy one to color in her face a little more (it was a VERY stark white before)...then I took that same sparkly peach and went over the whole page randomly.  And then it was bedtime!

I also got my ICADS done for yesterday and today, just didn't have time to share them.  Both are on 3x5 cards.

This is the one for the 19th, the prompt was 'summer':

I saw a picture of this on Pinterest, and it had these really bright awesome super saturated colors, and I thought that looked pretty summery, so I tried to recreate it on a card.  I REALLY LOVE how the colors look on this.  (Used watercolor and Pitt pen)

And here's today's card, with the prompt of 'poem'

:

"Faces of other people follow me around the room."  This is acrylic paint and then I glued down some faces I made using paperclay (the blueish white ones) and Martha Stewart Crafter's Clay (the purple ones).  I painted their eyes, lips, and cheeks with acrylic.  The poem this is from is below in it's entirety.  I wrote it and it's a double alphabet poem, minus the letter 'x', because there are just not that many 'x' words out there to use...  I always end up cheating and using words that sound like 'x' at the beginning...extreme, extra, etc.

"The Firing Synapses"

And you will always

Be with me, beloved.

Closed eyes call and you answer in 

Dreams that keep you dear to me, 

Ever in my thoughts, even where you shouldn't be.

Faces of other people follow me around the room.

Giddy laughter covers the gloom in me.

Half of my life rots with you, hallow in the grave.

Indecision corrodes the rest.  If only you had not...

Justice, however, won't be served and I'm always jolted back.

Killing me slowly, they keep it up.

Love, they never seem to let me alone.

My memories of you are constantly interrupted,

Not by anything I care for, nothing important,

Only for the sake of this half life I lead.  This open wound

Pouring, barely enough left to keep me going.  Nothing easing the pain.

Quietly, life drains out of me...quick enough I suppose.

Ready or not, when the time comes, you can't resist.

Sometimes I wonder where you are now.  Sickly

thoughts try to make sense of it.

Useless.  I know I will never understand

while I still breath, while I still think, 

exactly what happens, what to expect.

You yearn to know or else try to forget the question.

Zapping your brain, the synapses zero in or else try to disconnect.

So there you have it...if you'd like to read more of my poetry (some is pretty decent, I swear!) you can check it out HERE.

Dancing On A Graves and ICAD Day 5

When I first became interested in art journaling, as is my tendency when I become interested in something, I did a lot of searching.  I scoured the internet for pictures and information.  Well, honestly, the first thing I did was talk to my sister, who's an extraordinary researcher...and I put her skills to use for myself...she may or may not be aware that I use her as my research monkey.  (I love you, Marian!)  And the next thing I did was to take what she'd given me and branched out on my own and found information where ever I could.  I went to the library.  I stalked the blogs of people who's work I admired.  YouTube seemed to become a homepage for me, because I was constantly looking at how-to videos.  I ordered a bunch of books off of Amazon.  I can get a little obsessed sometimes...it's a good and bad thing.  But in that initial burst of interest, I discovered something I found very interesting.

In all the blogs I stalked, all the videos I watched, all the books I read, there was a pattern of...I don't know if this is the right word...cheerleading (?).  There was inevitably something mentioned to the effect of "You can do it!  Dismiss your inner critic!  There's a little voice inside in your head saying there are beautiful things  inside of you, and YOU CAN SET THEM FREE!", etc.  My pessimistic side wanted to mock all of these encouraging words, because they seemed like a bunch of mumbo jumbo.  Not because they were stupid or wrong, but because I didn't understand that there were so many people out there who needed to hear them.

Let me try to explain:  

In my life, I've had the pleasure and the pain of being responsible for myself and others from a pretty early age.  The downfall of this responsibility is that I question basically all my choices.  I can be the most indecisive person in the world...I over-analyze EVERYTHING.  I am always afraid of making the wrong choice and that the consequences of my choice will have this butterfly effect that eventually leads to what we all fear...a zombie apocalypse.  OK, that's a stretch, but you get what I mean, right?  Choices lead to actions, and actions have consequences beyond our control.  The fact that we don't know what consequences our actions will have is a little scary to some people, and a lot scary to other people...I fall into the "a lot scary" category.  It's not the actions, it's not the physically doing something  that scares me.  It's the mental part, the choice, that's scary.

The good part of being responsible from early on is that I know I can DO.  My mom's favorite saying when I was a kid was "Can't never did nothing."  If you keep saying you can't do something, you're right, because you won't even try.  This line of thinking has led me to be able to do a whole heaping lot of different things.  Oh sure, I'm a colossal failure at many things, but I keep trying.  For many situations in my life, failure has not been an option.  If I have to do something, I'll latch onto it like I'm covered in super glue and won't let go til I'm as close to perfect as a person can be.  

And that's why I couldn't understand that people need to hear "You CAN do this."  ...well duh, of course you can!  For me, once I made the choice to do creative things, the majority of the scariness ended.  It became about practicing at that point.  It became irritation that I couldn't get my hands to make the things I saw in my brain.  It became about learning as much as I could about how to make the kind of art I wanted to make.  

I am still learning.  I am still not at the point I want to be at.  I have second thoughts about certain decisions: Do I add this color, or is it better without?  Do I want to put this journaling here?  Do I want to use acrylics or watercolor today?  See, it's the choices I'm most afraid of.  But the great and forgiving thing about art is that you can always make more.  You can always have a do-over.  It makes the consequences of your choices much less scary when you come to terms with the fact that, if we choose, what we make can be never ending.  Anything we do can be fixed, repaired, altered, amended or covered over entirely and it becomes a new start.  In art, mistakes merely teach us what we need to do to get better.

Deciding to make art has been a really wonderful choice for me.  It's taught me so much.  My attitude towards life has started to become a reflection of my attitude towards art.  I've always been scared of making decisions because I didn't want to make a mistake; I thought of consequences as final.  Art has taught me that no mistake is irreparable.  Even the worst mistakes, if nothing else, teach us what we don't want.  

So here comes my mumbo jumbo:  I've heard so many people say "let go of your fears".  That's pretty good advice.  But, I think I have better advice.  Don't let go of your fears.  Bury them.  Bury them under mounds of your art.  Just make something, anything, and make your mistakes.  Make so many mistakes that your fears are suffocated by effort.  And then learn from your mistakes.  If we keep doing this, eventually we'll stop making mistakes and our fears will be completely buried.  And then we'll dance on their graves.

"I came here to dance on the grave of my fears."  I had done the background of this a while ago.    The sky is Dylusions, and the bottom is colored pencil with dylusions over top for the individual blades of grass.  The mushroom cap is scrapbook paper and the stem is a tag I cut out of a piece of paper I nabbed from work (I really like paper with boxes and grids on them.)  The lady was part of a set of free printable stuff from somewhere online.  I printed it off so long ago,  before I was even on Pinterest (oh, Pinterest, was there ever a time you weren't a part of my life?), that I can't find the link for it.  But the face, arms, legs, and dress are all separate pieces.  The topmost butterflies are angelina film stamped with Stazon ink.  (Angelina film is iridescent and amazing...go google it, it's worth the time.)  The bottom butterflies are stamped with my faux gelatos (faux-latos...hehehe) and outlined with Sharpie markers and Microns (as is the woman).  The shading on the mushroom and the woman's shadow was also done with faux-latos.

For ICAD day 5, the prompt was "recycle or repurpose".  ICAD is a great start for letting go of your fears, and this prompt seems like a bonus in that direction too, because you could use an index card and something destined for the trash can...so who cares if it doesn't work out?  Bury those fears!

This is the 3x5 card I did:

"Do raindrops dance down at your feet tonight?"  This is a line from the song below, "Where You Are" by Clare Burson.  To make the background, I grabbed a paper towel I had used to catch over-spray from when I was spraying an art journal page with Dylusions, sprayed a little water on it and then scrubbed it onto the index card.  There was a lot of color left in that paper towel!  Then I took the cap off an empty container of glitter glue that was in my trashcan and stamped the circles using black faux-latos.  Then I used watercolor for the text part.

Here's the song that the lyrics in the above card are from:

This song makes me think of someone who's died.  One of the lines is "When I look to the stars, I know where you are."  I'm talking to our fears when I hear that line and I think to myself: "I know where you are, stupid useless fears...buried six feet under!!!" and then I laugh maniacally because I'm holding the shovel that put them there!  Bwa-ha-ha!!!  

Here's my 4x6:

"If you are willing to do something that might not work, you're closer to being an artist." -Seth Godin
Hooray for subconsciously managing to get all of today's pieces to come together around a common theme!  It was purely accidental, I swear...my brain just gets stuck on a notion sometimes.  For this card, I again used one of my paper towels that I use to catch the Dylusions over-spray with (I had used this one mainly for ICAD day 2's 3x5 stitch themed card...you can see the outline of the card pretty well.) and glued it to the index card.  Then I took a black Sharpie and wrote out the quote.  Lesson learned: sharpie spreads/bleeds when you use it on paper towel.  So it made the quote pretty hard to read in a lot of places.  I was trying to find a way to fix this, and watercolors were the solution.  As long as the watercolors were on top of the part where the black Sharpie had already bled, they didn't run (you can see how precise it ended up staying on most of the words).  If the watercolor hit a piece of the paper towel that didn't have sharpie on it already, then the watercolor would bleed/spread too (you can see this in a couple places, like the "o" in "to" and several of the letters in "artist").  I signed it with a Pitt pen, at the bottom left, and that didn't bleed, although it wanted to snag the paper towel a lot more than the Sharpie did.)

So that's my long-winded thought for today.  I'm off to go murder some more fears and hide the evidence...

My Brief Flash of Genius and ICAD day 3

A while ago, I talked about the coolness of packing tape transfers...they remain cool to me.  You can find a tutorial on them HERE.

I was having a lousy thoughts day and decided I needed to get some stuff out in my journal, just some mental yuck that I didn't want anybody to see in the end.  I just wanted to get some kind of cathartic release thing to happen.

Anyway, I was looking for an empty space in a journal to work out my frustrations on and came across a page where I had just written something random and stuck down an extra transfer I had done.  Then I had an epiphany.  A big "What if I..." epiphany.  

So  I grabbed some acrylic paint and squirted it over top of the page, moving it around with an old credit card.  And then I took a paper towel and swiped over the packing tape transfer that was on the page...SUCCESS!  The paint wiped right off.  Hooray!  So when the paint dried, I used a sharpie and started writing out some of what was in my brain and then stuck another packing tape transfer over that.  Then I repeated these steps (with different colors of paint) till everything was of my head and did one final layer of paint over the top of everything.

And here is the result:

The first transfer that was on the page was the bird one...I "put a bird on it".  Hehehe...Portlandia.

I really like the image of the dancers, it's so interesting to me...

I like how everything's facing a different direction, how you can see some of the words but as a whole they're still obscured, and how there's a different color paint showing through from every layer.  Thanks brain!

OK, I confess that having the words "And now all these things live in me." coming through  inside of the house image was on purpose...  I had written it and realized that it might fit and come through if I angled the house right, and boom!  It did!  I think that's a neat little extra touch.

So anyway, I just wanted to share that idea in case you wanted to do write something personal, but don't want anybody to be able to read it afterward.  Or even if you don't and just want some color from underneath to come through to the surface.  It was a flash of genius for me, so I had to show you guys, because they happen so rarely, and I kind of wanted some proof that they actually do happen...

It also happens to be day 3 of ICAD, with the theme of "faux stitching", and I did two again.  What can I say, I'm on a roll...

Here's the 3x5:

On the edges, there are fake stitches, and then I did the real stitches too.  It only took me till when I started doing the border around the word "real" to realize that if I punched some guide holes into the card first, I could probably get it to look more neatly done.  And, as a bonus, the needle would stop slipping and I'd quit accidentally stabbing myself with it.  The blood loss from needle stabs was minimal, but my finger was starting to get really sore!  See how ICAD helps?  Now I know, for future reference, to punch guide holes first!  You learn something new every day...  The extra dumb part was that I had punched guide holes in the faux stitches part in an effort to make the stitches look more real.  So it probably shouldn't have taken me so long to put two and two together concerning the real stitches...  But I got there eventually, and that's the important thing.

Here's the 4x6:

The quote says "I myself am entirely made of flaws, stitched together with good intentions."  Hooray for quotes that fit the technique!  I've really liked that quote since the first time I saw it, and have wanted to do some kind of real embroidery incorporating it, so now that's back in my mind.  I like the little faux stitched daisies at the bottom.  And the zigzag too...it reminds me of Charlie Brown.

So anyways, that's my creativity for the day.  I hope you can use the multi-layer packing tape transfer idea for something, or that it leads you to your own epiphany...and that you'll then share that epiphany with me, so's I can try out your idea!  We'll have an interchange of epiphanies!  And then we'll go get tacos...

ICAD and Organ Donor

I've been playing around with lettering in my art journal.  It's one of the things I really want to work on so that I can get better.  I have no natural talent when it comes to handwriting, so I know I will have to make up for that with hard work and perseverance.  Practice makes perfect, so if I keep trying, eventually I'll get it, right?

"I could be an organ donor The way I give up my heart."  I saw that quote on Pinterest (of course).  The background is Dylusions sprayed through some plastic mesh stuff I found on the floor of my house...I have no idea where it actually came from, because I have been wanting the mesh from a bag of oranges since I first saw someone else use it as a mask/stencil.  Apparently the universe has provided for me...now if it would just get on that whole millions of dollars thing I've been asking about...  I also used acrylic paint (the rust color is metallic..it's shiny in real life, I don't know if that comes across...) and some red glitter glue.  There was an incident with smearing of glitter glue that you can see in the left heart at the bottom of the page...

I've also done two more ICAD cards.  Today's theme is 'candyland'.

Here's the 3x5:

She & Him lyrics again...actually I got it wrong, the lyric is "In the light it faded to white, in the light the colors turn to white", so I got it backwards a little...oh well.  This is acrylic paint over gelatos.  The acrylic wanted to peel a little in places...I don't know if it's because it wasn't all the way dry, or because the acrylic didn't want to stick to the gelatos.  The gelatos are meant to look like (abstractly, I guess) skittles...at least I think I got the classic skittles colors right...

I thought you might like to hear the song for yourself.  (I like what the person did with this video, it looks really neat, I think):

And here's the 4x6:

"You used to be sweet."  Except with my bad handwriting, it kind of looks like "You used to be sweat.", which is kinda gross...  I had fun playing with the gelatos on this one.  I am loving how creamy and smeary they are... it makes for a neat effect.  I did the lollipop first, and so it looks a little wonky, but I figured it out a little more by the time I got to the face.  I can't wait to play with them some more!

What's Going On In There and ICAD Day 1

Here's my most recent page, drawing done in colored pencils only, journaling in Souffle and Pitt Pens:

 

"Some changes happen deep down inside of you.  And the truth is, only you know about them." - Judy Blume

I'm always curious to know how other people view things.  I sometimes have the strongest desire to be able to see life out of someone else's eyes.  Not because I want to be that person, but because I think people are so interesting.  I guess I could make a poor comparison to Jane Goodall and her relationship with primates.  I mean this in that I sometimes feel like an outsider looking in on something I know I'll never really be a part of with extreme fascination.  I want to know what motivates people, what makes them the way they are as individuals.  I wonder why I notice certain things that other people don't and vise versa.  I guess that's what I was thinking about when I did this page.

I've been excitedly waiting for ICAD to start since I first heard about it.  ICAD is a challenge to create something on an index card each day.  You can learn more about it HERE.  The idea of doing something creative everyday appealed to me quite a bit, especially so that I could practice things without the pressure of making something 'pretty'...if it turns out horribly, who cares?  It's just an index card!  And if it turns out well, then I can paste it in my art journal or try to recreate it on a page.

As usual, I was an overachiever and did two index cards.  One is 3x5 and one is 4x6.  There are optional prompts for each day over on the website, and the first day's prompt was "zebra".  Here's what I came up with.

    

First the 3x5:

I have just discovered She & Him, and have been obsessively listening to their "Volume 3" album on Spotify.  I also got myself a little present in the form of some Faber-Castell Gelatos, which is what I did for the background, with watercolor for the lettering...I tried Sharpie too (you can see it underneath the watercolor in some places), but either Sharpie and Gelatos don't mix or my Sharpie has reached the end of it's days...

And here's the 4x6:

I put some blue gelato around the edges of this and then drew the zebra in the middle.  But I gave the zebra a gorgeous horse mane...which zebra's don't have...they have spiky hair...so I scrubbed some black watercolor over it in an effort to 'fix' my 'mistake', and I actually think it's super neat how the color of the gelato comes through the watercolor.  I also really like how the face markings came out...it kind of looks like a horse with a really awesome tatoo...