Magic Things

"The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper."

-W.B. Yates

Did I spell "senses" wrong on the page?  Yes, I did. 

Apparently, my spelling senses need to grow sharper...

But spelling errors aside, I am a fan of the quote for sure.

I like the idea of magic things waiting for us to notice them.

I think we get caught up looking for grand gestures of the universe,

and, sometimes, I think we can get those things.

My guess is that the magic of life, though, is found in the small details...

the parts we ignore as ordinary. 

So much of life is found in the smallness of it....

Maybe that's why those magic things are looking forward to our perception becoming more keen.

Because the magic is already there.

We just have to open our eyes and see it.

At a Snail's Pace

For DOCUMENTED LIFE this week, the art challenge was Gesso, and the prompt was: "The beginning is always today." -Mary Shelley

In keeping with my inadvertent wild kingdom theme, here's what I made:

A not-to-slimy snail!

I really liked that Mary Shelley quote, and I'll probably use the actual quote on some other journal page.  It brought to mind the fact that every day is a fresh start and a chance to do things differently...it's never too late for that and you never have to wait, you can just begin...

"It all starts here."
I used a tutorial I found on Pinterest to draw my snail.
You can find it on my board called "Draw".

I was thinking about that quote as I made my snail's shell.  I liked the way it spirals out bigger and bigger.  

I was thinking about how beginnings can be like that as well.  You start off slowly with something little and you gradually build on it and build on it and, over time, you find you're not at the beginning anymore...in fact, you're very far away from where you first started!

It's important to start from your heart!

At the center of my snail's shell is a little heart.  I think that must be where all things truly begin to take shape.  

If you'd have asked me in the past, I would have said everything starts in your mind.  You form an idea and plan and dream and all that and that's the start.

But I think I was wrong.  I think that it's all just an illusion at that point.  It's not quite real.

It's only when your heart gets involved in something that it has a proper start, because it goes from being a dream to something else...something you know you have to accomplish.  Sure, your brain is involved as well (hopefully anyway!), but it's not till your brain connects with your heart that you really start to create something.

I think that's the point where I'm at now...where my brain and my heart have finally connected and I know, both mentally and deep down inside, what it is I need to do.  It's a wonderful and slightly scary feeling and I'm interested to see where it takes me!

To Live Without Definition

Another late one tonight...overtime and then mending a coat...sigh.  But I'm one post away from a month long blog-a-thon, so I'm doing a quickie tonight!

I used some happy mail napkins I got from my friends Boo and Pamikins quite a while ago, as well as some leftover's from my Journal 52 page for this week and ended up with this:

I guess it's a collage...

I had painted the background and then put other napkins on, but didn't like it...so I tried to take the napkins off...which ended up ripping the pages.  Oh well...let's just say it adds to the finished piece, ok?

"To live is the rarest thing in the world.  Most people exist, that is all."
-Oscar Wilde

I whited out the background on the page with the groups of girls, but left the colorful and crazy background for the individual girl...

While there have been times in my life I've wanted to fit in or, more correctly, to be accepted...those are two entirely separate things after all...I've never quite understood the desire to be like other people.  

In the past, I often wished that my brain functioned the way normal people's brains do...until I realized that most people's brains don't actually function all that well either.  I don't say that in a mean way...although now that I think about it it's probably hard to interpret that in any other way...

What I mean is that I see a lot of people putting "fitting in" over being happy.  I'm not always innocent of that crime myself...less so the older (and wiser) I get though.

The other day, a man I work with called me a free thinker and told me that I was therefore a rare and dangerous breed.  He said that generally people like me are misunderstood and tend to cause a lot of problems just by doing what comes naturally to them...because most people fear things that are different.  I think it was a compliment...

He's not wrong, I guess.  It's been my experience that people like to label things...and when they come across someone that doesn't fit into a predefined category, they're not exactly sure what to do about it.  I imagine that I've been very off-putting to a lot of people in my life so far.

I like to think that I have learned to temper my weirdness with kindness...that I don't try to shove my ways down anyone else's throat. 

I was thinking about Oscar Wilde's quote that I put on my spread today.

I always giggle to myself when people try too hard to stand apart from the crowd...because doing that just lands them in another crowd.  Maybe I'm just a little snobbish about my weirdness.

I wish that we lived in a world where everyone could be free to be themselves at all times.  I think people like to believe we live in that kind of world, but it's not true.  I've not met a person in my life, including me, who is not a watered-down version of the person they'd like to be.  And every single person I've ever known, again including myself, perpetuates the world as it is...because we like to pass judgement, consciously or not...we like our labels...we like to think we know what other people are, to be able to define them.  And to try to define another person is to judge them.

Starting now, I'd like to quit passing judgement on other people and, instead, to concentrate more fully on becoming the undiluted version of me.

Suck it up, Cookie!

So last night, I was in the middle of doing a whole lot of nothing...actually, I wanted to do some art stuff, but was in one of those moods where I couldn't pick what I wanted to do and didn't really have any great flashes of inspiration happening...it's because the studio is such a mess, I know it.

It's my own fault, because I jokingly mentioned my aversion to cleaning yesterday...which made my mind get stuck on just how messy it really is in my little studio room...and then I couldn't concentrate on anything else very well.  

So if I was perfectly honest, last night I was procrastinating at making art, which was my (as usual) attempt at procrastinating at cleaning, but the inspiration just wouldn't strike...so I ended up turning to my last resort...watching something on Netflix.

I'm not a huge TV watcher...every once in a while, I'll get stuck on a series and watch all the episodes back to back till I get through it all...but I had run out of my latest obsession (Broadchurch...it was a crime mystery show that has David Tennant (of Dr. Who fame) in it) and so not even Netflix was being agreeable...it got so bad that I ended up doing a search for romantic movies, which is probably my least watched genre.

Anyway, I ended up watching this movie called "Dorfman In Love" (you can see the trailor for it HERE).  It was surprisingly good!  A cute story and it was visually interesting as well (and that's not a code word meaning good looking dudes...although there was that too...)!  I don't tend to recommend TV shows or movies, but I will say that I would totally watch this movie again.

And, best of all, I was inspired to do something artsy after I watched it:

"Suck it up, Cookie!"

There's a part in the movie where the main character asks her friend to do something for her and, instead of doing it, he tells her to suck it up and do it for herself.  (The 'do it for yourself' thing comes up a couple times actually.)

And the not-cropped version of the photo...
I did this girl on kraft paper and used a water soluble pencil and  my Neocolor II's...I decided to let the kraft paper be my skin tone and only added shading and highlights in certain areas....now I'm wondering if it looks like she has a five o'clock shadow or something...

The 'suck it up and do it' part of the movie stuck with me, and made me think a lot about the things I am currently trying to procrastinate my way out of...like cleaning the studio...and how maybe I should just go ahead and do these things...one never knows what might happen, right?  Maybe I'll find some inspiration while unmessing the mess!

Generosity

Today's prompt for REVERB14 is:

Look back at last year and consider: How did generosity open your heart?  How can you cultivate generosity in the coming year?

"Let us forget, with generosity, those who cannot love us."
-Pablo Neruda

I think, that of all the things you could give a person, time is the most precious.  Time is one thing in life that you can't get more of...you can't hoard it up to use later...when you go to sleep tonight, today is gone...you never get it back.

I'm going to be selfish here and tell you that what opened my heart this year was something that was given to me.  Not that I'm not a giving person...I think that if someone needs something I'm capable of giving to them I will...but it feels wrong to me to talk about whatever my own good deeds may have been.

Instead, I'm going to tell you the truth: the generosity that has opened my heart this year has come from what others have given me...from discovering that there are people out there in the world who are willing to invest their time in me....people who willingly want to be a part of my life.

I'm sure that this year isn't the first time it's ever happened, but it seems like it.  Maybe stopping to think about generosity today caused me to be a bit sensitive to the generosity of others...or at least to take the moment to name it and to really appreciate it.

Maybe this will sound silly, but one of the most generous things that happened in the past twelve months was, on more than one occasion, a friend of mine remembering things that I said in passing...things that I didn't suspect anyone was really paying attention to, let alone taking note of.

Life is busy and most people are so busy focusing on getting by that they don't stop and look up at the people around them.  I'm guilty of that myself at times.

The fact that someone looked up and took notice of me is something I deeply treasure.

I am hoping that in the coming year, I can cultivate this same type of generosity toward others, as well as working on another form of generosity, one that is very difficult for me: forgiveness...towards other people as well as myself.  

Here's hoping that 2015 will be the year of freely giving.

Doing Stuff

The prompt for DOCUMENTED LIFE this week was "Trace a Hand On Your Page".  And I did that...kind of:

"It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do little.  Do what you can." -Sydney Smith

Actually, I traced my hand on a different piece of paper (twice) and cut them out and used them as stencils to spray Dylusions.  This way I didn't end up with the Dylusions all over my hand.  ...just half of my hand and a little bit on my face...I'm really bad at spraying in the right direction.  It should not be that hard...

After I sprayed on the Dylusions, I drew my little worrying bunny, who was not meant to look worried (it just happens that he does...) and added the quote. I think I may go back and outline the quote, because it looks a little too light for my comfort...but we'll see where laziness factors in to that equation.

I'm pretty happy with the bunny, because I didn't copy him, he just came out of my head.  Usually if I try to draw anything without a reference, it comes out...not good...  But the bunny is pretty darn cute if I do say so myself!

Thanks for the well-wishes for my nephew!  I wanted to mention that Remy got to come home yesterday, with doctor's orders not to fall off the bed anymore...which I feel is good advise...  That little turd scared us all...and I'm fat, and fat people can't take being scared...we have heart attacks WAY too easy for all that...  So, fingers crossed that he waits till he's sixty or seventy before he has any more accidents!  

And on that note, I am off into the wild blue yonder to do what little I can before work today.

Smooches to you all!

The Most Ugly of All Ducklings

I have a confession to make...

I don't share everything with you.

Today at work, while I probably should have been paying attention to typing, I was instead thinking about how weird it is that I can tell you all about my personal issues and plaster them all over the blog and it totally doesn't bother me at all.  For all intents and purposes, every person on the face of the earth could read some of my most private thoughts...and I'm cool with that.

But in my daily life, I'm not really like that.  Sure, I've got a few friends that I vent to, but I don't put it all out there like I do online.  On a daily basis, I'm a relatively private person.  I'll give you a moment to recover from the shock of that statement...

Don't get me wrong, I talk...a lot.  And if you heard me talk, you'd probably think I had no boundaries what-so-ever...that whatever came into my brain just flew out my mouth without a filter.  But that is just a grand illusion, my friend.

So then I started wondering if there was anything I didn't share with you...

I mean, despite all that personal stuff I talk about, there has to be something I hold back, right?

Not really.  You get pretty much all my gory brain and heart details...

You know what I don't share with you, though?

When I make something really ugly.

For all the deeply personal stuff I tell you, I realized that I never show you my ugly art.

Is it kind of odd that of all the things I probably shouldn't be sharing, hideous pages are the thing I keep to myself?

Yeah, it's weird.

I guess I don't mind telling you the private details of my life, because your opinion on that doesn't matter.  Sorry...  

I don't mean it doesn't matter, because I like it...in fact, I LOVE it...when you care enough about what's going on to comment and I've gotten so much encouragement and good advice from you since I've been blogging it out.  What I mean to say is that, when it comes to personal stuff, in the end, after considering what you've said, I am the one who makes the decision and lives with the consequences.  I chose to accept or sometimes reject your opinions...just like you do with your friends and family (that's right, I think of you guys as my friends and family!).

But when it comes to my art...your opinion matters to me SO MUCH!  Despite the fact that I've grown a lot as a person in the past few years, I still have a desperate ache for approval...for admonition...for other people to say I did something and it was good.  It's not always a desperate ache, sometimes it's a teeny tiny little gnawing in the back of my mind...but it's always there in some form or another...

And there are days, not a lot but some, that if I got a negative comment about my art, I feel like it would break me.  It would just crush me.  And I know, knowing myself as I do, that the next day I would probably wake up and be fine.  I would take that negative comment and use it as motivation to get better.  I would get a nice big dose of "I'll show you!" attitude and make something totally awesome!  It's just that first there's the crushing part...and I don't like the crushing part...

But during my mental conversation with myself at work today, I started thinking how unfair that was.  When I started out art journaling, it was kind of frustrating to see beautiful page after beautiful page from the artists I admired.  I wanted to see the ugly ones too...because it gave me hope.  Hope that I had a chance to make something half as pretty as what they made.

Now I'm not saying that anyone admires me...and I'm not tooting my own horn about my art (although sometimes I do, when I make something I end up being super proud of!)...but I've worked really hard to get to the point I'm at!  REALLY HARD!  There were a lot...A WHOLE STINKING LOT...of ugly pages...  One of the things that kept me going was thinking: 'if so-and-so (whatever artist I was inspired by at the time) can make an ugly page, then there's a chance I can make a decent one'!

And I'd like it very much for someone to say that about me one day...that amid my decent pages was an ugly one that gave them hope.  Well that can't happen if all you see are the pages I am relatively happy with!

And so in the end, I thought I would share an ugly page...and what I did about it  (sorry for the kinda crappy pictures):

I don't know what happened here...this ugly gal has been in my journal for months, while I stared at her with hatred and disappointment.   I think I tried to paint her using a big brush or only my fingers maybe?  And then she was so ugly I just walked away.

I think I decided that the eyes were the worst thing about her (although she was generally pretty hideous...), so I started there.  I fixed the whites of the eye, adjusted the size and shape of them, and made the iris darker.  I also started adding some shading around the eyes into the nose area.

I decided I didn't like how dark the eyes were, so I blotted them out as best I could and went over them with a lighter brown.  I added more shading around the eyes, nose, and chin/neck area and fixed her crooked nose.  I also decided to try to even out her lips... with a red that was WAY to bright for the page...

Goodbye red lips!  I added more shading to the neck and eyes, and then softened it with a skin tone so it wasn't such a harsh contrast.  I really liked the nose at this point, except that it was crooked...just like her lip...she looks a little maimed...as I fixed her face, that hair situation started to really stand out as terrible...

Added more shading to eyes and chin/neck area, fixed the nose so that it was more even, went back in to fix the lip...with a less shocking shade of red, and started to fixing her hair...

I added more shading to the nose...ended up giving her a weird beauty mark on the right side (your right, not hers) which I decided was weird in the way I like my weird...as well as the hair and neck area.  I went back to dark again for her eyes, it looked much better now that the rest of her was taken care of...added the pupils and some lashes, as well as the highlights.  Then I decided that red still wasn't cutting it, so I went with a darker color on the lips as well...added some shading and highlighting to them as well.

Here's the whole spread.  All in all, I am pretty happy with the way she ended up...especially when I remember where that poor girl started...

I like making faces more than anything else I do art-wise.  I think my girls reflect who I am and what I'm feeling...every single one of them.  I'm not the best at saying those things out loud, sometimes...but my girls give me a voice when mine is too timid to speak.  

I chose the quote for the page, because, like dreams, I don't have to share myself with anyone.  My thoughts and feelings belong to me...in fact, they are me...

What I tell you with words, no matter how private the thing may seem, it's never as intimate as me sharing my art stuff with you.  The things I say (or type) are like the edited version of the story but when I show the art, I'm giving you all the bits I left out.  It's like a puzzle, I guess and the art completes the puzzle.  It's the sordid details.  I think that's why I rarely put clothes on my girls, because they are me, naked and exposed, unprotected and vulnerable.  And when I make my art, it's the only time I ever feel safe enough to be that way...

And maybe that's the real reason I don't show the ugly pages...because I don't like to think of the ugly things I carry around inside of me.  I know they're there, but I don't want them to be.  I want to be ALL good, as a person and an artist.  But that's not possible is it?

Like the girl I showed you today, underneath it all, I'm ugly too.  And in the end, I'm just hoping that there's enough good to cover up the ugly.  I think that's something everyone hopes for.