PLAYING

 

These are the four DreamScapes I painted that I decided were rubbish.  Now that I look at them a few days later I guess they aren't so bad considering they are practice pictures.  I am doing them loose instead of in a journal.  The colours don't show here as clear and clean as they really are.  They are watercolours.  I actually had fun doing these.  Yesterday I did thirteen more, I played all afternoon.  I will post some more of them tomorrow.

 

This one has shiny copper on it that doesn't show up.

I used alcohol and salt for texture on this one.

I used alcohol for texture on this one and turned the spots into snails.  It also has gold lines running through.

This one has silver lines, you can barely see them here.

 

I was out all day today taking a friend in a care home out to lunch and then visiting another friend in hospital so I couldn't do any more but will do some tomorrow.  I want to have one for each day of the month so I should be able to catch up tomorrow.

 

I am re-reading a book called Casting Off by Nicole R. Dickson.  It is about a woman and her daughter who go to an island off the west coast of Ireland to write a book about the Aran sweaters the women knit there.  The call them ganseys.  All the stitches in the sweaters have meaning and when they knit a sweater for someone the stitches are chosen to relate something about that person.  They weave their own wool as well.  It is a good story, I read it a few years ago and kept the book because I knew I would read it again.  I love anything about Ireland.

 

It was hot and muggy here today, had a few drops of rain but nothing much.

 

MY WORD FOR TODAY IS:  LIGHTEN UP ( I guess that's two words!!) I really need to stop taking things so seriously.  Pretty much like learning to play.

 

Thanks for stopping by.

 

PLAY

MY CALENDAR FOR JUNE

 

I keep starting and stopping posting on this blog.  I am not having a good year creatively and don't feel I have anything interesting to post.  I feel very frustrated.  I hope to create a calendar for 2015 so I really need to get out of this rut I am in.

I have been following Tara Lever's blog and find her suggestions very helpful, I printed off today's post as a reminder that we need to use our sketchbooks as places to practice not a place to make beautiful art.  A place to practice and develop ideas. I am one of those out-of-sight, out-of-mind people so I need the hard copy in front of me to remind me not to be so hard on myself!

I started a daily practice of what I call DreamScapes taken from Tara's practice of DailyScapes, (thank you for the idea Tara) but after only four attempts I stopped.  My usual "not good enough" messages from my inner critic were screaming at me.  So, today is Monday, a new week, and thanks to Tara a new start.

I NEED TO REMEMBER:

IT'S OKAY TO DO BAD ART
IT'S A LEARNING PROCESS

My word for today is PLAY - HAVE FUN WITH IT, THIS NOT A SERIOUS THING!!!!!!

I have been feeling like I am on a hampster wheel lately so I decided last week if I want things to change, I will have to change what I am doing.  I am going to get up by 9:30 in the morning and go for a 20 -30 minute walk.  I followed through today and went for a walk with my camera.  it ended up being a 50 minute walk.  I took lots of pictures of our beautiful spring flowers.

A show of such beautiful colours and shapes Mother Nature provides for us.  We have an early spring here in Vancouver and I feel very blessed to live here.

I keep starting my blog again and then stopping.  I just feel like my life is so boring I don't know what to write about.  I am going to try again because I love to see what I have done when I look back at my previous posts.  You know that old critical voice that tells you that what you have to offer is not important or boring or not as good as the things other people are doing. 

So I am starting this with a picture of my April calendar.  I created another watercolour calendar for 2014 and hope to do one for 2015.  I have painted some large paintings since I stopped writing my blog and am in the process of painting a 2' X 3' one for my granddaughter and another one that is one painting on two canvasses.  I am also art journaling.  One art journal is Draw Your Awesome Year with Joanne Sharpe and the other one is No Excuses Art Journaling from Gina Rossi Armfield's book of the same name.  I am very sporadic with it, not doing it as much as I would like to - why??? - Laziness is probably the answer.  I keep finding other things to do.  Maybe Avoidance is another answer - another WHY???  I have tons of time!!

I am thing of starting a new project called Face Me.  The idea comes from camillaolssonart but I am not committing to it yet as I have to do some soul searching before I decide.  This is not a workshop I am following but an idea I am taking from Camilla's own personal journey.

So this is me starting again.  I hope I keep it up this time.  When I look at blogs by Alisa Burke and Jullie Fei-Fan Balzer, I don't see why I shouldn't.  They are both so busy and I have tons of time.  Maybe that is the problem!!!! No pressure!!!

CALENDAR FOR JUNE

This is the calendar I drew for 2013.  I plan to make one for next year and have started gathering ideas and poetry for it.  It was a fun project to do. 

I made some bracelets today in grays, pinks and white.  I haven't photographed them yet but will do so.

WILDNESS

It's almost five months since I last posted,  where does the time go?  I have been taking some classes in watercolours and acrylics and am enjoying learning some new techniques.  I do something creative pretty much every day, keeping up my date art journal.  Today I got out my beads because I feel like making some bracelets.

When I was journaling this morning I was thinking about the feeling of the loss of wildness.  I live in the middle of a city and am surrounded by concrete and glass and look out on a marina with many boats (most of them never leave their moorings).   I feel that my soul is starving for some nature - not plantings contrived by humans but real nature.  Wild grasses and weeds and ferns and moss and all those lovely things we find in the woods. 

This led me to thinking about my own wildness and how I am feeling separated from it and how I might reconnect with it.  I remembered I had a copy of Women Who Run With The Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes.  I haven't looked at it for years but it was still on my bookshelf.  I picked up the book and opened it and, as so often happens, it opened to the perfect page - The Feral Woman.

"The feral woman is one who was once in a natural psychic state - that is, in her rightful wild mind - then later was captured by whatever turn of events, thereby becoming overly domesticated and deadened in proper instincts.  When she has opportunity to return to her original wildish nature, she too easily steps into all manner of traps and poisons. because her cycles and protective systems have been tampered with she is at risk in what used to be her natural wild state.  No longer wary and alert, she easily becomes prey."

"There is a specific pattern to the loss of instinct.  it is essential to study this pattern, to actually memorize it, so that we can guard the treasures of our basic natures and those of our daughters as well.  In the psychic woods there are many leg traps made of rusted iron that lie just below the leafy green of the forest floor.  Psychologically, the same is true of the greater world.  There are various lures to which we are susceptible: relationships, people, and ventures that are tempting, but inside that good-looking bait is something sharpened to a point, something that kills our spirit as soon as we bite into it."

Feral women of all ages, and especially the young, have a tremendous drive to compensate for long famines and exile.  They are endangered by excessive and mindless striving toward people and goals that are not nurturant, substantive, or enduring.  No matter where they live or in what time, there are cages waiting always; too-small lives into which women can be lured or pushed."

"If you have ever been captured, if you have ever endured a starvation of the soul, if you have ever been trapped and especially if you have a drive to create, it is likely that you have been or are a feral woman.  The feral woman is usually extremely hungry for something soulful, and often will take any poison disguised on a pointed stick, believing it to be the thing for which her soul hungers."

At this point in my life, I find that the most difficult traps and snares are the limitations I put on myself.  Limitations that come from fear and lack of confidence in my own abilities and instincts.  SELF-TRUST AND SELF CONFIDENCE MUST BE RELEARNED.  Once you have lost it it can take a long time to find it again.  I am making progress and the tattoo on my left arm reminds me that I truly am a FREE SPIRIT. 

EMBRACE YOUR WILDNESS AND BE A FREE SPIRIT!

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Every New Years I intend to start new things on New Years Day - every year I forget that I have to spend a few days clearing up the past year.  Things like taking down decorations, writing appointments on calendars, reviewing and putting away last years journals, preparing new journals and choosing words and intentions for the New Year.  I have usually chosen my words by the New Year and this year I have chosen HARMONY and four supportive words: PATIENCE, FORGIVENESS, FAITH AND ACCEPTANCE.

I have spent the past two days putting decorations away and replacing them with everyday decor and sorting out my journaling.  I have bought a scrapbook and am going to get some insert pages on Saturday with a 50% off coupon at Michael's.  I want to save cards and different ephemera and thought this would be the best way to do it.  I can also add some of my art and poems and quotes that I find.

On November 1st, I started making a calendar and finished it on December 11th.  I am so happy with it as it is the first project I have done that includes watercolours and lettering.  This is the cover and January.  The background for January is darker and has snowflakes on it.  I have sold five of them so that is very exciting for me.

I hope to blog more frequently as well.  All good intentions, I hope I can follow through.

I would like to share a poem by David Whyte called Faith:

I want to write about faith,
about the way the moon rises
over cold snow, night after night,

faithful even as it fades from fullness,
slowly becoming that last curving and impossible
sliver of light before the final darkness.

But I have no faith myself
I refuse it even the smallest entry.

Let this then, my small poem,
like a new moon, slender and barely open,
be the first prayer that opens me to faith.

from Where Many Rivers Meet.