EMBRACING CHANGE ....

 

This is one of those pages I'm really pleased with - difficult to explain exactly why, but I like the shapes and the colours and I'm satisfied with it in some way which is difficult to quantify, but has something to do with having got down on paper what I wanted to say .....

Anyway, it began with paint - just bog-standard acrylic paint, and I then deepened the colour at the edge with a strong pink neocolour II crayon.  I added a piece of patterned paper for no other reason than that the pink and orange look nice together.

And having introduced the orange I went on to add more - from an assortment of collage pieces copied from previous journal pages.  The Modigliani lady just seemed to belong there - almost every page seems to need something HUMAN, whether its a figure or a pair of eyes, just something.

You may notice the grey shadow I added between the above and below pictures - I used a grey Promarker, and it always amazes me how much difference it makes!  I didn't know that I was going to write this until I did - but then again its not very surprising since this is what is most on my mind at present.  Health issues (mine) have led us to the decision to retire early, and while I'm sad to be leaving where we are, I'm also a bit excited about the future and time to be together .... and I WANT to be allowed to look forward to it.

So having said what I wanted/needed to get out of my subconscious, I did the my usual trick of filling in the remaining gaps with this and that - I often use dots as shadows/shading and this time I used the grey Promarker again, and like the subtle effect it has given compared to using black.  The flowers are just doodles to fill up the space.

So there I am - caught between a life that I've loved but can no longer sustain, and a new life of freedom from responsibilities if relative penury!  Fortunately I LIKE beans - we may well have to eat a lot of them for a while - and am happy to get my clothes from charity/thrift shops.  I have a secret slush fund saved up for craft supplies - I definitely can't do without those!!

SECRETS ...

Sorry about these pictures, which I can see now are a little bit dark.  I think this page was made back in January when it was somewhat dull and gloomy - whereas today the sky is blue, the weather is mild, the washing is on the line (!), and its almost warm enough to go out without a coat.

This began as a painted yellow background, onto which I added collage elements - for no special reason except that they rather took my fancy.  I believe the posh description for this is "tuning into the vibe"? Anyway, no very deep thought went into it, just instinct.  Some of the collage elements are colour copies of old journal pages, but others are images and shapes culled from magazines.

I finished adding collage elements to make a frame around the page, outlined the sections in black, and then used a grey Promarker to make a "shadow" around the edges.  Surprising what a difference this makes isn't it, so much so that I nearly always do it now though you may never notice unless its pointed out?

I do sometimes make pages like this, framing a big blank space to come back to later ... at which point I added the doll face, the writing and the doodly drawings.  Now and again I do a page like that and it never does get written on - which doesn't bother me at all.

You can also see here, if you compare with the previous picture, how I often doodle on top of a collage section.  In a way I feel this takes the piece from something cut out of a magazine to being "mine" if that makes sense!

Although this, like many of my journal pages, was entirely unplanned, it always amazes me how things come together and how I later see connections that seem to be entirely "right".  Maybe thats my subconscious at work .. but you can have your own theory about it!

Hope the Spring has sprung in your particular corner of the world - I'm enjoying early daffodils and crocuses, and we are quite northerly so it comes late to us here.  I would like to cast off a few layers of clothing and dive right into the Spring.

GOD SEES ME ....

Those of you who've been with me a long time will know that I sometimes make pages about my inner spiritual life, but these are the ones I don't post very often because they're deeply personal and may not make sense to everyone.  However, I hope this one is an exception and I'm sharing it because I really LIKE it ... and I don't necessarily like everything I make!

I'd begun a page I didn't like at all so had gessoed/painted over it - I didn't mind at all that you could still see some parts through, because that just makes it more interesting.

I'd recently bought this new eye stamp and knew I wanted to use it - unfortunately it didn't stamp very well on this surface but I just drew over parts of it.  What I was originally intending here was the eye would represent God, and the small person underneath would be me ... but that's not how it turned out!

In the end it became all about God, visually at least, but the thought expressed below made me feel calm and peaceful at a time when there's a lot going on in my life!

And perhaps one of the reasons I'm so pleased with the result could be the bold simple shapes, when too often I go in for too much fiddly detail?  Well it seems to work here anyway. The pointy finger is from a collage sheet, as are the letters GOD, and the other shapes are cut from patterns and colours that appealed to me - from magazines and books - and then drawn on top to make them my own. Detail mostly added with my trusty Posca paint pens, the shading on the face uses my Promarkers.

Happy New Year to all my readers!  I don't make resolutions but I do have hopes and dreams for the year ahead which may well come to fruition in 2015.  My take on it is always that if its meant to be then it will be, and if not I was barking up the wrong tree (again)!  I let God sort it out.

THE MIND OF GOD .....

   

I don't always blog my spiritual pages - some of them are simply too personal - but this one isn't in

that category!  It came out of a line in one of our Sunday hymns where the phrase "the mind of God" was used, and I remember thinking that I wouldn't dare to presume to know what God was thinking!

So anyway, that was what was rolling around my brain when I was working on this page.  I just made a painted background as usual, and as usual I stuck to one colour.  I keep telling myself to use two or three but I'm not very good at it.

So then when I put some collage on I made myself use a good strong contrast colour - very often I'll end up choosing pieces which are from the same palette, I get sort of stuck in the tone on tone way of working, and lots of shades of blue looks GOOD doesn't it.  Anyway, I climbed out of my rut on this occasion.  Not quite sure what I was thinking when I made the figure - she reminds me of an African woman with big necklaces, can't remember the name of the tribe who dress that way.  Reflecting on the fact that she looks a bit "other" and "different" connected back to my thoughts about the mind of God, and that it doesn't work in the same ways as ours.

So then of course I had my page subject, although I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to say yet, so focused on doing a bit of doodling, and you know how much I enjoy that!

On this occasion I didn't even feel the need to cover every single inch of the page with doodling, although most of it got treated to some dots - I do like adding them, they seem to work like shading.

And of course I was able to work through my ideas about the mind of God, and to conclude that the problem in thinking was mine and not Hers!  When you try to see the world from God's point of view a lot of things change ....

This is one of my favourites among my recent pages - its partly the colours, but somehow it seems quite "free", something I work towards in my art but don't often achieve!!

DIFFERENT?

 

Another page from my latest journal - my new square (the pages are approx 10 x 10") journal.  Still finding this a joy to work in, especially because of the quality of the paper, but hoping to move on from this eventually into hand-made journals.  I like the idea of a journal which is literally my own work - from sheets of paper to finished, bound result.

Anyway, I was messing about with backgrounds and trying to incorporate shapes and colours which I could work with and around, not to mention making sure that I used a variety of colours and not just shades of the same one!  This one was produced with my trusty Neocolour II crayons.

I hadn't any idea when I began work what the page would be about, so below you can see my tentative steps into creating a "frame" for the page using pattern and doodling, and a bit of collage. For those who are new to my work, the wormhole doodling is done with a Pitt artist pen which is waterproof and writes well over paint and other substrates.  The doodles involve Posca paint pens, my second favourite art material after the crayons!

There was a hiatus of a few days before I worked on this page again, adding the collage figure, a bird and a section cut from a coloured copy of a much earlier journal page.  I learned that tip from Teesha Moore and its a really valuable one.

It was contemplating the weirdness of the figure I'd produced that led eventually to what I wrote here - I almost never use quotes, but only journal my own words and feelings.

Where I live we have a large population of migrants from the Indian sub-continent and women wearing Islamic dress, up to and including the full burkha are a common sight on our streets.  I struggle to see a fully veiled figure because all my instincts tell me that what I'm seeing is a repressed, subjugated woman, and as a lifelong feminist that really troubles me. I'd found myself giving glowering looks at such figures and realised that I had an attitude problem I needed to address. I'm still working on that.

But what I wanted to express was the way we, the way I was treating people who looked "different" and making judgements about them.  I was guilty of assuming that the women I saw were downtrodden victims; now some of them may indeed be, but by no means all, or even most.  This perception of difference does not give me the right to glower disapprovingly, any more than any other difference of dress, race or whatever.  Just because my intentions were good doesn't make it any less discriminatory.

I do feel passionately that we are all just human beings, often with enormous cultural differences, but we mustn't let these things divide us but try to find ways to bridge the chasms of misunderstanding and ignorance that separate us.  As always journalling about the things which trouble me help me find a way to understanding and acceptance - and I've now embarked upon a mission to smile warmly at every burkha clad woman I meet.  You never know, it might just make a little bit of difference .....

WHY WOULD I?

 

As those of you who are regular visitors here know, I often use my journal to get something off my chest.  Today is no exception.  It all began with a half started page I really wasn't liking at all, so I found a leftover piece of interesting scrapbook paper and covered it up.  I love it when you can do that!

Actually I wish I could make a background this good, but sadly I didn't.  Anyway, I had some fun just adding collage elements to it, all with no theme or subject in mind - which is why the items chosen make no particular sense!  It doesn't have to, I just like the way it came together.

But then, later the same day, I had a deeply frustrating telephone conversation with somebody, and that's what found its way onto the page.  The spiky orange bits and the lettering itself are done with  Posca paint pens - the smallest ones have the finest nib for this kind of work.  I was trying to do slimmer lettering this time, and it was fun to use a pale colour like white, although it needed outlining with a black fineliner to make it pop off the page.

So there I was, steam no longer coming out of my ears, and quite pleased with what I'd done.  As I said, a journal page doesn't necessarily have to make any particular sense, as long as it does so to you the author.  I know what lay behind the creation of this page, and I'm the only person who needs to know!  Isn't journalling wonderful - I satisfied my creative urges and got rid of my pent-up annoyance all at the same time!