Fibromyalgia is a really strange illness with a host of symptoms you don't necessarily realise are part of it. Something I experience, and thought was just a personality trait, turns out to be one of these and to have a name - Sensory Overload. From time to time, and particularly if I'm tired, I become completely overwhelmed by sounds, people, conversation, and need to retreat and be quiet for a while.
I was in that place when I sat down to work in my journal - just me, in a quiet room (no music or talk radio) and my art materials. Sometimes the most I can do is make backgrounds, and I never really worry whether I like them or not because I'm going to work on top of them.
With this one I had some vague ideas about roses, so that's why I painted pink patches onto the orange page which I half intended to make into roses.
But that's not how things turned out - instead I used a technique I learned from Teesha Moore. I've got a drawer filled with bits of paper cut out from all kinds of sources which contain interesting colours or patterns that take my fancy. I cut shapes out of these, sometimes strips to make a border around the page, but here sort of 'U' shapes that I often think look like teeth or boulders!
I usually add to the pieces I use in some way so that they become mine, rather than just something from a magazine. I draw patterns or embellish them to make them individual and unique, and mine.
Its quite a meditative process and I just allow it to take me wherever it will, and the words come unbidden ...
I was too tired to do a lot in the rather empty looking space above the figure - I couldn't think of anything brilliantly arty to do with it so just began making marks with a grey Copic pen. I liked the result and did some more!
It seems strange to me that when I'm overloaded I should end up filling a page with colour and pattern, but somehow that is restful to my soul. Perhaps its because I'm choosing to allow it to come out of my inner core rather than it assaulting me from outside?
Sorry I missed last week - I've been very tired lately and needed to take life gently. Thanks for sticking with me.
