ArtiphyTheHeart

Warming Up

Writers often use prompts and time limits to warm-up or unblock.  I do much the same thing when I draw.  I give myself a time limit.  Usually 30 minutes.  Then I pick a short story that I have already read, re-read a page or two, and illustrate what I've read.  Roughly.  Very roughly.  I like to use panels, and I like to make the narrative part of each panel.  

I rarely illustrate an entire story, but I do use a separate panel for each individual thought without skipping around or editing the text, even if I've chosen only a page or two.

The time limit keeps the sketches as ideas as opposed to artwork.  Depicting ideas pictorially without the constraints of correct technique or finishing touches keeps the work clean and abstract.  Mistakes are not considered mistakes.  They are part of the exercise and stay put (note the two m's in Hemingway).

It's easier to move on to more sophisticated work when you begin with something clean and clear that helps you see instantly what to keep, what to add or replace, and what to throw away.  

It's like warming up at the piano before a concert.  My daughter plays, and she often warms up with the Goldberg Variations (see video below), playing them excruciatingly slowly at first, no matter how many times she has played them before.  For me, this is similar to a piano warm-up, except that I keep it simple and quick by limiting my time and choices.  

This type of illustration is sometimes later finished, then published as artwork.  Take a look at The Graphic Canon, Vol. 2: From "Kubla Khan" to the Bronte Sisters to The Picture of Dorian Gray. If you click the link, you can view a sample of the book and perhaps have a clearer picture of what I'm talking about.

 

Making A Statement

From time to time throughout history, a discussion about the function of art resurfaces.  I personally believe that art is above function.  It needs nothing to justify its existence.  But there is no denying that art can be used in many ways and can have many functions.  Making a statement is one of the ways that art can be used functionally.

This is page five in my Swatches journal, a tiny handbound book made from pieces of discarded library books.  This page which I worked on top of had been part of a discarded children's encyclopedia. The entry was "plantation".  I had already cut out the red dress and the white flower, grabbed some pieces of shreded washi tape, and was painting out the background when the picture emerged of the plantation owner sitting on a bench smoking a pipe while a slave labored over a barrel.  I looked for a Lincoln stamp and found one.  Then it all came together fairly quickly.  

Sometimes when you least expect it, the pages themselves have a story to tell or a statement to make.  

The necklace and heart are dimensional resin stickers, and have been included as part of my plan to use at least one sticker per page in this book.

So Small

It's impossible to tell how tiny these pages are when you're viewing them online.  This one fits in the palm of my hand with room to spare.  The writing is miniscule.  The back of this page was fortified with lots of collage elements, which strengthened it sufficiently so that most of the background on this side could be used as-is.  It's often more of a challenge to do that than to start from scratch.  The aim is for a cohesive whole, not a page with things stuck on top of it.  

I'm sticking to my sticker on each page plan.  The puffy "hello!" works here.  

This is page 4 in my Swatches journal.  As I mentioned in a previous post, I bound the book using pages from discarded library books.  Every page had a rip or a tear or dirty marks and folds.  I love using parts of them as a base for collage.  Every once in a while, parts of what was once a really delightful page will be salvageable, and I love giving new life to the old page by incorporating it into a new one.

One Page At A Time, For Now

This is page two in my Swatches journal.  None of the pages in this tiny book are the same size or shape.  That means that parts of  both previous pages and next pages, peek through from behind the smaller pages.  This creates a puzzle for photographing them as individual pages because in the book, each page becomes part of the artwork of the greater whole.  While they are pages of journaled mixed-media collage in their own right, as a book, they are not separate from one another, but parts of many different pieces.

I decided to scan each page solo, without the surroundings you'd see if you were flipping through the book.  Maybe later when the book is complete or when lots of pages have been completed, I'll do a quick flip-through video and post it so you can see each page in its natural habitat.  But for now, one page at a time.  

Teeny-Tiny

The pages in my Swatches journal are really small.  None of them are the same size.  Each of them has a torn edge or two or three.  Not four because they're sewn into the book.

This is the first page.  It's roughly 3" X 4".  My goal is to keep it whimsical and use a sticker on every page.  Just because.  There are two puffy stickers on this page:  The chicken in the broken eggshell and the tulip.

The main image was part of an illustration that was on the parent page--the part underneath all the collage.  I doctored it a bit.  The scalloped edge was a small piece of trim from a wallpaper book.  Not wallpaper.  One of the photos in the wallpaper book.  When it comes to materials, anything that works is fair game.

I've made lots--LOTS--of these little books before, but this is the first one I've made with multiple signatures stitched into an honest to goodness book cover.  And as teeny-tiny as it is, it is still a bit bigger than some of my other "little" swatches books.  

The fun is just starting.  Click on Swatches and make some little books with us.

A Little More Time, And Some Advice For Your Mojo

Here's MYPL page 28 after a little more work.  To compare, you can see the start of this page by clicking HERE.

In the last few posts, I've talked about working in ten minute segments, which was a challenge Kelly Kilmer posted HERE.  But sometimes, even when you have a couple of hours, for whatever reason, things just don't click.  That's when you have to relax and make up your mind to just be happy doing what you can.  

A couple of urgent matters set me almost two hours behind schedule on Thursday, which for me is a real mojo drain.  When I was finally able to get to it, it took all I had just to decide what would come next on this page.  One thing I was sure I wanted to do was construct a bridge to unify the top stenciled portion of the page with the image of the planetary surface on the bottom.  I let my brain rest with that thought while I chose a neutral colored architectural element that would compliment the scrolling lines of the stencil, and freehand cut another piece to use on the right side for balance.  After that, it was fairly easy for my mind to conjure a border design that would echo parts of the top element and repeat it across the page.  

I penned the negative lettering of the page's theme, and decided to put the date at the top.  Just as I was making the date lines thicker, I was interrupted with news of three--yes three--serious traffic accidents which were backing up traffic with lengthy projected delays, and all of them on the route I would be taking to where I needed to be next.  I had to leave immediately to take another, longer route which would get me where I needed to be.   So the pen stopped moving and things were packed up and put away so I could head out the door.  

Two hours was less than half the time scheduled for artwork on Thursdays.  And usually, after two hours of work I have much more to show for it.  But the time I spent was productive.  In those two hours, decisions were made, problems were solved, and the general direction of the page began to emerge.  

This was the opposite of accomplishing much in ten minutes.  It was accomplishing less than usual in two hours.  But the level of satisfaction and accomplishment were equal.  As I said in this post HERE: 

Feeling accomplished cannot be measured by time or weight.  It's only measure is satisfaction.

With all the curves thrown that I had to catch and pitch back throughout the day, it was just as satisfying as if I'd finished a hundred pages.  So I'll add "number" to my sentence above.  Here's my revised declaration:

Feeling accomplished cannot be measured by time, weight, or number.  It's only measure is satisfaction.  

And here's what I have to say about my day, especially the early hours which kicked my muse out the door and exploded my mojo to smithereens:  

Even when your muse has abandoned you and your mojo is shattered beyond repair; Even when after too much time looking and too much time thinking, you still don't know what to do, there's one answer to heals all artistic wounds.  Touch your materials.  Just that.  Get them onto the table, pick them up, and turn them around.  Draw anything.  Glue anything.  Things can always be glued on top.  Or paint anything.Things can always painted over.  Write anything.  Things can always be glued, painted or written over.  Just touch the things you work with.  Then use them with no outcome in mind.  Your muse will immediately get jealous that you're working without her.  Your mojo will pull itself together instantly because it can't stand to be left out of a creative adventure.  Especially one that starts out without any particular destination in mind.  

Just do it.  It's magic!

 

A Few More Ten Minute Bursts

A few days ago, Kelly Kilmer challenged her blog readers to take just ten minutes and see what could be done in that time with an art journal page.  I took the challenge and talked about it HERE.  

This is page 27 for MYPL and it was not created in ten minutes.  But bursts of it were.  I selected colors and laid down foundational pieces of collage in ten minutes.  In several ten minute segments, I completed the border and the lettering.  I both warmed and cooled select areas of the page by applying layers of orange and green ink over the top of the finished page with heavier applications around the border, and I completed this in ten minutes.  

Some aspects of a page need to be composed in one sitting.  Otherwise the original energy is lost when you leave the piece, and the new energy you bring to the page when you return will be different.  Because of this the page can lose it's continuity.  

But detail work like lettering or penning a border can be done in intervals.  One of the good things about doing parts of a page in intervals is that you come back to the page with a new set of eyes.  You see things that you didn't see before when you were immersed in it.  You can make new decisions to add or subtract, to paint in or paint out, or to leave something exactly as it is.  Or to restore something to what it was before a change was made.  These things are hard to see when you've been with the page steadily for a lengthy period of time.

Kelly's idea was that by working in ten minute intervals, you can complete something that you would never begin if you knew it would take you two or three hours at one sitting.   And that's true.  But there are other benefits to ten minute bursts of creativie activity, too.  Knowing you can do anything for just ten minutes ensures that you will exercise your creative muscles at least once a day, and satisfy your creative cravings in the process.  Additionally, by working for ten minutes, leaving, and coming back to your page later, you see what you're creating in a different light and can approach it with a renewed freshness.

Finished

The first ten minutes of this page can be seen HERE.  I finished it with multiple layers of collage and warmed it with an overstain of tinted walnut.  

I keep a lot of different types of art journals, but I use my collage journals primarily as a means of exploring color, pattern, and composition.  I have no problem combining unrelated materials, and I consciously try to mix whimsical mass-produced commercial elements and magazine pages with my own artwork and lettering.  It's a playful, experimental dialogue between things from my hands with things from the hands of others.  I work with these and other types of art journaling pages as a daily exercise, and they are for the most part, what I choose to share on this blog.  

I plan to begin sharing more of my other work, maybe as soon as tomorrow.  Not finished pieces of art.  I don't put those on the web, and have no plan to ever do so.  But I keep lots and lots of sketchbooks, and I have some favorite subjects that I revisit so frequently that they each have their own books.  From time to time I think I'll pull pages from these sketchbooks and let you have a look. 

But for now, today's page is enough.  Feel free to click on the image and enlarge it so you can read what I've written.  One of my favorite artists, Katherine Dunn, posted a quote from one of my favorite books yesterday on Facebook, and it fits the theme of this page so serindipitously.  The quote is from Love In The Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Márquez:

"He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over to give birth to themselves."

How appropriate, since the theme of my journaling deals with discarding childish ways, embracing adulthood, and growing ourselves as an on-going process that is not an angst-ridden death to play, but is instead, a liberating process of gaining new insights, refining abilities, developing talents, discovering endless new avenues of productive pleasures, and enjoying the increasing freedom that is earned when we choose to take adult responsibility as opposed to chaining ourselves to youthful pranks and displays of power.  

To grow ourselves, we are indeed obiliged to give birth to ourselves over and over . 

More Simple Pleasures

From time to time I post about my simple pleasures.  This not-so-simple journal page filled with layers of my stenciled prints contains a list of some of my favorite simple pleasures.  

Tea always heads the list, and the page with it's tie-dye colors reminds me of an old hippie coffee house where good whole leaf teas are stored in air-tight containers and brewed fresh, pot by pot and cup by cup.

Next on the list is birdsong.  I live where the birds spend their winters.  There's nothing more pleasant than waking up in a warm, quiet room with a window cracked open for fresh air, and the first sounds of the day coming from a choir of birds.

Two more of my favorite simple pleasures are tide pools, and just breathing deeply.

This is MYPL page 25.  I've incorporated many stenciled prints using Liquitex acrylic spray paint for Stencilry.  The tea photo is a print of the photograph in yesterday's post which you can see by clicking HERE.

The Truth About Can't

I was blessed to grow up with parents who eschewed limiting ideas and behaviours.  

I remember coming home from kindergarten and complaining to my father that Kathy D. told me I couldn't do something on the playground.  "You can't do that," she said.  

And my father answered very simply and quietly, "That's ignorance.  When someone says you can't do something, they're just showing what they don't know.  There is no can't".  

So I told my father, "Tomorrow I'm going to go back and tell her that you said I can." 

And he answered, "No.  That won't do.  It's about ignorance, so she won't understand.  She'll argue, and that's no good.  Let it always be enough that you know you can.  Just go about your business and ignore the can'ts.  Life is full of them.  You need to let them be and just keep going.  If you pay attention to the cant's, you won't see the cans."

It wasn't about defying authority.  I knew the difference between can't and shouldn't, or may not.  It was about CAN.  And being told that I should quietly go about knowing that I can, made all the difference.  It gave me the motivation to learn new, difficult things and the patience to wait for things.  Why rush just to give up?  Especially when you know that you CAN.  So what if it isn't today?  You CAN.  

I learned a third exercise that many people don't think to do.  People think to stretch their bodies, and people think to stretch their intellect.  But most people don't think to stretch their capabilities.  Even if they don't know it, they're stuck with the question, "Can I?  Will I be able to?  Until you answer that question with a yes, you're a member of the billions club.  You're part of the billions of people that don't try until they're sure that they can.  They don't know if they can, and they're afraid to try until they know.

I learned the answer to that question in kindergarten, but that doesn't make me special.  Anyone can learn it anytime they want to.

(This pic above is page 24 from MYPL.  The stencil is from yesterday's post, HERE)

Cutting Edges

One of the things I quickly discovered while cutting this stencil/mask: When cutting your own stencils by hand with an Xacto knife, the edges are really important.  You have to pay careful attention to the intersection of horizontal and vertical cuts.  It isn't enough for them to just meet each other because you risk frayed corners if the edges don't intersect.

Cutting text is good practice.  It helps prepare you for the combined straight and curved lines in artwork.  I could have used purchased stencils, but I wanted the practice.  And I like that I can control the look when I do it myself. In an Art for Elementary School class I took in college, we were told to emphasize to students how much their drawing would improve if they practiced improving printing, script, and penmanship in general.  I think this extends to cutting letters with an Xacto.  If you practice cutting letters, your stencil cutting skills in general will improve by leaps and bounds.

Do you recognize this page?  I started it a while back and posted about it HERE.

The first decision I made when designing the stencil for this page was where I wanted to put it.  This art journal very conveniently has 8-1/2" X 11" pages.  That means that if I cut the area which will receive the paint from a separate piece of printer paper and I position the cuts carefully, the stencil I cut will also successfully mask out the rest of the page.  Once I decided where I wanted the letters, I  drew the letters in a type style that I thought would look good on the page.  Cutting out the letters proved to be quite easy.  

Here are some notes I took to ensure the success of future projects:

• Make sure cuts intersect at corners
• On some curves it's easier to turn the paper than the knife
• Fresh, new blades.  Always.
• Clean, unblemished cutting mat
• No day dreaming!  This is not the time to lapse into the zone!
• Remember, you're pulling the knife, not pushing it.  All cuts are on the pull.

This is page 23 for Marvel: Your Precious Life, an online art journal workshop offered by Kelly Kilmer.  The stenciling exercise is for Stencilry, an online workshop for designing, cutting, and using  stencils.  It's offered by Mary Ann Moss.

I used Liquitex low odor acrylic spray paint in medium magenta for this stencil.  The layer of acrylic spray on top of the printer paper reinforces and strengthens it with a light coating of acrylic polymer.  You end up with the best of both worlds:  A very easy to cut sheet of paper which becomes more durable after it has been sprayed.  

I think the top pic of the stencil cut from the paper is actually pretty cool looking.  I'm sure it will find it's way into another journal page soon.

Looking Forward To Everything, Always

I'm so excited to begin each and every day.  I look forward to absolutely everything.  Life wasn't always like this.  There were days upon days that I anticipated with boredom and exhaustion.  What changed?

Something tiny.  A very tiny thought popped into my head one morning while I was making breakfast.  I thought that maybe I would enjoy cooking, eating, and after breakfast clean-up quite a bit more if I did something creative with it.  So I did.  

That morning I rummaged through the fridge and came up with a small handful of veggies that I washed, chopped and added to a dab of melted butter in a skillet before scrambling my eggs.  And a pinch or two of spice.  Maybe four extra minutes of my time made all the difference, and I really enjoyed breakfast.  

During clean-up, I kept a notepad and pencil handy.  I thought about what I might make tomorrow and I wrote it down.  I even thought about busy mornings on the fly when a piece of toast and Nutella was all I'd have time for.  I resolved that on those mornings, I'd use fine china for my tea and toast.  Or spread a cloth and have a floor picnic.

Those thoughts took me through the day and here and there I began to write down things that would easily add pleasure to other routines.  I thought about adding a flower--just one--to my table every day.  And I thought about places to get flowers and about crocheting doilies and all sorts of other things, too.  And I wrote them in my notebook.  Some weren't practical, but it was fun thinking them up and writing them down.

I thought about expanding this.  Seeing every single piece of monotony in my day in a different light.  And I thought about driving, and how I hated it.  So I resolved to notice one new thing on each and every drive and to remember to write it in my notebook.  Once I noticed a shirt on a man standing at a corner.  Another time I noticed that the telephone wire running along the outside of a building I always passed was painted blue.  Just tiny things.  But life started becoming more exciting.  I began to look forward to seeing.  And I fell in love with thinking up ways to add something playful to every routine.

Some other tiny things that made a big difference were how I turned book reading and film watching--things I've always savored--into an end of the day ritual, and how I purposely skip some days and just keep them open.  How I randomly pick a day each week to sip wine or tea in bed while listening to music.  How I invite my family to join me, or ask them let me spend my time privately, and what a huge difference voicing an invitation or a desire to be left alone can make, and how it gives a choice to others.

And then, all of a sudden one day I realized that I looked forward to everything.  All of it.  And the most beautiful thing happened along the way--I have very a hard time now remembering how it felt to be bored.

The First Rule...

...in everything is knowing what to keep and what to throw away.  That includes knowing what to say "yes" to and what to say "no" to.  And what to focus on when you read and which words are just there to hold the others together.  And what to eat all of and what to leave on your plate.  And who to hold hands with and who to run away from.  

They all--everything, that is--begin with an idea, and that idea can be distilled into a "this or that" format.  Once it's this or that, the wisdom is in knowing which to keep and which to throw away.  

A hint:  Never, ever, throw away your freedom to decide.  Always keep that, no matter the cost.

MYPL page 21.

Beside Myself

This is MYPL page 20.  I'm in a hurry to feel perfect again.  I'm at 96%.  Not bad, but not quite 100%.  In the midst of an illness it's wise to be patient.  But at this stage, I don't think it's a bad thing to want to rush, as long as it's held in check.  Wanting to hurry up and get on with things means that life is desirable.

Ten Days

This is MYPL page 18.  I started it on Thursday, February 7th.  For some reason I was really uncomfortable and I couldn't focus.  Very unusual for me.  So I got myself to a stopping point and called it a day.  

That night I announced that I was sick.  Really sick.  It was strange that I just announced that, and even more strange, it felt less like I was talking and more like I was just listening to myself talk.  Surreal.  But then fevers are surreal. This one lasted ten days.  Ten days of fevers plus a host of other symptoms that viruses bring.  

I finally went back to that page yesterday. Ten days later.  When I began again, all that was on the page was background, the topsy-turvy ladies, and the hearts: two positve shapes (bottom right)  and two negative shapes (top left).

Here's what the page looks like flipped upside down.  I added some yellow tint to the photos, and finished it with a few pieces of collage, and lots of pen work and lettering in negative.  

Valentine's Day got lost somewhere in the middle of those ten days.  The hearts hold the dates.