Meanderings... a daily wander through the neighbourhood

  

 Driftwood house sign

  So close and yet so far...

 Look who's waiting to greet me upon my return...

Upcycling a small shelf into an art pen rack

Many who know me as an artist, writer and Intuitive are often astonished at my level of organisation. Admitedly it borders on the fanatical at times, but I simply work so much better when I know where everything is. Over the last several months I have acquired an alarming number of pens, pencils, brush and felt pens etc.. and they were beginning to take over every available surface in the art room. With a tiny space to work in, another solution had to be found.

It all started innocently enough... I discovered these wonderful bamboo pencil holders at the local dollar store and brought a couple home with me...

I unearthed a pine shelving unit that had served as a spice rack in one incarnation, and a mug rack in another. I had been eyeing it up this time round as a rack for art supplies...

Then I had a brilliant idea - what if I lay my pen containers down on the shelves and access my pens that way? Tony, my somewhat more practical mate, cautioned that I might want to consider putting a backing on the shelf otherwise the weight of the pens would pull the containers over. Of course I had to test his theory. He was right. Spectacularly.

Back to the drawing board. One idea was to angle the entire unit but I quickly vetoed that due to limited space. What if I could angle the shelves themselves? What if my shelving happened to be put together with screws? It did! So I set about unscrewing the front screw on each shelf so that I could angle them appropriately.

 

We then took ourselves to the lumber yard and found a piece of molding (although any straight piece of wood will do) and cut three lengths using the inside measurement of the shelves. 

Next I nailed the cut lengths onto the back of the shelves. This is definitely one of those times when you want to line up twice and nail once. I didn't. Thankfully I realised my error after the first shelf... You need to be sure that the bottom of the length of wood is nailed to back of the shelf so that you can angle the front of the shelf upwards. Check, then check again.

 

Once the lengths were nailed in place, I was able to test the angle by placing a few containers with various weights and lengths of pens. Once I found the angle I wanted I marked where I needed to drill a new hole. This is a matter of making a rough guess (if there is a mathematical equation to calculate this then please feel free to use it...) Measure approximately where the mark is so that you can line up all the other screws the same way.

I drilled the new hole and then rescrewed the screw into the new postion. Then I simply took the same measurement and did the same with the rest of the screws. I can fill the remaining holes with wood filler.

And here is my new shelf with all my pens on it... Needless to say this will work just as well with glass jars or tin cans.

 Only problem is... I now have room for more supplies...

The Sketchbook Challenge - Doodling

Initially inspired by last year's challenge I was so excited to sign up for The 2012 Sketchbook Challenge until I found out that the prompt for January was "Doodling." I was not impressed. My definition of doodles meant messy, ungainly, untidy. Not for me. Was I ever wrong!

My first painting... definitely a doodle

Doodling reminded me of "practicing." Not that I don't think practicing is a good idea. It's a very good idea. It's just that I spent an innumerable amount of hours as a child and teenager practicing to train to get into, and then graduate from, ballet school. Lots and lots of practice. So I've evaded practice for most of my adult life. I tend to just wing it and get right stuck in straight from the start. Not that I recommend it, you understand. It's what I'd like to think works for me. But who's to say?

Reversible faces - decidedly doddling

But doodles... Doodling... I checked the dictionary in case I had got it wrong. Doodle: Scribble or Draw, especially absent-mindedly. Waste time. Fool around. No siree, not me... Doodler: Foolish Person. Oh great... and I'm planning on putting this up on my blog?

Trying out new pens - qualifies as doodling

Then I started reading the blog posts of the other participants. And got thoroughly inspired all over again! And realised that yes, I doodled. Often. A whole lot. I just never called it that. And yes, I derive incredible pleasure and benefit from doing so.

I doodle all the time. It's how I do things... One of the doodles that appears again and again in my sketchbooks is a female figure.

It so happens that I have gone on to do several popular series of paintings using these figures in many different ways ~

Painted Words

I doodle with words, and often form stones or poems with those same words at a later date ~

I doodle in my fabric art, stitching at random to create other shapes from existing patterns ~



Envelope purse for "30 artists - 30 items show" - SOLD

 Starfish Purses for Fibre Dance 2010 - SOLD

In my fabric art "Dancing Spirits" series,  I learned quickly that you cannot successfully undo stitching on velour and abandoned having any preconceived ideas in mind, preferring instead to simply follow the needle... or doodle ~

Dancing Spirits for Fibre Dance IV show - SOLD

Dancing Spirit - Commissioned Piece - SOLD

So what can I say? I doodle. I am indeed a doodler. And if that means I'm absent-minded, waste time, or fool around, if that makes me a foolish person, then I will wear the badge with pride. And keep right on doodling...

So grab a pen and paper, let your mind wander, forget the world outside and let me know how you like to doodle...

Keeping an Art Notebook

For the last several years I have kept Art Notebooks to record techniques, ideas for series, quotes, or projects I want to work on. The latest one measures approximately 8 1/4 by 5 1/2 inches and is a standard hard back bound black book whose cover has been enhanced with molding paste, acryclics, and gold paint.

I collect images that inspire me and often they provoke ideas for paintings or sculptures, as in the one below.

 I keep track of concepts that I want to develop and remind myself of colours that make my heart dance...

Notes on supplies that I would like to acquire, an idea for a fold out book. A quote that became a painting... and sold...

Or an outline concept and notes of a mural for a client's property...



It is my constant source of reference and inspiration and long after the work is done, a wonderful memory of what steps it took to reach the finished piece. And it reminds me that inspiration is everywhere, and if I have done it before, I can do it again...

Let it be simple...

In the remaining few days of December I bid farewell to a challenging year from many perspectives. I was grateful to finally be able to glimpse some of what I had learned throughout. As the end of first day of 2012 approaches I welcome the year ahead with one thought only. Let it be simple.... Instead of tilting at windmills, stepping on giants, challenging the status quo at every opportunity, I return to my own life; as Intuitive, Artist, Writer and Teacher. From here I can focus on who I am and what matters to me and that is enough. Allow for life to be simple.

Because it really is if we let it.

May the year ahead bring you whatever matters to you the most ~

Golden Morning...

Woke up very early this morning and as the kettle was warming on the woodstove for tea I noticed that some of the tips of the trees were tinged with yellow...

 "Look behind you" said Tony, and there the rising sun was bathing everything it could reach in gold.

A cup of tea always makes things better...

My Irish grandmother, Nana. Hannah by birth, Annie to her friends, she always maintained that a pot of tea was the cure for all things. In my last post I wrote about the recent trauma of having a cold mug of tea dumped unceremoniously over my journal/sketchbook. With the help of my lovely soulmate's sense of positiveness I was able to turn the disaster around. What I'm still trying to come to terms with, is that on top of all this, one of the pieces I was most devastated about, after drying, well, sort of... looked... a lot... well... better!!!

Obviously I don't have the "before" picture, but just let's say there were no smudges on either side of the picture...

We had spent the week camping early October in Goldstream Park (near Victoria) and it did more for my soul than anywhere has in a very long time. I sat by the fire most days sketching and writing or just staring into the flames. For this particular piece I had drawn the trees straight onto the paper with a fountain pen filled with black ink, and then went back in with a watercolour brush filled with water to bleed the lines, which created the effects on the trunks of the trees. While the paper was still wet, I would dip the nib of my fountain pen into the wet spot, which would suck the ink onto the paper, bleeding further as it went.

I would come back to this piece again and again. The leaves of the trees and bushes were painted using my Windsor and Newton watercolour set, and then enhanced with Pitt Brush pens. Staedtler Triplus Fineliners.  Gelly Plus 0.4 point pens by Monami Co. Ltd. (brought back to me from Hong Kong by my friend Janie) added details. Silver pens put the finishing touches to the leaves on the bushes. It's one of my favourite pieces in this sketchbook journal because of the memories it brings back of a very meaningful time and place.

And then the mug of tea hit...

Cold herbal tea with almond milk and blackberry honey poured into the pages of my sketchbook journal and through my sketches. On the left hand side of the double spread page it smudged the trunk and the dead tree beside it, bleeding ink and colour out of both sides of the trunk. 

On the right hand side it smudged the trunk and softened the smaller trees beside it. The end result was a suggestion of mist, signature of the West Coast of British Columbia... a distant memory of mountains...a will- o'-the-wisp perhaps... 

To finish of the piece I glued one of the bits of fungi that I had picked up and dried between the pages of my sketchbook journal. Somehow it seemed to belong now on this page, a wandering spirit of the forest.

 My grandmother was right in so many... a cup of tea always does make it better...

Looking like a real artist...

So in the van today, as we turned a sharp corner, my tea mug (with about 2 inches of cold milky herbal tea with honey in it) tipped right over onto the unbound open edge of my sketchbook/journal, drenching the pages and everything within...

My dear sweet soulmate (the driver of said van) patted me on the (also wet) knee and says: "Now it looks like a real artist's."

Rude words abounded ~ I was devastated. It wasn't his fault at all but you see, I have this thing... I love prisine notebooks. I like them neat. And tidy. And, above all, clean. Not for me the mucky, dog-eared look. Ruffled pages seriously disturb me. Uneven paper edges actually keep me awake at night. I can handles water wrinkes, just. Only as a result of a watercolour sketch. Smudges bother me though. It took me, literally, years before I stopped carrying whiteout in my purse along with my journal to correct my spelling mistakes. Come to think of it, now that they have those whiteout pens I could... But I digress...

Words smeared... Paint ran... Ink spread... Pages stained. There is an unsightly tea stained mark along the bottom edge. My poor sketchbook/journal, proud in its crisp, clean state now lies battered and mottled. Bruised and worn. Like a warrior home from a war that was lost. Dejected.

Which makes me feel sorry for it. Because on some level I know it senses that I may just pick it up later tonight when I go to journal and reject it. Needing, no craving, the safety of a new, clean, and might I add, DRY, place to write and sketch.

Waiting for the ferry on the way home I did do a quick watercolour sketch. I had to. The first rule of thumb when you fall off, is to get right back on. Works for bicycles, horses, and skates too I understand. So hopefully it worked for sketchbooks. I did a quick sketch of the scene, did a watercolour wash, and then began filling in the details with Pitt pens. Absorbed in what I was doing until it felt good to be working in there again.

Am I going to abandon it? As someone who has had abandonment issues with toasters in the past (that's for another post) I don't honestly think it's within me. After all, this journal sketchbook has seen me through an awful lot these last couple of months. I'd have to be a pretty lousy person to discard it just because I forgot to put my very tall and unstable mug of tea somewhere safe in a van that delights in throwing things all over the place just because it can turn on a dime. I did mention the driver who loves same, didn't I?

It's really been there for me. Accepting without crisitism all that I had to say or draw. So I'll see this somewhat unsightly sketchbook journal through to the last page.

Besides... apparently, now, it looks like it belongs to a real artist...

Just call me "Pumpkin"

Several years ago I broke a tooth on the front right hand side of my mouth. Having lost another tooth further back on the same side several years previously what remained was a HUGE gap, then one tooth, and another HUGE gap, or so it seemed to me. So much for all my talk of  “Inner Beauty… and “It’s what’s inside that counts…” and "It's not about looks." Yeah - right!!! It had EVERYTHING to do with looks. I looked like the Wicked Witch of the West!

I was feeling very self-conscious and extremely sorry for myself as I had to wait one whole day for my dentist to rebuild the tooth for me (and he did an amazing job) so woefully milked it for all it was worth that evening, with the man in my life.

We spent a lovely evening eating (me very carefully) and talking (me mumbling a lot) and laughing (me hiding my mouth behind my hand) and at the end of the night he hugged and kissed me, stroked my face and wished me good luck at the dentist’s next day. As he held me in his arms he smiled and said…

(Wait – just to put this into perspective, I grew up in Belgium and it was only when I moved to Canada at the age of twenty five that I first encountered Halloween. So take that into consideration as you read what happened next.)

… So he smiled and said: I’m just going to have to start calling you ‘Pumpkin’ then kissed me again, hugged me tight and said Goodnight.

I smiled all the way back indoors. Aaaaww ~ He really must like me, I thought – he has a nickname for me... How lovely…I smiled as I made my tea. I smiled as I got ready for bed. I even smiled at myself in the mirror.

I smiled as I lay reading my book. I wrote about it in my journal. I smiled as I turned off the light and began to fall asleep…

AND THEN I GOT THE VISUAL!!!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN PUMPKIN !

                                     

Sketchbook/Journal ~ when you forget to leave a trail of breadcrumbs...

In my last post: Mucking up a sketchbook so you’re not afraid to ‘muck it up’ I wrote about the transition that has occurred over the last few months with regards to my sketching and journalling.

In July of this year I was facing some health issues and felt a huge need to reconnect with myself on a very deep level. It wasn’t only a reconnection I craved, but the bringing together of different parts of myself that felt as if they had wandered of without leaving a trail of breadcrumbs to find their way back home again.

One morning the need became so intense that I picked up a hardbound sketchbook and began gluing in sketches that I had done over the last little while, sketches that reminded me of the good things in life, places I felt safe, days that were special… and the sense of utter relief that I felt once this was done was overwhelming.

From that day on, my sketchbook/journal (as it became known) has never left my side. I poured my heart into it, my concerns about my health, about my ability to teach again, or continue working, my fears about the future. I also sketched daily, sometimes more than once a day. Sketched, painted, collaged.

It calmed me. When things got scary I was able to look back and in an instant be transported back to the garden, the beach, the lovely vase of flowers, my lover’s smile…

In it I pasted artwork that spoke to me, poems, quotes… I'd go back long afterwards and add paint to my sketches... it didn't matter how good they were, or weren't, just that I did them. And through it all I wrote, and wrote, balm for the soul, courage for the heart.

I’m on my second sketchbook journal now and have finally achieved what I have always wanted, to have an immediate and seamless record of my days, using two of my great loves, writing and art, to do so.

My health is improving gradually. Many challenges still lie ahead. I feel a lot safer now, and I feel more together (most of the time…) and certainly more complete… and the writing and the art are beginning to spill over into the studio seeking form in essays, blog posts, children stories, a new series of work…

Have courage.
Forge ahead into a blank sketchbook/journal.
Bear witness to your own life.

And know that, when you forget the bag of breadcrumbs, somewhere between your sketchbook/journal’s pages, you’ll always be able to find your way back home again...to your self.