I really am on a daisy-kick in my drawing lately! Such happy little flowers, resilient too.
I did do this drawing last Monday, but decided to post it today after I spent much of my morning colouring one of the templates for Entangled Butterflies (available to preorder).
I dug out one of my Lamy fountain pens, which had a black ink cartridge in it. I swapped the black for green, and drew this on some bristol board.
From time to time I dipped the nib in the black ink so I had some gradients and variation in the drawing.
It was fun to do. Also, it’s been a while since I drew with pen on paper; most of my work of late has been digital drawing, with the occasional pencil/pen sketch on paper.
This is now finished! It’s taken a lot of time over the past few days, but I’m happy with it now.
It’s been completed on A3 mixed media paper using a variety of media. Details have been added using coloured pencils and iridescent/metallic paints, hence the shimmery, shiny spot to the left. These details are a nightmare to photograph, but hopefully you’ll get enough of an idea from what you can see in the image.
Adding the iridescent patterns was a bit like using ithildin; I had to have the light at the right angle so I could see what I was doing and that also involved me cricking my neck at awkward angles!
My only problem now is to put a price on my work to sell it; so any sensible help/advice would be greatly recieved! Oh, I also need to find a name for it too…
Another quiet day today, with lots of Lemsip, tissues and art. Had to go out shopping this evening, but the supermarket was thankfully quiet.
Finally! I manage to stay awake long enough on a weekend to colour this one in! School has been wiping me out. I have been drawing outlines for a short while in the evenings, but I certainly don’t have the time I used to. As I am more alert than I have been for a while, I hope to get more art done today.
I really needed to do some art too. It relaxes and calms me. Four weeks back at work after a prolonged absence last year has seen me increasingly tired. I have lessons to learn about pacing myself and not pushing myself so hard or being so hard on myself. There are many more lessons that I need to learn too.
I am so glad, however, I have found my creative ‘mojo’ once again. May it long continue!
It’s also only a few days until Color Me Calm and Color Me Happy are available for purchase. It’s really exciting for me!
It has been a while since I last made a post to my blog.
I have been struggling with vagueness and lack of focus with the medication I’m taking, and this one I’m on now doesn’t suit either. As well as the vagueness, I’m constantly on edge and fidgety, and the medication is supposed to treat that not cause it. Have to give it a couple more weeks before it’ll be changed though. I’m still away from work as a result.
In spite of all of this I’ve still been busy with art, though the focus for the projects I’m involved in has been lacking at times, but just ‘doodling’ with no constraints or requirements does help me settle a little and also is something I can do that doesn’t need that focus.
In the summer I signed contracts to do the artwork for two books linked to art therapy. In the last week I was approached by another company to do one book for them in the first instance, and if it goes well then there could be a whole series of them. My hope is that I’ll have enough contracts and work lined up that I can go kind of part time at work. That won’t be for a while and I need to get myself better first, but the part time may be a way of helping me remain ‘better’ in the future. Time will tell.
I have just finished this.
It’s 18cm x 18cm and I used Unipin pens and coloured pencils on heavy, smooth acid-free cartridge paper.
I assert my rights as creator of this art; it may not be used or altered in any way without written permission from me.
In creating a mandala we open ourselves to all the possibilities that exist inside and outside of us.
Carl Gustav Jung is credited with introducing the Eastern concept of the mandala to Western thought and believed this symbol represented the total personality, aka the Self. Jung noted that when a mandala image suddenly turned up in dreams or art, it was usually an indication of movement toward a new self-knowledge.
Within everyone’s psyche, to one degree or another, can be found a seed-center of the self surrounded by a chaotic maelstrom of issues, fears, passions and countless other psychological elements. It is the very disordered state of these elements that creates the discord and emotional imbalances from which too many of us suffer on a regular basis.
[From various comments on mandala’s pinned on Pinterest].
I really have been kind of busy with art during my long summer holiday from the madness that is teaching. I have two more weeks until I return to that craziness, and working out how to juggle creating artworks for two books with the demands of teaching and a little bit of a social life too. I’m sure I’ll manage it; art will be my solace at the end of a crazy day as it always has been, this time with the impetus to create to fulfil a contract too (which won’t take away my passion for my art).
Here are some of my creations over the past few weeks.
And there’s more of these at Artwyrd at deviantART.
I’ve also been busy with mandala type things too.
Again, there are more at Artwyrd at deviantART, as well as other pieces of art I’ve done.
I turned 50 last week. I spent the day with a friend at the West Somerset Railway. All too often in my life I have spent special days alone; days like birthdays, Yuletide/Christmas, New Year and so on. This year I plucked up enough courage to ask him to join me knowing he also likes steam trains.
Yes, it took a LOT of courage. I have a big problem in asking people to join me or help me. I don’t like to be the centre of attention nor do I wish to be a burden to others, and I definitely don’t like the sting of rejection either.
All of that is a bit bizarre as I will help others, accompany them, accept invitations and so on if I am at all able to do so.
Yes, I have problems with self-esteem, self-image, self-confidence and a lack of social skills that others take for granted and it takes a LOT for me to do little things to learn and break down barriers that limit me in my life.
I am learning. I am finding the courage. Little by little.
And that quote is quite apt for how life is being for me at this time. Lots of little changes and challenges (well one rather big challenge).
All these little quotes are going into an A6 sketchbook which is for me to carry with me to remind me of the little things (or not so little things) I need to do or remember to help me change my view of myself and to change my life.
Well, that’s the plan anyway. In itself, the writing of the little messages and the decoration of them is a pleasure. I hope the work helps to cement them in my subconscious and to reprogramme the faulty thinking I still have, a lot of which stretches back to childhood.
I have finally found a self-help book that makes sense to me. It’s Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by David Burns. In the book he makes the point that it’s your thoughts that create your feelings and not the other way around. Many thoughts we have we aren’t even faintly conscious of, yet they still have enormous power over the way we feel, which then feed back to the thoughts producing still more feelings. We all have inner critics, negative automatic thoughts, and we can learn to change them, or at least reduce the power they have over us.
I’ve come across this idea in counselling in the past, but it’s never made as much sense to me as it does now. I think the counselling I had helped me heal some aspects of myself, understand others, gave me strength to continue teaching, but, more importantly, it laid some of the foundations for me continuing to heal the mis-conceptions I have about myself and the resulting limits they place upon my life (or rather the limits I allow them to place upon my life).
I have noticed a difference in myself lately. One big difference was me inviting someone to join me.
A second difference was the way I accepted the offer to create the artwork for two books; I did this almost unhesitatingly. The hesitation was about the number of art works needed and the time given to do them in. Surprisingly, the hesitation wasn’t about my ability, my self-doubt, and that was a big step forward for me too.
Yet another is that I’ve noticed I’m a lot more at ease around people. At one time I would be fidgety and eager to keep moving to move along to the next thing. Now, I can relax. On my darker days, the days when I’m low and in tears I do tend still to be on the move constantly, running away from myself quite figuratively, not happy to spend time in my own company. In the past this would have involved a lot of money being spent on pointless things, trying to buy a sense of ‘value’ of myself, or trying to show others I’m valuable as a person because of these things I have.
The truth is spend, spend, spend was only ever an Elastoplast over the wound called a huge lack of self-worth.
Comfort eating is a behaviour I still indulge in. I comfort-eating to fill the gaping wound that is a lack of people and love/affection in my life on a consistent basis. Oddly, the days I’ve spent with friends and the day or so afterwards are days where I have no overwhelming appetite, no need to stuff myself stupid to fill the hole, to hide the emptiness inside. Other days, I often don’t consciously realise what I’m doing until it’s done. I then feel stuffed full, and sick. Sick of myself, of how it makes me feel fatter than I am (I am overweight, how much so I don’t know as my inner-mirror is warped and I see myself as huge as blue whale), ugly (well if you’re overweight, you are ugly, and not just ugly on the outside but on the inside too), useless, no one will want to be my friend…these phrases are often heard in the strident, bitchy, sarcastic tones of my mother’s voice.
I’m getting better at finding evidence to refute these erroneous beliefs about myself, to understand that beauty isn’t a dress size or an age. I haven’t quite found the key to fit the lock to allow me to change these thoughts on a consistent basis.
Creating the quote artwork has been one tool in an increasingly large toolbox to help me find or forge the key that will dis-empower the negative automatic thoughts and allow me to believe I am the good, nice, beautiful person that others seem to think I am and that I deserve more good in my life.
I was contacted by Darya’s mum asking if I’d ‘do a blessing in the style of your cards’.
This is what I did. It’s approx A4 in size.
This design started with the kind of infinity loop towards the top left. The loops coming from it eventually were seen as a letter ‘B’ and the word believe seemed to be the right one to put on this. Everything else grew, quite literally in some cases, from this point.
There are golden stars to wish upon and golden seeds and flowers and growth and sun and rain … and hope.
Approx. 6″ x 8″. The black lines were worked using Uni-Ball UniPin pens. Colour was applied using watercolours and gold watercolour paint. The paper is heavyweight cartridge.
As always, I am the owner of this creation and it may not be used, shared, distributed or altered in any kind of way without permission from me. Thank you.
Art is the Adventure 