This is my latest work, though I may add some metallics to it. May…
It strikes me that it’s a sampler of sorts, of texture patterns. Many of these are inspired by the work of Rebecca Blair.
I’m not sure if the end result is “me”. But it’s been a lovely way to spend over 20 hours over the past few days.
It’s been something that I’ve been able to do in bite-sized pieces, which has been helpful as I’m still experiencing fatigue due to burnout, anaemia and menopause.
The artwork is on an A4 sheet of Fabriano mixed media paper.
The pens used were 0.5 and 0.1 Uniball Unipin fineliners, and a white Uniball Signo gel pen.
Colour was added using Karin Brushmarker Pro pens and a fine Kuretake Zig water brush.
Two pen drawings I share with you. One with chalk pastel color added, the other black ink alone.
In both drawings I’ve used a limited number of patterns and textures, a limited texture palette, if you will.
This, along with the limited colour palette in the upper artwork, bring a feeling of cohesiveness and calm to what are quite intricate designs.
I think calm is the correct word to use, but I’m not sure. I have trouble identifying and recognising emotions unless they are very strong.
Over the past few weeks, months perhaps, I’ve needed a lot of gentle, peaceful time. When I am like this, I tend to go inside myself and withdraw from the world and social media. I’d like to believe that healing is happening unbeknownst to myself. Healing that brings peace, harmony, acceptance of lots of things that have happened in the past eleven months or so.
It’s been a turbulent time for me in terms of physical, emotional and mental health. I sometimes feel I’ve lost my way, or have too many interests and sources of inspiration for art.
Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve begun to go back to this style of art, an artistic expression of my inner self, my unconscious. Or at least that’s what I’d like to believe.
There’s always a pleasure and joy in drawing for me. However, when it flows in a truly intuitive way as in these two drawings, there is a sense of other things happening within. Peace, calm, yes. But also a feeling of harmonious creation in the design that flows from my pen.
Did I really make a conscious decision to use so few textures? I’m not sure at all. It just felt the right thing to do as I worked.
Of late, so much of my work has felt disjointed, I cohesive, out of balance. These two don’t feel that way to me; well, maybe a bit.
Look at me, writing about feelings after saying I’m not aware of emotions. But this feeling is more of an aesthetic appreciation where my art satisfies a part of me in some way. I have no vocabulary that can explain more. Perhaps I don’t need to explain
I wonder if this is just comfort art, or whether it’s a sign of self acceptance and healing. Maybe it’s both or neither, but I do feel it is showing a change in the inner parts of me emotionally and mentally.
If my art brings you a sense of calm, gentleness, pleasure, or another numinous feeling of enjoyment, no matter how small, then I’ve shared a part of myself through my art. At the same time I’m discovering more about myself and my journey, I trust.
This morning, I woke thinking that I really do need to pop all my favourite texture and filler patterns somewhere so I can refer to them easily. So, a sampler page it is! And yes, I videoed it and you can see the video on YouTube by clicking on this link!
I’m actually looking at the artwork I’ve done in the past few days or so that has been inspired by the work of Rebecca Blair. I’m really enjoying these kinds of simple, straightforward and rather graphic patterns. As they’re new to me and I keep coming up with my own variations, my fear of forgetting things kicks in.
Athazagoraphobia is the psychological term for the irrational fear of being forgotten or ignored, or just of forgetting things. Forgetting things like patterns or textures I like. That’s why I have a number of A5 journals with collections of drawings and patterns and so on in them – my visual references. This partly comes from a desire to collect such things and have a reference at hand to get inspiration from. But it also comes as I do worry about forgetting things as well, especially when I’m exploring or learning something new.
And it’s a totally irrational fear! My memory is usually really good, but I worry about forgetting things as well. Maybe it’s a result of seeing the devastating effect of Alzheimer’s on my father. I can’t remember if I was this way before that. Actually, I was. For a long period of time I kept a journal to keep my thoughts and memories in. Oddly, I don’t really do that now. I have a large collection of journals here and my only desire is to destroy them as I don’t look through them and I really don’t want anyone else to be able to look through them either. They are way too personal for that!
Anyways, I’m making a page full of my favourite patterns from my recent artistic endeavours, just in case! If nothing else, it will be something to spark creativity at a time when I’m a tad stumped for it. It’s also a fun thing to do and a lovely way to review my recent drawings.
Two more oyster shells have been drawn and added to this sketchbook page. I used two different methods of adding shadow.
For the middle drawing, I used a 6B graphite pencil along with a paper stump or tortillon. Then I added some soft, peachy alcohol markers.
In the right-hand drawing, I added a base layer of a pale peachy alcohol marker. Then, I used red, orange and pink Colorsoft pencils to add shadow and variation in colour.
Then, it was time to add pattern /texture! To do this, I used an 01 Sakura Micron pen. Also, I alternated how intense the patterns were in the layers.
Finally, I added some white highlights with an 08 Sakura Gelly Roll pen. And a bit more graphite here and there to bring out the layers.
Which is your favourite so far?
This sketchbook page isn’t finished. I want to fill it with variations of oyster shells. I do intend to keep to the same kind of colours for the drawings.
Art is the Adventure 