July 2013 Mandala a Day Pages

Completed July 2013 Spread (right)

Completed July 2013 Spread (left)

Mandalas drawn with Sharpie Pens, Gelly Roll Metallic Pens,
Office Max Metallic Markers, Tombo Markers, Pitt Pens

Here is my July 2013 Mandala a Day calendar spread.  I must confess that sometimes I've had to play

catch up to keep somewhat up to date.  I've always doodled mandalas like these but have rarely used

them as part of my art creations, so it feels good to acknowledge their importance to me.  I'm part of 

Dion Dior's Wisdom Circles group on facebook and appreciate how she honors the mandala in art.

I think the thing I've learned the most by making mandalas as art on my July calendar is how

to begin to make my favorite pens work together.  I love my sparkly Gelly Roll Metallic Pens but

not all of my usual pens want to write and draw over them.  So here is what seems to work: draw

the basic mandala with the Sharpie Pen (I've got a range of colors) and then next with the Tombos 

and add sparkle with the Gelly Roll Pens.  Tough to use a brush with Twinks (Twinkling H20s) and

Silks (acrylic glaze with mica added) since the mandalas on this page are size limited. I'll post a

picture with all my mandalas completed at the end of the month.  

My birthday month has been pretty good except it's been too hot in Colorado!  As a birthday gift

to myself I got my car's air conditioning fixed--oh happy day!  Started teaching at an additional 

technical college mid-month and have been paying my time and attention to Soul Collage.  It is

really a healing process!  I'll blog about that sometime this week.  Getting excited about my August

calendar spread.  Going to do pages like Georgia O'Keeffe Traveling Above, Looking Below cloud

painting that I often used to visit at the Art Institute of Chicago.  I'm going to attempt to record a

dream each day in the cloud/day shapes.  What image or idea are you going to play with in August?

July 2013 Art Journal Calendar Pages

This is my July 2013 calendar page.  I've committed to creating a calendar page spread for each month for the rest of the year.  This is only my second month.  I did want to do something with stars and stripes but did not want to do the traditional red, white, blue.  I settled on a sky blue with dark pink days.  I colored the star background and the banner strips with Reeves Water Soluble Crayons, a set I just picked up last week.

I scribbled on the color and then used a damp sponge to spread the color around.  I like that it looks like the sky.  I intended to use a guide to draw on consistently shaped stars and then paint them in white.  When I made a tracing error I erased it with a white eraser and found that the eraser erased the background color as well.  I kind of liked the ghostly, cloud-like star gotten by erasing within the lines.

I next used a hand-me-down banner stencil to make the days.  I originally intended for the banner to be continuous but later decided on cutting the banner into random rectangles for the days.  Took me a while to arrange the days coherently but found that they eventually looked right as I puzzled with them.

I decorated each day with Martha Stewart makers, Pitt and Micron Pens, Sakura Metallic Gel Pens.

I've decided to do a mandala doodle a day this month.  Really like the idea of my calendar page spreads helping me to know more surely when I made or completed each page in each journal.

June 2013 Calendar Page Progress

June Calendar Spread with doodles and notations: Pitt Pen,

Spectracolor colored pencils, Sakura metallic Gelly Roll pens

I'm making my July 2013 calendar spread on June 29th with my visual art journaling group so time to talk about making the June pages.  This group is also on Meetup.

I am so happy!  I have every color of those beautiful, super-saturated Dyan Reaveley's dylusions ink sprays but sometimes find them too intense and too hard to control.  With these pages I cracked the code for how I can use these great colored inks in a way that makes me happy.  I sprayed the Campso Teal ink spray on a disposable plate and then sponged the color on my page.  I then sponged gesso onto that.  Love the variation in color!  I then cut 2" squares from a Joanna Grant free background page which I scanned into Picassa, which is a free Microsoft download for managing images, and added light to make the writing show up more easily on my days, printed that out.  Glued on cut-outs from envelope art flower doodles.  Drew the words for June 2013 on the background paper and cut them out.  Drew the numbers for the days in Sakura Gelly Roll metallic pens.  BTW, Joanna made these backgrounds with collage and the Gelli Plate.

And now, some three weeks later my June 2013 is almost finished.  Like last year I ended up making

botanical doodles on most day squares. My friend Alice gave me a set of (now discontinued) Spectracolor colored pencils.  They are very creamy and visually delicious! Guess they are most similar to Prismacolor colored pencils.  It's been very fun to play with them on this page.

I am committing myself to making a calendar spread for each month on-goingly now.  Seems like a great way to keep track of major events and to put my various journals in the context of time, when I look back at them.

Artist Brain Jam

Today I need to blog about "Artist's Brain Jam" as opposed to "Artist's Block".
  
I think of artist's block as an experience of being in the doldrums, a place of 
no motion where the creative flow, like wind and water around a ship, is still and heavy.  Becalmed.  There is a feeling of not knowing what to do.

In contrast "Artist's Brain Jam" is when the flow of ideas, images, techniques, alluring supplies and materials, all completing for attention, swirl around me like a hurricane.  I find myself able to focus for fleeting moments on bright colors and shapes as they rocket past me.

How did I get to this state?  Part of it was feeling like I had a little more free time this summer and asking myself what I wanted to do with that time.  Hmmmm.  Learn to sew better and make some art quilts (got a new-to-me sewing machine); get an easel and go back to oil painting in the garage (bought a new-to-me studio easel); try some new mixed media techniques; take a couple online classes.  Oh, and unpack from my recent move, finish the three books I've started writing, finish designing and producing the online classes I want to teach on three different platforms.

Then I signed up for 21 Secrets. 21 mini-workshops, each with a different

artist/teacher teaching multiple mixed media art techniques.  Open until

the end of the year.  Oh, and, like a dieter left alone with a plate of

lovely cookies, I signed up for a class on Craftsy plus added 10 or so classes

to my wish list there.  Also signed up for Juliana Cole's League of Extraordinary Journalers, MaryBeth Shaw's Stencil Club as well as a Soul Collage workshop.

  

Plus somehow I joined a dozen or so artist's facebook groups.  Oh, and there were those courses with the amazing Joanne Sharpe as well as the astounding Jane LaFazio.  Might take that one course from Pam Carriker and Craftsy just emailed me to say they would like to offer a sale price on one of the courses on my wish list.

Know that Zen story of the centipede and toad?  I think I first read this

anonymously penned tale in Alan Watts book The Way of Zen.

The centipede was happy quite
Until a toad in fun
Said, 'Pray, which leg comes after which?'
This raised her mind to such a pitch,
She lay distracted in a ditch,
Considering how to run.

My brain feels like that now--flat on my back with legs and arms waving in a distracted way.  Gee, who did this to me?  Note to self: don't leave my

artist self alone with a credit card and the internet on payday.  All those

brightly colored candy jars are just too attractive to resist.

Of course some good will come from my personal indulgence. Probably a little nap will help with my overwhelm headache.  Here's something, although still on lesson one of Valerie Sjodin's Embellishing Edges and Text. My first page popped out from that workshop, below.

"One day you finally knew what you had to do and began."  Mary OliverPencil, Pitt Pen, brush markers and Gelly Roll metallic pensfrench curves to shape the right edge of the page.

Flowers perhaps inspired by my trip yesterday to "The Enchanted Gardens Tour of Northwest Denver".  But the face was a surprise.  I started with the shaped edge of this page and then worked along the upper, lower and left edge.  Next I added the quote, a find from my sketchbook.  The negative space suggested
a face.  She looks like a cartoon of a Flemish portrait, the queen of hearts
and my niece.  Makes me want to start painting a few Matisse style portraits,
something I did in art school.  For the last years I've been focused on
botanical imagery.  Good advice from Mary:  let yourself finally know how
to proceed (at home) rather than frantically traveling to foreign lands (or workshops) seeking wisdom and inspiration.  Trust that you will know.

Finally, I want to include the Chuck Close video linked below.

I'm inspired by the CBS interview of Chuck Close, part of their "Notes to Self Series".  So many great statements about how and why to engage in the artistic process. And one of the places that true to you ideas and inspiration comes from.  I've blogged about this video and these pages before, but needed to include these thoughts in this blog about being overwhelmed by the sheer volume of artistic ideas available to us online. Chuck reminds me to show up and engage in the process and see where it takes me. That the true learning and access to fresh ideas most often comes for the work itself.  

Don't need to buy a ton of shiny new art supplies or sign up for 30 classes.

Do check out an online class or two, but pace yourself.  And print out your
craft store coupon of the week and see what one item you can buy with it. 

I'm learning to practice moderation.  Let this be an artist's moral tale. Keep those feet on the ground. Take your creative self to the studio (however small or temporary it may be).  Look inside, not in an anxious way, but through turning your curiosity towards an exploration of what comes out of your artistic process itself.

Mandala Flower Doodles on Envelopes

Mandala Flower Doodles

Tombo and Martha Stewart brush markers,

Pitt Pen, business envelopes

Something has come together for me recently.  I've been doodling

mandalas for many years.  All my day timers, papers and notebooks

are decorated with mandala doodles.  Not consciously "art", just

doodles.  In my "real art" life I've been going to the Botanic Garden

in Denver and drawing flowers, my favorite thing.  As I'm writing

this I realize that this is like my art and doodling during art school.

In the studio I was painting in a Neo Expressionist style and in

private I made botanical sketches.  Hmmmm.  

Know it has a lot to do with what is artistically intuitive and natural

and what is considered "legitimate" art.  Not sure what it means

but I had a revelation when I posted my mandala flower sketch on

the Dion Dior's facebook page Wisdom Circles.  Without thinking I

wrote "Wisdom Grows". Caused a psychic shiver.  Something about

drawing and painting and doodling the circular shapes of flowers

connects parts of myself as well as petals and stems.

Gifts of the Muse Journal Pages: It's OK to Go Inside

Credit card scraped acrylic background, stenciled acrylic spirals

with Tombo Marker detail. Clipped out raised wall-paper scrap colored

with stamp ink, spray ink, Tombos. Magazine clips of sea vegetation.

"It's OK to Go Inside" page left

Recollections "snow" opaque marker, Pitt Pen, Office Max metallic marker
fish cut-outs recycled from copy of my prayer flags

"It's OK to Go Inside" page right

Recollections "snow" opaque marker, Pitt Pen, Office Max metallic marker
fish cut-outs recycled from copy of my prayer flags

In my visual art journaling group I've been opening each session with a 

guided imagery taking us down to a garden to meet with our creativity

muse.  In our meetings we've asked to receive a symbolic gift (like a shell,

etc.) or a message of insight and encouragement.  I've begun to call this

activity "Gifts of the Muse".  In this group my muse (yes, I meet with my

muse while doing the guided imagery) reassured me that "It's OK to

go into your shell".  I do a number of extrovert seeming things in the

world like teaching in the classroom and running groups but I am a

dyed-in-the-wool introvert.  In the US the extrovert rules and sometimes

I feel guilty or weak because I need alone time and become exhausted

when I overextend myself in the outer world.

I recently showed my psychology class this great Susan Cain

TED Talk about introversion.  

http://www.ted.com/talks/susan_cain_the_power_of_introverts.html

It reminded me about how our culture treats introverts like failed

extroverts.  Introverts need to remember the gifts available to 

those who turn inside to be inspired and energized.  Because I am

blogging for creatives and we tend to be an unusual and thoughtful lot

I just wanted to share my muse's words:

It's OK to be an Introvert

It's OK to be Reflective

It's OK to Think and Dream

Go inside

It's OK to go into your shell

Go inside. 

More Envelope Art

My first envelope doodles this year, markers and Pitt pens.

Doodled mandala flowers with curly-Q's. Pitt pen, markers.

Close up from envelope above.  I really like the wavy lines and curlies.

I signed up for 21 Secrets this year when it first opened.  I've only had a chance to do the first
assignment in Ro Bruhn's "Flower Power" workshop.  In her workshop we were asked to make
flower doodles on the inside of business envelopes.  This background was used in order to add
interest to our drawings with the envelope security patterns.

I think this series of envelope doodles is interesting in terms of my various styles.  The first
doodles seem blobby and overworked.  After experimenting a bit I was more relaxed,
happy, playful.  I returned to my usual mandala flower doodles and even tried a curly wavy line
around my final doodle.

I'm not sure what it all means but it is interesting that my doodles progress during my three attempts.
Makes me think about how useful it is to warm up, experiment, relax and play, and persist.  Also
love the up-cycling of business window envelopes.  Life gives you phone bills?  Answer the call to creativity.