beach girl

so

i was thinking about the beach

last night when i sat down at my art table..

and then this happened.

 
          ..still an unfinished page.  don't know where she came from, i don't usually do doe-eyed babies like this, but it was fun.  (and don't you even THINK about adding a shark in the background for #sharkweek!!  poor thang..)

charcoal pencil, watercolor crayons, waiting for ink and...???

tomorrow at this time i'll be getting on a plane.  maybe i'll bring my sketchbook along.

see ya!!!

copycat

"There is nothing new under the sun."  Ecclesiastes 1:9

I'm learning some new things about being a copycat.  That to be a great artist, you actually need to start stealing stuff.

This book I'm reading...

Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon,

explains it much better.  

But I'll at least show you what I mean by my own attempts.

I will often scroll aimlessly through Pinterest or Etsy, searching certain types of art that I love to create myself, but needing inspiration, I'll look to other artists, and actually try to duplicate theirs, 

just for fun.

Like this picture below, done by someone else:

Nice! I thought. I love drawing and painting faces, in sort of a folk art style,

adding color, details, random collage elements and some nice words or a quote to give it some meaning.

("The only art I'll ever study is stuff

that I can steal from."  --David Bowie)

So I began to copy it. Same color scheme, same clothes, same chalky white outlines and funky flowers pieced together from patterned scrapbook papers.

oh but wait--what's going on with her hair? what happened to the prim little bun on her head?

oops. i guess it just didn't work for me. And the more i looked at my "stolen" piece of art, i realized it just didn't sit well with me, so i ripped out some phone book pages and starting pasting them over the girl's frumpy outfit.

Added a big swath of white gesso...

(i LOVE gesso, it covers a multitude of sins...)

more scraps, more gesso.

Penciled in new outlines, new body shapes.

yeah, it's looking better already. more casual.  more like me, actually..

not that i was going for that look but hey i'll take it.

pretty much my finished product here. 

added a quote that I liked, not the one i copied from.

and there you go.  an attempt to copy turns into my own original.  

Sort of like my life.  Tried living my imaginary identity, only to find my heart feeling sadder and emptier, colder and number.  Until something...some...thing...flashed by the eyes...those mirrors of the soul...and lit a spark.  that fanned to a small flame...and bigger...and bigger...until it was a fire out of control and the real me came tumbling out, thrashing, awkward, and SPLAT!!! so embarrassing.  and i've been picking up the pieces, strengthening this tender plant with supports, wooden beams, counseling, fighting off the weeds that try to choke it back into its former plastic identity theft.  nope.  the original, unable to be copied, one snowflake in a million has come out.  

that's what art is all about.  finding your true voice.  sometimes it takes a bit of hard practice, of trying to imitate other's stuff...till the work becomes your own.  

i'll end with just a few more quotes from the book i mentioned above, Steal Like an Artist:

"Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination.  Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows.  

Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul.  If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic."  --Jim Jarmusch

 

"All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts."--William Shakespeare

(fake it til you make it!!)

   

"Start copying what you love.  Copy copy copy copy.  At the end of the copy you will find your self."--Yohji Yamamoto

"The human hand is incapable of making a perfect copy."--Austin Kleon

"We want you to take from us.  We want you, at first, to steal from us, because you can't steal.  You will take what we give you and you will put it in your own voice and that's how you will find your voice.  And that's how you begin.  And then one day someone will steal from you."

--Francis Ford Coppola

"You can't connect the dots looking forward, you only connect them looking backwards."

--Steve Jobs

There is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost.”
― Martha Graham

 

 

ok i know i'm awkwardly fusing the idea of original art with the idea of being an original YOU, but still...

** just remember: art may be a recreation of something that's been said before, but you, YOU..are not an imitation of anyone else.  You are uniquely created by God, and that makes YOU extremely special.  And very much loved. :-)

changing it up

Rearranged my studio yesterday.

Moved some furniture, created a new L-shape configuration with my desk and the long table that i share with my daughter.  Reorganized some more stuff, put stuff that i use  most in places closest to me so i don't have to scramble and knock over water jars and the cats and get distracted trying to find what i need. 

 

It also gives me a nice view of the outside, through the bay windows facing our backyard.  I need to fill my eyeballs, my corneas, my iris or whatever that part of my eye-brain is...

that needs light and natural life to inspire me, to keep me breathing creatively.

But probably the main reason i do this...is for the love of change.

i've always been motivated by change, it's an adrenalin junkie's fix in a boring sleepy suburbian lifestyle.  If i can't be hitchhiking across foreign countries with just a few bananas and my snorkel mask in my backpack, then let my crazy wanderlust spirit go wild in whatever small ways i can.

yes, if i had the choice, i would've lived in about 10 different places in these past 15 years, instead of just one.  So as i wake up to this realization of what my true nature really craves, i'm using art as a medium to reach my heart again, to stir up those passions, those feelings that become a rush of energy to motivate me to make larger changes...still over the horizon, not able to see them yet...and still so much painful ground to cover before i arrive.  or i shouldn't say arrive, i don't really believe in arriving.  you just keep journeying.

Buying a new coffee mug almost every beach trip i take is another guilty pleasure of mine.

i know i cannot really defend my impulsive choices, i guess it's the biggest "change" i can muster at this time, just a new sensation to warm my cupped palms in the morning, while dreaming of larger thrills on my journey onward.  waiting is so hard.

in the meantime, maybe these new paintbrushes will help.

That's it for now.  I've got more stuff to share, some paintings and collages i'm working on,

so i'll be back...eventually..

hit me with your best shot

Threw together this art journal spread last night

based on the lyrics on the old 80's song by pat benatar...

..and inspired by the mood of the week!

I started by splashing on warm colors of paint and dyes,

                ....scrawling some of the lyrics on the side and then covering it up with gesso...

           ...adding this perky young vintage chick that looks like she had her head chopped off and                                pasted onto a vogue magazine-ish model figure... (it was!)

added this little subliminal image that sort of looks like she's doing her thing in a sports bar with tv screens showing the latest fight..

...and this is just a shot of a few of my leftover collage materials that i've been collecting, for such a time as now.  don't worry, they'll find a home in some other collage, another day.

that was fun!  art is so therapeutic!  now i need to get to the gym and box some of it out, too. 

anyway, thanks for stopping in!!!

art at the beach

Currently stationed in Nags Head, NC, on the beautiful Outer Banks islands.  Enjoying some time relaxing in the sun, the pool, wading in the shallow waters of the sound near the condo we're renting, visiting the wild waves of the ocean side, hiking the sand dunes, kayaking, bicycling, and just laying around.  During our down times, I'm thankful to have brought along my huge heavy bag of art supplies, which I now have set up on the dining room table for whenever the creative muse inspires me.

My first painting is an exercise from this new book I just bought, entitled 

The Painting Workbook by Alena Hennessy.  

This first exercise is about color pairs.  Limiting your palette to just two colors (along with tints and shades, using white and black), it's a fun way to study colors and the way they interact with one another.  I tried keeping my subject simple, the shape of a seagull I'd seen earlier that morning on the pier:

                  Here he is, in two of my favorite color combinations, turquoise and lemon yellow:

Then I started working in more white and black paint, just playing, just having fun.

Adding the title, "the brave and the free", just because that's what he resembled to me.

2 words that describe what I want to be.

and then i just played around with some fishy stencils i'd brought along, hoping to build on this later.

more later!

good night

                             bottom line: a passionate night of making art you end up hating

                                                                is still better than

                             falling asleep on the couch watching lukewarm meaningless garbage on tv.


                                                              good good night!!!
                                 

peaceful mind

Art Journal time!

Today I put the finishing touches on this collage spread I'll just call "peaceful mind".  It's a state of mind that I long for, that I remind myself to keep seeking, even in the midst of storms and trials and major changes in my journey.  Unexpected paths I'm not prepared to go down.

Like most of my collage paintings, this one is done in stages: basically i do a bunch of wet stuff, let it dry.  more wet stuff, let it dry.  Repeat.

More specifically, my first stage here was playing with dye ink that I mixed with water and put in little spray bottles, then sprayed it on the pages.  One color, let it dry, then the other color.  Paint some more diluted dye on with a brush.  Ink up a large swirly stamp and stamp some random swirls across the page.  Then stencil on some question marks.

Let dry.

Pencil in a head shape.  Tear up an old vintage romance novel and start glueing the text fragments to the head shape, randomly.  Use plenty of mod podge to preserve and strengthen the surface of the delicate, old pages.  Let dry.

Paint on a light coat of white gesso, some mixed with blue acrylic paint.  Color in a gold-ish background for the hairline using watercolor crayons.  Smudge with water on a brush.

Go through magazines and collect images.  Whatever tells your story.  For me it was the storms outside of me, vs. the peaceful thoughts and things to cherish I can choose to keep inside of me.
Paste these images where they seem to belong, in and around the facial features you also drew in.

Don't forget to also add in words and phrases that speak for your heart.  For me, those were: thoughts and long journey (for the outside, stormy section), "peace", (stenciled in letter  by letter) , Live Your True Self, Life is About Moments, Mindful, a path to lasting peace, joy, and my own lettering of the phrase, "i can still be happy...(sort of)"...and most importantly, a Bible verse that spoke to me recently and encouraged me: "And the peace of God which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." (Phil. 4:7)

And that's it. 

What I love about doing collages like this is, by using random images that you find elsewhere, you can piece together things that can capture the abstract and surreal feel of a dream, either a daydream or a night dream.  Things that can be just plain ridiculous and fun and that make no sense when you try to explain it to someone, or those other weirdly connected dream stories that somehow make sense to your subconscious mind, like a spirit voice that is speaking to you about things you may need to know in the future, or are summaries of lessons directed to you that you never learned in the daylight hours.  

Or just plain weird stuff.  For example, my daughter just described to me the dream she had last night: She dreamed our family moved to another house, but it was also with another family, and there was another dad and about 20 other kids and she was saying to me, "mommy i don't feel comfortable with all these strangers", (normal for her shy personality) and that i was saying "it's ok, you'll get used to them."  Then she went on to describe how the house was kind of like in a mall, with neighbors all around but the "street" was more like a bouncy playground floor, etc, etc.

Anyway, thanks for letting me share this, and I hope you find a place to share your dreams, as well.