strength

morning art

20 minutes is all it takes

- it's almost better than coffee -

paper making today

It was a class I taught today. 

This is the student work :

We used junk mail and flower petals.

(The green paper I made after everyone went home. It's made from berry baskets.)

rare red

In the past I have very rarely used red

... I think I'm over THAT now.

pie on the windowsill

Journal pies:

Sitting on the windowsill with drying glue, paint, gesso, fingerprints ...

Art journaling is my choice for a morning practice of mindfulness. Similar to "morning pages" as touted by Julia Cameron - which I've never been able to do consistently. Probably because I'm self critical about the written word. Nevertheless, I have a story to tell.

How do you tell your story?

gesso is my best friend

Gesso really knows how to help me feel better about myself.

She covers for all of my mistakes.

She says, "you can always start over."

For instance,

under this duck are three other people.

Gesso helped me show them the door.

... and then she introduced me to this duck.

I love me some sharpie

- sharpie pens -

Let me show you what I mean ...

For this little picture I started with a scraped on paint surface. 

On a board, I used a little bit of collage paper, 3 colors of acrylic paint, and a credit card to scrape the paint on in layers:

Then, with a sharpie pen, I drew in the outlines of the shapes I could see. It's a little like cloud watching:

Then I went back in with paint and a paintbrush to thin out the sharpie lines and create more defined color boundaries:

Then I added a few collage papers, dots with a pencil eraser dipped in paint, and drew in hair with a micron pen:

I added the words by writing on white tissue paper, tearing the edge, and gluing it down with acrylic medium. I also added a dot border to finish it off:

"When she remembered the counting house,

She had to close her eyes.

She made herself think about her dandelions, the old apple tree, and how the warm sun was on her lovely face."

131

This reminds me of all my close encounters with mathematics. A painful attempt at multiplication and division in grade school. Thrice failed algebra. A cashier job I was relieved of due to a chronically out of balance till. The accounting job where I had to fake it til I made it. Math tutoring at my dining room table. Thank goodness for art.