Spots Before My Eyes!

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Hello there 🙂   [waving and smiling happily}

Here I am with the latest episode of my adventure in learning to step outside of my comfort zone.  Although, to tell the truth and ‘fess up, pretty early in this lesson I began by doing my own thing, as I wasn’t in love with the flowers the tutor produced on her page

I started well, laying down a coat of white gesso followed by two coats of black paint as I did not have to hand any black gesso.

Then the rebellion started. I didn’t like what I was seeing [multi-coloured scribbles of water soluble crayon to make three flowers] so I made my own flowers from design paper and a template.  I made every flower two layers, off-setting the layers.  I cut one completed flower in half.   I outlined the petals with a black pen and then doodled dots and lines as the tutor indicated.

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Day 1 the page looked like this:

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So far, so good right?  I was quite pleased with that ……

Next day I began by edging everything with a gold pen ………..

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…….as I returned to the format the lovely tutor was trying to teach me and I edged, dotted, swirled and scripted with the paint pen over two days until the page looked like this:

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Apart from the flowers and gold paint, this double page spread was made almost exclusively with a paint pen – which is really just a fat ‘Sharpie’ like marker filled with white acrylic paint.

Over these four days I dotted, doodled, scripted ‘Spring is coming’ [because it really is – Hallelujah!!] and recorded my thoughts on the process.

My thoughts on the process have settled into – I don’t really like this style of working in my art journal.  Which is good to gain clarity on.  I don’t use my art journal as a diary.  I use it to try out ‘good ideas’ or to play about and see what happens and am not that comfortable with mixing up the two.  I also tend to work organically developing and tweaking the original idea for quite a while before moving on to something different.

Having said that I feel I have been freed up a lot while engaged in the process, I’ve tried loads of different things, been introduced to radically different concepts [for me] and I’m pretty sure they will spill over in some way into my continuing work.

I’m also not a ten-minuter.  I’m a sixty minuter or more!  I have the time and I like to spend it carefully crafting and trying, discarding, re-doing and endlessly tweaking.

These are all really great discoveries to make and I am so grateful to have been able to take this workshop and find it all out.

I no longer need castigate myself for my slow and ponderous efforts.

I’m a plodder and proud of it!

I might have to rename my blog ‘The Happy Plodder’ – has a certain ring don’t you think?

Any hoo – I digress.  Here is the completed spread – don’t look for too long or you’ll start hallucinating:

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The keen eyed among my bloggie friends will spot that I am projecting myself a day into the future … [I’m publishing this Friday 30th – a deliciously spring-like evening in my part of New Zealand]  I cheated, I just can’t look at the dots and doodles and swirls and spots any longer!

I haven’t finished my course yet – I think I’m just over half way through.  And I think I’m going to ditch the ten minutes a day and work for however long I feel like it on each installment. Which means I might have it finished in a day or two.  🙂

Please do pop back and see what happens next.  I know I’m curious to know….

Thanks for coming by – have a great weekend!

23 thoughts on “Spots Before My Eyes!”

  3. A riotous, rebellious, abundantly joyful welcome to Spring!! Mother Nature would sooo approve!! : ))))xx

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  5. I guess I am also a plodder. It would take me ten minutes to decide the colors I want to use 🙂 Annie

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  6. Wow! I love it! Wouldn’t it be cool to have a daily journal all doodled up like you have there, with space to journal?! I know you didn’t want to journal but I’d love a journal like this.

    PS: loved the entries you have. “I have spots in front of my eyes” DWL!

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  7. Wowie-Kazowie…..you’re right, I’m hypnotized or mesmerized…LOL or both! 😀
    Reminds me of the 60’s, maybe album covers or cool T-shirts. That looks like an amazing amount of work but I’m really groovin’ on all the dot’s and swirlies. It would actually look really cool on a T-shirt….maybe a side biz? (ps, thanks for your nice note on the sewing trick, I goofed and posted too soon, so I tucked it back and will catch up when I re-post!)

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    • So that’s where the 60’s went! The t-shirt idea is great, I might give it a whirl and do some for the family for Christmas pressies …. I was looking for inspiration and I have some fabric paint sitting around doing nothing …..

      I pinned your sewing trick too – such a cool post. I’ll re-pin when you put it back up.

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  8. Wow, that is an amazing amount of work…but a labor of love, too. I really like the look of the white dots and swirls and your pretty lettering as well.

    I think one of the good things about trying things that are completely new or at the very least, outside of our comfort zone, is that we learn about ourselves in the process. Embrace that sixty minutes and relish that you have that kind of time.

    I’m looking forward to the next installment.

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    • It didn’t take nearly as much time as you think – the flowers took the longest and the rest really is just doodles and swirls and dots.

      I love that I have so much time for me these days – the family is gone, the frantic rushing about trying to save the world has all but ceased and these days I am pretty laid back and – well…. contented 🙂

      I’m very happy to hear that you will be back for the next installment – I haven’t even looked at it yet … stay tuned.

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        • Ah – I was at the other end of the spectrum, married at 17 and babies started coming just before I turned 21 …. all over red rover by the time I was your starting age – nearly ….. 37 was when I started becoming a world traveller 🙂

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          • Wow! You were so young. I traveled in my twenties and thirties, married at 35 and had boys at 37 and 40. My mom had me at 40, almost unheard of in her day (she was born in 1919). In the end, it sounds like you and I both had similar experiences, but as you say on different ends of the spectrum.

            I love traveling and look forward to doing more of it as my boys gain independence.

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            • I was! [so young] I had a bit of an odd beginning and was never really young until, well yesterday really 🙂 I’m horrified now when I see those 20 year old babies with babies. [‘Pot’ and ‘kettle’ come to mind here] I had two daughters to make our ends of the spectrum balance nicely.

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              • I love our yin and yang.

                Are your daughters crafty like you? I immersed both of my boys in art as youngsters. I had a cabinet full of paper, paint, clay, markers and the like. One of them followed suit for several years, but now they’re both slaves to their iPhones. It’s a whole new world.

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                • Yes, me too!

                  Don’t forget that what you immerse them in in those early years will hold them in good stead despite the iphones and whatever else technology throws at them in the coming years.

                  Both my girls [they’re not girls any more – in their 40’s now – but will always be girls to me] are gifted artistically. They had a Steiner education which did most of the work….. The eldest has followed me into paper crafts while the younger sticks with her beautiful abstract paintings They both have demanding careers and complain about lack of time to be arty in.

                  I had to wait until well into my fifties to start playing and its only in the past two years that I’ve been able to spend lots of time enjoying myself. I’ll be 64 next week and am winding down the life coaching and winding up the fun! 🙂

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