IF - Mask

Collage - including wiggly eyes. "Masked Belle"

---

Jim and I've been making Christmas cards using the sheets I prepared on Friday - the picture above is a variation I did of one of the designs. Using cards with windows precut we're getting around 20 backgrounds out of each of the sheets. So we've got more background than we'll need for Christmas - we're hoping to make some other greetings cards too.

Here's one of the cards and some inside greetings snapped whilst drying:







Its making cards that gets me into the Christmas spirit - what does it for you?

Starting to make my Christmas cards

Watercolour paper, acrylic inks, tissue paper, PVA glue, glitter glue, glitter

As I am currently relishing being inspired by other artists I've started making Christmas cards following this tutorial in a blog called Art Tutorial .

The photos haven't come out quite right - even after I adjusted the colours - but you can see the general idea. Just imagine them brighter and glittery!

Whilst I was dropping drops of colourful inks onto damp paper - I told Jim it was the best fun possible - without seeing what I was doing he asked me if I was making a mess. It seems that I really enjoy making what other people consider a mess... and no, he's not the first person to make this observation. So I am glorying in being what my father would call a mucky puppy...

The two sheets here are my reds, I've also done a couple of greens, and a couple of blues. I intended to do something very subtle in shades of white but somehow that didn't happen. Mucky puppies like bright colours!



This one also has flower petals from some unused natural confetti and the black dots are red sequins.

Christmas Squart

A Christmas squart inspired by Ian. Painter IX

---

Today I went to some more camera shops. This time looking specifically at Canon IXUSes as recommended by Davem and Ian (same person as above but this link is to a photoblog). I like the idea of this one:



If anyone has specific experience of the Canon IXUS 850IS Digital Camera (7.1MP, 3.8x optical zoom) I'd love to hear about it - its meant to be relatively wide-angle with an equivalent of 28mm at its wide end and going up to 105mm at its telephoto end.

I think they are called Canon PowerShot SD800 IS in the US.

I'd particularly like to know how well it stands damp conditions - Jim might want to use it when he's walking in Scotland.

Week 4 - Integrity

A photograph of some holly growing well locally, altered a little in Painter IX. In a style inspired by Joy Eliz.

---

This week in the Artist's Way is called Integrity and has a big challenge in it - Reading Deprivation. This is the week when one is told not to read - at all! Avoid TV and radio too. Keep other people's words out of your head. Let your own words come through in the silence.

I was wondering how to do this especially as I do not want to stop blogging again, even for a week. Then, when I was answering the comments to yesterday's post, the word verification came up with something that suggested to me to look in one of Julia Cameron's other books - The Vein of Gold. It opened on what she calls a basic tool, I'd call it a basic concept, that of Clusters.

A Cluster is a group of people who support you in your artistic endeavours, and whom in turn you support in theirs whether they are the same sort of artist as you or not. And of course my cluster, the one to which I currently belong, is here with all of you! Which means I will dip into your blogs and comment - but I will restrict myself - I won't go surfing off looking at new blogs and I won't follow many links either.

Joy Eliz tagged me to name 5 favourite Christmas songs. Strangely mine are all carols.

Caroline's Carols, in no particular order:

• Good King Wenceslas
• Ding Dong Merrily on High
• The Holly and the Ivy
  
• We Three Kings of Orient Are
• Deck the Halls with Boughs of Holly

To decorate this posting I decided to play with the idea of being influenced by others and took two photos, one of holly and one of an evergreen tree, and played with them in Painter in a style inspired by Joy Eliz. (I used the Van Gough brush).

It was so much fun (I was singing to myself and that's always a sign that I'm enjoying myself) that rather than tag you for 5 favourite Christmas songs I suggest you pick a blog artist and do something Christmassy in their style!

Some artists with distinctive painting or drawing styles you could get inspiration from:

Andrea, Johnny Norms, Joy Eliz, Janey, Shelia.

Amongst many others of course. I look forward to seeing your results.

Review of Power

A mixed media collage reviewing my third week of revisiting the artist way.
Painter IX

---

This image is rather murky - except for the yin-yang in the centre. This reflects a rather murky week.

In the book this week is about using anger and defusing shame.

It forgot to mention the weather... on Thursday I happily put up a picture boldly called "Singing up a Storm" I was thinking of it as musical... but the storm hit Bristol fiercely at the weekend... then there was Blogger's strange claim with the "I Power Blogger" icon turning up unexpectedly in today's weather for Santa... and my blog completely disappearing throughout most of today until I republished it. As Tinker commented it wasn't visible through those Blogger clouds. Now I'm wondering about moving to typepad as a result of this.

Other things that have happened include:

• We moved my computer from one room to another - when put back together again the keyboard tended to eat up my words. Not especially strange maybe - but two other bloggers had keyboard problems too - Reluctant Nomad who commented that his wouldn't delete until he cleaned it, and Melba who blogged that hers got damp and she had to replace it.
  
  
• Today I went to the hairdressers. My appointment was for 11 a.m. I was at the car park at 20 minutes to 11, allowing plenty of time, I thought, for full car parks and Christmas queues. There were two barriers and after about 5 minutes I got to the barrier in front of my lane. And there I sat. The other queue carried on getting let in whenever a car left.
  
  I pressed the button for a ticket - nothing happened.
  
  I pressed the button again. Nothing.
  
  I pressed the Help button. Expecting a voice to come through the speaker but NOTHING HAPPENED.
  
  Eventually a car park attendant appeared and told me I had to wait for the "FULL" light to go out and I said it was.... he came down out of the multi-story car park and eventually worked out that the barrier wasn't working.
  
  So he coned me in!
  
  This was to keep other cars from getting behind me - these other cars had been keeping me trapped at the barrier and now were getting through the other one.... he said he'd let me though with his pass card... it didn't work... eventually he let me out of the trap and into the other side... I was only 7 minutes late for my hair appointment... sigh...
  
  
• On Friday Jim and I were celebrating our wedding anniversary a day early. He took the day off and we went to Bath. We went into a camera shop to look for a small digital compact that I can carry with me when my SLR is too big / heavy. The salesman talked to us and suggested a Panasonic of some sort (I do not remember unmeaningful strings of numbers and letters well... it might have been the Lumix DMC-FX01). To show us what it was like he tried putting in an SD card. The first one appeared to be full. And the next. He was getting frustrated so he eventually got a new card out and then the camera said that it too was full... the salesman said
  
  "He couldn't lie to us because we'd seen it go wrong"
  
  which struck me as an implicit confession that he'd have happily lied otherwise...
  
  We didn't buy that camera.
  
  
• Today Jim met me for a late lunch and a look around the camera shops in Bristol. There was one he rather fancied but no-one seemed to have it in stock. One shop said they could get it in but only if we were definitely going to buy it - what I wonder do they think separates them from websites? If we were prepared to buy it without seeing it we'd have bought it on line already!
  
  
• On Friday when coming back from Bath we got the train from Bath to Temple Meads - it arrived in Bristol too late for our connection to our local station. But that hardly mattered as that train had been canceled anyway. We went to the information desk and they gave groups of us taxi passes. It takes 8 minutes to go by train from Temple Meads to Montpelier. It took over an hour to queue and travel by taxi on a wet Friday evening...
  

I could go on (even more) but you get the picture. And just in case the world is always like this for you, it really isn't normal for me.

Here are a couple of details from the murk:



This is the Mountain King Pudding. He turned up in a morning doodle. His crown is made of mountains.

And this one is of a Doorway between the worlds, I rotated it 90 degrees here:



This week I have again been working with tarot images, one per day. This morning I got my first duplicate since I started - the 6 of trees - the card I'd pulled last Tuesday in answer to the question: "Who am I?" But I'd decided then that what it had really told me was who I was going to be. Now its come up again and I'm happy to own it this time.

I've arranged the cards in a medicine wheel. This is a form that I've used before for doing major readings. To read it you start in the bottom right hand corner, the South East.

SE - the direction of the ancestors - Card: 21 The World - Shining Woman

This card signifies success.

S - the direction of the inner child - Card: Place of Trees

This card signifies good health. (Yippee!)

SW - the direction of self-image - Card: Knower of Birds

This is the card of the diviner - one who can divine the meaning of what happens, with or without a system like the tarot to provide the meanings.

W - the direction of rock and groundedness, also the direction of introspection - Card: 4 of Stones

This is the card on the front of the book that goes with these cards.

The image is of a doorway between other worlds. It indicates stability.

NW - the direction of karma - Card: Ace of Stones

Connecting many levels of life and being well-anchored in ordinary things.

N - the direction of the adult - Card: 6 of Trees

The card that I thought I wasn't ready for last week.

This is the card of the person who uses the Tarot confidently. (It does mean more than that but given the other cards that's how I'm interpreting it here - tarot readings are always context dependent.)

NE - the direction of the design of energy - no card I was only doing one a day so one direction out of the 8 had to be missed - instead two images

The Pudding and a Power woman. The message is to get in shape and relax more!

E - the direction of Fire and Spirit - Card: Gift of Birds

Art and inspiration!

If you are still with me after all that - thank you!

And I forgot to mention this is my Illustration Friday - seeing as Might might mean Power!

Strange weather

Yesterday Jim was checking the weather at the BBC and saw a link which said

Is it snowing on Santa?

And this is what he saw:

(click image for a larger view)

So if you are in Finland on Tuesday watch out for blogger clouds!

Computer problems

"Warped" in Painter IX

---

Am having problems with my computer - hope to be sorted soon!

Update - a new keyboard seems to have fixed it. Back tomorrow (Monday).

Singing up a Storm

This is Dada music... you know: da, da, da

Painter IX

---

On Radio 4 today (Ha Ha: Art) there was a programme that was looking at humour in art and about art. Most of the laughs in this programme are at the expense of artists. They seemed to think it was hard to have humour in "serious" art.

And its true a joke is normally a throw away - not something to be gazed at over and over again - so is there scope for humour in art?

What do you think?

Week 3 - Power

A doodle inspired by one the floors I saw in an artist's studio. Painter IX.

---

In the Artist's Way to reclaim one's power one has to accept one's anger and shame. This is the dark side of self that gets exposure during the week. Anger's energy is used to make a map of what we really want to do. I've found this very useful whenever I've remembered to apply it. This is what I do.

I get all STEAMED up about something or someone.

Then I remember that if I'm annoyed or irritated or any of those anger type words this is a useful signal.

And I say thank you to myself for it.

And then I work out what its about.

Some are easier than others. For instance if I'm looking at a picture and thinking "I could do better than that!" then that's exactly what I want to do.

Others are harder. For instance being angry with someone because of something they have done which I really don't do and don't want to do, say smoking... in that case the message for me isn't so direct but there are always habits that aren't beneficial that have crept in and guess what this is also the week in the artist's way when some of them get highlighted!

On the lighter side its the week where we really get going with synchronicities, not just as an interesting phenomenon, but actually getting what you need in answer to specific requests sent out to the universe. At first I used to rationalise this as a way that at least I'd got my head sorted so that when an opportunity came along I'd recognise it - and that is a very good way to start. But it gets harder to rationalise away... and the thing to do is to say thank you and accept what comes your way. These days I do a lot of asking.

Got this free association exercise from Kat

One word. No explanation.

1. Yourself: creative.
2. Your partner: loving
3. Your hair: fluffy
4. Your mother: messy
5. Your father: working
6. Your favorite item: lots
7. Your dream last night: childish
8. Your favourite drink: water
9. Your dream car: working
10. The room you are in: basement
11. Your ex: arrogant
12. Your fear: rejection
13. What you want to be in 10 years: enlightened!
14. Who you hung out with last night: alone
15. What you're not: skinny
16. Muffins: blueberry
17: One of your wish list items: countryside
18: Time: passes
19. The last thing you did: lunch
20. What you are wearing: home
21. Your favourite weather: crisp
22. Your favourite book: synchronous
23. The last thing you ate: peanut-butter
24. Your life: changing
25. Your mood: happy
26. Your best friend: away
27. What you're thinking about right now: silly
28. Your car: borrowed
29. What you are doing at the moment: typing
30. Your summer: boiling
31. Your relationship status: happy
32. What is on your TV: clock
33. What is the weather like: changeable
34. When was the last time you laughed: often

Try it too if you like!

Contrasts - review of Identity

A mixed media collage reviewing my second week of revisiting the artist way.

---

This week was a hard one for me. I found myself with loads of ideas about identity but whenever I attempted to express them they changed! It was like trying to pin down a lump of jelly (jello) and pretend it was a piece of granite - just not realistic and rather messy.

So I alternated between really paying attention to what was going on around me and working away in my journal.

There is a devil hidden in the detail:



Exploring one's dark side is never easy - the reason we leave it unilluminated is because we are pretending to ourselves that it isn't there. And some of it seems to be pre-language which means attempting to psychoanalyse it is a waste of time - much better to get in contact with the feelings and unblock them.

And then there were a whole load more angel synchronicities:



I drew this angel as a morning doodle in my journal. Can you see the connection from its halo to its head? When this angel is resting the halo goes off like a neon sign saying closed for business.

Another reason for choosing these two as details is that this week I sold a book and then 3 hours later got a message saying that it had been bought in error. It was called "Heaven and Earth". By a great stroke of luck I hadn't posted it yet (normally, as the order came in before noon, it would have already been on its way).

I also added in the rainbow chest of drawers as it was one of my favourite doodles from this week.

There were plenty of butterfly synchronicities too but the message seemed to be that of reconstruction - not yet ready to emerge in its full glory. Top left there is a butterfly almost ready to emerge from its chrysalis; and bottom right there is one that is sleeping.

I worked a lot with the Shining Tribe Tarot this week (see my earlier post about the Empress). I drew a card and made a drawing of it each morning after that. That is where the other tarot cards in this image come from.

This morning's was the 6 of Trees in reply to "Who am I?" but I felt that it was really an answer to who will I be soon, so I put it upside down on the 2 of coins ready to be flipped upright when activated.

Oh and before I forget, if you want to see a very funny image of me see what Ian did to me on the Camel Exchange.