Courageous Creativity with Christina Romeo

I've loved all of the artists that Amanda Mauck has interviewed for this series and I've been finding the exercises so fun. This one by Christina Romeo was so out of my comfort zone. I will definitely be doing it again. First we just scribbled in some dark areas around where eyes would be and then we roughed in the rest of the face. We used a couple colors of acrylic paint and a palette knife to fill in the head. I really love the texture and non-preciseness of the palette knife. 

Courageous Creativity with Diane Culhane

Diane Culhane took us through a fun exercise based on the work of Jasper Johns. I was disappointed that my fairly new pens weren't really up to the task, but I liked the colors and didn't want to start over. Lazy. But I loved playing with positive and negative/ foreground and background.

Throwback Thursday: Word of the Year 2020

Here was my word for this year. I feel like I've been struggling with creating the healthy life that I want and slipping into old habits that don't support that.  So my word is "choose." The white square at the bottom that you can't really see is a dictionary entry for "choose."

Courageous Creativity with Leslie Nolan

The interview I watched today was with Leslie Nolan. She is an art coach for intentional creativity which sounds really interesting. The exercise was to create an intention on around how to cohere in our lives right now then pick 3 objects at random and outline them on the journal page.

So right off the bat, I didn't do mine quite the way it was intended. I outlined each object, but from the examples that Amanda and Leslie did, it looked like you were supposed to make the outline around the group of objects. Oh well.

Next we looked at the lines to see if we could pick out figures or objects. We could add line and color to help develop the story of what we were seeing. When it felt done, we were to write an affirmation under the drawing.  We then asked 3 questions of the figure in the drawing and wrote them down with space in between.  She then had us answer the questions from the point of view of the figure.

I used a bottle of ink, a weird circular cap that was cluttering my workspace and an old paintbrush that my kids didn't rinse out.  This photo recreated because I forgot to take photos of the steps (rolls eyes).

Here's what came out of that:

So she seemed angry and defensive and she didn't have a body below the blue thing. The diamond shape immediately felt like a "yield" sign to me.  My affirmation was that maybe I didn't need this defense of not feeling anymore and I could find my way to my body.

My questions to her were:

1. How else can we feel safe?

2. What does yielding mean?

3. How to transform the anger into action?

Her answers:

1. Use art to express yourself. Set boundaries in a healthy way. Communicate your needs and intentions.

2. The yield sign is a way to communicate. You can be "right" or in relationship. Distance can be made up. You don't always have to push away.

3. Transform anger into action with your pen, with your art. Use it to know when boundaries are needed and when something needs to be said.

What a simple exercise with some pretty powerful results!

 

Throwback Thursday: Word of the Year 2019

For the past several Januarys, I've done a word/intention for the year. Actually, I started in 2017 and my sister has been instrumental in keeping the tradition going. Here was my canvas for 2019. These are about 2'x2'. My word was "release" spelled out in Scrabble tiles. I love that the word "ease" can be found in "release."

The MRI skull/brain in the upper right corner is a blockprint I made from an MRI of my own brain (done for research purposes, not for medical). 

Courageous Creativity with Lucy Morningstar

For this exercise with Lucy Morningstar, we drew self-portrait(s) for 10 minutes in INK! She suggested not using a pencil because we'd get hung up on getting it right and erasing. After we drew them, she had us tear them up to help us not identify or attach to the art or to our ideas of ourselves.  She described doing self-portraits when she was very depressed as a way to gain some distance between the feeling and the person she was as a whole. I noticed on the Courageous Creativity Facebook page that someone had glued the pieces back together for the art journal. I had drawn several quick sketches and so when I put them back together, I mixed up which pieces came from which drawings.

Recent block prints

In May, I wanted to send some thank you cards to people who donated to an online fundraiser for the Bozeman Dharma Center. Since we were under a "shelter in place" order by the governor, I used that as an excuse to do some carving. Unfortunately, I mailed all the good prints out before getting a photo. And I'm too impatient to reprint right now, so here's a not so great print. 

I've been having a lot of fun playing with background textures in the carvings. Here's an image I made for personal thank you's.

Action Friday

Last Friday, my family and I went to the local National Day of Action for Black Lives rally and march. It's estimated that there were at least 5000 people there. I don't want our action to stop with attending one event. I carved this image and plan to send postcards asking leaders at national, state, and local levels what they are going to do as a person in privilege in a position of power to change systemic racism.

Courageous Creativity with Karine Swenson

Along with Mitch Bowler, the interview with Karine Swenson inspired me to begin trying to draw again. I haven't had a chance to do the exercises that Mitch gifted to the group, but I did practice along with Karine's practice warm up exercises.

I used this photo of my cat, Rico Suave, as a reference. Those back toes though...

The first exercise was using straight lines and trying to pay attention to the inner spaces and not the edges. I have to say I found this really difficult. I'm definitely drawn to the edges.

The second exercise did something similar but with circular scribbles. I could feel myself getting into this one more.

The final exercise was a one line contour drawing. I've always loved these.

All of these were to practice hand-eye coordination and learning how to see.

Courageous Creativity Day 7

I'm still catching up but loved this interview with Ivana Zoza who blogs at Artful Haven. She encouraged us to make a gratitude page and as her free gift gave images, quotes, journal squares, and a template to make an envelope. I used one of the quotes: "I'm thankful for my struggle because without it I wouldn't have stumbled across my strength."

The goddess figure on the right was one of the first images I carved way back in the mid 1990's. She's still one of my favorites. 

I also loved that Ivana had us write three cards to put into the envelope: something we were thankful for from the past, the present, and the future. She says the miracle happens when we open these sometime down the road and find that the thing we said we were grateful for in the future has come to pass.

Freaky Portrait

This went through a series of steps. The background was actually from a piece of art my sister created for her word of the year. She didn't like how it turned out and tore off some of the papers she'd glued on to use on her second attempt. I decided to reuse the substrate and started doing a rough self-portrait. The first phase was pretty weird. I didn't take the time to do the proportions correctly.

In the second phase I fixed the proportions a bit by bringing down the hairline. I also tried fixing the eyes, softening lines and added in the leaf buds on the chest. So much better.

Third phase: I fixed the shadows around the mouth to be more accurate and also worked on the upper right corner. I know the shoulders are too small, but I like it.