day 12: 12 days of Twelvty

Twelvty-Twelve: Yellow-Orange

The Gorgeous Golden Glow of Yellow-Orange, Ochres, Ginger, Saffron & Spice

 

“All that glitters is not gold.”
~ Shakespeare

All through 2017 I’ve been exploring the subject of color in a year long visual adventure: one color each month. Over the last 12 days of the year I’ve shared a little insight into what I made through the year, and today we reach the end of the journey, the circle is complete.

Each month I continued adding more single color doodles and collaged ephemera to the pages to this art journal, these are the closing pages.

If you missed the previous posts, you can catch up here: Starting out in  Yellow, then Yellow-Green, Green, Blue-Green, Blue and Blue-Violet, next Violet, then Red-Violet, Red then Red-Orange and finally Orange. Now we’ve arrived full circle! Yikes what a trip!! 

Wishing you a fabulously colorful new year! Much love to you X

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If you’re interested in understanding more about color, get my ebook A Year full of Color as well as regular monthly updates on my latest colorful antics, delivered right to your inbox:

Your email is utterly safe to me. It will be guarded by the deity of your choice and a small dragon.

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TWELVTY is adventure you can join too.

By exploring the color wheel and each of the 12 colors, I share my creative process plus a feast of resources about color I’ve collected for you.

You’ll learn about the history of how color has been used, not just by artists, but as part of different cultures around the world. You’ll discover the meanings linked to the colors, how there are connections through the ages and around the world.

There are even playlists of songs and music relating to each of the colors! (I said it was thorough, right?)

In 2018 I’m introducing a new element to TWELVTY – a shared creative project that we’ll work on together as we traverse the color wheel.

Find out more here

Registration for TWELVTY 2018 is open now!
Find out more & join here

 

day 11: 12 days of Twelvty

Twelvty-Eleven: Orange

Juicy citrus shades of marigold, maple & mango

“Orange is the happiest color.”
~ Frank Sinatra

Color is an integral part to all types of creativity, it influences our moods and emotions, it’s linked with memories. Colors have been assigned meanings and connections throughout history and around the world.

When we tune our eyes in to notice the colors around us, life becomes brighter and more vibrant.

Through 2017 I’ve been exploring these aspects of color in a year long visual adventure: one color each month.

Each month I continued adding more single color pages to this mixed media art journal.

Over the last 12 days of the year I want to show you a glimpse of this project.

Starting out in  Yellow, then Yellow-Green, Green, Blue-Green, Blue and Blue-Violet, next Violet, then Red-Violet, Red then Red-Orange. Tomorrow we’ll take the final step bringing us full circle to Twelvty-Twelve: Yellow-Orange. 

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If you’re interested in understanding more about color, get my ebook A Year full of Color as well as regular monthly updates on my latest colorful antics, delivered right to your inbox:

Your email is utterly safe to me. I’ll bring it tea if it wakes up, then sing it back to sleep.

---

TWELVTY is adventure you can join too.

By exploring the color wheel and each of the 12 colors, I share my creative process plus a feast of resources about color I’ve collected for you.

You’ll learn about the history of how color has been used, not just by artists, but as part of different cultures around the world. You’ll discover the meanings linked to the colors, how there are connections through the ages and around the world.

There are even playlists of songs and music relating to each of the colors! (I said it was thorough, right?)

In 2018 I’m introducing a new element to TWELVTY – a shared creative project that we’ll work on together as we traverse the color wheel.

Find out more here

Registration for TWELVTY 2018 is open now!
Find out more & join here

 

day 10: 12 days of Twelvty

Twelvty-Ten: Red-Orange

From auburn to brick, rusty rouge, browns & burnt orange.

 

“The sky takes on shades of orange during sunrise and sunset, the colour that gives you hope that the sun will set only to rise again.”
~ Ram Charan

Color is an integral part to all types of creativity, it influences our moods and emotions, it’s linked with memories. Colors have been assigned meanings and connections throughout history and around the world.

When we tune our eyes in to notice the colors around us, life becomes brighter and more vibrant.

Through 2017 I’ve been exploring these aspects of color in a year long visual adventure: one color each month.

Each month I continued adding more single color pages to this mixed media art journal.

Over the last 12 days of the year I want to show you a glimpse of this project.

Starting out in  Yellow, then Yellow-Green, Green, Blue-Green, Blue and Blue-Violet, next Violet, then Red-Violet and Red. Tomorrow we’ll step around to Twelvty-Eleven: Orange 

---

If you’re interested in understanding more about color, get my ebook A Year full of Color as well as regular monthly updates on my latest colorful antics, delivered right to your inbox:

Your email is utterly safe to me. I’ll bring it tea if it wakes up, then sing it back to sleep.

---

TWELVTY is adventure you can join too.

By exploring the color wheel and each of the 12 colors, I share my creative process plus a feast of resources about color I’ve collected for you.

You’ll learn about the history of how color has been used, not just by artists, but as part of different cultures around the world. You’ll discover the meanings linked to the colors, how there are connections through the ages and around the world.

There are even playlists of songs and music relating to each of the colors! (I said it was thorough, right?)

In 2018 I’m introducing a new element to TWELVTY – a shared creative project that we’ll work on together as we traverse the color wheel.

Find out more here

Registration for TWELVTY 2018 is open now!
Find out more & join here

 

Reinvention

A few years ago I created a year long project, dedicating each month to a single colour. Beginning in January with red/purple – that gorgeous magenta I keep falling back into – I cycled my way month by month through the primary/secondary/tertiary colours, ending the year in Red.

Ever since I’ve had the desire to follow up on this and reinvent the idea.

So while I haven’t been over here in the world of Ephemeral-Gecko-ing, I’ve been busying myself on a new project ….but you will have to wait until tomorrow for all the details….

Meanwhile, here’s what the 12 colours in 12 months adventure looked like:

 

derailed logic

You know me well enough by now – you know not to expect a simple train of logic, don’t you?

When I found this anonymous model, the leopardskin, that sultry seductive look, and all the glamour of the 1940’s ‘do — and I don’t remember the exact connecting train of thought that same next –– I just straight away thought mermaid.

Of course, right? <welcome to my world!>

See the face? 29/52

Close up, week 29 looked like this…

A lot of layers, a lot of buried words. A lot of rich, warm colour

Did you see the face?

Create Your Own Map (22/52)

This recurring instruction: Create Your Own Map.
It’s what I’m endeavoring to do.
I’m mapping my way as I go.
I document when I remember,
I share when I think it might help.

Starting out in the usual fashion:

Colours and curls,
Cut outs, collaging the inconsequential,
daubs, dabs, smudgy smear.

State the intention.

Then populate:

  

Look up, look down. Look around

Remember it’s the journey not the destination.

Note to Self: 17/52

Sometimes I’ll hear or read something I like, I have to write it down. Write it down quick before it escapes. Trap it. The weekly art journal is often to hand, and when the current week is getting full, I’ll drop in these new words somewhere in the future pages. Then when that week rolls around it’s there to remind me. This week remembered to me of this truth:

“Everything I need is already within me.”

I took this photo for fear of the words getting buried. I wanted to show them to you. I love the simple truth of it. We’re so much more resourceful that we think, much of the time.

In this much collage there’s a risk of word burial.

I’ve still got the collage bug big time.

I love the build up of layers, the intensification of imagery.

As it turned out, those words just got bolder. Then became surrounded with eyes. (of course!)

New Beginnings

It’s that time of year, time of life, time of day.. it’s also the name of an exhibition I have some work in.

The title is open to interpretation but it got me thinking about the saying What the caterpillar calls the end, the rest of the world calls a butterfly.

an untidy desk is the sign of…

So with my fav kind of glorious inky messy, the divinely joyous, the snipping up of little bits of paper, the gluing bits accidentally to my sleeves, hair, floor… and the itsy small doodles on the wings… the magical making process, another project began to unfurl.

I remembered how I hadn’t done this for so long – let the inner kid out to play without any rules or boundaries – well, one – just do butterflies. We jumped in with both feet!

I began with 3 different butterfly images, digitally reduced to grey-scale, then high contrast mono before printing in a few different sizes. Some flipped over to fly in the opposite direction.

Enough of the tidy digital world, enough of the pristine pixel arrangement. Time for IK to make a mess with layers of inky goodness before cutting out the little beasties for collaging, and extra doodles.

So far there are 2 framed collages, and a series of cards. I’m in the process of setting them up over on DeviantArt so prints are available too  ……….. and I’ve got another little side project where they’ll be flitting through too -> watch this space!

Shadow Monkeys (8/52 cont/d)

Week eight of 2015: a busy page that’s warranted 2 posts…

And that’s without any mention of the butterflies.

Or Steve Jobs. But that’s all for another day…

The thing I wanted to tell you about now is monkey related:
Since I spent a weekend in conversation with my daemons, they’ve been magicking themselves into apparency here, there & all over. This week they’ve manifested in a semi-Cubist, heavy handed biro scrawl, merged, their tribal Día de Muertos faces peering out from the recesses of the page.

We’ve been sharing the available space in this mind for a few decades. It’s refreshing to shift the power balance between ‘them’ and ‘us’ (for want of better terms).

So when I read the post from Danny Gregory this week, asking for tales from our Monkeys, another bunch of dots connected: Monkey minded me, the battles with my daemons, and all the reasons it took me so long to go to art school.

I dedicated a corner of a page to the Monkeys (they were chief trouser-wearers and direction-choosers in my life for way too long. They get a corner to play in now. I get the rest of the page. That is ALL) A place to start unscrambling some thoughts:

These are the bare bones of those thoughts:

My monkeys bewilder me with their faultlessly formed logic.

They have faith only in the opinions and the hard-hearted snipes of the the hardcore cynics. They know why I can’t and what I can’t and all the reasons why.

They will poke at me with pointy sticks if I turn my back on them for long. They stand in my way. They say: don’t show yourself, not your real self, cos then the haters aren’t hating the real you. You tricked the haters, the mean kids, the ones who know. You win. See?

The monkey’s logic is flawed at a level so deep I sometimes forget : Do not trust the monkeys.

It was the Monkey’s determination that as art isn’t a real job, and work isn’t supposed to be fun, and all the associated hooey, that defined my existence until quite recently. A large part of life (by my reckoning) is unpicking the knots that we spend the preceding years tying ourselves up in. Unattended monkeys will continue tying knots.