Daisy Yellow’s icad

Every June and July Daisy Yellow/ Tammy Garcia / gypsy999 posts 61 prompts for you to follow. The suggestion is that you make small index card pieces. This year I am enjoying the digital collages so much I am continuing with those.

The first week of prompts are all about fairgrounds:

Roller coaster

Fireworks

Tilt-a-whirl

Ferris Wheel

Queue/ line

Carousel

Haunted house

I am having great fun blending using image blender, using found images (some from the internet ) and adding cutouts using the Freemix App.

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Simple colour/ emotion exercise (art journalling for self care)

I did a simple exercise today with a group today – it was surprisingly successful . There were some very powerful emotions evoked

so I thought I would share. There are no pictures I am afraid because it was so personal

Materials and kit

I provided packs of single coloured papers- filled with magazine pages, printed paper and coloured papers. Glue stick , scissors , words. Free publicity postcards

I invited the group to choose a colour and decoupage / cover a post card with different bits of paper as they wished, they could have scissors or rip the paper . It was attached with a glue stick.

As they worked I asked them to be mindful and think about what emotions were coming up for them.

I also provided of words used to describe emotions and a pack of words that describe emotions cut out from a novel.

After 20 mins , they had talk to the person sitting next to them about the process and then say something to the group.

Here are the words if any one wants to reproduce the exercise. (Taken from a hand written poster design on the wall where I was facilitating )

Emotions

joyful excited sexy playful creative aware daring fascinating stimulating amused extravagant delightful

Powerful proud respected appreciated hopeful important faithful confident intelligent worthwhile valuable satisfied cheerful

Peaceful content thoughtful intimate loving trusting nurturing

Pensive relaxed responsive serene sentimental thankful

Sad guilty ashamed lonely bored sleepy bashful stupid miserable inadequate inferior apathetic

Mad angry hostile hurt jealous selfish frustrated rage hateful critical furious irritated skeptical

Scared rejected confused helpless submissive insecure anxious bewildered discouraged insignificant weak foolish embarrassed

Preparing a found book for art journalling

I like to use second hand books for journalling. There is a comic book range in Scotland called ‘the Broon’s’. They produce cook books and gardening books( Waverley Books) that look like old journals and are a nice weight of paper and size for art journalling.

The paper is a bit smooth so I like to prepare a few pages before I start journalling

Today I added gesso to a page with a credit card and then dabbed acrylic paint through a commercial stencil. By adding the paint first it means that you can rub the paint off the page with a baby wipe or damp cloth to get a more interesting result

I like commercially produced stencils but they can look a bit samey when lots of people use them.

So I use doilies that I find in second hand shops. Lace or crochet work well. If you do use them – make sure you dry them well in-between use or they rot and smell bad .

I covered the print below with a layer of watered down paint.

I always use acrylic for mixed media journalling because I make lots of layers that I don’t want to run into each other. I am dyslexic and have trouble with upside down and the wrong way round – I added the cover design on the back of the book so all the pages are upside down …….

I always try and make paint go as far as possible so I spread what was left of the blue onto some pages with a credit card and through another stencil.

The pages of the book are such fun I don’t often add a lot more before journalling.

The cover of the book is quite shiny so I scored it with a scalpel blade before I decoupaged it.

I used a selection of different papers – the back is upside down tooo. And then added details, texture and random text from magazines

New commission, Osteopath -23Eyre Place, Edinburgh

We had a fab but tiring time in Sacramento visiting our son and his wife over Christmas and the New Year. I feel like I am emerging from jet lag and had a meeting today with my Osteopath who would like me to produce some art for her practice.

She has been advertising in the yellow pages since 2000. The paper version of the pages is stopping. I am to use her collection of adverts as a basis for some art work

http://www.eyreplaceosteopath.co.uk/

I had fun using layout to make some patterns – though I think these are a bit too representational

We talked about ideas for 3 pieces

– I fancied making some origami from some of the adverts ( there are lots) to make up the shape of a spine which could be framed in a deep window box. I like the idea of the finished origami shapes breaking up the text through the folding. And the link with a spine/ osteopathy

Image from Pinterest no citation ref

I thought a frog might work because it could work like a vertebra

The Osteopath likes my dancing ladies that I produced for my last exhibition – she is happy with this concept in terms of the idea of movement links in with Osteopaths helping people to move.

The third idea is to do what ever I like with the papers …… watch this space.

Paper dolls and miscarriage

I had 5 pregnancies and 2 live births 30 years ago. At the time I didn't really mourn my loss and I wonder if my anxiety and chronic migraines stem from the upheaval of hormones I experienced over 4 years.

Mostly I feel like have worked through my grief . However, I was knocked for six this week after reading an article in 'Therapy Today'

( Who Knew ? j.Gosney June 2017 vol 28 issue5) The article describes Gosney's work with grieving pregnancy loss. (I could have done with meeting her in the late 1980's). She talks about why there is 'such a silencing shame around miscarriage' I suspect it is because we don't want to upset or worry other newly pregnant parents.

I remember 'retreating from a world that had become a hostile environment peopled by babies, pregnant women and proud fathers' I moved my living room to the back of the house away from the twice a day school run of chatting happy Mums and buggies

I am not sure I experienced post traumatic stress but I definitely 'became vulnerable to anxieties….. and questioned my bodies ability to carry full term…. I realised I couldn't trust my body anymore.'

With my dyslexia and continuing migraines I still feel this phrase resonates strongly.

Most of my art doesn't look into this as a source of inspiration. however after the embodied reactions I keep getting to @gracemorgan's art on Instagram – I felt inspired to look at how I could explore this, using my paper doll technique.

My first go at womb mandala

Wombs with 8 week embryos( which is when the doctors thought things when things went wrong) I quite like the difference in the colours of the womb – photocopy , against the rawness of the real painted colour of the embryos

These feel a bit sanitised, I am shying away from blood. Which is ridiculous really. Though I am being a bit hypocritical because I dislike sanitary towel adverts on the TV

And another pretty one

http://www.bacp.co.uk/docs/pdf/16027_all%20editorial%20tt_jun17.pdf

Migraine mandalas

I get hemiplegic migraines ( which I am sure I must have mentioned in an earlier post) they are exacerbated by flashing lights and hormones. Most of the time they are under control with a very small dose of antidepressants. However, menopause and my irritable bowel has been fun!!! Sometimes, the migraines are brought on by flashing lights – sometimes food (if I am being sensitive). This latest episode was self inflicted really – reading a book and drawing mandalas in 4 hrs of flickering light on a car journey -was asking for trouble. 

I decided to have a go at working through my frustration and anger at my self , after several  reared their ugly heads , consecutive evenings. 

I am staying at my Dad’s house in the south of France with only my travel kit. I painted  loose ovals on lots of sheets of heavy duty cartridge paper with  very diluted acrylic. Then added swirls of neocolours, oil pastels and more paint- it’s warm and arrid here so everything dries very quickly. 

I wanted to continue working with my paper dolls. I tried a design where a female shape is curled up in painholding her head but it ended up looking like white splodges in some sort of fiery constellation. 

A head screaming (below) just looked weird( lol) and didn’t convey what I wanted to express- I like the colours , textures and patterns , so they became backgrounds. 

I needed some figures that worked in circles so I searched on line and came up with an ancient artifact from Mexico 

Practicing blind contour faces in pain ( really getting into the details 😂😂😂😂) 

The above design uses an African figurine as motif but even though it made a lovely mandala in the centre with its arms and legs I didn’t like the proportions of the head and neck. 

Nice uncomfortable screaming baby type figures are amusing me now my head is better and I like the nightmarish qualities – there is an other worldly feeling and out of body experience that I seem to have captured too , which sums up my aura stage quite nicely. Though if I think about it -I don’t experience all that colour 

Meditation inspired art making – Portugal

One of the things I have enjoyed at the Omassim guest house is the daily meditation sessions. There has been a variety of different approaches to meditation on offer – an energy bath, candle and eye gazing and chanting. These sessions have inspired me to make art around the ideas explored – I had great fun making my paper dolls in meditation poses. 

Above are a few designs from the energy bath session. I had brought some backgrounds ready prepared with me – where I used pink ink sprayed through a doily. I used a mixture of pen and ink mandalas, neocolours and oil pastel to create the other effects. 

We chanted about the elements. (I wandered into the village one morning and found a shop selling primary coloured papers and oil pastels. These new supplies lent themselves very well to more paper doll mandalas) 

Then I had a very strange experience meditating looking into Jon’s left eye. It felt like everything else fell away except his eye. I got annoyed when he blinked because it broke the sensation. It felt like I didn’t know him at all and that the whole universe was some how available in his murky green eye. ( he he he) 

More Movement Medicine dancers this time in Orange

Over the past 6 months I have made so many different mandalas that sometimes I don’t know what to do with them. I had been wanting to work with my movement medicine dancing ladies some more. So yesterday I made loads of cut out dolls. 

I was very amused about 30 minutes in,  that I needed to make the images stand out more – the colours were too samey or the patterned mandalas meant that the dancers got lost on the similar coloured backgrounds. 

An orange frenzy ensued which was very therapeutic and got my creative juices going. I had thought I was a bit stuck because I hadn’t danced for a week. 

I made some smaller templates so that I can cut circles of joined dancers – the idea of them all being connected appeals. Catherine ( http://catherinewright.co.uk/workshops/) mentioned us all being joined by a gold thread last session – but I can’t quite get my head around how that would fit visually within this work  – there is so much colour and pattern going on- they feel more like a  ‘5 Rhythms’  Chaos session (https://www.5rhythms.com/). I think I must have had Matisse’a ‘The dance’ going on somewhere in my head too 

https://www.hermitagemuseum.org/wps/portal/hermitage/digital-collection/01.+Paintings/28411/?lng=

I love complimentary colours and the circles of dancers fit in with my mandalas – it’s all a bit bonkers colourwise – I enjoyed scrawling in blue oil pastel over the finished collages , but I think some of the more simple ones are very effective.

I produced some single dancers for some A5 pieces I had in my stash – I think maybe I should draw these figures individually. 

Movement medicine inspired artmaking

Over the weekend I participated at a movement medicine workshop. It was called ‘This being human’ and was facilitated by Catherine Wright. 

http://catherinewright.co.uk/

During a meditation about the tree of life I had this really clear image in my head of a human figure as a tree trunk with a black heart or hole where the heart should be. I have had a tight chest recently and palpitations as menopausal symptoms. I danced the feeling out. I am aware of being in touch with my head and my stomach – but there is a numbness where my heart is. 

During the workshop we worked with a poem by  Rumi called ‘ The Guest House’ 

This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness, 

some momentary awareness comes 

as an unexpected visitor. 

Welcome and entertain them all! 

Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows, 

who violently sweep your house 

empty of its furniture, 

still, treat each guest honourably. 

He may be clearing you out 

for some new delight. 

The dark thought, the shame, the malice, 

meet them at the door laughing, 

and invite them in. 

Be grateful for whoever comes, 

because each has been sent 

as a guide from beyond.

We did an exercise on Saturday where we welcomed a ‘guest’  and worked with a partner – talking, witnessing and using dance. I chose the idea of ‘disappointment’.  As I danced I became aware that I was relieving ‘something’  but it wasn’t disappointment. So I chose to revisit my confusion on Sunday. 

I am still unable to verbalise what is exactly present but I realised with relief that the hole is not black or vacant but a conduit that is not to be frightened or scared of. 

I needed to revisit this experience today through art making. 

Sketches for  ‘a black heart’ – I wrote in my journal ‘ figure rooted but with a hole where the heart should be’ 

 As I was dancing , holding my heart or the feeling of my hands up to my chest was important – drawing hands that don’t look like claws or sausages is always a stretch of my ability – I also needed the tree/body to be a real rounded shaped woman  

Conduit / portal heart sketch – there was such a sense of relief at the realisation that what was going on felt like a portal. As I was at a dance session it was important that I tried to convey movement. 

Black heart – in my head the tree trunk / body was red – the background is newspaper that I used as  protection paper. It is advertising a film and it has amused me that my figure could also look a bit like an ‘Oscar’ there is no way I would offer to be the mouldy for any figurine 😂😂😂😂 

Conduit/portal heart 

My mandalas seem to need to be in everything I do at the moment. The conduit doesn’t feel draining and the energy feels like it is not restricted by time and space. 

During the dance workshop we did a session where working in groups of 3 we witnessed , danced and or meditated , wrote or drew. During my first role as ‘meditator’ I doodled , the portal was very strong in my head and I produced this 

Prisma, iPhone Apps

I am enjoying playing around with the Prisma app at the moment – I particularly like the Heisenberg filter.

I think the buttons below are a successful filtered image 

It tends it struggle with high contrast images loosing details in the shadows and it coping with really fine detail 

 

With the succulents below – I had to lighten the original image because the first time I filtered it the result was very dark 

I really like the ‘pencil/line’ effects – it does get a bit samey – I have really enjoyed pushing it – I think the succulent wall, my journal pages grid and the girl work particularly well. The buildings are a bit formulaic. 

However – I think it works very well when I mix it with other apps 

The succulent 

 layered with Imageblender 

Mast reflections 

Layered with  another image of water in image blender 

And then layered again with a window. 

Examples of different filters – original below 

A few more filter effects