Mandalas

I have referred several times already on this blog that I am in the process of de-stashing the house. As we are painting everywhere and have to take everything out of whichever room we are working on, it seemed to make sense to go through it all before putting it back. The other incentive was watching the Hoarders programme (on CBSReality if you are in the UK). No way was I going to end up like that! It turned out that I'm actually pretty good at getting rid of things. It was mainly the fact that there was room for it all that stopped us getting rid of what we no longer needed.

Books were the things that took up most space and I am definitely the guilty one. Apart from about 10 books all of them belonged to me. It was fascinating to revisit all my past interests and see the relevant books on each subject. Silk painting, bobbin lace, macrame, crochet, knitting; I have visited all of them, done lots of projects but am now so over them (although the knitting might be coming back). In those cases it was very easy to pass the books on to the charity shop. Then there were the art books. Most of them stayed. They are timeless and I still regularly refer to them.

The embroidery books were next. It's safe to say I know how to embroider, and why I possessed multiple stitch books is anyone's guess. The fast majority of them departed the premises, and I only kept those ones that had been opened in the past few years or so. The fast majority of quilt books also went the way of Oxfam (in Penicuik if you are interested). The only quilts I have ever made from someone else's pattern are the 100 Modern Quilt blocks by Tula Pink as part of the #100days100blocks project, so why I had so many other ones again is a mystery.

I kept the books that gave me joy when I looked into them.

Then there were the books about mixed media and art journaling. The fast majority of them stayed!

Going through my books gave me a very valuable insight into what I'm interested in here and now, and most likely in the future. And it's art journaling. Every book I picked up on that subject I immediately wanted to look through. So my art future seemed to be written for me already in the books I didn't want to let go off.

I found no less than 5 books on the subject of mandalas. Clearly they were something that had caught my attention over the years but although I had done some mandalas as part of art journal pages, I had not fully concentrated on them. With 5 books to hand that had to change. The book I was most attracted to was: The Mandala Guidebook; how to draw, paint and color expressive mandala art, by Kathryn Costa.

I started at the beginning and did my first hand drawn mandala as seen above. It's done in a Sketchbook Moleskine journal sized 5 x 8.1/4" or 13 x 21cm. The journal had been used for mopping up left over paint, try out stamps and stencils and generally trying stuff out so the background was already there.

I then googled Kathryn Costa and discovered she was running an online class on Mandalas starting the 18th November, just a few days after the time I was googling her. I considered that as an omen that I needed to sign up.

Above is part of our first lesson, that covers 6-petal, 12-petal and 24 petal mandalas. This is also covered in the book but it's always very informative to see it on a video lesson too. It's so addictive, drawing and then colouring them in. I used simple gel pens for my colouring in, some of them with a sparkle. It's a fair bet that you will be seeing more mandalas here but I will try very hard not to buy any more books on the subject! No guarantees though!

If you're interested in how many books went out of the door, I was going to keep up a running count but discovered very soon that wasn't the best thing for my mental well-being and motivation, so I will just say a lot, an enormous lot! And I must add that they had all been read at least once so they weren't bought in vain. The joy of ownership will now belong to someone else.

Most fiction also departed. Life is too short to re-read books when so many new ones appear on a daily basis. I'm going to return to my Kindle to read them. Some however stayed, either for sentimental reasons (such as Gone with the Wind, in Dutch, that came from my paternal grandmother) and others because everything inside me told me to hang on to them. Listing those is too personal but one of them was Simone de Beauvoir's Les Belles Images and I even had two copies of it (both in French). I've kept the one with all the annotations I made in it when a student. Now they really were revealing!

This has turned into an unusually long post so thanks if you're still with me. The words just needed to be put out there for my sake, if for no one else's.

I Wish

The months seem to fly past and yet again it's time to share my monthly project as Guest Designer for Stencilgirl Products. This month it's a bit of a strange one. The project started with an upset, then deteriorated further and I thought I would have to start from scratch. But somehow it did eventually emerge (like the butterflies featured) and start to acquire a look I liked. I decided to go ahead and share it anyway as having to rescue a spread is something we don't often think about but that happens to us all.

You can find a full step-by-step tutorial (a bit tongue in cheek!) on the Stencilgirl Talk website together with the stencils I used. I also rubber stamped on the pages using a stamp from the Marks set by Nathalie Kalbach.

The disaster was entirely my own fault. There is a strict rule in my studio that tops have to be put back on things as soon as I am finished with them. And yet! I had gessoed this spread (in my A4 Dylusions art journal) and while I was waiting for it to dry I thought I would just add some glitter to another project. You probably can guess what happened next. My sleeve swiped the entire pot of glitter and it fell right on top of the wet gesso. And that's where most of it stayed. I had never realized before how sharp the edges of glitter are but it proved to be nay on impossible to go ahead with my usual techniques. To find out how I managed to tame the glitter go to Stencilgirl Talk!

The event also  inspired the words I used on the pages. They are addressed mainly to myself. I have learned over the years I have been art making and exhibiting, not to be affected too much by outside criticisms but still wage daily war with my hyper critical inner voice, which of course gave me a right telling off about the glitter disaster.

Let's Doodle

If you are very observant you may have noticed that I didn't do a Documented Life Project 2016 spread last week. I simply didn't have it in me at that time and in a way it was good to give myself permission to let it me. I should do that more often! The new October theme didn't help either. It is: A Fresh Start - clear your palette. Our art challenge this week is: start with a doodle.

I have no idea why I didn't start doodling in my art journal straight away but instead I grabbed the nearest piece of paper from my bin (it had some typing on it already) and doodled a mandala-like shape on that. That meant I had to cut it out to apply it to my page but it also meant I could photocopy it first and use it again on the opposite side.  The palette was cleared by using metallic paints in the background as well as on the art foamie I used.  The quotation as seen below was also about making a start.

 Techniques: painting, stamping, collage, doodling.

Tools: art foamie (I used Ring Hopscotch designed by Julie Fei-Fan Balzer), rubber stamp of small circles (from a sheet from ImpressMeNow), gel pens