Friday, 8 June 2012

15 Habits of Great Writers - day 2

Well.

2nd day is to believe. And here below is what Jeff said
"The challenge

How do we turn something like belief into action? We don’t. Not yet, anyway. Instead, we marinate.
A wise man once said we are the sum of our conscious thoughts. In other words, we become what we fixate on".

So do just that: Take some time to dwell on the fact that you are a writer. Meditate on it; let it sink in. Write about it, if you want. Do whatever it takes. The important part is you believe it.

And just so you don’t think this is all esoteric, you’re going to do something radical tomorrow. You’re going to get up two hours early and write. If you usually get up at seven, get up at five. If five, then three. You get the idea. Don’t check your email or read blogs. Just write.

This is how you know you really believe something. Thinking and talking and tweeting about writing is one thing; actually doing it is another. So today, believe it; tomorrow, do it. (Don’t worry; I’ll be up with you.)

Until this happens, until you actually believe you are a writer, you’re only kidding yourself. And you’re not doing anybody any good with all this self-doubt. You’re a writer. Not because I say so, but because you do. Start believing it."

So.

I get up early tomorrow (yeah right) - lucky it's not a work day.

I'll let you know.

15 Habits of Great Writers - day 1

Well i've signed up to the 15 day challenge on writing. They're onto day 3 already. I found the site through my friend Darlene's link on her facebook page.

The first day is to delcare you are a writing. Very timely as I've started re-writing Frid and Mud. It needed a new beginning so I am one page into that.

Jeff Goins is the auther writing th ecahllenge - he can be found here - http://goinswriter.com/great-writers/

Sunday, 3 June 2012

moleskine exchange

I'm part of a moley exchange. There are eight of us.

Using the accordian style Japanese moleskine journals we each do four pages.

Tha latest set of pages I've done is for Cathy's Undersea cave.





This spread was mainly using copic markers, ciao ones, that I've just bought some of. Tricky to blend them and they bleed through the page. Luck that in the exchange we only work on one side of the pages. Coloured pencil and other media does go over the top though and they do cover the page fast without having to clean brushes.

For this subject I did like the bubble effect when I used the colourless blender that lifted the colour rather than blending.



And Ive put my name down for another exchange starting September, even though we have three more spreads each to do in the current one.


And the theme I've chosen for the next exchange will be Nick Bantock. I admire his creativity, sense of design and whimsicality - is there such a word? There is now.
And his type of art fits weel with the fact that this exchange will not just be paint and drawing but can include mixed media.


http://vimeo.com/39181285


This is a short video available on his web site. http://www.nickbantock.com/index.php

Saturday, 19 May 2012

Art Journal

I've been trying different things in my journal. Underpainting in orange
Underpainting in red.
Also have done the on-line Strathmore workshops again this year. http://www.strathmoreartiststudio.com/ Workshop One with Traci Bautista took me out of my comfort zone -"Whether you are a beginner or an experienced artist, you will enjoy a creative escape as you combine different media, color, texture, collage, doodling, lettering and more to create your own mixed media paintings. Play with paper in ways you never imagined!" Her blog - http://kollaj.typepad.com/ While her style is not mine, I learnt heaps about playing and not being scared to try something I hadn't thought to use before E.G. white out ink. The first one was not my style at all but using new techniques and following someone switches off the internal critic. I think it is the colour combination and some mess. I used a wooden cut out from the craft store as a template and then embellished, with tentative circles of whiteout ink.
The next I used leaves as templates. Then embellishing. Some parts I like better than others. It really gives ides for journalling backgrounds tho. However, often I found i liked the art and didn't want to journal over it :)..
One thing about the workshop, even tho online, is the interaction with others, seeing their work gives inspiration and ideas, not only for ideas but colour combinations. Here I used buttons as templates for the flowers, spraying on acryllic and water colour. I bought cheap plastic spray bottles for $2.
This spread was more of the same but using cardboard letters as templates. I liked the colours. On the left i used the wooden templates and then pressed them on the right hand page. The white is corrugated cardboard shapes used as a stamp/. I liked that effect.
Here I added to the trials of colour combinations and made further use of the corrugated cardboard.
Another thing used as template was embroidery canvas. I like the neat lines of squares and I also had buttons . Here I put the templates on an uncoloured page but you can colour it first like i did when I used the leaves as templates.