Eveline of evelinetimeless a friend and fellow art journaler has been practicing sketching. She took cues from me and started in. She's followed along with the facebook face experiment and the twitter Hand Experiment. She's definately creating a style all her own and I'm totally digging it. Check out this video of her sketches, check out her unique and wonderful style. Great stuff!
So my inner critic has been harping on me about the sky studies I've been doing. I am in love with doing those and the face experiment paintings. Love love love them. There is something about staring at the sky and painting nothing but it. I love the sky. Love the colors in it, the bright oranges, bright pinks, intense yellows, deep purples and shades of blue. It’s amazing to me.
I got the mail when the sky was setting and the front of my house faces due west. I stepped outside to the most amazing orange and pink glow I’ve ever seen. I vowed that I’d start painting the sky as it set and rose. It took me awhile but I’ve started.
I’ve been posting some of the images to flickr. But I decided to post the little skyscapes to my Artfire account. They each measure about 5×7 inches and are on either Fabriano Artistico 140lb watercolor paper or Stonehenge 140lb 100% cotton printmaking paper. I’m putting them up for $15 each and $5 shipping. I’ll combine shipping on multiple purchases. (These would look fantastic matted and framed 3 to a group.)
As I listed them my inner critic said, “Don’t do it! They’ll never sell. They are just studies. It’s junk.” I figured eff him, I’m putting them up and I’ll let people decide what they like, not my critic.
You can find my artfire studio here and the art section here. Go have a look and tell me what you think.
This last week has been a trial for me and I can't go into it much here but the DayJob has been giving me fits. I haven't done much art. The posts I've been pecking out here have been the most of what I've done. Not to say that writting is nothing but it's not the same as picking up a pencil or brush.
I've not been sleeping well. I go throguh times like these where I simply can't sleep. I try everything, and I do mean everything to sleep. I cut caffeine out. I cut HFCS out. I eat earilier in the day. I try not to nap. I take benedryl to knock me out. I try other assorted things to burn off the excess energy. And it doesn't go away.
It gets to be a terrible cycle. Eventually I give up on the no naps rule and sleep because I can. then I can't sleep at night. Then I take benedryl and my dreams wake me up. Or the slightest noise wakes me.
Eventually It gets to be friday and I've gone through a cycle of crappy days at work where I'm dead tired, can't focus and get less done than I would like and I can't get stuff done at home because I can't think because I'm so tired.
And now all I want is to sleep. Hopefully without the impending doom of going to work I can get a decent nuight of sleep. Also please note it's not 90 degrees with 60% humidity tonight.
Love this. There is a gearhead meet up in Danver's a couple times a month and I never know about in advance but always drive by and wish I had my camera
Love Jimbradshaw's work. Dense little pages full of little characters. Great stuff.
I wrote in my previous post abut my late night walks across campus. These used to freak out my friends and roommates. I used to hear things like, "Aren't you afraid of being attacked?" "Raped." "Mugged" Fill in the blanks I heard it all.
At 1 and 2 am on campus I never saw another person walking. Never.
More importantly I was never afraid. UMaine was a big campus, around a mile square, an well lit in most areas. There was something divine about walking it when there was no one else around, no cars and near silence. Just me and the hum of street lights.
My 2nd year my friend and I took Painting 201 together across campus from our campus housing. The studio was in a chemistry building near my old dorm. One night one of the painting students found a woman in the bushes outisde the building raped and beatten. I slowed my late night walks, though the incident occured at dusk. For several weeks I remember feeling pent up, easily aggravated and hyperactive.
In the end a friend of mine and I put vodka in waterbottles walked campus together and got drunk. Giggling in the fresh snow, we made snow angels and wandered to a friends place. We ended up getting a friend to take us skedding* across campus. That night I met up with a guy with a completely tricked out hot rod, with full black leather seats, front and back, and a super cool purple and silver paint job. He was dating a friend ofa friend of a friend. The guy with the hot rod ended up taking people skedding. I distinctly remember giggling hilariously as I slid back and forth around the back seat and bouncing off my friends.
I never lived in fear, that came later, with age and moving to the city. City life fills me with fear and anxiety in such a way that life in the woods does not. It's interesting, when I first moved here I dind't feel fear. I continued much of my same behavior. My friend Sarah and I used to wander Boston late at night, blue and pink haired idiots.** We'd wander her and there, to the park, ride the T. Sometimes in silence and sometimes having intense conversations about art and life. Many of my friends thought I was dating Sarah, but she's like a sibling to me, a little sister I never had. Today we don't see each other often enough and I miss her, and our conversations. But those memories of our fearless walks of Boston and Cambridge warm my heart.
I want to tell you a secret so that it’s not a secret anymore. I want to share it with you, so you can see that I feel it too. I want you to know that you are not alone.
I self censor in my journals. I know I tell you not to. I don’t want to.
The critic that lives in my head tells me in soft whispered tones, “No one wants to hear that. No one cares. No one wants to know.” Or he’ll* say, “If you die tomorrow, won’t you be embarrassed by that?”
Sometimes I tell him to eff off and work the way I want in my journal. I don’t always show those images to you. Some things must be private. My internal struggles can’t all be shared.
Some of my older work is overtly sexual, I’ve never shown much of it online, and never any of it on my blog. Why? I’m not sure. I remember doing some of the nudes I used to work on and my roommate at the time used to refer to them as scary vagina pictures. He found them creepy and unsettling. That always bothered me, but I suppose that watching someone explore their interior thoughts and sexuality could be difficult to someone who wasn’t doing that in a visual manner.**
Anyway, my point here is that self censorship sucks. I do it because of, for lack of a better word: FEAR.
Yeah I’ve got it, just like you. I fear what people will say, what people will think.
I question how do I live fearless? How do I explore the dark stuff in my head?
I’ve got a journal. It’s a small thin journal; I’m going to start to fill it with dark stuff. Dark writings, stuff from the deep dark recesses of my head. I’m going to force myself to get comfortable with that part of me. After all the dark stuff, the stuff we keep hidden is part of us too.
Try to beat down the inner critic with me, conquer that fear.
I love the dots.
I'm completely in love with everything this art journaler does. It's so raw and painfully honest.
Love love love the use of the birth control package.
See her blog here.
