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The three of us sat there,
Life of Brian playing off an old VHS,
each of us creating in our own ways.
I was tipsy and happy and full of warm, yummy soup.
And so I began to create.
To doodle and add water and color, & thought about the day.
It is time to go deeper.
To re-think the days of my life,
the art I create,
why and who and where and how.
To open my Third Eye, meditate, see, think, BE.
Deeper than ever before, scrambled and new.
What about you?
12"x12" mixed-media on canvas
This painting came with me to the undertow and rode the storm with me.
It picked me up and carried me to shore.
It wasn't an easy journey. This wasn't done in a day, or two, or three.
But weeks. Hours and hours spent with detail brushes.
Pushing the very boundaries of my abilities.
Challenging me.
Cleaning me out. Pulled out all the wires and bits and what-makes-me-me until it reached my heart.
And plucked it from my chest.
My brains are scrambled, my feet unsteady;
when it put me back down, I stumbled along.
She was hard-won, fought for with blood, sweat, and tears.
The deepest painting experience I've ever had.
She is surrounded by Noise.
By the constant sensory input of chronic pain,
over-stimulated and straining to BE, to think, to be CLEAR.
But she's going to Listen past it all.
A week ago, I had a vision.
I was me, with feathers in my hair, with moccasins on my feet,
reconnected to my Native heritage,
surrounded by animals.
It has been swimming in my head since then,
all the peace I felt,
the Oneness,
the Truth of who I am underneath.
That is what she is.
She is Me, under it all.
Past it all.
A Dream of Me.
Listening Past the Noise to Her Wild Self.
I am ready to Listen, to Be, to Create.
24"x24" mixed-media on wood
Ever since I started playing in my journals daily (for long periods of time!), I've been full of inspiration and bouncing around! I spent most of this week getting my body all back to normal after that medication fiasco, as well as working on a beautiful new painting I'll be introducing you to tomorrow! Here are some of my pages-in-progress, like a mini brain dump. Some will change a lot, and others, not very much....but I want to show you all more in-progress work so you can see the evolution of things. Finished pages are great, but they don't help you figure out how they were made much, do they?
These are pages in my Moleskine. Most work done in this journal is "dry," that is, without acrylic paint, and focuses on collage, color, and thoughts. I work in here at the beginning of my day, right after I've woken up and my dreams are beginning to fade.
My new favorite colors -- teal, fluorescent pink, and black.
This isn't a journal page, per se, but it was a mandala I doodled over a gelli print! I spent the better part of a day carving this monster from a block, and just love the thing! I may have to make more!
Now I need your help! I am not a huge fan of spreads (I haven't done one this size for years!), but was so inspired by Tam's Free Falling journal page video that I jumped in and started one....except now I don't know what to do with the right-hand side of the spread! So, what ideas do you have? What should I do? I was thinking of drawing another face, like Tam does in the video, but there are things over there I like! So help me out -- give me some ideas so I can a. try something new, and b. finish this spread!
There are times when I get an idea in my head and I just can't shake it....it will bug me and bug me and won't let me BE until I go and do it. Since starting my daily practice of collage and mark-making, I've only found myself coming up with more ideas, not digging deeper to find inspiration. You know, those frustrating days when you sit down to work in your journal and can't come up with anything. Nope. Haven't had that. It drives me a bit crazy at times, but now that I'm writing things down, I no longer worry that I'll forget all these possibly-wonderful ideas!
Things have been...difficult...for a little bit around here. After weeks of declining health and energy (remember all that fatigue I was feeling?), I finally found out I was having a negative reaction to some medication. Did you know generics differ from each-other and the original medication by 15%? Yeah, neither did I! Thankfully, I've been detoxing from it, and am feeling soooo much better (hence blog post; I have four of them slated and half-finished for next week!). I swear, I lost my mind for a little bit!
One of the things that helped me see clearly once again was a women's circle I found out about when I went on an adventure to see some live music at a friend's house (live music is magical; if you can ever see it, even if it's a small group or music you *might* not like, do it anyway). I was able to drag myself out on Tuesday night in what I call Studio Chic, aka paint-covered yoga clothes, and found myself diving into the conversation and practice in this circle of women. Most know one another through their Kundalini yoga practice at a local studio and ashram; I've been interested in it ever since learning Carissa is actually a non-teaching yoga teacher in the same tradition!
Seated on the floor, we went through basic breathing and movement exercises to warm up, and I found myself able to focus for the first time in weeks. We followed with a vocal meditation -- and in the space of moments in the Present, an hour-and-a-half had passed.
The line in the doodle above stood out to me (as well as the woman leading the activity) -- that we are elders, just in training. That when we meditate and pray today, we're sometimes sending those messages we needed in the past. Or maybe today, we're praying for the Us of tomorrow. But we always have a line to the elder we will become, a way to connect to the Self that has the answers we so desperately seek in the present.
No, time is not a straight line (though if you're a Doctor Who fan like me, you're already aware of this fact!).
I began my letter skeptically, then remembered -- I had gotten a message from a future me while writing my daily pages a few days previous, being told about the Artist in me (something I will need another blog post to expand upon!). She told me what I should be focusing my attention on, working through, and that the Work is what matters.
My Moleskine sketchbook has become my Adventure Journal; I work in it daily, and carry it with me wherever I go, pulling it out to record where I am, what I'm experiencing. It's a lot like a memory device; I can better recall an event if I was drawing/doodling at the same time. And the cover is quickly being taken over by stickers from the indie bands I've seen in the last month (as well as an art sticker of my own!).
I doodled while the Love Leighs played Thursday evening, on my friend's front porch. Dawn recently posted her own scribbles and said: "I’ve realized that if I do them in a more scribbly way, the form is more forgiving and I’m not so worried about making them “perfect”." By doodling and scribbling, I feel like I captured their movement, their melodies, their words, the way the faerie lights made them glow, how two of them weren't wearing any shoes. I journaled a bit about how music in such intimate surroundings feels like a connection through the years, back to an earlier time, before the internet and YouTube and downloading CDs. When people would gather and sing and play and share life.
I ended my night drinking the remainder of a friend's bottle of wine straight from the bottle (and shared it with the band's upright bass player). As my conversation ebbed and flowed outside the front door, the players changing as the night wained, I found myself peeling off the label and slapping it in my journal. On-the-spot journaling, indeed!
Of course, I had to share my doodle with the band. It's not my best, but they were still touched. And I'm feeling more and more alive as I bring together art and adventure and a body that's no longer fighting against me.
On the lighter side, here is the video I recorded when I hit 1,000 newsletter subscribers, and gave them last week as a thank you (as well as a few other not-seen-elsewhere-things). I have a new set-up, and time between clients (so hire me...I have time!), and have really learned SO MUCH in the past five months about recording & editing & directing & business & so much more, that I wanted to start making videos for myself again.
(Also, I've decided to see if dosage changes with some meds may help with the fatigue and general yuckiness-I-can't-stay-awake-ness, and so far, I've gotten dressed today and am wearing a messy top bun and glasses, since TBD on Pinterest said it is fashionable. I think I still look like a nerdy artist who doesn't like hair in the way when she paints or reads, but hey...that's why they're fashion experts and I blog about art and life. Feeling better today. Got lots of love getting the word out about my awesome $10-off sale for Going Further...really, it's like 3 e-classes' worth of info, inspiration, and so much more...a massive brain-dump of my favorite projects and techniques....you should really grab it if you want to be journaling from now until summer. (I have even uploaded a preview w/ a lesson you can download!) Please help a girl out? I'm not telling you to pay, I'm asking if you would. [you can always donate if you so choose.] Letting my vulnerability hang out here, and man, is it hard. Go watch the video. It's good and fun and artsy and I babble. Are you still reading this side note? Cause I've got a book calling my name from my comfy bed, and a puppy to cuddle with. XOXO, Samie)
I read a blog post -- the link escapes me, now -- about how we present these images of ourselves on Facebook and social media that can be created for 'likes,' images of a together-life. It got me thinking of something I encountered recently that had me realizing social media and blogging is only one aspect of our lives...we want to be positive and upbeat, shading all the amazing experiences we're having.
But what about the rest of it? What picture of our lives are we painting?
You may see photos of me art journaling with friends, or off at CHA, yes. But what you don't see are the text messages to friends having to cancel on friends. The tearful breakdown I had walking from the convention center to the hotel, camera gear and junk on my shoulders, the longest walk in a long time fraught with pain and limping and the solid wall of a flare-up. You don't see night spent curled up in a chair because of overwhelming fatigue and a headache that appears, nearly every night, around 6pm.
You don't see the depressive moods that come on at any moment -- I recently read the best quote about chronic pain and depression (the entire article is well worth the five minutes it'll take you to read): "...chronic pain may cause secondary depression (wouldn't you get depressed and down if you were hurting constantly for months or years?)..." How I can suddenly turn sad and have to force myself to not sign onto Facebook because I always post sad things that I regret hours later.
But that doesn't mean I dwell. It doesn't mean life is full of acceptance. Sure, I spent two hours in bed watching silly 80's BBC shows this afternoon, but I also went out for lunch with a friend and worked on a painting for an hour. I'm curled up in my chair again, but my Couch Box is next to me and I'll doodle & draw in my art journal for a little bit.
Life isn't all or nothing. It is living in the moment and enjoying the best of each we're given. Perhaps we could all be a little more honest when posting, showing our true, messy, broken selves -- and all the beauty we can create from it.
I was given fabric pigtails tonight to make me feel better. It's amazing what a bit of shimmering fabric and a sense of cuteness can do!
Like many of you, I have a big basket of washi tape that only seems to be growing, but I was clueless on what to use it for!
I'm not a scrapbooker, or one who makes cards. I've seen adorable projects on Pinterest and a few of my favorite crafting blogs, but they don't lend themselves to what I'm creating. I try to grab tapes in patterns I think I'll use enough to justify an entire roll, and have been traded many that I may not have liked at first, but fallen in love with.
Sure, I've taped down papers, photos, or different elements with washi tape in my art journals and a few paintings, and have started using them as collage elements themselves, but...how and where to use these delicious rolls of addictive happiness?
A few months ago, I was reminded of this post of Julie Balzer's, where she mentions using masking tape along the seams of her journal spreads to keep ink, paint, and more from bleeding through the stitching -- who hasn't had that happen to them before? This genius solution had me using masking tape in my own journals until, one day, I grabbed a thicker washi tape instead...and a favorite technique was born!
I now start my pages by looking through my collection and trades and grabbing one or two that grab me....the colors, pattern, etc. I may put one stripe down the entire thing, or patchwork them like seen above.
Since I'm not a huge fan of spreads, they can help separate two pages with a nice vertical line as well as influence what colors I'll be using on the pages.
Or maybe not! Sometimes, the tape gets colored and drawn over in spots, turning into just another element.
But it definitely saves the seam from leaks. Yes, it resists inks, as seen above, but paints and India Ink stick, as well as crayons, acrylics, and paint markers!
And at times, it sticks out, a border, simple, text, a bit of tinted color.
And at times, I create before I can get to it, and add it later, the layers underneath peeking through.
I'm using so much more of my tape, now, and just adore how it looks, no matter how I use it! These are just a few ideas of what you can do...how else do you think you could use washi tape to protect the seams in your art journals?
Last year, after seeing Elsie and, well, Elise, reflect on each year upon their birthdays and create goals for the next year, I decided to make a list of 28 things I'd like to accomplish while 28.
And then promptly forgot about it.
When I started using my Moleskine again last month, I rediscovered the list, and was surprised to find I had unconsciously accomplished many of the goals I'd made! I can't even describe it...as I went down the list and checked things off, my jaw dropped...and knew I'd just made a tradition I'd continue for the rest of my life.
(The quote on the left is a John Green quote, from one of my favorite novels, The Fault in Our Stars.)
I did write an e-book this year, over 120+ pages of my favorite art journaling techniques, Going Further.
While I didn't teach a camera class, I did tutor Roben-Marie in camera work and editing.
I taught at my first retreat in December.
I visited Roben-Marie & Carissa in Florida, and my best friend from HS/College Amber, in Los Angels.
Art Journal Diary made me $1000 in one month (It was one of two high-profit months for me!)
Born Brave was born as Creative Warriors in the beginning of 2013.
I sold a few prints at First Friday this month...
... & hung five paintings at a gallery in downtown Phoenix.
I swam in the Atlantic twice.
I have made way more than three new connections this year!
Since going gluten-free in September, I have lost 23 lbs and gone down 2 dress sizes.
I adore my long, wavy hair.
I have experimented with oils, pan pastels, and texture mediums.
Since teaching regularly in-person since last year, I have become oh-so-confident at sharing what I know with others.
I may not have biked in the mountains, but I did spend four days in them.
Jen is an amazing mentor and friend!
I've chatted with and helped a few others with their journaling.
Carissa Paige is a soul-sister in so many ways, renewing my faith in finding those who just know you.
I have connected with others, set up an alter, and replaced my saints' medals.
My stock of flowy skirts has increased by three.
I can only imagine what 29 has in store for me!
(My darling parents bought me a new cup (if you've met me IRL, you've probably seen me with a blue plastic cup in-hand, as I bring it everywhere...but it broke in December, and then I left it at Frenzy Stamper, so yay...new one!) and some Molotow paint markers. YUM!)
