Creative Clown

Oh My Word – March

I am late with this post, which ties in perfectly with my word for this year. Acceptance.

I suck at a lot of stuff. Really. Especially if it has to do with follow through, commitment or responsibility. I used to call myself undisciplined and immature. But since I’ve been practicing acceptance I just call myself Zura Beth

Focusing on the word acceptance, and ways that I can bring it into my life has already brought about some changes. Nothing earth shattering, but subtle changes that indicate it’s working to try to be more accepting of myself.

So, I am going to accept that I didn’t post this March update until the 13th of March. And I’m going to accept that I can’t find the paper where I wrote the activities for each month. And instead of posting an activity, I am going to ask you to do something. Will you leave a comment on this post and let me know if you are seeing any results from focusing on the word you chose for this year? If not, do you think you know why not? I’d love to hear from you and know how it’s going with your word mission so far.

My First Hand Bound Journal

I finally took a picture of the journal I bound. I learned how by watching Rice Freeman Zachary’s video here.

I used a comp book for the cover. I removed the paper by cutting the threads. Then I folded watercolor paper into 5 signatures with 4 pages in each one. The next part is where Rice’s video was so helpful. You have to plan out where your sewing stitiches will be and she has a great trick using grid paper. Mine isn’t perfect but it’s much better than I expected for my first try. I painted the cover black and glued on a page from Frida Kahlo’s diary. I want to make more!!!

Finally Finished the Magazine Rack

Whew!! We took it all apart thinking it would be easier to paint, but it was a major deal to re-assemble it!! There were lots of pieces to paint, but I finally got it done! In the picture below, you can see the back side of the little insert that I covered with zebra tissue paper. The original was a thin piece of wood with flowers cut out.

These are the end pieces.

GPP Street Team – Crusade 38

The challenge this month from Michelle Ward’s GPP Street Team Crusade 38 is to paint tissue paper with gesso and acrylic while you are doing the same on your journal pages, then apply the tissue paper layers.

I admit I did three spreads before I got one I liked. The first two just didn’t look like my work. I had not painted tissue paper before so I was just trying to follow directions. When I wasn’t successful, I stopped and thought about the process. I asked myself, “why are we using tissue paper?”, “why do I want to do this?”. Then I realized it was a way to add color and layers. I’ve done this often with painted and printed papers, so I approached it the third time like I would if I were using paper instead of tissue. And, I like this final spread.

I painted the pages gold and while it was drying I painted a piece of white tissue paper with red, lime green and gold. Then I glued down some pink and brown polka dot tissue and pink and brown striped tissue. I covered that with white acrylic spread on with a credit card. Over that I used pink acrylic on a checkered rubber stamp, and lime green acrylic on a homemade foam stamp. I cut a heart from my painted tissue and glued it on the left page. I stamped a foam heart-in-a-square stamp with white acrylic and glued it on the right page. I tore random pieces from the painted tissue and glued them on the bottom of the pages. Lastly I scribbled randomly with a graphite pencil.

I am enjoying these challenges very much. Thank you, Michelle!

Old Furniture and New Things

Mister had no concept of junking when I met him. He’s been to a few garage sales, but he NEVER took anything out of a dumpster, for sure! Since he met me he has learned that I find value in many things he previously considered trash.

During a January snow storm, he went to pick up some dinner one night. On his way home he saw a vintage wooden magazine rack discarded in the alley. Bless his heart, he got out in the snow storm to retrieve it and bring it home to me! When he came in with it, I said, “PLEEEASE tell me you got this in the alley!” He was so proud of himself, and I fell a little deeper in love with him. He told me he thought it would be good to keep my journaling stuff in. Is he a keeper, or what?

I forgot to take a before picture of it, and I’m painting it now, so will post after pics when I’m done.

Tonight we passed a lovely old wooden chair in the alley and all I had to do was look at him, and he went with me to get it and drag it home. Here it is:

I can’t wait to get started painting it! I am making myself finish the magazine rack before I start on this, though. I’m going to paint it red to match the furniture on our front porch, and sit it out there. We already have a lawn couch and a table.

I bound my first book!! I put watercolor paper in a comp book cover and sewed it with stab binding (I think that’s what it’s called). If you want to learn how, go to youtube and search for ricefz. She has a good vid to learn the binding technique. So now, I’m hooked and want to do more!! I want to do one with a leather cover and put beads on the threads on the spine.

We are planning a trip in Apr to go to TX and see my kids. I am so excited!! I miss them, and I miss Texas. I’m looking forward to some really good Mexican food. Seems the further away you get from the Mexican border, the worse the Mexican food gets.

Lucy Baribeau’s Diary Project

Lucy Baribeau has just opened sign-ups for artists to submit art for her next yearly calendar/diary. It’s a great opportunity to share your art for her yearly publication. Check it out here.

EDIT: I mistakenly said this was Suzan Buckner’s project when I originally posted it. The links are correct but it is Lucy Baribeau that is doing it, not Suzan. My aplogies to both Lucy and Suzan.

Love, Proposals and Fish With Blue Lips

Valentine’s Omens

Last year on Valentine’s Day, Randy and I found this rock on the edge of a brook. We thought it was great sign that we found a heart on valentine’s day, when we were newly in love and planning our wedding.

This year we found another sign on Valentine’s Day. Ironically, it more of a “domestic” sign. We through our vegetable scraps out under a tree in our backyard to compost. On Valentine’s Day, I was taking a picture of some squirrels when I found this onion scrap.

We were pretty excited. We are wondering if we’ll find a heart sign every year on Valentine’s Day.

Woodpecker, More Love, and Fish

This guy has been in our yard several days over the past week. I don’t know if you can tell from the picture, but the hole he is working on is huge! When I took this picture, he had been out there about two hours. They are so beautiful!

Last Sunday my stepson, Tyler, proposed to his girlfriend at the Oklahoma Aquarium. It was so cute. I took her to the aquarium under false pretenses. He got there early and dressed up in a shark suit. When he got to the part of the aquarium where he was, I asked her to have her picture taken with the shark and he pulled the costume head off, got on one knee and proposed. It was so neat, and she was soo sooo shocked!!

Since we were at the aquarium anyway, we took in the sights. My favorite was this fish that appears to have on blue lipstick. I just want to paint his (her?) portrait!!

Art I’ve Done Lately

A while back I saw this multi-post tutorial at An Artist Journal on what she calls intuitive collage. It’s a good tutorial and I thought it would be cool to try it. I had fun, and want to try again, but I only got two 5 x 7 collages out of a large sheet of watercolor paper. I know that doesn’t make sense, but the idea is to paint and glue things on a large paper then find the smaller collages within that and cut them out. Here are the two I liked of mine.

xxx

This heart is something I did after watching some youtube videos of an artist named Carla van den Berg. She does these awesome paintings using grout, eggshells and something called chicken grit. So much texture!! Just beautiful. So I did the background then used a heart stencil and filled it in with grout. This was practice so it’s not that great, but I learned that the grout does work and you can play with the texture because it takes a long time to dry. I have an idea for a larger one I want to do. I’m thinking about entering an art show here in April. If I can get this technique to work as I want, I might enter it.

One more heart. I love this one!! I just slapped coats of paint and lots of gesso on this canvas in many layers, then scratched the heart with an icepick. It’s simple but I like the look of pristine white over something that apprears to have weathered many storms.

Waking Up Class Registration is Open

This is a course that I dreamed of teaching for many years before I actually wrote it and sold it the first time. It is a class that enables women to freely explore and learn about themselves in a creative and non-threatening way. Through the lessons I share the methods I have learned from many years of self exploration, leading to mygrowth in being able to nurture myself, forgive myself and face the hard things in life with confidence and optimism.

Some people reach adulthood with the ability to handle life with finesse and balance, but most of us don’t. Especially women. We have so many things we are responsible for that we usually are just running to try and keep up. Who has time to slow down and look inside? I sincerely believe that is the reason for stress related diseases, sadness, discontentedness and many other issues we face.

If you would like to acknowledge your worth, and give yourself just ten weeks (one lesson per week) to explore the methods I’ve found to be successful for the the past twenty years, then please join me in Waking Up to the Real You. To sign up, go here.

Winter Blues and Drawing

This winter has been challenging for me. We have had an usually cold and snowy winter which has kept me in most of the time. I am an extrovert and need a lot of people around to keep me energized. I have gradually felt my energy draining and now I am at a low point, and really looking forward to spring. I find it hard to do what I want to do each day. I feel like I’m walking through molasses.

I have kept up with drawing something each day. Below are a few more things I’ve drawn and scanned. Lately I’ve been doing some drawing lessons I found at Toad Hollow Studio. She has some good basic drawing tutorials. I’ve enjoyed the ones that teach how to use the pencil to shade and to get smooth or textured lines. I am doing a bit more advanced lessons now and they are challenging and I find myself feeling frustrated. That is why I can’t draw! When it gets tough, I want to quit. The most challenging thing for me is getting the parts of the whole where they are supposed to be. I’m trying to learn to sketch it in first but I get things all out of whack and want to throw it down. Patience is not my virtue

Art Journal Writing Process

When I do art journal pages, my main purpose is to write. I love doing art to create a page to write on, but I don’t create a piece of art in my journal. I create a page that allows me to write because writing is the way I document my life. I write about my experiences, my gratitude and I write about problems and issues I’m dealing with.

What I want to share through Creative Clown is both the art I do on pages and the writing process. I want to share this because it truly has made my life much, much richer and has helped me move forward and have a much better life. The problem I’ve encountered in being able to share this with you, is this: my writing process is intuitive so it’s been difficult for me to know how to share this process. But this morning as I was writing in my journal, right in the middle of writing about an issue, I could see the process I was using. I was able to break in down into explainable steps. I’m excited that I can finally share it with you.

Here is the basic idea, but you need to keep in mind, that it is a process, so as you are going through the steps, things will arise that will affect the flow, so go with what comes up for you. You may get off on another thought or have other things you need to write. This is a guide only. Below the guide you will see where I have shown an example of how I used the guide.

1. Write out the problem in a few words.

2. Who does it affect?

3. Who is responsible for finding a solution?

4. Who might help me find a solution?

Before you go on to step 5, go back to step 2 and under each person you listed, answer “How?”
Go to step 3 and under each person you listed, answer, “Why?”
Go to step 4 and under each person you listed, answer, “How?”

5. Possible solutions.

By the time you get here, you probably have thought of some solutions. Write each one out, but leave space under each one.
After you’ve written each possible solution, go back and under each one answer “Is this a good solution?” and answer it yes, no or maybe.
On the ones you write maybe or no, answer the question “Why not”.

Again, I want to stress that this isn’t nearly as linear as it appears in an outline. It’s an intuitive process and if you can just follow the guidelines, while allowing yourself to go where it takes you, you will find solutions. That is why it’s important to write the first four steps, before you go back and answer the questions under each area. By the time you’ve written those first four things, you will already be getting answers, but it’s not really a question and answer type process. Just write out the problem and who it affects, etc without stopping so that you will already be naturally seeking solutions.

Here is my example of how I used the process with a particular problem:

PROBLEM:
I can’t find my style in art – I like too many different styles to settle on one.

WHO DOES IT AFFECT?
Me
How? I spend more time worrying about it then painting.
It keeps me from selling art.
It takes away my confidence.
I am not making money.

Randy
How? He doesn’t have me as a happy partner when I’m worrying about this.
I’m not selling art and bringing in money.

WHOSE RESPONSIBILITY IS IT TO FIND A SOLUTION?
Me
Why? It’s a personal thing. No one can tell me what my style is.

WHO MIGHT COULD HELP FIND A SOLUTION?
Artists I admire
How? I could look at their anrt and see how they incorporate different looks, colors and media into one style.
I could write them and ask for guidance.
Randy
How? Tell him what I’m struggling with so I’m not dealing with it alone.

POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS
View the work of artists I admire.
Is this a good solution? yes

Write artists I admire and ask for guidance.
Is this a good solution? Maybe
Why? I feel silly and intimidated.

Talk to Randy.
Is this a good solution? yes

Spend more time painting.
Is this a good solution? yes

Put art up for sale whether I have a style or not.
Is this a good solution? yes.

If you use the process I’d love to hear from you. I’m happy to discuss it with you if you get stuck or need help with it.

Lastly, I”m going to show you an image of a journal page where I’ve worked out a problem. You’ll see that I don’t use an outline, I just write in a natuaral way that takes me through the steps.

process1 300x204 Art Journal Writing Process

Click to see larger image

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