Tag: writing

Book break

PiaBooks & reading

Sometimes I need to zone out from real life, and now apparently is one of those times. So instead of being busy doodling in my repurposed books (I’m planning for 7 with each its own theme, but I only have 5 so far) I’ve been reading and not much else. These breaks are usually very univited, I’d just figured out that acrylic paint doesn’t work in the books because the pages stick together and my promarkers don’t work well on gessoed pages. Doh. I’d tested them on acrylic only… So I splurged on a little box of pastel chalks just yesterday to force the flow, but alas, it’s not how it works. My body reminds me not very kindly, that I’m not really in contol 😉

pastel

This weekend I’ve been through “Labyrinth” by Kate Mosse and “People of the Book” by Geraldine Brooks. On the table are “Of Marriageable Age” by Sharon Maas, an equally brick thick book by a Danish author and “The untethered soul” by Michael Singer (so, it had a horse on it…). I may have another browse thorugh Hugh MacLeod’s “Ignore everybody And 39 other keys to Creativity“. On order from the library are Kate Mosse “Sepulchre“, Felix Palma “The Map of the Sky” and Anne Lamott “Bird by Bird“. I hope that will be enough to see me through to the other side!

ubundne bogensfolk labyrint herskere sepul The-Map-of-the-Sky ignore bird_by_bird_lr

Bogpause

Pause fra mine hjemmelavede skitsebøger og pause til at læse. Trænger nogen gange til at bare stene og lade verden gå sin egen gang uden mig… Ikke af lyst, for jeg vil egentlig hellere fortsætte med mine projekter, men kroppen tager over og bestemmer noget andet.

Her op til og i weekenden har jeg læst “Labyrint” af Kate Mosse og “Bogens folk” af Geraldine Brooks. Nu venter “De ti herskere” af Christian Mørk, “I giftefærdig alder” af Sharon Moss samt “den ubundne sjæl” af Michael Singer og på biblioteket er bestilt “Sepulchre” af Kate Mosse, “The Map of the Sky” (den er vist ikke oversat endnu, men “Tidskortet” er) af Felix Palma og “Bird by Bird” af Anne Lamott. Så håber jeg at jeg har nok til jeg igen dukker frem af tågen! 😉 Jeg skal jo i gang med at lege med mine nye pastelkridt som jeg købte i går, dels fordi jeg ikke kunne få de sprayflasker jeg gik efter (som man bl.a. kan bruge med skabeloner til at lave art journaling baggrunde), dels fordi jeg har fundet ud af at akrylmaling ikke duer i bøger, siderne klistrer sammen, og mine fine dyre tusser tegner ikke så godt ovenpå gesso. Doh. Jeg havde kun testet dem ovenpå, ja akrylmaling!!

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Jeg har et spørgsmål til de danskere som evt. læser: vokspapir, hvor finder man det? Det skal være mere vokset end bagepapir, altså så man kan bruge det som mellemlæg ved sider som ikke er helt knastørre uden at det hænger i.

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Daily doodle

PiaChit Chat

It’s all the rage on creative blogs – a post a day, a collage a day, a journal page a day, a photo a day, a heart a day, 365 days challenges.

poodle
A Dpoodle a today.

And it makes sense, if you want to keep the flow, get in the groove. You need to show up every day and do your thing. For a long long time I didn’t, I let life run me over, I was exhausted and kept saving my ideas for tomorrow. “It’ll soon get better, and then…” turned into years… But I’ve learned recently, if I want to get it done, I need to get started. No matter what life looks like today.

Being me, I do know however that a fixed project commitment every day doesn’t work for me. Making it a duty, heck, that’s why I became self-employed so I wouldn’t have to show up on time for somebody else’s gig, you know, the sun is shining, perfect time to go riding at 11 am! (or paint – don’t get many hours in winter).

Besides, once I begin thinking about it, I can suddenly imagine doing a doodle a day, a written something a day, a painting excercise a day, a yarn a day, a photo a day, a knit-one-row-a-day project, a cartoon character a day, an index card sketch a day, a horse a day….. (see, I’m making lists again!)

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I also have a list of things I’d like to study, artsy as well as “bookish”. Schedule a day where that’s what I’m doing for xx hours a week. But I need to take it slow because I know what happens if I don’t. Multitasking is poison to the soul!

So I’m not going to commit to any one particular thing a day, because suddenly life happens and I’m off in another direction for a while. But, starting with my converted book I’ll try to show up every day and do “something”, not just gab or think about it (which I’m really good at as you’ve gathered). I have plenty of little things I want to do that are not art in themselves but preparations to make art, such as stencils for use on book pages and elsewhere. Font research. Great for days when art scares you, but you still want to feel some accomplishment.

In fact I think I may have so much fun with it that I started on its partner. I even looked for the part 5+6 that I knew I’d seen, but I’ve thrown out quite a few books over the last years, both my own, to make more room on my shelves, since I’ve reached the limit for more shelves, as well as my MIL stash that lived in the loft for a while. The stash, not the MIL. So they were gone, and recently too as I recall, when deciding I couldn’t be bothered reading them. A whole stack, same size, different designs, would have been cool though! Maybe.

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The covers are a work in progress. The pages I either slather with gesso, making the old paper more sturdy as well as preventing markers from bleeding through to the other side. It contains chalk, so it dries quickly and also makes a porous surface suitable for inks and watercolors. Or I sometimes use leftover paint from something else to make a little background that I can later use for collage or paint something else on top. If you add a lot of medium you allow the text to be seen through the colour, you can even use matt acrylic medium to get the same effect as gesso but keep the text. I pull out every 4-5 pages so it doesn’t get monster thick when I add all those things, the spine being the width it is.

The thing about this project is no pressure. I don’t need to get an idea to work on it, I just mindlessly add a bit of paint and maybe something likeable comes out of it. I haven’t wasted expensive paper if it doesn’t, but maybe it’ll keep me in or get me into that flow. It feels like it’s now or else – having wasted all that precious time already. So this is my way of reminding myself over and over that a new software is being installed. I’m going to drag my resistant twin kicking and screaming into the century of the fruitbat.

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Maybe eventually I’ll come up with something that I’d actually like to document and collect every day, for now I’m publishing my intentions so feel free to check up on me and keep me to it. 😉

In return I promise not to actually pester you with my antics daily. Maybe just a special doodle once in a blue moon?

But just to make it harder on myself, I’d like to hear your ideas for “something a day”. Do you think it’s a good idea/routine/challenge and why?

Blog block?

PiaChit Chat

Funny old world, just as you think you’re on a roll, you land in a patch of mud. And where I live, we get really serious mud, the soapy slippery, boot sucking kind of mud that turns into concrete in summer. Full stop, the harder you pull at one boot, the deeper the other one sinks…..

So here I am with 33 drafts in my queue and nothing to write about, mind ambling about like birds that forgot the route to Africa. Right, so chill it, don’t write and do something else! “But then all my new friends will forget about me,” a small peevish voice mumbles at the back of my head. Besides, I like writing, and this blog was supposed to be a warm-up for something else entirely. So darnit, I’m going to write something today, I haven’t the faintest idea what it’ll be about, I’ll just let one sentence form after another, or even word by word. Which incidentally is a fun experiment in itself, try it! Decide on NO subject, just sit still, write the first word that forms without trying to control the next. Over and over. No second guessing, just wait in silence.

Can’t have a blog post without pictjers of course, so I get to fool around my very messy image library, or maybe even have a look at those 1000’s of photos that live outside the computer in dusty folders and boxes?

Kitten Arthur has developed new table manners here beside me, picking out one tiny bit, flicking it onto the table, chasing and catching it before eating. Well, I guess it keeps him out of other trouble, amuses me and now he needs a cuddle so I don’t have to think about writing… I keep his food on the windowsill here, so the bit fat guys don’t eat it, they’re on special slimline for neutered cats stuff. I just wish he’d stop trampling the keyboard on his way from here to there.

So anyway, I could write about autumn, and all the colour combinations that keep exploding inside my head. Or take a tour of websites and images that inspire me too. Or I could get dressed and go move some firewood into the shed. 😉 It’s looks like rain though, tea and random fall photos would do me just fine.

And now it seems I get to spend the day watching over a cat who will NOT pee in a special litter box for sampling whether she has an infection. Oh joy. And I saw another kitten online that I wanna wanna wanna get! For Arthur to chew on instead of my fingers…..

Enough rambling for today – nothing interesting seems to be happening in my brain – enjoy the pix while I go boil some cloths!