Kids and Moms, Wreck This Journal and 59-63

Cover Page/Wreck This Journal/Draw Popsiple trees, Mommy!
59/100 in 100 creative challenge
pitt artist pens
(this and all following pictures from Wreck This Journal, by Keri Smith)

I'm trying to finish my book this week. I don't think I will totally finish, but I'm making a good effort. A lot of the pages are half done, so I just need to find my focus and wreck with intention. Or wreck randomly, really.

This post is child directed.

These are all pages that have been wrecked by my children or pages that have been directed by my children.

The cover page, for instance, was created because Ivy required that I draw "popsiple trees." She is obsessed with them.

As you will see by the following pages.

More Popsiple Trees, Mommy!/Instructions
60/100 in 100 creative challenge
pitt artist pens, diptych

Red!

Green!

Black!

They told me, and I had to figure out a way to make it work. Kind of interesting being instructed by bother Keri Smith and my children.

I particularly like the gray/black/green page.

Nice color combo. And the trees growing out of the words are whimsical and graphic at the same time. I could see using this somewhere else in the future.

Number Page
61/100 in 100 creative challenge
collage, newspaper, gold paint pen

It says here 1234canihavealittlemore5678910iloveyou... I don't know if my lyrics are wrong. I don't care.

Okay. This isn't child directed, oh well.
BLANK (double sided)
62/100 in 100 creative challenge
acrylic, pitt artist pen
BLANK (back side)

Kind of a post modern take on the instructions. She said to leave it blank.

Rather than ignore it. I blanked it. And I traced the blankness on the other side.

What does it really mean to be blank, anyway? What if your intention is blankness?

The opposite page is my intention of moving on and letting go of the past. Moving forward. It is awaiting the flame.

1st Ave Riding Sketch
63/100 in 100 creative challenge
pen, watercolor, pitt artist pen

Also not child driven. But drawn with them in the back seat on the way to the grocery store. don't worry I wasn't driving.

When things slide past you so fast, it's hard to capture exactly what's there. However, it wasn't as bumpy as I thought it would be. Watercolor was added later, as was the writing.
not counting this one in my creativity totals.

I couldn't bear to chew on the page. So I had Ivy do it. She didn't like it much, but she enjoyed doodling on the page. I think this is kind of her "writing." I think she might have signed it.
This is Ivy's page, too. Also not counting it in my totals, as it's hers.

She's been working on it for a while. She wants to use my markers, which she isn't allowed to usually. I don't know what she's trying to convey here, quite.

Here is Gabriel's page. Not my creative challenge, either, but I do know what he is trying to convey. He's into designing houses, lately. He wants to build a dog house, but this is a people house. Oh, we have no dog.

He's got kitchens and living rooms and gardens and bedrooms and a reading room for mama. :)

What have I been learning from this Wreck This Journal?

I think I have been learning to loosen up and let go and stop putting so many constraints around my creativity. Freedom? Not a bad thing.

I think I have also discovered that I miss my personal journal. I think I'd like to take it up again, not just journaling on my blog but in my pen and paper journal.

And I think I want to get back to artjournaling.

You wouldn't believe how long I've been painting in books. I should share some of the stuff I've done over the years. I even made my own chapbook of art and poetry one year. Before all the digital photography and my own blogging. Old school photocopies and hand binding. It took forever.

There are fewer boundaries than we would think. We have more freedom than we know.

Of course, true freedom is scary as hell.

Say Yes to Life, WTJ 55-58

Say Yes to Life
55/100 in 100 creative challenge
Golden Fluid Acrylic
(this and all following images taken from my Wreck this Journal, by Keri Smith)

I've been working on a lot of things. Some of these things are artistic in nature. Some of them are business. Some of them are daily living. And some of them are about higher purpose, sense of self, balance and grounding.

I still feel guilty counting these images in my total creativity challenge project, but I've been putting a lot of energy into my Wreck This Journal, as I just realized our book club is almost over.

I paint and collage and draw and doodle and ponder all day long, even while the kids are awake.

When I first heard of this book, I didn't think I needed it. I knew how to do an art journal. I knew how to deconstruct my life and how to get over the perfectionist hump.

But these are not things you learn once and then don't have to bother with. The amazing thing about living is that lessons are never ending. Nothing is static. What you think you have mastered merely becomes the stepping stone for what you have next to learn.

This image here is an idea I've been working on in my life for a while now. After painting it here, I think it might make a nice print. Hmm. Maybe something for my shop?
Say Yes to Life/Yes
diptych

Slowly, I am starting to get my groove back.

It's so crazy how everything can be going so smoothly, and something puts a bump in your smoothness and all of a sudden the whole road gets rocky.

Maybe it's just coincidence, maybe it's being thrown off a rhythm.

Whatever it is, I'm working on getting the positivity back, the center, and the momentum.

Start (just begin) (detail)
56/100 in 100 creative challenge (part of diptych)
Pitt artist pens, gold paint pen

It's really hard to see how that path is going to go when you are just beginning down it. You don't see how you will get to that long distant goal of the cradling hills.

But you just have to start. You just have to keep going in your baby step, slow going, non stop line of life. It goes on twists and turns.
Start (just begin)
56/100 in 100 creative challenge ( diptych)
Pitt artist pens, gold paint pen

I have no idea what this says. Something about the journey and keep on going.

Well, what else are we gonna do? Lay down and give up?

"Just keep swimming" in the immortal words of Dory the fish.

Blind Map
57/100 in 100 creative challenge
Golden Fluid Acrylic, white and gold paint pens

More pages about the journey. About being lost. About looking for sign posts along the way.

Are there any?

I think there are, but they don't always mean what we think they mean.

Hard things are what you need. Easy things don't last. What you thought would be simple gets oh so complicated. What you thought would be complicated just kind of slips into your life with ease.

Yet we keep looking for these blind maps, trying to find the way in the darkness.

What if we aren't lost at all?

What if we aren't lost at all?
Make a Mess and Clean it Up
58/100 in 100 creative challenge
Mixed media, diptych

I've been doing this page for so long I don't remember what all I did to it, what media I used. It's a blind self portrait and it is many many layers of futzing. That's my interpretation of making a mess and cleaning it up. I started a portrait with the intention that it would be a mess, and I would keep going with it until it felt right and was no longer a mess.

Does it even look like me? I don't think that much, but that's not really important.

Maybe sometime I'll post the various stages of this one, and the reverse side of the page, which is really cool actually. Maybe I'll do something to the reverse and finish it off as a stand alone page.
Make a Mess and Clean it Up
58/100 in 100 creative challenge
Mixed media, diptych (detail)

This morning I felt the urge and knew what to do with the facing page. It was her hair, it was her mind, it was the message. So I drew it in and wrote in the words.

I like the way it turned out and I think it goes well with the highly worked/layered portrait of the other side.

It says

I am learning the lessons I need to learn and it's not easy. i learn to make my messes and to clean them up. failure is temporary.

say yes.

trust your strength.

Believe in yourself.

I'ma trying.

I have many more pages from the book. I two or three paintings in various stages of working. I have no time to post. I have no room to post!

I will have to be backed up until next time.

Oh well, I believe it will all come out all right.

Keep on wrecking. Keep on creating.

Keep on swimming.

49-54 and Thinking About Art

The Sign Says Yes
49/100
pen and ink, Pitt Artist Pen, gold paint pen, 5x8"
This and all following pictures are from my copy of Wreck This Journal, by Keri Smith


This is what my sign says. What I need to hear. What I need to think. No comes too easily to me.

For instance, I keep wanting to not count these Wreck This Journal pages as art. I don't want to count them in my creative challenge because I think I am cheating, but I am not. I keep thinking that all of my creative challenge pieces should be something to sell, but you know what? That's not good for my creativity. It's stifling. Which does not help the YES that I need.Ivy Likes to Paint, Just Not With Her Tongue.
50/100
tongue, crayola marker, pitt artist pen

My "no" wants to say that this is not art.

Lollipop Trees Directed by Ivy
51/100
Pitt Artist Pen

That this is not good enough or finished enough to be considered part of my creative challenge.

YOU SUCK
52/100
Pitt Artist Pen, hilighter, rollerball pen, diptych

My NO likes to say this a lot. This is one of my NO's favorite phrases. The other being, "I can't."
Time Passes in Moments
53/100
Pitt artist pen, diptych

My NO wants to say that this is just hatch marks so it couldn't possible be art, but then my YES (see first picture) reminds me that some of my favorite artists do not use figurative art. Or they use materials that will deteriorate. Or they write with chalk on public sidewalks. Or they factor graphic lines and casual marks into their work on a regular basis. Or repetition functions as a poetic metaphor.

The truth is, that this Wreck This Journal is about breaking out of the boundaries that we all set for ourselves. It is about taking chances and trying new things that we are not comfortable with. It is about experimenting and failing and making messes that we would never make if we were trying to make Art with a capital "A". Art for commerce. Art that other people will look at and say, now that's Art.
Night and Day
54/100
Pitt Artist Pen, Pen, Watercolor, Gel Pen, shower scrubbie. Diptych

Take a look at how I have squooshed all these pieces into one post, although there is something to say about each and every one. There is something to use in my "real" art. This is the mind working, the subconscious, happenstance, experimentations.

This is what art is about, not always about creating a perfect picture or something on canvas or something with masterful technique and craft.

Where is it going? That is the question, here. What path would this piece take me down? What can I utilize here in the next piece I do. Also, it serves as a survey, almost.

What is here in me? What are my thoughts? What are the marks I keep coming back to? What are the colors? What images, what themes, pull me again and again, and why do they?

This is about the exploration of the self, I believe, at least for me.

I don't know if I will ever do anything again with any of these pieces. they could stay stuck in my Wreck This Journal forever, mouldering away, for all I know, after visiting the book club.

But then again, they could lead to my next breakthrough. They could become the new connection. They could tell me what I should be doing with my life.

They've already gotten me thinking.

What about you? What is your current work saying to you about you? How can you break out of your comfort zone and travel to somewhere new?

Golden Traveling and Wreckage

Golden Traveling
43/100 in 100 Creative Challenge 7/14/09
Golden Fluid Acrylic on watercolor paper, 5"x8"

Here's a new one. Moving away from the washes, and back to thicker more painterly effects. I was inspired by yesterday's painting, which was orange, but I almost wrote as gold. I thought, hey! why not try a gold landscape? How would that work? If it doesn't work out, I still get a post out of it. This is actually gold and bronze paint, with white and a touch of green and a turquoise, which surprisingly ended up being the same color as was actually in the bronze paint if you let it sit and separate. Like oxidized copper.

The blue I had thought was the sky beneath the clouds... but when I looked again it seemed like mountains. So hey, whatever you want. It's supposed to be abstracted. And then when I was done, I waffled over putting in the light streaks of the other Travelings... was it a gimmick? Was it just thrown in there randomly because I'd done it before. I must have sat there for a good long time with the paint on my brush before deciding that I liked the streaks for the feeling of movement, along with the graphic, flattening element.
What is Left When I Close My Eyes, (Wreck This Journal)
44/100 in 100 Creative Challenge
Golden Fluid Acrylic, Gel Medium, Dryer Lint

Ha Ha! My first inclusion of Wreck This Journal into my 100 paintings in 100 days creative challenge. Let me tell you, with one readjusting of my personal constraints, my totals will shoot up and I will no longer need to feel like I HAVE to paint just to keep up my numbers. I will be free to experiment, to try new things, to be meaningful or explore things that are outside of my Flying Girls or Travelings or what have you.

This wreckage, for instance is from the page that says to collect your pocket lint. I don't have that much pocket lint, and often don't wear pockets and besides, I just didn't like the itsy bitsy pieces I was coming up with. And I remembered seeing some artist somewhere who used dryer lint in different shades, so I thought, what the hey? Why not? I took the lint out and folded it and cut it like a snowflake, then painted the page black, even the instructions. I've decided to not let the instructions rule my wreckage. Then I used gel medium to stick it on. I thought I'd collect more lint, but when I brushed the lint with my hand some of it came off and some of it dusted down onto the rest of the page. Instead, I decided to paint on it. I kind of like the way it came out although I don't know what it means or anything.
Breathe and Release (Wreck This Journal)
45/100 in 100 creative challenge
Golden Fluid Acrylic and Lavender shower gel.

This is the page marked "infuse this page with scent." The kid dumped all my essential rose oil out.. so my night table infused with roses, but I remember reading that to make regular moleskine paper work with watercolors was to wash it with dishsoap, so why not use this pretty smelling soap and mix it with my paint? That's what I did. And it now makes me feel so good and calm whenever I open the book and take a breath in that I wrote about breathing and releasing on the page. Ahh.

There's more wreckage, but a lot of it is in progress. I think I'm using the instructions as kind of background for something that I want to say. Not just exercises for exercise sake, but as kind of prompts into exploration and creativity.

Morning Traveling

Morning Traveling #10
41/100 in 100
Golden Fluid Acrylic on watercolor paper, 5x8"

Slowly working on getting re-un-disorganized.

Making lists of what I need to do this summer. Breaking things down into tasks. Some I should get overwith quickly, if I could just go ahead and do.

I don't seem to be able to pay attention to my lists once I start them. I write a list and let them get lost and ignore them and go back to being confused until I work myself up to writing a list again.

I'm also rethinking my 100 paintings in 100 days goal. I want to continue, but I'm getting too stressed out at being a couple days behind and it's just no fun. It's a chore.

That is not my intention.

So I'm expanding to paintings and drawings. Should I include WTJ? Maybe I should. See the thing here is the journey.

Maybe in the back of my head, I am thinking that everything I do in my 100 in 100 project needs to be saleable. But the truth is, art is not really about the product, not for me. It's about the process. It's really awesome and wonderful to have a beautiful meaningful painting, but it's about what I learn while I am painting. Learn about painting. Learn about myself. Learn about the world.

So if that is true, then focusing only upon PRODUCT work means that my important process is shunted aside. Maybe that's why I feel like painting is a chore sometimes.

Wow. I think that's it.

I don't think it's a coincidence that almost all of the work I've done in the last year is focused around the journey. It's been one hell of a journey these last couple of years. In life and in art. In art and in life.

My paintings reflect that journey, document that journey, and are the very steps of that journey.

So you know what? There may be fewer flying girls and travelings and more... well... experimentation. And I'm counting WTJ from now on. I'm learning a lot from it. It's part of the journey.

Not coincidentally, that will get me caught back up to my 100 in 100 and i will no longer have to fear falling behind.

Traveling Treasury and Wreckage

My first news is very exciting for me. I grabbed my first etsy treasury. It's probably because it was the holiday weekend and not everyone is sitting around at home while little kids nap. But I did it! I got one. Woo Hoo!

It was so much fun. I have moving on my mind. I want to do a roadtrip across country, but I don't know if it will work out. We might have to go another route. BUT, the very concept inspired my window shopping and curating. The treasury is called Traveling, just like my aceos. These are almost all new shops to me, but most of them just popped right up in the search to be exactly what I wanted. Please take a look, it won't last long. In Wreckage news... somehow, I can't see taking my book into the shower. I just don't want to, and my shower is very tight. There isn't anywhere to put it but on the floor. Not willing to do that. So as an alternate, I put it out in the torrential downpour in the garden. There are puddles showing the rain drops.
I also dropped paint, in various dilutions and colors and then closed the book here to make a print. The kids really enjoyed watching this process. I did it color by color, rather than all the different colors together. And you can't really tell, but the last shade is gold, and it gives it a lovely butterfly wing kind of sheen.
This is the page that went along with my Traveling ACEOs. I actually kept the little cards on the paper as I painted. Part of the painting was drips and runs, so I let the ACEOs drip onto the page, as well as wiping and testing paint on the page. I like the color theme. I might add more lately.

I didn't do a whole lot of wreckage this week, but I am noticing that it is having an effect on my art. The experimentation of the book is leading me to things that draw me. Things like repetition and pattern, for instance. Using less figurative work and more conceptual. These are things I have used in the past, so maybe I'm just getting back to them.

I still am uncomfortable with letting go of things. Proabably why I didn't want to completely soak my book. I don't want to lose something that I like. I will work on it.

Flying Girl and the Break of Dawn, or I Hold The Night Within (and wreckage)

Flying Girl and the Break of Dawn, or I Hold The Night Within
25/100 in 100 creative project, 6/26/09
Golden Fluid Acrylic, white ink pen on paper, 5x8"

This is what the dawn looked like from my window as I lay in my bed with a child who had been woken by lightning in the middle of the night and refused to go back to sleep. More or less, my eyes were bleary.

But also, here is the internal landscape. In the dawn, we carry the night inside of us.... and in the night, we carry the dawn. The bird? Well... I guess there's something inside of her that keeps her flying, no matter the night, no matter the dawn.

For this week's book club entry, I took my Wreck This Journal for a walk with the family. We fixed the double stroller, now they only want to ride.

But the journal went on it's own two feet... er... multiple pages. The edges wore off a bit and the cover got smudged, but I was not as wreckeriffic as some of the hikers WTJ hikers I've seen. I'm okay with that. The leash is a nifty woven leather belt I found at a thrift store for a buck.
This is actually the second time I decorated my cover. The first time, which looked much like this but with a purple milk pen, got completely smudged and wiped out when I took the book for a walk. So I redid it in white. I like white on black. It probably reminds me of chalk boards, and all those years of being either a teacher or a student. Sometimes both at the same time.
Here is some more purple milk pen... covered by blue milk pen when the purple alone wasn't opaque enough to cover the letters. I like the way this looks. It took forever and my hand cramped up, but I still like it. This might be my favorite page. It makes me smile. Why? I don't know. I'm weird. I also like that I didn't follow the directions to the letter. Notice there is not one jot in the margins. I like the written page too much. Perhaps this is an ode to books. You can't read it anymore, although it didn't matter to begin with, but it still looks like language. It's still familiar and comforting. And the only word left un covered is "yes."
Here's my ugly page. It started when I realized how much I was yelling at the poor kids. Yes, they were ignoring me and making messes and fighting and all that, but still. Ugly mommy. G said it didn't look like me, but oh well. There's also scared/overwhelmed me... which is perhaps where the yelling me came from. On the same page is G's prompt of ugly things having a hundred legs. Then he said it looked like a centipede. And then there are the cockroaches... palmetto bugs, that are huge and fly... both dead and alive. The dead ones don't fly, but they lay on their back and occasionally kick their legs and grab onto the broom when you try to sweep them out the door. *shudder* Also the little poop in the potty. Yuck. The ripped screen window, which lets in evil mosquitos. The dirty foot prints from walking around barefoot on top of scattered cheerios and bananas and whatever else my children shed every minute of their beings. The cheerios and dust underneath the sofa. Oh yes, and little kids waking in the dark of night and not going back to sleep. Ugh. This is all in shades of black, dark gray, dark brown, with a smidgeon of stale pee yellow and oh yeah... a touch of red for the burn of a mosquito bite that has been scratched too much.

Wreck This Journal Some More

Fun times with opposite hands. There's a bit of Rightie bias in this book... as the directions didn't take into account that many people are left handed. I took the adaptation into my own, ahem... hands. Left and right. They make a nicely symmetrical drawing.

I love contour drawing. And blind contour can be so much fun and so surprising and such a good test of what we "think" a picture should look like. But this isn't blind. I looked.
One word over and over. "believe." except for the solo circled word over in the top right corner. That was a typo from the repetition. "be live" it says. I found that to be profound. And when I was done, I felt compelled to paste the fern onto the page. so I did.
This is a magnolia leaf, I believe. It is beautifully brown and leathery on one side and suedish on the other. My son gave it to me. I thought it was so attractive that pasted it in the book. Now I don't want to fill the page up with any other botanical specimens, I just want it there, solo. I might paint away the directions and do some patterns to hi light the lonely grace.

I find that I do something to a page, then come back to it much later. I have many half formed pages. I don't know what they are going to end up being.

Our bookclub for Wreck This Journal, by Keri Smith.

Wreck it baby, Wreck it.... no really

Been working on my journal. Painting messes, ripping pages... here I painted warm colors on the front and cool colors on the back before ripping. Then stapling the pages together. I'm not sure I like the way it turned out. I might wreck it some more.
Then the "lose this page" page. Somehow, I couldn't bear to just get rid of it. I wrote on the back the things that I wanted to release. Things like anger and resentment, or things that I no longer have but can't let go of for some reason. I tore the page out, took it out into the garden and got ready to burn it.
Oh yeah. Fire! Fire! heheheheh. Here you can see the flames licking through the list of things to let go of, releasing them into the air as carbon and oxygen. Bye bye things that keep me tied up.
Except in the end... this was what was left, what didn't burn. "The Loss."
I thought it looked cool and stuck it back in my journal...

Uh... I thought I was supposed to let it go?

I thought I was supposed to accept the loss. Why am I still holding onto it?

Hmmmmmm.

Flying Girl Growing in the Shade or Under Glass

Flying Girl Growing in the Shade or Under Glass
008/100 in 100 days Challenge 06/08/09
Golden Acrylics on paper, 5x8"

This is not what she looked like in my sketch. In the sketch, I imagined FG inside of a terrarium. But when it came time to paint, I did not want anything that complicated or elaborate. So I just painted her with the fern background and thought maybe a mushroom pattern on the dress... but when I got ready to paint, the green brown of the background put me in mind of moss, and I wanted moss in there. And then I thought, why no! Flying Girl IS the terrarium, the enclosed ecosystem that lets the mushrooms and moss grow.

So here's what ended up being. I like it.

I didn't like it to start. It just seemed ugly and clunky with the dingy brown/green and the not quite light blue.

But what I am finding as I continue on in this 100 in 100 challenge, is that I don't need to consider each painting to be precious and fragile. There is not so much weight to each painting if I am painting every day. If I mess up a painting, so what? I just move on to the next one and see what happens.

This is the way breakthroughs occur, I think. For me at least... when I've screwed something up and don't have anything to lose, when I trust that something good will come, if not this time, then next, when I try something risky no matter how I am afraid of failure.

Maybe also Wreck This Journal might help me continue this risk taking. I'm doing it with the Next Chapter book club


I've been futzing around with the book here and there, and this is the first page where I've gone bacack and tried to "do" something with the futzing. My coffee spilled... always a danger when you have toddlers/preschoolers jumping around you and your tv table "desk." So when the kids jostled the table, I set the cup down into the spill, and then made coffee rings on the page. Then when it happened again the next day, I used my paintbrush... which was out from a painting session... and painted the words into the coffee rings.

Yesterday, I outlined it all. Don't know why I did. I guess I liked the patterns that came out in the rings and wanted to hi-light it.
I like the way it looks here. And I like how the coffee spills almost remind me of a big old live oak tree, rich with shadows and light and hanging spanish moss and vines.

I wonder if I can work that idea into my 100 days paintings? Hmmm. I also like the neutral colors of tan and cream and the black pen. Hmmm. Or what about the shape of shadowy leaves against the bright sky? Hmmm.

Stay tuned.

Oh, and I finally got the side bar of 100 in 100 participants up. If you don't want your name up there, tell me. I thought I'd removed someone already, but I see it's still there. I must not have saved it. Or if you're not up there and want to be, tell me. I had a hard time with knowing whether or not people really wanted to jump in, or which blog they wanted.

Or if you're afraid to start, or want to but are worried that you can't join because you haven't been there from the beginning... please, join anyway. There is no one who is going to harangue you for not creating. There is no way to "fail" this challenge. Jump in. Adapt it to your needs.
Be brave.

Let me tell you... it gets easier the more you do it.