Steal this Idea

I was ruminating out load this morning as I sautéed the lamb chops for my slow cooker. Yesterday I was at a private lesson with a student and she was said how she wished she could get the CD player in her car fixed. Her son told her "Just play the music on your iPod."But she doesn't want to spend an afternoon switching her music to her iPod, she wants to just keep on playing it on her CD player. And why not? I love new technology but sometimes I just can't be bothered. I would rather be doing something else.

What I found really upsetting was that I couldn't think of anyplace to tell her to go where she could get her CD player fixed. We know what a salesperson would say: "It is cheaper to buy a new one." But is it? If you don't just consider money but also the time to research and figure out what is now available and what you might want, then you think of the environment and how polluting it is to make the new player (can you even buy CD players?) and how the old one is now to be thrown out and how polluting that is. And you can't give it to someone else because there is no place to fix it.

So finally we get to my idea. My DH is pretty good at fixing stuff. Well, he isn't so much mechanical as he has a creative mind. I said to him this morning "What about a place that fixes stuff?" I like the idea of fixing stuff because it is in line with my values of not buying stuff and recycling. I think I also imagine it is a little like refashioning (which as I write this I realise is probably not the case.)

In my fantasy I take it a little further. I like making stuff but not fixing it. "What about if you fix the stuff and I will get a 3D printer and I can make stuff?" This is sounding more fun. Keep in mind my DH still has one eye on the paper. I am not getting a lot of enthusiasm back.

Do you know about 3D printers? They are kind of like our desktop printers except they make 3D stuff. How exciting is that!!! You put an image in via computer and they print it out in whatever material you want, ceramic, plastic, even metal in thin sheets like gluing layers of paper together.



So in this ongoing fantasy now that I have a 3D printer I can print out any parts my partner might need for his fixing. Or on second thought, he could actually print out the parts. I will use the printer to make little sculptures, which sounds much more interesting to me.

By this time my partner has completely lost interest in my idea because he "doesn't really like fixing stuff." Oh. Okay.

Anway feel free to steal my fantastic idea and I will send my friend to your place to get her CD player fixed.

What Shall it Bee?

 This is what I finished today in the studio. What is it? I mean, besides a bee.

 It began here, as a game piece in a small box that I bought at a garage sale.

I know people make jewellery pendants from dominoes, so I thought this game piece could be a good beginning base. I like that it is wood.

 I sanded off the pictures. I don't mind that they aren't completely gone, it kind of retains the story of its beginning as a humble game piece this way. This will be the back.

I begin drawing the bee on. Sorry I forgot to take in-between photos. I painted in with acrylics.

The colours in the first photo are more accurate, but I wanted you to see the size. It is small, pendant sized. Shall I glue on a jewellery bail and make it into a pendant?

Mistakes as Freedom

Last week I was working on a new painting. It was going well and I was excited. My partner walked by the studio and I called him in to show it to him. He liked it, but with a big reservation... "she looks out of proportion". I had wondered about the same thing, but had convinced myself it was just that toddlers have short legs (which they do!). However when I looked anew there was no denying it, he was right. She looked strange.

"Oh no!" I said, "what am I going to do? The way I am working (using acrylic like watercolour) I can't paint over the top like I would in oil painting. There is no way to erase."

I had to do something. I couldn't deny that she needed serious redrawing. I left it for the weekend as we went up to Brisbane.

This morning I was rarin' to go, as I always am after a few days out of my studio. The sun was out, which equals me feeling happy and optimistic. I was up for an experiment.

I carefully looked at the figure's proportions. I rechecked my reference photos (but we know photos distort and even lie.) I downloaded some more photos of my step-grandchild (the model) and after careful consideration I had some idea of where the problems were.

Then I took out some sanding paper and started sanding. I was lucky, it worked better than I had hoped. The pen lines and acrylic sanded off fairly easily without taking off all the gel I had used underneath.

I had discovered a way to 'erase'. This opens up a freedom that I didn't have before. I am glad she was out of proportion so that I could discover this.

I Didn't Think About it Enough

I haven't done any refashioning for ages. What I miss most is the hand-stitching. I wish I had some projects waiting for me, ready to hand stitch that I could pick up whenever the urge hit me.

As we are heading into the cold weather in Australia, first I had to resort my refashion projects. I had out all my summer inspiration, but there is little use in me working on the hot weather pile. Here are the new cool weather possibilities.

I did manage to tidy it up later.

The most obvious place to start was a thrift jean jacket I started ages ago. I was embroidering jacobean flowers on the yoke. This is where I stopped. It needs more leaves and bits.

I think it looks nice and all that, it was just looking too... embroidered flowers for me. What did I expect? I wanted to grunge it up or something. Make it less normal?

 I thought maybe a change of medium would help. Subject change might help too, but I can't go to putting on a rat or something, it would just look weird. But what about some stencilled flowers? I was kind of thinking stencilled like street art. But I didn't want to use spray paint. I hate spray paint.

In Ricë's latest blog post she is using freezer paper for stencilling. I hadn't tried it before so I googled it. Easy. You just cut it out and iron it on. Sweet.

I don't have any textile paint, but I have this GAC-900. You mix it one part with one part acrylic paint and it makes the final image softer and less plasticy. I have only used it once before, on a white fabric patch.

At this point it is not working so well. It isn't covering the denim. I have to use a lot of paint. I decide to paint white first under the flowers, hoping that will make the colour show a bit more. 

That seems better. I mixed some titanium white into the green as well.

Okay, here it is finished. Kind of. The painting is finished and I am pleased with how it came out, but...
I was imagining street art grunge, it is more like stencilled folk. How can I grunge it up? It is all too tame. I feel annoyed at myself. I went into embellishing this jacket without really thinking about it. It is kind of an 80's throwback.

Do I give up and start over on another jacket, or do I keep going?

Redefining Self Esteem

(Don't expect the image to have anything to do with the subject, I just wanted to give you a visual)

I have been reading Robert Ohotto's book "Turning Fate into Destiny" and it has got me thinking about a few things, specifically what is self esteem?

Like most people that I know, I have struggled with my self esteem. I am on familiar terms with feelings of inadequacy,  perceptions of not being interesting,  judging myself as not good enough to be an artist, or as just weird. When I was a young adult, I was arrogant and imagined I was superior to most people. As I got older I realised this was a way of coping with my actual feelings of inferiority. I have tried to heal those sensitivities through therapy, accomplishments and even positive thinking.

I came to not really like the expression 'self esteem'. Not only because I couldn't seem to 'get' it, but because it seemed to have connotations of an almost smugness, as if self esteem and humility are antipathetic. It seemed to have an attitude of 'I can do anything and be anything and have anything.' And as I grew older and a bit wiser it was becoming apparent that this was simply not true.
Instead of what I understood as self esteem I began to work with self acceptance and self forgiveness.

In his book, Robert Ohotto differentiates between what he calls self esteem and soul esteem. I find this contrast illuminating. He says that self esteem has to do with outer confirmation of one's worth, by success, social status, doing well etc. All well enough, but how resilient is anything dependent on others'  opinions? - others who even when well meaning are not reliable (meaning that their opinions are not reliable).

My interest is in redefining self esteem (taken from Robert Ohotto's definition of soul esteem). A definition based on what is True and changeless. That all living beings have innate worth, and that worth is unchanging and equal. I am not worth more or less than anyone else.
How about that? A Radical concept. But if I look deeply I see that it is True. If someone is more successful, more beautiful, more stylish, it does not actually effect their or my inherent worth.

My worth (and theirs) remains the same. No matter what I do or they do.

How about that?

Confession and Public Apology

I have had the same profile picture for the four years I have been writing my blog - Pippi Longstocking. She is my hero and kind of a alternate personality for me. The truth is, when I began writing my blog I used a fake name. I was a bit scared of the internet and it felt 'safer'. I let that go years ago, yet kept Pippi as my picture.

Now older and wiser and sensitive to issues of copyright, both moral and legal, I am embarrassed to have kept someone else's drawing on my blog representing me for so long. It is a beautiful image, one that really captures Pippi Longstocking's personality.  I don't know who created that computer image of Pippi that I have been using, but I want to offer them a public apology.

I am sorry that I used your art without your permission and without giving you credit. I still don't know who you are so I am unable to correct the latter, but I can stop using the image. As a fellow artist, I should have known better.

Here is the painting my new profile picture is from. Why would I ever have done anything else?

Inspiration

I spent the evening drawing this little cosmos that I peeled off the lemon tree yesterday. The picture is actually a little larger than my drawing. I did it with my micron pen - I don't know if I used 01 or 02 as the writing has worn off. 

 As it didn't need perfect proportions I just drew straight into it with ink. Gee, it was a lovely way to spend my time.

I should have taken a photo of the tree - you can see its trunk in the background. Instead as usual, I was thinking only of reference photos so this is what I shot. I wish I had had some beautiful model I could have draped it on, but still you get the idea. It is an amazing conglomeration of moss and two vines. 

Here is the journal spread, it just happened to land next to an evocative poem by ee cummings.

What is an Art Journal?

A Surprise Confrontation

I drew the woman on the right page first, and later I drew the woman on the left page with the bow and arrow. It wasn't until I was finished and drew in the little line of grass that they came together as a single picture and I kind of went 'oh'. I felt kind of bad that the one woman was threatening the other.

Click on the pictures to see them larger.