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Sunday 13 June 2021

Changing the narrative

 Those who have been following or reading my blog, or those who know me, know I'm on a Uni journey. I'm in the last half of my three-year bachelor degree in arts psychotherapy and it has been a ride, let me tell you. The first year was like a year-long therapy session. The second-year was so heady and stressful I thought my brain might just explode. Third-year so far has been a much easier ride. It helps that I loved the research subject and the top I did my literature review on and the uni has restructured the placement component so it's nowhere near as full-on as my first placement was. They have removed so many assessments and requirements that I feel like I can breathe with this placement!

Part of placement is we have the opportunity to do PD every Friday morning for 3 hours, to add to the 240-hour commitment. The very first PD session was on metaphors. I love metaphors. Metaphors are my jam... lol and maybe one day they'll be my bread and butter too! In the PD we were invited to think about our overall life metaphor and immediately I had a bird locked in a cage, able to see out, able to see all the other birds flying around and living their best lives and trusting the wings they were given to do what they were meant to do. It's a pretty powerful metaphor for me and it's not the first time I've had it show up in my life. 

Being that I am an art therapist though, I decided I might actually do some art around it and thus began my next art journal spread. I made my own art journal, creating signatures and sewing them into canvas to create my very own personal art journal. I also have this thing where I like to add subtle differences along the way and this page I created actually had a half-page sewn into it. The little spread I have inside the half page is actually quite relevant to the story I began to tell on this double-page spread, though I won't be sharing that here today.

I began with a simple background on both sides of the page and on the half-page that flicks between the two. On one side I found a photo in a magazine that looked like a person with droopy wings and I pasted that inside a cage.
You can see the half-page in this shot. The half page became quite central to the story because after we explored our overall life metaphor, we were then invited to stay with the metaphor and change it in some way. So what exactly can I do to change the locked in a cage metaphor? Open the cage door of course!
So on this side of the page, I found another magazine photo from one of my body art magazines and pasted that into the birdcage.

I decided to put a swing into the birdcage with me and then I enclosed myself into the cage. I glazed the wings with some Golden Liquid paint and drew in some veins into the wings with a simple artline pen. The back part of the cage was just some neocolor II payne's grey, the bars on the front of the cage was done with my Lumiere's pearl purple.

I did the same on the full page on the left-hand side but I kept the door open for this one. I also gave this one wings but this time, I unfurled them and wouldn't you know it, turns out they were butterfly wings and a transformation had taken place while being locked in that cage growing up. Now the door was open though, I was still reluctant to leave the safety and containment of the cage. The world didn't look so inviting out there.
On the half-page, I decided to do a barren tree in the Lumiere paint and I outlined the cage first in black posca pen but in the end, I actually used the irRESISTible teal ink because I love the texture of it.

Of course, I had to outline the cage on this side of the half-page too. So I thought about what make it more inviting to entice me to get out of the cage and to try and trust my wings to allow me to fly, allowing me to do what I was put on this planet to do. So I began to paint a lush forest path on the other page.

I just used some cheap acrylics to depict the forest. To finish it off, I decided I needed to have me, the transformed butterfly actually walking away from the cage and the barren tree and into the lush forest of possibility.

Little bit of gesso, little bit of posca pen and Golden Liquid paint and a few dots and there I am walking away from my cage in search of a new tomorrow. Emerged from my metal cocoon and moving toward a more luscious future than I could ever imagine. 
I mean, when you open my journal and you flick through it page after page, it probably won't make sense, because this page comes before the locked birdcage and also before the birdcage with the open door, plus there is the little spread in the middle of the half-page. That's ok though. I know the story, I know the journey, and now you do too. The transformation of the butterfly, free to fly it's own path now.

I'm going to add these to the following pages for their monthly challenges as it fits in with the requirements:
There's definitely the added bonus of some purple in this one for the crew over at More Mixed Media Challenge.
It meets the criteria for the crew over at Creative Artiste Mixed Media but doesn't hold a candle to the gorgeous creations being made over there. Definitely go check out the art being made.
Last, though it's not entirely a butterfly, I AM the butterfly so it still meets the awesome theme Mia from Craft Artista came up with for this month.

I hope you enjoyed this journey.  Maybe you can relate to it in a way. For now, I'm going to use these newly released butterfly wings of mine to fly into a future of being an art therapist so I can help all the other trapped butterflies find their freedom through artistic expression too!

In Joy!

Sunday 6 June 2021

The Wolves in her soul

 It is really weird for me to not have copious amounts of uni work to do. My first placement had 3 learning outcome documents, 12 triads plus a triad assessment, 2 essays and 2 presentations to go along with the 240 hours of placement but the uni has, thankfully, realised it is just too much so now I have 2 presentations and that's it! So it's incredibly weird to have a whole weekend without having to read uni texts or prepare for the assessements. Instead, I read art therapy related material that I WANT TO read, not stuff that I have to read for uni and I actually DID art instead of simply wish I had time to - though to be honest, I am pretty good at making time to do art simply because I know my  mental health is always better for it.

So this weekend I found another spread in my art journal that I keep adding more pages to that I wanted to give new life to. At first I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do so I kind of just covered it up with paint.

I knew I wanted to keep the white wolves but I wasn't so sure what I was going to do with them when all of a sudden I thought I could put them in an eye. I don't even know where the thought came from but I have learned over my years of training to just trust the thoughts and trust the process and follow those little nudges that take you along in your art journey. So I turned it into an eye and looked for a fitting wolf quote that had something about the wolves being part of the soul or part of the journey or something about being protected by wolves or having wolves always be with you.

It was very orange. Far more orange than I normally would work with but the colour was appealing to me so I kind of kept it. I just needed to dull it down a little bit first. I also worked on giving the iris more detail.

I finished off the eyeball and also glazed the pupil and the background in Golden's liquid Quinacridone/Nickel Azo Gold, added my favourite script stamp, added the quote and then added my usual border. I've been really loving these spreads in my journal lately and am happy I've been filling the book up with more of my own stuff rather than things learned from others.
I really love how the wolves turned out, sitting in that pupil. They were an image from a National Geographic magazine. It's interesting that there are three wolves too, as I have three children and they are very much a part of my soul and I would protect them like a wolf protecting it's pack.

Seeing as this has more than three different mediums used and very much a mixed media spread I figure I'll share it in the challenge over at Creative Artiste Mixed Media and More Mixed Media Challenge even though this one doesn't have any purple in it, which is actually unusual for me. Purple is usually my go-to colour!




Friday 4 June 2021

Butterfly Love

It's June so do you know what that means? It means we have another theme from the gang over at Art Journal Journey! The lovely Mia from Craftartista is the guest host who has chosen the theme BUTTERFLIES! 

I LOVE BUTTERFLIES!

Butterflies are so very symbolic for me. They represent new growth, new beginnings, transformation. They represent the complete and utter destruction of who I once was only to emerge a newer and freer version of myself. They represent the fleeting moments of beauty in my life. They represent the struggle, the unknown, the dissolution of what was and the creation of a new way of existing in the world and so much more. So I love, love, love this theme so much. 

Of course, if you've read any of my blog at all you know I'm also obsessed with digistamps and I just so happened to have these two butterfly ones already printed out on my copic blending paper ready and waiting to go before I even knew this month's theme. So what better chance to use them than this, amiright?!
I started with some of the red tones in the copic range to colour in the roses and loved the colours so much I added a bit to the other flutter as well.
From there I wanted to add some bright yellow to help the rose one pop.
I decided black was just a little too dark so I just went with dark purples for the outline sections and then voila! Two pretty copic coloured digi butterfly stamps to add to a journal spread!
I went flipping through the journal I'm currently working in to see if there was an old spread I wanted to cover up but it seems I've covered all the ones I want to cover, for now. I did find this palette page though, you know, the page where you clean off and lay down the excess products from another page?
So from there I filled in the white spots of the page and gesso'd over the top of it. I added some normal ink stamps and this is why I love digistamps over these because no matter how much I ink them up or press them down, they just don't give me the nice crisp lines I love so much. 
I decided it was time to use some of my Lumiere's before they all dry up in their little pots and seeing as I was doing butterflies I thought why not do a little garden border thing. I started with the vines and then began to build up the flowers and add dots, dots and more dots because dots are awesome.
Once I had put enough petal layers on the flowers I got out my irRESISTible inks and gave them a bit of an outline and some more swirls n curls n dots.
Then I added one of the digistamp girls from The Paper Shelter and glued in the butterflies.
Then, as I do, I darkened the edges, added a pithy quote that feels really relevant to my life right now as I step into being an art therapist and sharing myself with the world, added a bunch more dots because DOTS! Then called it done.
No doubt there will be more butterfly-themed spreads through the month but I'm pretty darn happy with the first one for the month and I ask you, is there something you are avoiding that might be holding you back? Time to unfurl your wings and fly!


















 

Tuesday 1 June 2021

It's copic and digistamp girl time.

 I am between Uni pressures right now. I have completed all my assessments from first trimester and even got back great marks for my Research subject, which I'm super happy about and now I am waiting to begin my placement working with pregnant women and new parents, I'm just waiting on the arrangements of when I can do the work. So I often sit here now after I get my medical transcription done and I don't know what to do with myself! Of course, naturally, I turn to art and so here are some digistamp girls from The Paper Shelter that I coloured in with copic recently.