The Three Amigos - no Pierrots

The return of the pierrots. Ever since childhood I have had a fascination with pierrots and clowns, and because my last post was so serious, I felt like I needed to uplift my reader's spirits, so here we go enjoy the return of the three amigos - no pierrots.

Whimsical and fun creatures they were.

My Ancestor's Sorrow

This art work is one of my more politically inspired ones, hence not revealing the whole picture; this is because I do not want this blog to be a vehicle of my opinions and biases. Also, personally I don't like offensive art work, although I produce it at this level.

Here I have used a stencil outline of a norse man and woman, and then cut into the wood block using lino cutting tools. It took awhile and I ended up with a sore thumb, but nonetheless I persevered.


The wood blocks were then inked over with oil based inks (mixed with linseed oil) using various colours and then run through a printing press. I did several of the same prints to create a repeated pattern look on my art work which was then transformed into the final one being an empty skull .... get the picture.

When using oil based inks put your colour down on a sheet of glass with a spatula and then use another sheet of glass to transfer those colours onto your glass and mix with linseed oil. Then use your roller to get the correct consistency, then apply onto your wood block. From here place a sheet onto your press, then carefully put the block face down and then put another sheet over top and put through the press.

After it has gone through remove carefully and let dry and then you can also apply another colour if you wish.

It's very messy (which I enjoy) so cleaning up may not be much fun if you work like me. A tip: it's good to have canola oil to wipe most of the ink off your hands. Use turps to clean up everything else (roller and glass and glass spatulas). Don't use baby oil to clean up your hands as this is petroleum based and is not good.

Mucha Shadow Box

A classic mucha print cut out and decoupaged onto a shadow box. Acrylic fairy wings have been added.
An articulated paper doll with a resin head and crown also added.

My daughter's drawings: families

Both of my daughters have the gift of drawing, and I get amazed with what stuff they come out with. Here's my young daughter's work. She draws a whole lot of people (mums, dads, sisters, brothers) so she can play families with them, they are so cute when you look at them closely.

She has put them against some scrapbook papers, they are going on their travels.

Miracles Exist

Came across this layout that Anna had done for me a couple of years ago, which I had not yet filed into my scrapbook album.

The caption is Miracles Exist, as it was the delivery of my first child. She had the same blood as me, but unfortunately my husband's blood wasn't compatible with mine or hers, something to do with the rhesus factor. So I now have this antibody in my body for life waiting to destroy any future invasion of my husband's positive red cells. Sounds weird our bodies can react that way.

But thanks to injections everything becomes safe. So had two miracle babies. Hallelujah.

Gladadriel

This is my first attempt at digital scrapbooking. I have used Adobe Photoshop with Digital Scrapbooking Place CD (Heritage Word Art, ...).

I was experimenting with extracting the photo image from another photo file, and inverting some of the images. It gives kind of a ghosted ethereal look. I don't know if I'll remember all this when I go to do it again, and to think I used to teach this stuff years ago, it has gone way pass me now!

A Creed to Live By

A Creed To Live By

Don't undermine your worth by comparing
yourself with others.
It is because we are different that each of us is special.
Don't set your goals by what other people
deem important.

Only you know what is best for you.
Don't take for granted the things closest to your heart.
Cling to them as you would your life, for without them
life is meaningless.

Don't let your life slip through your fingers
by living in the past or for the future.
By living your life one day at a time,
you live all the days of your life.

Don't give up when you still have something to give.
Nothing is really over until the moment you stop trying.
Don't be afraid to admit that you are less than perfect.
It is this fragile thread that binds us to each other.
Don't be afraid to encounter risks.

It is by taking chances that we learn how to be brave.
Don't shut love out of your life by saying it's impossible to find.
The quickest way to receive love is to give love.
The fastest way to lose love is to hold it too tightly;
and the best way to keep love is to give it wings.
Don't dismiss your dreams.

To be without dreams is to be without hope;
to be without hope is to be without purpose.
Don't run through life so fast that you forget
not only where you've been, but also where you're going.
Life is not a race, but a journey to be savored
each step of the way.

 BY Nancy Sims

Da Vinci Machines

This afternoon it was time for some more cultural consumerism. The Da Vinci Machines show is on at 75 Customs Street East, Auckland City. It is on until 6 December.

It's a fascinating exhibition with items that are life size and also interactive (although you have to do that with care). It showcases some of Da Vinci's designs and inventions in the fields of flight, hydraulics, war machines, mechanics, transport, civil engineering and optics.

Have a sneak look at what there is, photos with permission.

Alice in Wonderland Toy Theatre Scene

Okay you know the story line for this classic, so let's hope I put these scenes up in order. Alice falling down the rabbit hole.

The "Drink me bottle" that made her tiny so she could fit through that door.

She had been crying so much, but now she was small she was swimming in her own tears.

 

So what did she have to do to get big again? Well, she did, so here she is breaking out of the house.

And of course, don't forget the mad tea party!!!

 

Nor the Queen of Hearts and the painted roses white and red.

 

And finally the scene with the caterpillar and his pipe.

 

Illustrated toy theatre by William, altered and decorated by me.

 

Marie Antoinette's Masquerade Ball

Finally, what some of you have been waiting for an invite to Marie's masquerade ball. Come follow her through with these delightful scenes (again made by William) and *collage effected storyline. Story in first person as if Marie herself.

A letter from Maria Theresa to Marie Antoinette:
"The only real happiness in this world comes through a happy marriage. I can say this from experience. And all depends on the woman, who should be willing, gentle, and able to amuse ...."

So, I will seek consolation in light-hearted amusement. There is always Artois ready for a game. Come on, off we go. I was always thrilled to enter Paris. It seemed particularly exciting after dark when the street lamps were alight. Another masked ball would allow me to go incognito.

"Your highness .. Artois" ...

"Shush, keep your voice down".

Spinning around, fleetingly moving on my feet, thrilled by my anonymity ... and then I sense him watching me, and although I averted my gaze I went on thinking of him. I stopped dancing and joined my party. I felt myself blushing and was glad for this mask, as he had approached nearby.

Then an impulse came to me – I wanted to speak to him, to hear his voice. This was a masked ball, so why not. "I wish to amuse myself ... for a moment." So I went right up to this handsome blonde stranger and stood before him smiling. "It is an amusing ball ... is it not so?"

"I find it very amusing and you delightfully charming " he answered not in a French accent, "You are not French?" "Swedish Madame". I laughed and betrayed my nervousness ... Enchante.

I wanted to know more of the stranger ... "What is your name" "Axel de Fersen" "Comte Axel de Fersen" I repeated.

Lesemajeste - any move this stranger makes ... and I wondered, after the encouragement I had given him, what I should do if he did ...

"Madam you care to dance? Oh I should say Mademoiselle?

So I fled with my entourage, this was the right and proper thing to do.

We went straight to our carriages, the night was now over, exhilaration had alarmed me ... I enjoyed indulging in this flirtation. I did not think I should ever see the stranger again, but I thought: I shall remember him for a long time ....that seemed enough. If only that could have been enough.

And back to Versailles with the restless night behind us ... and dances ahead of us ... waiting.

 

"My dear sister Sophie, .... I would give my life to save her and cannot; and my greatest happiness would be to die for her in order to save her ...." Axel de Fersen to his sister Sophie.

Moral rights of integrity are attributed to Victoria Holt's estate.

Sad but true story. Story adapted in a "collage effected" narrative form from Victoria Holt's book - "The Queen's Confession." [collage effected - pulling random lines out of novel, mixing up in different sequences and scenes, and adding own verbiage]. Alas,  these histrionic arts – remember it is just toy theater, but this one is historical so I can't change the ending.

Concept Words

I belong to a group of creatives who are into transformation, creativity and connectivity, and we love words.

One of our members has recently submitted a list to us, so check out these delicious words.

Apericolea:

From the Greek, referring to 'a lack of experience of things beautiful'. (That's our culture today*). Beauty challenges us. We experience joy, rapture, hope. We may weep, but we are called forcibly into our lives and to that inner work compelled by the experience of beauty.

Fastasia:

Italian for 'imagination', or better still 'imaginative insight', what Vico described as an authentic species of knowing equivalent to the uniquely intimate knowing of an inventor or creator, more immediate and personal than knowing mediated via the strategems of logic.

Consilience:

Literally a 'jumping together' of knowledge across disciplines, consilience is all about 'connectivity' and the weaving together of ideas from different domains of knowledge to reveal deeper, common groundworks of explanation.

Coeur:

The French word for 'heart' from which we also derive the word 'courage'. The heart: or body's gateway to another order of knowing. "The heart has reasons, which reason does not comprehend."

So there we go, four concept words whose essences weave through and underlie our groups creative and consulting practices.

* John Cimno was watching public TV late one night and heard Bill Myers in conversation with renowned historian and scholar, Joseph Campbell. They were talking about contemporary attitudes towards beauty. Far too many of our youth, our leaders and our communities suffer from apericolea, Campbell said. Beauty isn't cool, commercial or controversial ... or so some would have us believe ... it's because for the masses it is too unattainable, although still aspirational ... but it is not shockable, to be shockable is easy.

Part of our group's vision is to stand against that darkness, and remedy apericolea wherever it might be found. We favour beauty! We are challenged, shaken, transformed; we are never passive in the presence of beauty, whether that is the leaping of a gazelle, the sweep of a symphony or captured in an equation, or painted across the sky at dusk.

Art Journalling/Journaling Session 16: Walking in another's shoes

For people that know me, they will know I love shoes, and usually with heels, the higher the better ... those tend to be the shoes I walk in (and sometimes totter, too). What brings me to my thoughts this weekend is that I've been reading a book by Charlotte Gambil-Scanlon called In Her Shoes, and I tell you what this lady out does any male preacher I've come across. I saw her in action at the Sistas conference and she is really gifted.

Anyway, I have reflected on some of the things from her book, because as a career counsellor (or even as me in a non-professional context) I have been guilty of doing all those things she says in her book not to do. So today's art journaling is also like my counselling reflective journal where I reflect on my day's clients (usually 9.30 at night my days are long!) and look at a quick snap shot of their context and where to go from there.

So on with the art journaling, just painted a few strokes of acrylics paints and then added images of ... yes shoes ... and also card cut out shoes .... then I just jotted down some of those reflections that had meaning to me.

If you can't read the pages they are here:

1. Listen to people's stories – engage in their world and suspend judgement – or better still don't judge. To truly understand someone you have to take the time to dig deeper and go into their world.
2. Give more of my time to them.
   We think that to win people over we have to impress them, or have all the right answers to the questions they ask. All people want is for someone to stop and care enough to give them the precious commodity of our time.
3. Be committed to love people – don't chastise or judge their lifestyles. Measure my words carefully and speak into their life redemptively.
4. Decide to connect with people.
   Adjust my focus away from my own life, and focus onto others. It means slow down. Don't be so caught up in my own journey, that I fail to engage others on my way.
5. Don't see people as an inconvenience or a nuisance.
   See people as a sea of opportunity and need.
6. Don't make or put assumptions on people.
   Every person has background scenery (their context) and I can't understand it clearly until I walk in their shoes.

My life sometimes has a compassion deficit. I need to build a life – a wise and compassionate life, one that is not too busy to stop and understand people.

Moral rights of integrity attributed to the author: Charlotte Gambil-Scanlon.



"Walk in their Shoes" --- message to self.

Now I no longer own a scrapbook shop I don't like pimping products, but if anyone is interested in that book here it is:

And that IS Charlotte on the cover, 2009,
 If anyone is interested here is her link: Charlotte Gambil-Scanlon.

Maison Paris

Okay, I've had chance to finish my next LO, this time it opens up and keeps opening up, to finally reveal the Eiffel Tower.

This one is made with a bit extra card, so it isn't as pliable, I'll use thinner card/paper if I do it next time.

The tower looks like its wearing a skirt!!! (That wasn't anticipated either).

Again I've used vintage postcards and a vintage print of a photo. Here are the original cutouts to give you an idea of how I constructed this.

Paris Oh La La

This scrapbook page has been converted into some vintage collage look. I had some cool vintage postcards which needed to be displayed, so voila.

A close up of the keys and bottle.
And more close detail of the Eiffel Tower.

Thank you Paris. Merci.