One BADASS Art Journal Course - Week 6 - Your BADASS Sisterhood

Sisterhood, Joy, Hope, Grace and Faith

Welcome to today's Art Journal page for the One BADASS Art Journal Course. One of the things that I really like about the course is that despite being one of the teachers I can play along as well like one of the students.  Each teacher is bringing their own style and it is great to try out the techniques they use and see what elements of it that you might incorporate into your own way of creating.  Tiare brought this lesson, and I took elements of the session and added my own spice.

I like the simplicity of creating these characters, and I kept the colors simple as well, playing about with the background before finding the characters that wanted to be represented on the page.

Having a close circle of friends that you can call on is important and the next journal page brought to mind a friend who sadly passed away, and we had known each other from our teenage years.

Friendships in Time

We thought we would grow old seeing each others grandchildren, we were there for each other over the years - Barbara was a dear friend who told it like it is and always had your back.

She became the friend she wanted to have......

In loving my sisters I am reminded to love myself equally.  We can often forget ourselves in the mix of taking care of others, but we have to show ourselves love, understanding and patience.

We have to remember to listen and not break our promises to ourselves. It all starts and ends with love.

 She became the friend she wanted to have in her life and started to love herself.  Come back next week to see what I have done

Being More Mindful - You can make a change

mind·ful·ness

• 1.the quality or state of being conscious or aware of something:"their mindfulness of the wider cinematic tradition"
• 2.a mental state achieved by focusing one's awareness on the present moment, while calmly acknowledging and accepting one's feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations, used as a therapeutic technique.

I see Me - Mixed media Art Journal Page - Amanda Trought

It is funny how the simple small things we do can get us taking action, and I had reached what felt like a slump - I knew what I wanted to do, but couldn't seem to move myself into taking action.  The feeling seem to linger and no matter what I tried nothing seem to work long term.

It only takes a slice of cake

After eating a slice of fruit cake one evening, I was met with the usual feelings of aching joints and lethargy which quickly followed by irritated skin.  I vowed not to eat anymore cake, I was done!  I thought of the pain I was feeling and I didn't want to feel it anymore, I wanted to finally take my decisions and life into my own hands.  My family looked at me with amusement as they had heard it all before, they said they would believe it when the see it, but this felt different.  I went further and told my son that if he were to see me eating cake he should rip it out of my hands, and then after thinking about how messy it would be I offered to pay him. My husband decided that he wanted to get in on what he saw as free money and they both rubbed their hands with glee mentally calculating how much they would make off me as I succumbed to the cake.  

I listened to their voices telling me that I couldn't do it and made a decision that I was going to do it, this time would be different!

Making the decision

They laughed and joked about it, but the way I was feeling I felt for sure that I would stick to it.  The more and more I thought about it I felt if I could give up cake then there were other habits that I wanted to address, it was more than just about the cake, and I was up for this challenge!  

After thinking about it for a while I realized that by paying them I was putting the responsibility of not eating cake onto them catching me.  Rather than punish myself for doing wrong I needed to celebrate looking after my body and getting on with the things I wanted to do.  I reasoned that if I really wanted to give up cake then I could, equally whatever other changes that I wanted to make I could put these in place as well.  It all had to do with a mindset change that I needed to just go for it!

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage - Anais Nin

Flipping the switch

A switch flipped and I immediately felt different about how I wanted to treat myself.  If I could change my mind about eating things that were physically affecting me then what else could I do.  I decided that I needed to really look after 'me' rather than just talking about it, but I also had to support myself by gaining wisdom from others who had achieved their goals, and also create a little cheer leading team for myself. 

Wisdom is like the baobab tree; no one individual can embrace it ...

When you are not feeling yourself other things are impacted as well, my creativity suffered the ideas that I would normally work on in my studio couldn't find me as I was dulled by inactivity and I really didn't feel like getting on with the very things that made me feel good or needed to get done.  

As I thought of all these things I knew that change and taking care of myself meant that I needed to really see who I was, wanted to be, do, and all the rest of it.

I SEE ME - Mixed media art

So my mindful acts are a way of getting to know myself, what I want to do, spend time doing the things that nurture and encourage, and included the following:

• Daily morning walks
• Getting to bed by 11.30pm - or as close to
• Daily reading 15 mins minimum
• Improve Diet -Wheat and dairy free diet, lots of fruit and veg and whole foods, no processed foods
• Daily Art & Journal writing
• Listening to motivational and inspiring daily recordings
• Daily family time
• End of day review and scheduling work and goals 

All of these things on the list are to get me kick started to change, and to achieve the things that I have been saying I don't have time for, and get me back to the me that I wanted.  When I focus on these things I am reminding myself that I do matter, that showing up for myself reaffirms my own value.

Problems are only opportunities with thorns on them - Hugh Miller

Making a Commitment

When I am feeling tired I remind myself that I made a commitment and that seems to propel me into action, I get my walking gear and within minutes I am out the door.  I have been constantly reminding myself that each action is about showing up for me, and the time is much better spent.  Even reading and committing to doing some reading every day means all the books that I have promising to read I can make time for them now because they are part of my schedule.

Every day that passes I am being shown new insights and ideas and I am learning to value the time that I do have and make the most of the things that I want to do, and celebrating my achievements!  We are all given the same amount of time it depends how we use it, and the value that we place on on our lives.  There is no replay button or do over, so we need to be getting on with these things today!

Walking in your blessings.....

I would love to hear about any changes that you have decided to make in your day to day activities, 

What is it that you have always wanted to do but convinced yourself that you don't have time?

What ways are you going to nurture yourself today?

One BADASS Art Journal Course - Week 5 - Late Night Conversations

Welcome to my interpretation of the class led by Cristin Stephenson in the BADASS Art Journal Class.  For this class as with the others I did 3 pages, one double spread and then two that came after that could either follow the same theme that I had worked with in the main page or be totally different.

Magic at midnight

For my main page below I started out with random shapes on the page, then as I thought about the late night conversations the song 'Dancing in the Moonlight' by Thin Lizzy came to mind

That connection with the moon, the music, and the sea also came in as well.  My characters that came out on the page seem to want to go on an adventure, perhaps a Thelma and Louise type of adventure in a car on a raft on the ocean with the music blazing...and free.... who knows

Adventure awaits

Some times you have to take that leap of faith, not knowing how everything is going to work out.  Some times we prevent ourselves from doing things because of fear. It is either we fear failing or we fear changing and things working out so we don't fit in our neat little boxes.  Fear to laugh and be yourself, fear to say yes to something or no.

Follow your dreams

Listening to a speaker called Lisa Nicols she was talking about her life and saying that fear can paralyze you and that you should use it instead as your fuel to get you to where you want to go.  We can sometimes fear using a particular art material, or fear that creative play because of what might reveal about you.  You can put anything in there that you might be feeling fearful about, and think about what the worse that could happen.

It is time to let go, step out, step into but make that change!  This page then came out of all of that, she chose to step out and be who she knew she could be, she stepped out and is 'Dancing' as well, not worried who might be looking or that 'its always been done this way' or about anything else that could get in the way.

Come join me next Friday and see how I interpreted the next lesson

One BADASS Art Journal Workshop Week 4 - Creating and Using Painted Papers

In week 4 of the course we looked at creating and using your own painted pages which was led by Effy Wild.  I love creating pages and find that they don't normally last long in my studio, as I always find faces emerging out of them and end up painting them.  I decided to do my own thing for this lesson.  You can see last weeks session HERE

I treated the page as if I were creating a background page with different elements, shapes and colors.  I then kept adding different layers which sometimes covered up the layer below or allowed them to show through.  This is a technique that you can get using tissue paper on a page, the underlying image will come through.

The more layers added the more it began to mimic my feeling of being surrounded by things that needed to find a home. I had to force myself to stop as I kept adding doodling and crowding it out, then covering it with paint and then going again.

Sometimes my mind be like.....and then I need to tidy up

On the first side of the main page I then drew a group of 4 simple figures.  It was almost as a way of  clearing up, and expressing aspects of my creative process, purposely not going into any detail but keeping it as plain as possible.

The many sides - keeping it simple

It then became more about an expression of the me I wanted to see.  How is it that you see yourself within your journal, do you express yourself freely or are you hiding something even from yourself.  The art journal for me can hold answers, but you got to let go of your perception of what you think others will want to see.

I see You Me

All of the pages for me are all linked and are about expression and the different forms it can take.  The way I create using many different mediums and styles seems to feed my desire to create.  I find working with different mediums suits me and the impatience I sometimes feel, there doesn't have to be the one thing there is always something I want to create, or try, and Mixed media art enables me to explore as many as I choose.

Again the style is kept very simple, but the textures and the colors ones that I find interesting.  If you are following along with the lessons, perhaps you can try putting changing something and seeing where it takes you.  You don't have to do each lesson just once, you can do it as many times as you wish and with different mediums.  Come back next week Friday to see how I worked with the next lesson.