Mixed Media Painting: Journey

I went to a Mixed Media Painting workshop today. It was taught by Emily and I enjoyed learning some mixed media techniques and messing about with paint, glue and stencils.

I used backgrounds from my trip to Japan - maps of Kyoto, pictures of koi, a postcard. I wasn't sure about my choice to involve purple in amongst the oranges and browns, but I like the result. It was more browns and oranges in my head. I'm going to try some of these techniques in my art journaling, and when I can find someone who has Modge Podge in stock, I'll add that to my supplies.

BlissChick Poster

Just spreading the word from BlissChick. Isn't this poster beautiful?

Sunday Scribblings: New Voice

San Antonio, Texas through the castle window

I have been thinking about voice lately. I read a number of blogs on a semi-regular basis and it seems like few of them are having troubles finding their voice lately. Or perhaps I hear their cries as my ears are attuned to these struggles. One blogger wrote openly of her problems finding something to write about. It must be hard to find something to appease the hordes of people who turn up to her blog, their mouths open like hungry baby birds, waiting for her to feed them something, anything.

I must admit that I find that blogger to be an average writer at best. That comment says more about me than it does about her. I don't like her writing style - it feels almost desperate to me, she tries too hard to grab me, her jokes are over worked and her topics bland and out of my experience, borrowed from the numerous tragedies around her. I feel nothing of her voice in her writing. If the words I read on these rare occasions are truly her voice, it seems whiny and petulant and best forgotten.

Another blogger I visit on the same rare basis has always irritated me which is, again, more about me than her. She of the pretty melancholy, the perfect husband, the desperate yearning for a baby and the tragic fertility journey.

So I wonder - are we voiceless without our struggles? Are they really who we are? Or is there something of us that lives and breathes and speaks outside of this journey to find meaning in our lives? I would like to think so. My voice is not my lovely dogs, my struggle with maintaining a healthy weight, the loss of family members, my education or my friends and family. My voice exists outside of all of that, sitting on a wooden stool in a small corner of my soul dressed in a white cotton dress, its hair loose and damp. It smiles sometimes, and cries sometimes. It simply is. It doesn't care about the window dressing of my life, no matter how meaningful or dull or painful it is to me. My voice is my voice and she waits for me to be silent for long enough to hear her speak.

I've been listening a great deal lately. Her voice has been my voice, has helped me discover the main character's voice in my novel. As I painstakingly build a world for my protagonist to live in, I can hear my own voice whisper and giggle and share herself with me. If I write from that part of me - the part that is always new, always fresh and always authentic - I can't imagine how I could ever go wrong.

Squashing Self Doubt

Takayama, Japan

It's amazing to me how despite our self-doubts, we keep putting ourselves out there. And I want to simply encourage you to keep taking those risks, big and small, in your life and in your art. Taking risks helps squash those pesky self-doubts in a powerful way. Your risks may be trying out a new color, learning a new style, reaching out to a fellow artist, submitting your work to a show, posting your work online, or opening up a shop. Not all our risks will have the results we want, but every risk gives us the inner knowing that we are capable of more than we realize.

- Wisdom from Leah at Creative Every Day