So Many Swatches

I uploaded 12 pages of swatches to flickr today! Yikes, 12! I think 12 is a pretty pretty overwhelming number for a blog post though, so please visit the flickr set if you want to see more. I mix a lot of paint y'all. I have so many of these pages now that I feel like I need to do something with them... but what? Ideas?

Drawing Lines in my Sleep

Click for big.

I keep a journal by my bed to jot down my thoughts, and sometimes to record my dreams when I wake. In the back of the journal, I draw patterns and lines, mostly to calm my mind or to occupy my hands and eyes while I listen to an audiobook, podcast, or some music before bed. I find making this kind of freehand drawing very rhythmic and soothing.

The first page above is a collection of a few snippets from my late night drawing sessions by lamp light, cut and arranged to fit my neatbook. I thought it was a lovely coincidence that the sheet music matched the color and feel of the drawings.

The bottom image is of a neatbook page that I'd begun ages ago, just wavy lines and wobbly diamonds in orangey red, and I never knew what to do with it. It recently occurred to me that it might make a nice abstract nature backdrop, and that is how the goldfish came to live there.

Some Long Overdue Neatbookings

Here are a few pages from my neatbook that I have been meaning to share for some time now.
Click to view larger!

Speaking of the neatbook— forever ago, Miss Mel Chao of To Boldly Fold, who made this book for me, took some lovely photos of it while I was in Boston this June. Take a look at her blog post about it here.

I realize that it has been 5 months since my last post. Will you ever forgive me? I hope you will. I am making things all the time, and have more to show, as well as some projects in the works, I promise you.

I just need to be better at sharing.

Because sharing is caring.

And I care, I swear.

xoxo

Their Hearts and Eyes are Golden

For a while now I've been keeping record of all my Tarot readings and interpretations, written in a notebook that I use specifically for Tarot. I think Tarot reading is pretty fun and useful— I read the cards to clear my mind and to sort my thoughts, much like guided introspection. A journal for secret little internal explorations deserves a special cover, so I painted an alternate version of a favorite Neatbook page, Tree Children.



By the time the first Tarot journal was filled, I'd grown so accustomed to the cover that I didn't want to let it go. I decided to paint the same image on the next two, with varying background colors. I think it's interesting how differently the covers came out, considering they came from the same initial drawing.  It was a fun and frustrating experiment, though not one that I'll be repeating any time soon!



Happy as I am with the copies, the first is still my favorite. Someday I hope to take a screen printing class, and once I've learned and gathered what I need, this will be the first thing on my screen printing to-do list.

I actually painted a different and redrawn version on a larger notebook, but after some consideration, I decided I didn't like the size for a Tarot Journal. I have other plans for that notebook, so I'll save it for another time.

On an unrelated note— Let's pretend that I did not completely miss a full month of blogging.
Technically, today is April 1st, but if I pretend this is March 31st, will you promise not to tell?
Shh... It will be our little secret.

In Circles

Another from the neatbook, portraits in circles. The bear and the freckled girl in the upper right are my favorites. Click the image to enlarge.