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~ Standing up for sanity (mine anyway) through art and humor.

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Tag Archives: Tree of Life

Vivid Idyll Refurb Collage

15 Monday Jun 2015

Posted by Jeanette Clawson in Mandalas

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

100 Mandalas, acrylic paint, altered art, altered art book, Altered book, Buddhist art, collage, Mandala, Mixed Media, Refurbished Art, Sharpies, Tibetan Art, Tree of Life, Upcycle, Watercolor pencils, Zendala

refurb finished

Here is the completed collage! I have been enjoying other people’s process photos and videos, so I’m including some of them for this piece. I really had fun with this.

Oh, the reconstituted collage poem was inspired by my blogging friend Claudia McGill. It reads

This observation is grounded

and

at first did not move her thus

I had a strange feeling

and kept walking.

and drifting among other souls

floating up

That complemented my mandala montage nicely, I thought. The funny thing is that the text is from a book I didn’t like and one I haven’t read. The larger text is from a more than 100-year-old copy of the Pilgrim’s Progress that my mother-in-law gave me for Christmas. She was reluctant to give me a “ratty old book” for a gift and I finally convinced her that I was very sincerely excited about the prospect of getting my hands on that book to use in my art. The other book was The Goldfinch which is printed on lovely paper and that is my favorite thing about the book. I learned the hard way not to do watercolors on the pages because there would be impolite language in the middle of a white flower (for example) and that was not the mood I was going for at all. That book needed some editing and I have enjoyed cutting the pages up for collage fodder.

So… here is the before photograph. I paid $20 to purchase this piece of “art” from a local gallery to enter their Refurbished Art Contest.

geese and refurb beginnings 008

I like a challenge.

I really liked the girl walking into the painting on the antithesis of the yellow brick road. So I drew some fun mandalas (with my Pigma Micron pens on hot press watercolor paper) that I thought would make the landscape more interesting for her. I have been drawing them many mornings as part of my morning mandala practice. I decided early on to have a tree of life mandala as the centerpiece.

geese and refurb beginnings 009

Then I painted and colored in the mandalas. I have been playing with Prismacolor watercolor pencils in addition to my usual Derwent Inktense pencils and I really like the pallet and effects possible with the different brands. I also used Sharpies for some of the coloring. I also painted some papers of different weights and cut out flowers and leaves for the Tree of Life mandala and decided to use some to decorate the borders.

refurb painted paper shapes tree of life

I cut circles for the collage from the different assembled unpainted papers. I studied languages in college a really long time ago and have my notebooks from language classes (mostly Chinese and Spanish) that I really like to include as well as the aforementioned books. I usually throw in a relevant dictionary page. The page for this piece is “idyl, idyll” and I included that definition right by the girl I left in the picture, because it is her idyl, of course. I also have a page from one of my grandmother’s cookbooks, and a copy of a sheet of music from my son. So I cut circles and arranged them on the circle I traced around my dinner plate onto the print. I used matte medium to attach them.

refurb paper collage

The next step was inspired by the illustrations by Demi. You may recall my Inspiration Board post from earlier this year. That is where the idea for the background for my tree of life mandala was born! So I painted most of the collaged circles blue and went outside the lines so my clouds would be visible beyond the mandala. I also painted the lower portion with a very thin coat green so the papers showed through a little as the “ground” of the tree of life. When the paint was dry I went in and drew a Wheel of Joy and clouds and rocks inspired by Tibetan Buddhist art (a source of inspiration for Demi as well). The rocks are not visible in the photo, but that’s how gel pens are.

refurb painted

and then I put it all together with gel medium!

Here are all of the supplies I used.

supplies

This will be on display at Alter-Ego Studio in lovely Wisconsin. Come to see and/or purchase this piece! Have a beautiful day!

Refurb of Art and I

05 Friday Jun 2015

Posted by Jeanette Clawson in Mandalas

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

100 Mandalas, altered art, botox, coloring, Mandala, moon, prisms, Recycled Art, stars, sun, Tree of Life, upcycling

I have completed the illustration for the next coloring club. It will be on Thursday, June 18th.

sun moon and stars

Also, I am participating in an art contest that consists of Refurbishing a piece of thrift store art provided by the gallery. There were a few pieces to choose from and here is my selection.

geese and refurb beginnings 008

I plan to decorate it with mandalas with a Tree of Life mandala as the centerpiece. There will be flower mandalas and perhaps a partial sun mandala as well. I kind of envision it as a dream that the girl is having. Here is the beginning of those works.

geese and refurb beginnings 009

I have also been getting something of a refurb myself. Last week I got new glasses that have prisms ground up in the lenses. They are helping with some of the vision problems I have been having. Overall my eyes are doing ok at this point and big concerns have been put to rest for the present. Yesterday I went my first Botox treatment for my migraines. It is too early to tell if that will be successful, but I am hoping for some pain free days ahead.

My younger son will graduate from high school on Sunday and we have family coming to stay from out of town. Only a few people come to the ceremony, so we will be having a large celebration in a few weeks that lots of people are planning to attend. As you can see, I have been rather busy and will be in the next few weeks as well. I will let you see how the refurbished art turns out – I think this is a really promising method of including recycling into my art. I continue to write in my gratitude journal, but it hasn’t been as artistic as usual lately. Until then, may you find peace and happiness in your days.

Outside In Mandalas

15 Friday May 2015

Posted by Jeanette Clawson in Gratitude journal, Journal 52

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

100 Mandalas, altered art, art journal, collage, gratitude, Mandala, Tree of Life

outside in 002

The Journal 52 prompt for the past week has been Outside In. I have been working on a tree of life mandala stencil for a larger piece I’m doing and I played with that this week. Oddly enough the tree developed rather organically and I’m happy with the results. I was going to Zentangle the negative spaces, but I started to journal in them instead and I like how it turned out. The facing page is a labyrinth I drew covered by cutouts from my favorite labyrinth in Wisconsin. It is an Earth sculpture in a park about 45 miles from where I live. I hope to get there a few more times this summer because as the different flowers bloom the labyrinth changes. My husband also loves this place. I have included a few quotes and to do lists and intentions as well as things I’m grateful for on these pages. One of the ideas that has been threading its way through my week is that nothing can survive without food. What have I been feeding this week? I have a lot of anxiety and this has been a helpful question to see when I catch myself feeding the anxiety. I’m trying to turn to feeding more productive and nurturing emotions and attributes and have dusted off my home yoga practice as a result. What have you been feeding this week?

Challenges: Cee’s is Clouds and Diva’s is Earth Day

21 Tuesday Apr 2015

Posted by Jeanette Clawson in Mandala, Photographs

≈ 14 Comments

Tags

100 Mandalas, Cee's Fun Foto Challenge, Diva Challenge, Earth day, Mandala, photograph, Tree of Life, zentangle

colored tree of life

Check out the other Zentangled illustrations and photos of the Diva and her wonderful boys at

iamthedivaczt

Hawaii pink cloud

North beach clouds Hawaii Hawaii palms clouds hawaiian clouds beach with child

The above pictures are for Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Clouds. They are all from my recent trip to Hawaii. I love clouds and I have tons of cloud photos. The setting is what makes these special to me. I hope you enjoy them too.

See the other entries here

cees-fun-foto

CZT

Certified Zentangle Teacher

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