Jacqstar - a month in the life (part four - the last bit)

The lovely Jess from Create and Thrive  has organised an Instagram challenge for handcrafters called 'A Month in the Life' in which we post a picture each day of our businesses based on a different theme each day: (See part three here)

Create and thrive a month in the life

Day 22  - Goal

My attempt to write out the pattern to the shawl I'm making 

I normally make from other people's patterns but my goal is to be more creative and come up with my own ideas. Lately I've  been madly jotting down ideas and trying to actually make them work. I also want to learn the shorthand symbols for crocheting, which at this stage looks like hieroglyphics. Wish me luck!

Day 23 - Why?

This is why...

Why do I create? Why do I bother? Because it fills my soul and completes me. I'm my truest self when I'm painting, as it allows me to switch off and be in the moment, which I find very hard at other times.

Day 24 - Neighbourhood

My new friend

Now I live in a pretty ordinary neighbourhood, but I'm near bushland and some of the neighbours are really cool (and friendly when they think food is around) so here's a mate of mine...

Day 25 - Work Clothes

My work clothes (most of the time)

More often than not I'm at home in front of the TV crocheting in my jim jams.It's been a chilly winter so I've been all rugged up in my flannies and my Peter Alexander 'Dorothy' slippers.

Day 26 - In Situ

The Bride and her Maid of Honour 

/ɪn ˈsɪtjuː/

adverb, adjective (postpositive) 

1.

in the natural, original, or appropriate position

I was asked by a client what I had in white for a wedding. I managed to come up with a few things so here is the gorgeous Bride and her Maid of Honour wearing their crocheted hats. 

Day 27 - Learn

Apps for Sellers

I love learning new things and there is so much to learn when you're trying to run a business. I recently went to a free Brisstyle seminar for crafters on online selling. So much information :)

Day 28 - In the World

Creative Markets, Springwood

Here I am out in the world at my latest market stall at the Creative Markets Springwood.

Day 30 - Treasured

This is 'Music of the Night'. I painted this in a day-long art class with acrylic paint using only palette knives and fabric paint. I'ts quite large and it's the painting I'm most proud of. I sold it a few years ago to my boyfriend, so I  can visit it whenever I like!

Day 31 - support

My two favourite people

On the left is me with my Bestie- she provides the trestle tables, ideas and lots of moral support every market day. 

On the right is me with my lovely boyfriend, who is my number one fan and provides the muscle and lots of lollies when I'm doing markets. I couldn't do without either of them!

That's the end of the Create and Thrive A month in the life Instagram challenge. I've enjoyed sharing myself and my little biz with you and I hope you've enjoyed the ride.

Love,

Jacqui xx

Express Yourself!

Hello Lovely Peoples,

Today I went to an expressive painting class held by an Art therapist. I think I was expecting to learn 'HOW' to paint expressively, but I suppose that sort of defeats the purpose. Instead we first took a few deep cleansing breaths, and cleared our minds of the distractions of the day. We were then asked to listen to the music playing and choose the first colour that came to mind and that would be the colour/s of the background of our painting.

Mine was purple. I had a flash of purple and green so that's the way I started heading, but soon it started looking like seaweed or fish or something that I didn't want it to be. One lady there said, 'oh it looks like little fish swimming through the seaweed'  (I had no preconceived idea what I wanted the painting to look like - I just didn't want it actually looking like something - I was going for a purely abstract sort of result) 

So I then dripped some water onto it to blur the lines a bit, and I kept turning the canvas around so there wasn't an  up or down, and smudged the lines a bit with my fingers - I did a lot of finger painting today  and playing with different tools; the green bits were done with pallet knives  :) 

 I then tried a different tack - I splashed some yellow across it in an attempt to get away from the 'under the sea' theme.

This was the point when I really started getting into it (about an hour and a half into the class - what can I say - I'm slow to get going), trying to get as many different layers as possible into the painting - It was starting to take shape in my mind; the purple and green background were to be the first in (hopefully) many layers in this work.

Now, I just can't seem to complete anything in one sitting - especially a painting. It needs to develop at its own pace , and just as I had a clear vision, the class ended.

So - here's what I've got so far:

I love the curve in the yellow red and orange dots (flowers???) and I'd like to do some writing / collaging around that curve, with an inspirational quote. I'm in an art journalling / collaging kind of mood at the moment.

The question is which way is up?

So did I get any therapy out of it?

I suppose in some way I did. The overwhelming feeling I had throughout the afternoon was that of frustration. I was frustrated that what I saw in my head didn't translate exactly onto the canvas; Frustrated that I wasn't getting as 'into' the class as some others were; Frustrated that some of the other paintings were amazingly beautiful and pretty much completed by the end of the class, whereas I'd hit a creative brick wall and just stared at the canvas for ages waiting for it to tell me what to do next.

But all that in itself taught me so much about myself.

I was painting with my head and not my heart;  I wasn't just letting it happen. I'm used to making a painting look like 'something' so in this class I was all about making sure it wasn't looking like anything, when the natural flow of what I was doing lent itself to looking like fish or seaweed or whatever, and I should have taken that as my cue.

I was also looking around at what everyone else was doing to gage how I was going in comparison (and to be truthful, looking for ideas), when some people got so 'into the zone' that they later said they didn't notice the people around them or how long they had been paining.

Anyhoo, it's Art: there is no right or wrong way. It was just interesting to see myself in that light, AND I've got the beginnings of a very cool painting.

I'll keep you updated as it progresses.

Let me know what you think of it.

love,

Jacqstar xx

Anatomy of a painting

This painting was completed during two, three hour lessons with Patrick at his Ryhill Road art studio. The flowers and stems were drawn with fabric 'puffy' paints, although Patrick has since perfected  the use of acrylic paints put into squeeze bottles to get the same effect.  Lay the canvas on a table, making sure it is level.

Once the outlines are dry, spray the whole canvas with water using a spray bottle. Apply fabric ink to wet canvas with a brush, doing one colour at a time. If canvas starts to get dry, spray with water again, but spray upwards allowing the water to fall onto the canvas from above. Don't spray directly onto the ink or it will mottle the ink, unless that's the effect you're after. 

Depending on how steady your hand is when you're drawing the lines, there may or may not be bits where the line is thin or missing. This is where the ink will seep through and make the beautiful effects. I think I did too good a job on lining some flowers, so I had to purposely allow the brush to stray into the white lily to allow some colour transfer.

The ink comes in most basic colours but you can mix the colours beforehand to make a new colour.  I also added one colour over the other straight on the canvas. The plant stems I firstly painted  green, then added a bright yellow over the top to make a yellowy green, but it also  made it mottled when I sprayed it with water, so both the green and the yellow were visible.

The colours available in the ink are beautiful and bright, but I went back over them several times to get some really strong colurs - especially the yellows and the purple.





What I love about this technique is that it's quick (but I'm such a fuss pot I had to keep going back over the colours to get them just right), and it's meant to be a bit rough and messy. The colours are supposed to bleed into each other, so if you're not steady handed (like me), and make a bit of a mistake with the lines or the colurs, it makes it look even better :)


And here's the finished result...

I'm hooked on this technique, watch out for the next one...