Staying The Distance

It’s hard to believe we’ve been in this house a couple of months short of a year.
I know this because yesterday we got an offer for another 12 month lease.
Yayest of yays! 😀
There’s still just over two months until this lease runs out, so they must really like us…

I am continuing to get cosy with my art space, and have spent a bit (or more) of time out there each day. I think I’m catching up with my assessments. Here’s one I did earlier –

A crumpled piece of paper!
This is the second attempt at this one – the last one was rubbish…

The cold has started to grow teeth now.
Yesterday, the evening was pretty in pink.

It even looks cold!

The roses are sleeping, remembering sunnier days, and casting petals to the memories.

And I am close to slumbering – dreaming of graphite and charcoal.
…with a lovely relaxing playlist to sleep by.

Published in: on June 20, 2024 at 9:27 pm  Leave a Comment  
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Of Skulls And Sketching Places

Feels like this week has gone fast 🙂
Morning has decided it’s committed to winter, but the rest of the day hasn’t quite made its mind up…
Still keeping up (I think) with my lessons.
One of the assignments was to “draw an animal skull”.
Coles doesn’t stock those…

I was starting to worry that I might have to start hunting (or at least keep my eye out for roadkill!), but we found a friend who had a spare skull (sheep? goat?) I could borrow.
You never know what you’ll find in an artist’s shed.

Only got around to it yesterday – the bigger assignments can take hours rather than minutes. I also decided to use charcoal, a medium I probably haven’t touched for years.

Probably not my best work, but it’s going in as the final image.
It was more enjoyable than some of my other assignments (one was just…a very large rectangle. It was for practising measurement).
And my art/sun room is slowly getting arranged into a more useful configuration.

It’s been a good week.
Even my roses had a last hurrah for the summer.

Time for bed soon 🙂
But – just because I’m feeling rainbowy…

Published in: on June 15, 2024 at 11:27 pm  Leave a Comment  
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Snuggled In The Corner Chair

It was probably only a few days ago when the days decided to tip over into winter.
It’s been SO COLD!!
Comparatively.
And really, only in the mornings. Late afternoons. Nights.

I like this time of year. It’s sort of crispy clear, and good for snuggling in to warm duvets, and unicorn slippers. I even did a bit of a “spring” makeover – washed the sheets, which dried quickly in the breezy cold.

A beautiful sight!

I chose the blue skies duvet cover for me, to remember the hot sunshine by.

I have also (finally) been using my art room – something I hadn’t been able to get together in the last couple of places we’ve lived in.

My desk.
Where I’m actually doing some work!

And here’s my corner(ish) chair, snuggled in its little spot, and so far still warm during the day. It’s for reading, and writing (definitely no ‘rithmetic!)
I hadn’t realised there was so much colour around it…

Rainbows, and hearts, and toes about to become toasty warm!

I am tired right now – it was a big day of cleaning and washing – but I feel like I’ve been able to do more lately. Even though I lose energy over the day, it feels like I’m starting from a higher point. It’s lovely to be able to actually do something!
Having a bit more strength in the day is great, and there are times when I feel like a child again.

Not quite to this level of activity, though.
Everything else in the song is possible 🙂

This world may be crazy.
But it is beautiful.

Published in: on June 8, 2024 at 10:17 pm  Leave a Comment  
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A Tiny Piece Of Lego And A Big Clean Up

The sun has been lovely lately.
Bright clear days to get the washing dry, and just enough warmth to thaw my toes in the morning!
I got myself some sunflowers the other day, to bring the sunshine inside.

They’ve been lighting up the lounge room for a fair few days, but have been decorously wilting lately.

Still beautiful!

As the sunroom has been warm, but not baking, I’ve been using it a bit more.
I sat amidst the bookcases yesterday afternoon, enjoying poetry and music. Thought I’d do it again today…

Well, it started out OK.
I have some Lego sets the boys bought me, but I hadn’t put them together yet. How long could it take?
The one today was part of a Doctor Who set. The (twelfth) doctor, and the TARDIS is done – just K9 to go.
Those pieces are so tiny!
…and my hands are getting older.

Yes, I dropped a tiny, tiny piece.
A tiny, tiny piece that is also a specialist piece (it attaches the head somehow).
I heard it bounce away, but I can’t tell which direction sound is coming from.
A cursory look at the immediate surroundings didn’t help, so I pulled a few bits of furniture out.
Nothing.

I had noticed yesterday that the sunroom needed a good dust.
How long could that take?

I dusted the tops and shelves, including all the little bits and pieces on the shelves.
The boxes and containers all had to be moved and vaccuumed behind, as well as dusting them.
The (tiny, tiny) piece could have got caught up in the curtains?
The heavy, rubber backed curtains that I’ve been meaning to… do something with.
So, they came down, and were replaced with lovely translucent blue curtains. I still had to fold and store the old ones – the metres of heavy, huge fabric that sheds dust if you just look at it. I had remembered to put a mask on at some point, so the dust didn’t annoy me too much.
It took a while, but everything in the sunroom is sparkling now.
I already had the vaccuum out, so it made sense to do the rest of my cleaning (lounge, kitchen, bedroom, as well as dusting the surfaces in those places).
All nice and clean now 🙂
I normally do the big clean on Saturday morning, but now I can sleep in a bit tomorrow.

Today was a lot more active than my normal days, so I had Panadol and a hot water bottle, after a lovely hot shower/hair wash.
A bit sore, but feeling accomplished.

Still haven’t found that Lego piece, though.

Published in: on May 24, 2024 at 10:04 pm  Leave a Comment  

Hang Ups

My “art room” is looking a lot less cluttered this week.
I’ve finally unpacked some containers, moved some things around, hung some bits and pieces up…

Some of the packages haven’t seen the light of day for quite a while. There are canvases that I’ve had for decades, and some that are a fair bit newer. There are various reasons why I haven’t hung them up before, but one is that they aren’t really too great, in my eyes. But – they exist. And they’re not terrible 😆 I hope to get some more work done – get some of the images out of my head and onto a canvas, or piece of paper.
I have a certain fondness for my older work, even if I can still see the flaws!

A bit of a mixture – the two on the right aren’t as old as the purple peopley one on the left. That’s from 1986 – my first year of art college. It’s been hung on many different walls and travelled round the world with me 🙂

This one is also from the last decade or so.
It’s bigger than the others, and the hooks I have available are tiny, so it’ll stay here. I have framed prints from college, but they are too heavy for the hooks – lots of glass and framing.

I also found a lovely photo of our family from years ago. It’s sharing space with some paintings I bought while backpacking around Europe in 1994, and a beautiful textile print made by a friend.

I haven’t found a place to safely put this mirror – the hooks wouldn’t hold it, and I wouldn’t want the glass to smash on our uncarpeted floors. At the moment it’s just reflecting a gauzy, curtain-y dreamscape.

There’s still work to do.
I’ll just have to get over my hang ups, so I have more things to…hang up! 😀

Published in: on May 27, 2023 at 11:59 pm  Leave a Comment  

Once More, It’s That GISH Again

Another GISH Hunt week just gone – I think this is my fifth year?
It felt a bit low key this year, although I enjoyed it. Started off the week with a flu type thing, so I’ve only done six items…

Item 29
Make a book jacket. No, we mean a REAL book jacket.

This was hurried, not quite I wanted. I was feeling a bit rough and just wanted to start on something…I meant to update it with something better later in the week.

Item 52
Everyone needs a driver’s license to drive, and obviously there are lots of different kinds of licenses, but there is one that people often seem shy to share. Take a photo of a published poet showing us their Poetic License.

I am published – many years ago, in an anthology put out by a vanity publisher.

Item 161 –
TV shows get crossover episodes all the time, but we just don’t see enough Poetry Crossovers! Choose two of your favorite short, well-known poems from wildly different genres of poets and write the words on separate slips of paper. Then, rearrange the words to form a brand-new poem that creates the genre mash-up the poetry world has been yearning for. You must use all the primary words in your new creation, but you can add or remove conjunctions and articles as needed to make it flow.

Item 25 –
Son-flower.

One of favourites, and the quickest to do.
Note the eyeroll (my boys are familiar with GISH week now!)

Item 16 –
I (Misha) often make other people get tattoos, but this year I’m flipping the script and making you help me get one: Design a pointillism-style tattoo for my shoulder that incorporates a baby cheetah, a sockeye salmon and the words “wild and precious life” or something similar. The baby cheetah represents my son; the sockeye salmon, my daughter… and the phrase has deep meaning to me. I intend to use a mashup of the designs I like best, so give it all you’ve got. (Then, if you are so inclined, get a pointillist tattoo of three things that have deep significance to you — but you don’t have to do this part to get your Points.)

Another of my favourites! 😀

Item 121 –
Art is subjective, so there’s really no such thing as “bad” art in our opinion. Prove us wrong: create a piece of art so truly awful, it deserves to be in the Museum of Bad Art. The subject of your creation: a terrible, haunting, “big eyes” portrait of a character from Supernatural or another well-known pop-culture universe, in the style of Margaret Keane. But make it so bad, it’s kind of good.

Definitely not one of my favourites, but at least I got it done… it’s meant to be a character called Bobby Singer.

Well, that’s it for another year…just waiting for the sign up for next hunt.
Maybe it’s time now for an early night?

Published in: on August 8, 2022 at 7:43 pm  Leave a Comment  
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Reading For GISH

This weekend I participated in the GISH Book Bash – a GISH hunt with a literary bent.
It was a very short hunt (36 hours), so I didn’t get much done. What I did get done required minimal energy expenditure…

58 – Oh, no… Your library (local or personal) has been infested with bookworms! Show us the epic battle between you and these massive, book-munching behemoths.

23 – The last line from the poem on page 47 of my (Misha Collins’) book, Some Things I Still Can’t Tell You, written on a single blade of grass lying on a sidewalk. 

69 – Kafka’s insect having tea with the Lord of the Flies, complete with a tiny insect crown.

32 – Cave paintings were the first “written” stories, but we just don’t see enough of them these days — so let’s bring it into the 21st century. Depict your favorite movie or TV show’s story in a prehistoric style worthy of the Lascaux Caves, painted on the walls of your “(hu)man cave” or den.

Guess which TV show! 😆

All in all, not some of my best work. But still fun.
And…BOOKS! Yay!
😀

Published in: on March 30, 2022 at 10:39 pm  Leave a Comment  
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A Starring Role?

…or at least a couple of seconds in one of the slightly bigger boxes (amongst all the others!) 😆
Here’s the latest Couch Choir clip – an original song by Astrid Jorgensen.

Enjoy!
😀

Published in: on March 7, 2022 at 10:16 pm  Leave a Comment  
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Where Beauty Began

Lately I have been reminded
of the artistry woven into the fabric of life,
the tapestry of existence on Earth.
The delight in the small things,
tiny details,
discoveries for every moment of our days.

I have been reminded
that we are created
by a Creator

to be creative
each of us having a part to play
(and all our pieces are needed for the full picture!)
We can bring our unique gifts
to help hold back the darkness,
and uncover the Light.

All of us
artists,
born for community,
to navigate the hard times together,
and together, to rest.

Published in: on November 24, 2021 at 9:22 pm  Leave a Comment  
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A Penguin Appears!

…and a splash of creativity graces the world!

I went to the library the other day – books are one of the necessities of life 🙂
The librarian who was on duty at the time saw me admiring the little blu tack figures on the frame of computer, and said that she made them when she had some time.

So cute!
😀

When I passed by today I noticed that there was a tiny baby penguin there as well.

We are lead to believe that “genius” is something that only a small group of people possess. We are often taught to seek the one “true” answer to something, rather than thinking outside the box to see if there’s a better one – every school generation seems to have a new way to do maths problems, and the old ways are no longer used.
I was listening to a zoom call recently, and we heard that genius is far more prevalent than we were told. The word itself seems to come from a root that suggests an “inborn power” that doesn’t seem to be reserved for the fortunate few. We all have something that we are born to do, and that we are good at.
That won’t necessarily be a blu tack penguin 😀

…but it may be –

a beautiful garden,
the best apple pie,
the ability to fix any car you come across,
making delicious school lunches, every day, for 12 years,
creating a home that people love to visit,
being the person who can organise the neighbourhood to have barbeques for every conceivable occasion…

or we could all be the person with a smile so big, and a heart so wide, that everyone knows they’re safe and loved and welcome.

What’s your genius?

Published in: on November 17, 2021 at 5:03 pm  Leave a Comment