Fake it ’til you make it

This was a thought-provoking prompt this week that has really led me to think about concepts of maturity and authenticity particularly in relationship to art and art journalling. However my first thought was that “fake it until you make it” involved the use of pre-made materials. I pulled out a gel print that I particularly liked from my stash. I didn’t rip it up or create any mash up with other papers, I just literally and figuratively “cut corners” by trimming off the white borders (which will be a thing of the past with my new 12″ x 14″ gel press) 

I got out my markers and pens to do a little highlighting and scribbled words. This allowed me to think about my discomfort a bit more. I realized there was a bit of a balancing act between maturity/learning, authenticity and ego. Perhaps it isn’t an accident that more women are drawn to mixed media because it is, when you think about it, a collaborative art form. We are creating mash-ups often drawing on the art of others. Women are socialized to be more collaborative. Like the butterflies in our group (and on my page) the art we incorporate carries the page forward in combination with our own. Authenticity is a great value but sometimes we get it confused with egotism (or at least I do) when we feel like our own voice has to speak the loudest. Maturity is being able to step back and let another voice speak sometimes and I think the Dina Wakely message of “I spill make my mark” is hilariously apt to these thoughts. 

 

 

Inner Child

Inner Child

There she is! I have a lot of sympathy and caring for my child. She was crazy tall for her age (the tallest kid in her class until half way through high school), skinny and serious looking. People always thought she was much older than she was. That’s why her mother kept her in ringlets and hair ribbons to try to signal to people “She’s 8 not 12” but it didn’t work. I just looked weird and old-fashioned. The only child of an older mother who was surprised to become pregnant after she’d given up hope, I lived in an adult world in the city with a working mother. My refuge was books (fantasy) and my grandmother’s garden which was tiny but seemed like a vast jungle to me. For a multitude of reasons my childhood was mostly stolen from me but “Imagination” speaks to the odd young/old/tall in body/very young in spirit child that I was.

Dream

dream

I was channeling Chagall’s flying people in this page about dreams.

Deja vu

It’s that feeling that you get when you feel like you are split between two realities.

Alter-ego

Alter ego

I took a big fork in the road in my 30’s after having been a stay-at-home mom for several years with a real flower-child organic gardening type mission. I suddenly took a full-time job and got on the career track. This is my alter ego still standing in the garden in the back of my mind.

50 Shades of Me

art journalling 50 shades of me

I started with a collaged background and gessoed over a roughly head and shoulders shaped area. Then I sketched myself in pencil.

I used inktense pencils, paint markers and pens to add colour and words.

Secret Identity

focus image

Another page for the A Layer a Day group on Facebook. This week’s theme was “secret identity” or that identity which we hide from the rest of the world. I immediately thought about my gaming character in “Lord of the Rings Online”, a hunter elf. But I also realized that this image spoke to the fact that I tend to hide anger but focus it in a laser sharp way like the flaming arrow in this page.

I planned to do this page with negative painting so started with a collage but I used very, very little of the background in the final version.

I wear many hats (mixed media)

Me in many hats

The question was “How do you identify yourself on first introduction”? My mixed media response is, “I wear many hats”. Like many people, how I introduce myself varies situationally so there was no simple answer to this prompt. I started with a charcoal sketch, roughed it in with acrylic paint and then took out markers and pens to finish it off. Lately this seems to be my “go to technique”. Lately I have been improving on it by either outlining in pen and erasing the original sketch or using a workable fixative over the charcoal before applying acrylics. In this page I had some greyed out areas due to charcoal contaminating the paint but I lived with it. Live and learn!

Me in many hats