neurodivergent artist and author
For Day 8 of #DailyArtDevotions 40-day #artjournal #journey with Elizabeth Foley, I painted the cover of my repurposed cookbook turned art journal.
My portal in the center of the cover is a heart as my intention shifts to being heart-centered and open to what wants to come through when I create. My creative time will be respite for my overworked logical brain so that it can get some much needed rest.
For the cover, I used acrylic paints and stencils.
Today I thought about the journey…the artistic journey…the life journey we are all on…the way there are no straight lines, no direct route from point A to point B. There are times we fall off the path completely, then by magic or sheer will, we seem to pick back up right where we left off, sometimes many, many years later.
There are dark patches in our paths where it feels like we will never see light or vibrant colors again, but no matter how bad it’s been, the light and colors eventually come back as does the darkness. Again and again we follow this circuitous path towards what…well, I don’t know. Maybe, it is a journey back to ourselves, to our core, to our heart center.
I imagine it is a journey of shedding all we’ve been taught, those things that we believe blindly, that have become a part of who we are, but that do not serve us in any way except to keep us tethered to our feelings of worthlessness, of not being good enough, of not being deserving of all the goodness the Universe has to offer. I am starting to become aware of those beliefs, those messages that were given to me by family, advertising, friends, lovers, and so many others. It makes me angry that I so easily took them on as my own without question. What might my life look like if I excavated those beliefs and exposed them for the falsehoods that they are? Who might I be then? What might I create if my intention was to create only for the pleasure of creating and not for receiving validation, approval, and love from others?
Since I finished Nina Rycroft’s Face Shapes class yesterday, today was the perfect day to watch Karen Abend‘s next #FindYourFlow video on resistance and procrastination. In the video, she discussed self-discipline and self-awareness as ways to help with resistance and procrastination that comes up when implementing a daily creative practice. One of the suggestions she had was daily revisits to the thirty-day plan I created at the start of the program in order to come up with daily commitments and intentions based on that plan. It was incredibly helpful (and I loved the accompanying PDF she gifted us with) because when I reviewed the plan I had created, I realized at its core was a desire to focus on character development. This realization helped me decide that, moving forward, I would continue with Nina Rycroft’s illustration classes and move on to the Guide to Drawing Eyes class.
I wasn’t sure how exactly to make it more than just a bunch of eyes on the page. I wanted my practice to be a bit more fun than that…so, I decided to create characters based on each eye shape.
Today’s sketches are based on Nina Rycroft’s round eyes. She suggested three different round eye types, so I created three characters based on those. I kept the noses and mouths the same (for the most part), and kept them in the same location on the face. I used the same oval-shaped face for each character as well. When I was done with the rough sketch, I let my intuition guide me on what to do next. On the first character, I tried a new graphite pencil over the blue pencil, but it didn’t feel quite right, so I decided to use a Sharpie art pen to outline the characters rather than a graphite pencil. When that was done, I still felt the need to add more, so I decided to add color! Since I’m working on basic sketch paper, I had to choose an appropriate medium, so I decided to use watercolor pencils and then add a very light wash with a waterbrush. The paper held up nicely, and I’m really happy with the results.
Sarah Joyce Bryant 