Tag: art

Ink and Paper and Detail, Oh My!

So I get really excited with newness. I love the replenishing wave of a fresh passion, it’s so invigorating. But I’ve realized through the years that I’ve had a tendency to NOT FINISH what I start because of this. I love the first bursts of creativity, but it tends to wane for some reason. I’ve realized that maybe it’s because I haven’t known how to end what I’m currently working on, or just dislike feeling stuck with any part of it. All valid reasons, but having a bunch of unfinished art work sitting around isn’t going to work for me anymore.

Lately when I get a burst of a new idea, I jot it down quickly in my art journal, relishing the moment I get to try it out, but not giving in to the temptation.

However. I could. Not. Stop. Thinking about this one. I was having these vivid daydreams of sitting on the floor surrounded with liquid ink and tiny black pens and just allowing whatever my fingers decided to create, to come forth.

So, I stopped what I was doing and started this. Sometimes you just have to follow the passion. Ah! Loving working on this!!

The only thing is that I was so excited to start that I didn’t properly prepare the watercolor paper. So the paper rippled, and now needs to have some books stacked on top to straighten it out. Next time I have gotta take a deep breath,..

and take my time!

Does anyone have any great suggestions for 140lbs. hot press watercolor paper? I’ve heard putting it in the bathtub for awhile works well…. Love some advice!

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Victoria Erickson

I just discovered this amazing poet the other day. ahhhh! Her words are so powerful! I can’t wait to get her books. Wow!

Check her out if you get a chance.

xo

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Jump Scared and Grow into Brave

For years I knew I wanted to do super awesome things and for some reason I thought they were literally going to be dropped on my porch. Like someone would maybe even stop me on the side of the road and say, “Excuse me, are you Jackie? We have an exciting life for you! Just follow me!”

Obviously that didn’t happen, but I spent a lot of time WAITING FOR IT.

I knew the things I sorta kinda wanted but my FEAR was way too great to do anything physical about it.

Slowly through the years I’ve realized a bit about getting what we want. Even if we have the best intentions for receiving the life we want, but we refuse to take any risks at all,.. WE WON’T GET IT. We won’t.

If we refuse to quit the job that is draining the life out of us, or say no way to standing up for ourselves, or taking a class to learn a new skill we have really been wanting,.. if we aren’t willing to RISK, and to be BRAVE,….

WE. WILL. NOT. CHANGE.

I’m totally in my element now, making art. Making art for me, isn’t a risk, it’s a necessity. But I am DEFINITELY making sure to take little risks everyday.

Here are the risks I’ve been taking lately:

  • Writing this blog – Puts my voice out there! My innermost feelings and joys and pains. It feels vulnerable and not always that comfortable.
  • Making a Facebook business page of my art – I literally cringed when I started inviting people to like it. Ah! I feel so exposed! ughaserk!
  • Posting Doodle-a-Day photos for Instagram – I’ve never never been one to show my work, it feels like I’m being a show off. And yet, art is my heart and soul, and I’m no longer going to hide.
  • Saying I’m an artist – There’s a part of me that feels uncomfortable saying I’m an artist, and yet I know that BEING AN ARTIST sings through my veins, and so I suck it up, and say it anyway.

With each of these circumstances, my heart starts racing, my palms get sweaty, I feel nauseous and fiercely anxious. None of them are easy for me. And yet,… I know that this is where I will grow. I think back to all the times that I thought I might take a jump and then quickly replaced that thought with this one:

‘That sounds really scary, I think I’ll wait until I’m braver.’

I realize now, that we don’t just become brave. Bravery doesn’t just appear so the jump is easier.

If we jump scared, then we grow into being brave.  

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Looking For Art

Before I started this blog,

before I was waking up every morning excited to create ART,

I was attempting to get a couple other business ideas going. I’ve always been severely passionate about many things and it seemed like I could swing quickly from one idea to another.

This would cause a lot of stress for me. I thought I SHOULD have been the kind of person that decided what I wanted to do at 18, went for it, and then that would be my life.

Life wasn’t like this for me at all. I have been all over the map! I’ve had plenty of corporate jobs with sales and recruiting and marketing and customer service. (I secretly wished I loved them enough for them to be ENOUGH), and then I’ve also had different kinds of jobs off the normal job scale, working for a spiritual healer, and in a trendy shop in Venice, California. Jobs that seemed kinda kick back and not very ambitious. And yet, I learned parts of myself that I didn’t know existed. As I look back, any of these jobs that I had where I was working FOR someone, no matter what they were, they were based on providing me with either enough resources to make art, or time to do it.

All of that is fine, except that I judged myself horribly for this. I thought “What is wrong with you, Jackie, that you need to create?” “Can’t you just find a CAREER and stick to it?”Even though my heart LONGED to create, I felt like needing to make art, was kind of in the way.

Life would be easier if I was simpler. 

It’s funny that I’ve longed to have one career, when I know many people change what they are doing or wanting to do throughout their lives. But we are always evolving anyway, so it makes sense that how we want to show up in the world changes as well.

So back to my own businesses I was in the middle of… They were based on things that I like, and one was even concepts that I was PASSIONATE about; when I was working in a corporate setting. And yet, the actual work, the planning workshops, the research, not that horrible, but not super fun. The whole time I was doing this WORK for these businesses, I secretly wanted to be making art. Isn’t that funny?

And then I realized:

I decided to do these other businesses because I thought they would MAKE MONEY. And then if I was successful enough, maybe

I’D HAVE TIME TO MAKE ART.

What I really wanted to do,…

WAS MAKE ART.

It’s always always been that, but because I didn’t trust that I’d be taken care of, that I have been given these gifts for a reason, I’ve searched for YEARS to find JOBS and my own BUSINESSES that will give me the joy and fulfillment that art does.

So there’s been this part of me that feels embarrassed that I’ve changed my mind so many times, and yet,.. as I look at it, I haven’t changed my mind at all. I’ve known all along that I wanted to make art, I just didn’t allow myself to do it.

Yet another lesson I’m seeing, is to use the gifts that I have been given to create the life that my soul longs for. I am doing that! I am starting to believe that the more I fill my heart with love and do things that genuinely bring me joy, the more the right people, the right situations will find me.

 

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New Universe

Here is a new piece I’m working on. The more I play with it, the more I like it  I kinda like the different shades of orange and blue moving together.

It feels like an intergalactic universe, where everything is connected to each other. Like life I guess. I love learning about all the energy that bounces off of us from person to person, or how intuition creeps into us from a visceral level. We are all so connected to each other and the universe. Ah!

I usually do pieces like this with only black ink, so it’s really fun to be playing with color.

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Where’s the PASSION

I was talking to my hubby this morning. We have both been in the middle of an emotional upheaval and have felt so drained. I was telling him that lately I’ve just felt so tired, just longing to be back in bed, curled up.

I really dislike this feeling. Now I know when life is emotionally and mentally exhausting, it’s important to sleep. I got it. But I’ve had ENOUGH of that.

What I’ve realized about myself, is that if I’m not in a place of passion, I tend to get tired more quickly.

When I’m MAKING ART, and WRITING BLOGS and bubbling over with enthusiasm, I don’t need so much sleep. I jump out of bed at 4:30am, buzzing to create. My day is full of visions of what to make next, or the waves of paint swelling on my paper. I spend my time relishing what I’m grateful for and knowing that life is bringing me what is best for me. I am kind, I am fun, I am playful and silly and feel beautiful.

It’s not MORE sleep that I need, it’s taking a huge messy bite out of PASSION. Ah!

How can I get back to passion when I’ve been handling life stuff for so many days?

  1. Name off what I am grateful for. Set alarms if I need to.
  2. Meditate more often than I think necessary.
  3. Draw everything
  4. Release emotions (I work best if I cry at least every other day)
  5. Start something new
  6. Get my paints ready, and work on one of my pieces. Everything else can wait!
  7. Dump paint into my art journal and PLAY! The less thinking the better.

 

BURN

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I’m back

I’m finally sitting here at my little laptop ready to WRITE. Finally. It’s been so long! And actually it’s felt like forever since

I’ve MADE ART.

I went from driving many hours to a wonderful party in Los Angeles to a couple of days back home sorting through life stuff. Sometimes this happens, right? Days go in ways we don’t expect, and routine gets flipped around. But I have so missed writing my daily posts.

I think what I’m recognizing is that I am so much better at being easy on myself. It’s been an excruciatingly long month with so many stressful things happening, and lots of gory feelings exploding all over the place, and lots of places where cobwebs are literally falling out of the shadows.

When I’d go through things like this in the past, I’d feel so much SHAME and wonder WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME??

I should be able to handle this! I should be STRONGER BETTER FASTER more amazing than I am.

I  SHOULD BE DIFFERENT.

Through the years, through the work I’ve been doing on myself, those voices still come up but they are softer, and they are way more in the background then they used to be. In fact, I can point them out! I can call them to the  front of the classroom and tell them their help is no longer needed.

Now, I am in charge.

Because the last week has been again so much learning and growing and aching and changing,…

What is the most loving thing I can do for myself?

I can make art.

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Messy

My dear sweet warm loving hubby told me yesterday that I am messy,

and he’s right.

I am messy.

Before I lived with him, I thought I was laid back. I thought I was nonchalant and super chill and I was so wrong. When I lived alone, I’d hide away in my house when I had FEELINGS so no one knew I did. I was so embarrassed about having them, I sort of forgot myself.

But when you live with someone, they SEE IT ALL,

and I. Am. Messy.

I can go from 0-60 in 2 seconds flat. I can be calm and then freakin’ lose it.

I can jump to conclusions, interrupt, burst into tears, and shut down completely. He doesn’t know what he’s going to get at any moment in time and I’m sure it’s totally annoying.

But just like everyone,  I am trying to figure it out. Sometimes I feel like I’ve got life under control and I feel enthusiastic, and uplifted and ready and alive. Other times I feel incompetent and petty and wrong.

Maybe I’m way more emotional then others. Maybe I’m a little bit scarier than some. But we all have STUFF and I’ll continue to learn and grow to become the best version of me that I can.

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More stress, more Jackie time

So I’m very much in the thick of some really deep stuff. This year started out with my hubby and I asking the universe for some MOVEMENT in many areas of our lives.

We cut cords of old beliefs that were no longer working for us,

We felt our feelings fully,

We made lists of what we want to feel and experience in the year 2017.

Anyway, there was a lot of stuff. A lot of work, and shifting ideas and beliefs and starting fresh. So it’s no wonder that so far this year has been full of

TRANSITION

CHANGE

GROWTH,.. oh so much, so much growth.

Everywhere I look has been another huge epiphany.

So I was thinking, what do most of us do when we are in pockets of life that are extremely stressful?

Most of us have been taught to:

HUNKER DOWN,

Put our nose to the grindstone,

Push harder,

Get less sleep,

Literally shove ourselves THROUGH THE STRESS.

 

Hm.

Well how’s that working for us? Not great, at least not for me.

So I’m taking a different approach. The more change, the more stress, the more crazy life gets, the more I will take CARE OF MYSELF. It’s already stressful, why make it more so? If I can give myself more naps, or breaks, or laughs, or doodle moments, I will come back renewed and in a great place full of creativity.

If I push without feeling, drained and exhausted, my work and my life will not be very good. I won’t be able to come up with solutions, and I’ll end up so annoyed and disconnected and irritated. What a horrible way to use my energy.

Never underestimate the power of being in a good place. The more time spent taking care of ourselves automatically will put us miles ahead of someone that is just hanging there by a thread.

So, I’ll be listening to my body and my heart. What do I NEED to do to get into an empowered fun open place? That is my priority so I can actually accomplish.

this mountain

 

 

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