Colour Energy Course

I love coincidences and synchronicity.

I've just come across one of my old forgotten notebooks from 2006. In it I'd written down some ideas and made rough sketches for paintings and other creative projects that I wanted to do. One of the ideas was to do paintings of the SEVEN Chakras, each one in the colour associated with that Chakra.
(I never took the idea any further at the time.)



My forgotten notebook from 2006



 

And what do you know!!!

We recently did exactly that in my process art classes! SEVEN years later!!

I've been falling behind on my blog and am finding that the longer I leave it the harder it becomes to start writing again. Finding this old notebook has given me a “kick up the butt” and inspired me to get back to it :) So here goes...

 

COLOUR ENERGY COURSE:

 

The flyer advertising the ASTAR Colour Energy Course

 

"Colour is a form of energy that has the power to affect us physically, emotionally and mentally. Our use of colour expresses how we feel and think. The colours we surround ourselves with can have a huge effect on our mood. Colour can raise spirits and self-esteem, enhance surroundings, reduce stress and help view life more positively.

 

In the Colour Energy Course we will devote a three-hour in-depth exploration into each spectral colour, exploring the colour's energy through senses, meditation and painting only in the tones and associated hues of that colour.

Each week we focus on a particular colour, moving through the Chakra system, painting with intuitive spontaneity. We explore the colour nuances where, week by week, you are encouraged to integrate each colour into your daily lives.

 

This wholistic experience of each colour is a unique and very exciting journey."

- from the flyer advertising the ASTAR Colour Energy Course

 

 

I did the ASTAR Colour Energy Course at the end of last year (2013).

I was very excited to take part in the course because I'd had an interest in colour energy and the chakra system in the past and was keen to find out more.

The course helped me to reconnected with a part of myself that I seemed to have left behind somewhere along the way. Our home used to be filled with colour, but it was also full of clutter. In an attempt to de-clutter our space and to make it less busy I replaced colour with, what I thought would be, calming neutrals and a lot of white. There was also a trend at the time to have All White, minimalist interiors. I never got the minimalist thing right. My hubbie and I just collect too much STUFF!
Doing the course has made me fall in love with colour all over again. Even colours that I was not keen on before, like yellow and purple, now excite and inspire me.
The course also ended up being more profound than I'd ever imagined it would be.
All in all, I LOVED it!
...

Links to my blog posts about colour: RED  ORANGE  YELLOW

Knight's Castle - made from recycled boxes

One day, driving home after a play date, my son (then 5yrs old) told me that he would LOVE to have a Knight's Castle like the one his friend has. (It is a large, impressive plastic castle with all the accessories)

Christmas was only a couple of months away so I suggested that he include it in his letter to Santa. After a thoughtful moment he said excitedly "Or I can MAKE one!!".
Which he then did the following day (with a little help from mom).
I was delighted, and so proud of him.

 

 

 

 

 

He then wrote a letter to Santa and asked for a Knight (or two) on horseback.

And Santa delivered :)

 

 

 

 

 

Origami Window Stars



 I fell in love with some paper stars that were stuck up in the window at art class this week.
When I got home I did an Internet search to find instructions on how to make them.

It is suggested that you use tissue paper or kite paper (which is said to be better).
I didn't have either but couldn't wait to make one, so I used some trace that I tore out of a paper sample catalogue I had in my paper stash.

 

Instructions for this basic star can be found on the Duo Fiberworks website.



I think they would make lovely Christmas decorations.
I'm itching to make more and to try different designs, sizes, papers and colours but I have some work that needs to be done first. :)

Self Portrait

The project in one of my process art classes a few months ago, was to do a series of Self Portraits using clay, charcoal, and tea, coffee and ink.

For the first one we were given a mirror and a large lump of clay.
Sitting comfortably and holding the clay in our hands, we did a guided meditation.
We then placed the clay on the desk in front of us and with our eyes closed, were instructed to carefully and slowly feel our face, ... our ears, ... our head ... and our neck. We did this a few times using both our hands, first our fingertips and then our whole hand.
When we were done, we started to mould the ball of clay into a self portrait. We could look at our refection in the mirror and at times we closed our eyes and worked intuitively, feeling our way around the clay and occasionally referring back by feeling our faces and heads with our hands.

You would think that with all this care taken to explore your own face, and to carefully mould it out of clay, you would manage to achieve a pretty close resemblance of yourself  in your final sculpture.

So, I ask you, with tears in my eyes...

Who the hell is THIS Guy !??   LOL




Self Portrait in clay

Self Portrait in clay - side view



Charcoal sketch of Self Portrait in clay



Self Portrait in charcoal



Self Portrait - wet on wet using tea, coffee and black ink



Last Dance - mono prints

Printmaking (or Graphics as it was called) was my favourite subject when I was in high school. I've done the odd etching, woodcut and lino cut over the years and have always dreamt of one day having my own press. It is therefore not surprising that my favourite Process Art classes have become the ones where we work with Mono prints.

 

The class started with a guided meditation, which I always find really helpful. It calms your mind and helps you to switch off, or change gear, after a busy day.

We spent some time paging through magazines and tearing out pages of colour, texture or images that grabbed our attention. There was also a selection of items such as bubble wrap, textured fabric, lace, flowers, leaves etc. that could be used to make texture or patterns in the ink. We were free to experiment printing onto different papers, including the magazine pages we'd torn out.

 

 

My many printing experiments done on various papers, including some magazine pages.

 

 

When we were done, we stuck all our prints up on the wall and quietly sat and looked at them. We were to choose two prints that could then be worked into by adding colour with ink or pastels.

 

These were the two prints that stood out for me. They felt like they belonged together.

 

 

Last Dance

 

 

As always, the artwork that I do in these classes ends up reflecting something that is on my mind or in my subconscious at the time. In the days before this class I had been thinking and worrying a lot about my father who is ill and was due to start radiation therapy. I had been preoccupied by thoughts of human mortality, the fear of death, and the fear of, and inevitability of, one day losing my parents.

 

I called this work "Last Dance".

RAZIEL (by Anonymous)

I have been receiving some wonderful feedback about my blog posts to do with the Process Art classes that I am doing.

This message really made me smile... :)

"Hi Wendy I just wanted to share with you how you inspired me to join ASTAR. After your initial classes you shared your journey and I was intrigued. I found classes close by and have completed 2 courses and all I can say is WOW! And thank you for the inspiration. It's been an incredible, symbiotic, spiritual and artistic journey xxx"

I was very excited to hear that someone reading my blog had experienced something similar to what I'd been experiencing. Something magical. I was even more excited when they agreed to share their profound experience with us, here, on my blog. :D  They would like to remain anonymous.

Here is their story...


My ASTAR experience has been a deeply profound and spiritual one. The art has opened the spirit and the spirit has embodied the art.

The last course I attended was Chance Art and as a natural control freak I found the "letting go" to be most exhilarating and terrifying. Each lesson revealed a deeper understanding of myself and culminated in a mind blowing experience which I am still wrapping my head around.

The exercise involved cutting up our "poems" we had written through the previous weeks, putting all these individual words into a bowl, we sat with this bowl and then with eyes closed pulled out eight of these words.
We then strung these words together to make up a coherent or semi coherent sentence, after which we wrote this sentence over and over again on a sheet of paper using wax, bleach, ink – whatever we wanted to use. Once the entire sheet was haphazardly filled with these words we filled in the blanks with colour ink, coffee, tea, more bleach again whatever we wanted. By the end I thought my sheet looked like a morning after a heavy night.

After tea we sat quietly looking at what we had done as if we were cloud watching, forming images out of shapes and shadows.
When I looked, all I could see was the outline of a face and the suggestion of wings. So in the spirit of chance I went with it. The entire experience was out of this world. I did not feel as though I was doing it, as I followed the lines I found that the shadows that were there already revealed the lips, the eyes and the body. It was surreal.

After class I was exhilarated, and in the week following I kept thinking about my angel. During a meditation the letters RAZIEL flashed in my mind. I wondered if this was the name of an angel so after swinging between wondering and telling myself I was loosing my mind, I decided to Google it!

And there it was. Raziel, the angel that holds the messages of God. The angel that opens the third eye.

This experience has challenged my spiritual beliefs and has opened a whole new world of wonder to me.




Raziel

 

...

 

Dear anonymous.

This is so SO beautiful. It gave me goose bumps.

Thank you so very much for sharing.

xxx Wendy

 

Giraffes

As I mentioned in my previous post, "Geisha", the second term of my process art classes focused very much on letting go of our inner critic. This was done in a number of ways, from passing your work around the class where each student got to add something to your work, to working with a blindfold on.

 

In this class we started off blindfolded once again. We used inks, tea, coffee, charcoal and chalk pastels to fill the page with random markings. We covered a number of pages, working fairly quickly, without much thought given to what we were doing.

The pages looked something like this:

 

One of the textured pages created using a mixture of tea, coffee, inks, charcoal and chalk pastels.

 

We lay the pages out on the floor and were asked to choose one that "spoke" to us. One that seemed to have a hidden image or images.

I unfortunately don't have a photo of what my chosen page looked like before I worked into it, but what I saw at first were 3 GIRAFFES! Two of them were quite humorous and cartoon-like, and another was more realistic. I also saw a couple of birds. I used a wash of black ink, some charcoal and chalk pastels to help define the shapes that I was seeing.

 

My final artwork, "Giraffes"

 

I was horribly disappointed at the end of this class. Not only did I end up with what I considered to be a really ugly picture, but I also didn't see any obvious meaning or feel any connection with the giraffes. The end result is not meant to be important, but it is always a bonus if it turns out well. I hadn't particularly enjoyed the process either, so I went home feeling rather cheated :(

 

The following day, on Facebook, a friend shared how her daughter had been gored by a tame boar and needed stitches in her leg. In her status update she said, "It has forced us to slow down. Assess, and figure out what this "Boar Medicine" means."

Boar Medicine? I had no idea what that was so I did an internet search. My search took me to a page about Native American Animal Medicine where I read,

"The Native American practice of "animal medicine" embraces an awareness that reveals itself when a certain animal crosses our path."

And, 

" Animal Medicine is that which you need to learn RIGHT NOW! and the lesson that is coming across your IMMEDIATE path. Another animal may come cross your path tomorrow. Your attention may be called to one of these animals through television, conversation, daily experience, etc. Regardless of how one of these animals comes across your path, study the message and apply to your daily Life . . . they have a message for you!"

 





Detail of "Giraffes"





 

The Giraffes...

Okay, so it may have been a bit desperate of me and really silly to have wanted to find meaning in the work I'd done the previous evening, but I couldn't help myself...

I looked up "Giraffe Medicine" and found this:

 

"Today Giraffe is letting you know that it's time to stick your neck out. Start making new connections, stretch yourself, reach as far as you can. You are up for the challenge."

 

And yes, of course it made sense to me... I'd just finished making a list of gift shops, online shops and markets that I could approach about selling some of the goodies that I make. Seriously!

 

So, the next time an animal crosses your path... ;)