May ~ Manifestos: Let the arting begin ~ a peek at Penelope's journal

Manifestos. So many words! But don't be afraid to let the art be a part of it.

Remember my notes on the form for starting a manifesto from the last post? Here's how it all turned out ... step by step:

The basic notes

Step 1: Background made from strips of scrapbooking paper

Step 2: Adding stamping along the outside edges, plus some added doodles to unite it all.

Step 3: Writing out the test and planning where it will go. 

Step4: Writing on the text. And being at peace with the less than perfect results. Honest.

And now for some more art ... here's what I did with my four-word self phrase. First of all, here are all the ones I wrote:

Listen to your soul

Trees know the answer

Be in the moment

Never let anger win

Every tomorrow starts today

Be a difference maker

Time changes all things

Consider everything an experiment

Some of these are clearly borrowed from reading the manifestos from the class handouts and listening to other sources. Don't worry when wisdom sticks in your head from elsewhere ~ just use it!

So ... I decided I liked "Trees know the answer". Probably because I was sitting out on my patio when I was writing our my thoughts, and now that all the trees in the neighbourhood have fully leafed themselves, I've become keenly aware of their presence, their patience, trees just being what they are ... rooted, cyclical, doing their amazing biological thing - breathing, growing, being a home for birds and squirrels ... swaying gently in the breeze, absorbing sunlight.

One of the profound moments in my life happened in my early twenties when I was supremely frustrated at my inability to achieve something I thought should be much easier than it was. I fled to my garden, where I fumed and moped and was actually jealous of the flowers and the trees for having life "so easy". When I finally calmed down (gardens are good for that) I realized that my frustration came from not paying attention to what I actually wanted to do and what felt natural - a more gradual understanding of things instead of battering myself with information. So I owe a lot to trees.

I knew I wanted to draw a tree, so I pulled one of my favourite tree books down off the shelf for inspiration. The Night Life of Trees is a beautiful book of silkscreen prints of trees by the Gond tribe in Central India. I want to show you the tree from the book so you can see that 90% of the magic of the drawing comes from being inspired by the printing and wanting to learn how to draw it. 

The Peepul tree is the home of the Creator, worshipped by Hindus and forest people alike. They come from afar to pour water on the trunk in prayer. The Peepul tree is so perfect that seen against the sky, it seems to have the same shape as its own leaf. The detail is the same as the whole.

And now here's my drawing:

Feel free to print this out to colour for yourself!

And here's my final colour version:

Painted with my usual method, water-soluble crayons and a waterbrush.

And one last image from my journal. As I mentioned in the first post this month, my personal guiding phrase for the last 30 years has been "Work like you are living in the early days of a better nation." Sadly, this seems to be a more and more necessary thought these days, and I decided to incorporate it into one of the pages from the Legendary Landsapes colouring book. I'm only at Step 1 with it, and I'll be working to continue it through the month as we have our next two classes, so it will change. This is where it is right now ... 

I also arted up the Desiderata manifesto, which was the last page of the handouts:

Colour added using our usual, reliable Marabu Art Crayons

PS - YES! I'm working on creating a "how to" handout to make the house fold we played with in class. I need to do some drawings, but I should have it ready for the rest of our classes this month and will send it out as a pdf as well to those of you who aren't able to attend.

Now, go write your manifest!