Happy Holidays friends,
If you’ve been wondering where I’ve been, here’s where we can catch up 😉
Ephemeral Gecko is retiring, but I’m not!
Catch me over at MadeByMixy.com
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where I’m at :)
Category: learnings
Letting go of the butterfly
Time Lapse Compilation: part 3
If you’ve been here before, you’ll know that lately I’ve been documenting my art journaling process through a series of time lapse videos.
It’s curious to relive a visual journey. There’s nothing like filming the process to relive the ‘why did I do that?’ moments. These came up a lot early on but I’m noticing a desensitising effect with practice, and letting go of expectations. Process is process.
Nonetheless, the push and pull of loving/hating the direction it’s taking remains real. It took a really long time for me to catch on where this one wanted me to lead it.
Sabrina Ward Harrison: “Splendidly Imperfect and Alive”.
This video is a compilation of little time lapse videos taken over a few weeks of back-and-forth-ing on this spread.
The more time I spend in art making, the more I find parallels between a creative practice and all the other everyday-everythings. Seems to me, how we make tends to mirror how we live – bravely – messily – stubbornly – inconsistently… all of these are here!
Releasing the butterfly
This particular spread got so sticky because I reeeally didn’t want to lose that butterfly. I painted and drew around him until I had such a mess there was no other option, ultimately burying him under a new layer of paint to ease the intensity of so much going on. I was resisting letting go.
I’ll post the next in this series soon. To catch it ahead of everyone else + get monthly-ish updates on my other colorful studio antics, join up for my newsletter here.
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The in-between
The in-between is the place I love most.
The transient, the liminal,
The dusk and the dawn.
The turning of one into the next,
The edge of the fold.
The place of contention, conjecture,
Not either. Both.
The place where the horizon touches.
The moment in between.
The pause.
Fuelling the feud against the resolute absolute, the tightly defined.
Why are we still doing that anyway?
When instead we could butterfly between the two,
Share the energy,
Dance in the gap in between.
The illustrations in this post come from my 2018 Sketchbook Project book which is so nearly done! I’ll show you the finished book very soon!
If you’d like to be first to know what I’m working on, plus get exclusive offers on the things I make, clickety-hop aboard my email list right here.
Your email is utterly safe to me. I will send it words and pictures a couple of times each month unless you ask me to stop. That’s all.
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A life full of color
Some lifetimes ago, a sixteen year old version of me failed to get the place in art school that she’d pinned all her early hopes to.
Dismissed by the grown ups who’d repeatedly explained: ‘being an artist isn’t realistic’ led to years floating adrift from my calling.
(They were wrong. And this isn’t what I do, I’ve come to realise, it’s what I am)
A few years ago, rattled by some mid-life reminders of mortality, I finally fulfilled my life long ambition. But being an art student was as far as I’d thought this plan through. After spinning around in a self made feedback loop of regret for two decades, while I loved my time at college, I’d completely lost sight of the purpose.
My confusion was confounded when my course was cancelled after the foundation year. Before I’d time to consider my options my personal life fell apart, as a few weeks later my mum died.
Now I was free falling and had to find something to grasp onto, something simple I could rely on to slow the descent.
I needed a project to latch my focus to. I needed a subject I could immerse myself in. It had to be something creative, it had to be something colourful.
It just had to be color.
I hadn’t the bandwidth for anything more complex. I needed colors, but one at a time. No other rules. Just me, a book, and whatever paints and pens and things I had to hand. In just one color. I began with the color I felt most drawn to at the time, which was red-violet, magenta. It was soothing. It was all I had space for.
I took that year, one color at a time, one month at a time.
After another family bereavement a couple of months into my year long color project, I knew I needed some accountability, some way to keep this project afloat. That’s when I started this blog.
By the end of the year I’d created a this whole book full of color.
It’s still with me in my studio as a resource for inspiration – (that’s something I didn’t foresee when I began this project.)
(You can see it page by page here)
12 in 12 from mixy gecko on Vimeo.
As I showed my book of 12 colors to more of my artist friends, the idea of revisiting a year full of color began to develop. And they wanted in on it too.
So in 2017 I invented “TWELVTY“, a way of sharing the adventure around the color wheel with other creatives as an online program.
It’s been an astonishing journey, (which isn’t over yet) and I’ve learned so much (more on that in another post).
I didn’t expect to run Twelvty as a program with others again after this year – it’s been all consuming and I had other plans for 2018 – but Twelvty has plans for me too, it would appear.
So here we are, in preparation for:
We begin the journey in the new year, but registration is open from November.
I think it speaks for itself that some of this year’s Twelveteers have already joined up for a second trip around the color wheel in 2018!
There are a limited number of discounted places available to folks on my mailing list. If you aren’t signed up already – what the hey?!! – scoot down to the end of this post to add your email before they’re all swooped up!
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100 drawings: the closing pages.
100 days: 93-100
“I try to create fantastic things, magical things, things like in a dream. The world needs more fantasy.”
~ Salvador Dali.
100 doodles from 100 photos in my phone.
This is the final instalment of my extended summer project. I set out on this adventure on 1st June and I doodled the last doodle on 25th October. Life got in the way in the middle so it took longer than planned, but I’m so glad I saw it through. This is what the last week of pages look like…
day 93
Day 93 is another quirky animal, one of a pair of china cats in the Brighton Art Museum.
Here’s something I’ve noticed they all have in common: the facial expression that says “c’mon, aren’t you done yet?” Like they got somewhere else to be.
(China Cat Sunflower… You humming along?)
day 94
One of the lessons this project has taught me is that the images that look relatively easy to reproduce are almost always the trickiest. There are ways around this. One of the ways is to crop it down to just one detail, just a corner, or in this case, just one bird.
day 95
These last few days/months (maybe more) reality seems to be sharper and more tense. So a well timed word from Mr Salvador Dali himself seems to fit today.
I got this little clip-on fisheye lens doodad for my phone, this was its first outing, and what could be better to distort than the master of weirdness himself?
day 96
Practice, practice, practice… faces are tricky. The trickiest. The character lies in the lines and the details and something I can’t quite get. Yet. But I am getting closer.
This is is George Morris.
A while back I was scavenging the internets to find out about my family tree. I traced my mum’s mum’s side back 100s of years, but mum’s dad was not so easy. This might or maybe get not be my mum’s dad’s dad. (A long story, not for now). But if I’m right in my research then my great grandad was a jockey in the late 1800s. This photo was a newspaper I found on eBay. I know! The internet is amazing.
day 97
One day last spring, a last minute change of plan meant I had a free afternoon. so I took myself off to London to find the legendary Atlantis art store. I was not disappointed. This is their sign.
day 98
The part of the story where Alice is either to tall to get through the door, or small enough but can’t reach the key. Oh, Alice, I know this feeling so well. I’m there. How did the key get back up on the table? What is going on??
day 99
Time is such a curiously paradoxical thing. This project of 100 drawings feels like it’s been going on forever, in one sense, and yet these final days appeared so suddenly.
Huh? How does that even happen? I’ve literally been keeping count!
But the end was always forever-away right up until page 99. And then suddenly it was almost over. This day was a pyjama day. These are my pyjamas. Seems fitting for the evening of the project.
day 100
The final doodle from phone photos is a mural I found in Barcelona. What are these? Are they fish or are they space aliens? Or alien space fish? Whatever they are, they made a fun end to the book.
So that’s all, folks! I’ve learned so much in doing this. I’ll tell you more about the surprising lessons soon, but that’s for another day.
If you missed the previous parts, you can find them here:
Week 1 ~ Week 2 ~ Week 3 ~ Week 4 ~ Week 5 ~ Week 6 ~ Week 7 ~ Week 8 ~ Week 9 ~ Week 10 ~ Week 11 ~ Week 12 ~ Week 13
For regular monthly updates on what I’m doing, making and thinking about, direct to your inbox, hop aboard my little list here.
(and I’ll send you my ebook A Year full of Color as a thank you for joining)
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100 drawings: almost full circle.
100 days: 85-92
“Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere..”
~ Carl Sagan.
100 doodles from 100 photos in my phone.
This is the last but one week of my extended summer project, the last steps of a marathon. I have mixed feelings about it ending – I’ll be glad in a way – as all challenges need to come to a close. But as it’s become a part of my daily habits it will leave a gap. Already I’m looking forward to the next projects that will fill the void. I’ve been eying up new sketchbooks online…
Meanwhile, the story continues:
day 85
As this project moves on I’m exploring more than just straight drawing from photos. By playing with scale, finding a detail I like, making a drawing more than just copying some shapes. As the days and the pages mount up I’m looking for more challenges.
Have you ever done something like this project? I’d love to hear what you learned in the process.
day 86
There’s looking at a thing, then there’s looking with a view to drawing a thing.And then there’s the kind of looking while drawing a thing. And there’s a subtle, but big difference.
In redrawing this illustration of a duck I noticed it was made up of things. But until I came to draw it, I didn’t see that that thing that made it’s head was a tomato. Or the thing that made it’s eye was a spider. (Not really, but that’s what it looked like as I drew it)
This will stay with me every time I see a duck now. And every time I see a tomato. Just one example of how drawing enriches the everyday things in life.
day 87
I saw this poster outside an exhibition I didn’t go in to see, by fashion designer Mary Katranzou. All sorts of metaphors here: emptiness – butterflies – blindness – you make your own story up. For me on that day it stood for the empty vagueness I’ve still got lingering after being sick, a sense of merging invisibly into the background. I feel like I’m here, but not entirely. The parameters are visible, the boundaries still in place, but the essence isn’t showing through like normal.
day 88
I’m trying as many techniques and styles as I can find and remember though this project. Today we have a blind contour drawing. I figured as faces and hands are the trickiest things to draw, how much harder can it be to draw without looking?
(not so much, as it turns out)
day 89
Today’s drawing is from an 18th century Indian shadow puppet in the Brighton Museum. Oh those eyes!!
day 90
It’s all about nuance in capturing a face. The angle and weight of the line can totally change the expression and the character. And the species too, sometimes. Today’s curious beast looks like a dog in my drawing but the photo is more furious sheep (I think – can’t be certain.)
day 91
Anything orange makes me happy so this time of year is one of my faves. These jellyfish are everywhere in October 😉
day 92
One of the tricks to drawing I’ve discovered is not to be deterred by images that are way too complicated to accurately capture. Because accurate capture is what the camera is for. This thinking really takes away the pressure; it doesn’t matter if the proportions are skewed, the bits don’t line up, the missed details, the shapes and shadows that aren’t as they are in real life. Once those expectations are set aside it’s much easier to get on with the actual drawing. And that’s how the practice gets done.
Join me back here next week (-ish) for the final exciting instalment!
If you missed the previous parts, you can find them here:
Week 1 ~ Week 2 ~ Week 3 ~ Week 4 ~ Week 5 ~ Week 6 ~ Week 7 ~ Week 8 ~ Week 9 ~ Week 10 ~ Week 11 ~ Week 12 ~
If you want to follow along this project day by day I’m posting on Instagram (where you can also see more WIP & detail pix) & Facebook
For regular monthly updates on what I’m doing, making and thinking about, direct to your inbox, hop aboard my little list here.
(and I’ll send you my ebook A Year full of Color as a thank you for joining)
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100 drawings: continuing the learning.
100 days: 78 – 84
“Only that in you which is me can hear what I’m saying.”
~ Ram Dass.
100 doodles from 100 photos in my phone. The story continues:
day 78
I saw this funky door handle in Casa Batlló, the modernist building designed by Gaudí in Barcelona. Is it me or does it look like a slightly surprised, cross eyed Disney character? I guess being grabbed repeatedly by the nose would do that to any of us.
day 79
This tiny snail. I love how patterns repeat in nature, it’s a constant source of inspiration for my art.
day 80
Life might be a bowl of cherries, it might be a bowl of chillies. This is a bowl of chillies. I think I took this photo for the color, but I like the shapes too.
day 81
I saw this dude at the Brighton Museum last week (he’s a Javanese puppet). Another character in the book.
I write little notes to myself on some of these pages, some while I draw, some are on future pages. Mostly I don’t remember why. Today’s is one of them “decisions and beliefs. That’s all”.
Maybe it’s a message for another day.
day 82
Here is a wonky eyed lion. I fell in love with his smile although I don’t think it came across in the drawing… See what I mean? It’s one of those derpy smiles you can’t help smile back at.
day 83
This drawing is inspired by a close up of a tiny detail on these most incredible beaded wall hangings at Waddesden Manor, a house overflowing with outrageous opulence! Seriously – these are just tucked away in a corner of a hallway …
day 84
I chose this one from a whole collection of gift shop zebras. What’s not to love about a zebra? All the best animals are stripy (or cats) (stripy cats being the ultimate in animal perfection, of course).
Join me back here next week (-ish) for the next exciting instalment!
If you missed the previous parts, you can find them here:
Week 1 ~ Week 2 ~ Week 3 ~ Week 4 ~ Week 5 ~ Week 6 ~ Week 7 ~ Week 8 ~ Week 9 ~ Week 10 ~ Week 11
If you want to follow along this project day by day I’m posting on Instagram (where you can also see more WIP & detail pix) & Facebook
For regular monthly updates on what I’m doing, making and thinking about, direct to your inbox, hop aboard my little list here.
(and I’ll send you my ebook A Year full of Color as a thank you for joining)
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100 drawings: continuing the beginning.
100 days: 71 – 77
“We all have 10,000 bad drawings in us. The sooner we get them out the better.”
~ Walt Stanchfield.
100 doodles from 100 photos in my phone. The story continues:
It’s past 100 days since I began this project now, but I’m going to see it through. I lost most of a month being sick and I’m still going slowly to catch myself up. It’s a lesson to learn, to accept the speed life moves at, with grace.
day 71
This sculpture is in the gardens of Claydon House. I love how the middle face is floating, and the serenity, which now I look again I see more as a sadness. Even though it’s one time I did seem to recreate the expression in the drawing, I didn’t really see it until now.
day 72
This is “Pinkle” on account of her pretty nose and ears, a visiting cat who seems to have made herself at home in an almost perfectly camouflaged spot. (We later found out which neighbour she (mostly) lives with. She is now called “Mr Pinkle”)
day 73
Another day, another lizard. This glitzy lizard (that’s his name) lives on my bathroom door. His nose is a bit beaky in the drawing, but I like his shadow. I’m learning more about drawing and more about observation with every day’s drawing practice. …
When I set out on this 100 day project of daily doodles from the photos in my phone, I had no idea what the 100 pictures would be of, so it’s interesting to see what emerges. More animals than I expected, and more little corners of my home….
day 74
This is a project I’ve been secret-squirrelling on this summer. I will tell you all about it very soon, because it warrants a post of its own.
This is the 3rd evolution of what I’m calling “Wishes“. They are something a little bit magical. And I think I’ve finally nailed the design. More on these soon!!
day 75
I wrote about this project recently.
So here’s what I’m noticing in this one: how balanced I got the proportions. Translating from the size and dimensions of a phone screen to a 5 inch square page is one of the challenges I’ve had throughout (sometimes I’ve cropped the photo to a square to make it easier to draw).
You know the saying – ‘the way you do one thing is the way you do all things’ – I think of this when my drawings are utterly out of proportion and disjointed… so perhaps I’m improving on that too.
day 76
This is possibly one of my favs so far.
I love the patterns in obscured glass, and the patterns it makes of all that it obscures. And in this case, the leaf pattern obscures the view of actual leaves.
day 77
Remarkably more difficult to draw that it should’ve been, this one, too many lines.
This is one of the many faces I always see when I look at this batik fabric.
Join me back here next week (-ish) for the next exciting instalment!
If you missed the previous parts, you can find them here:
Week 1 ~ Week 2 ~ Week 3 ~ Week 4 ~ Week 5 ~ Week 6 ~ Week 7 ~ Week 8 ~ Week 9 ~ Week 10 ~
If you want to follow along this project day by day I’m posting on Instagram (where you can also see more WIP & detail pix) & Facebook
For regular monthly updates on what I’m doing, making and thinking about, direct to your inbox, hop aboard my little list here.
(and I’ll send you my ebook A Year full of Color as a thank you for joining)
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100 drawings: still beginning.
100 days: 64 – 70
“You can learn new things at any time in your life if you’re willing to be a beginner. If you actually learn to like being a beginner, the whole world opens up to you.“
~ Barbara Sher.
100 doodles from 100 photos in my phone. The story continues…
The more years I spend in this life, the more comfortable I am with being a beginner. I’ve been drawing since I was first able to grasp a pencil in one of my tiny uncoordinated mits. Some decades on, the coordination is improving, it’s still a practice.
It’s true what they say – the 10,000 hours, the daily habits, the solid routine – these all help to develop a skill, but not with a finishing point. Beginning doesn’t have an ‘end’.
There was a gap in my 100 day project when I was sick and returning to it felt a bit like starting over. The muscle memory in my drawing hand was wonky, the sense of pen line following eye following outline felt stilted and unsure. So, stilted unsure lines is what I worked with. And I began again.
And beginners are cool. (Ever spent time with a kid? Ever been a kid? yeh, they’re cool, they ‘get’ what being a beginner is all about, cos there’s no pretence at being anything else. They’re cool with it. And so am I).
Here’s the next instalment of daily drawings, the photos that inspired them, and some thoughts that went alongside.
Week 10:
day 64
I saw this guy amongst a family of curious metal creatures on my travels somewhere in Washington last summer. Irresistible! Now I’m humming Pigs on the Wing quietly in my head again.
day 65
I’m not so much a hearts n flowers kinda gal. I’m not so much the pinkypurple gal either. So something contrary is about me today and it manifested like this. The photo I doodled this from is the corner of a photo frame that is home to my delightfully mad mother on my mantelpiece. She’s been away causing her own special mayhem and confusion in the afterlife almost 6 years now. But she’s also everywhere. And firmly fixed inside my head with all the good and not-so that brings. Like everyone’s mother is.
day 66
This guy is one of a family of about 7 or 8 similar characters, each one a little carved drawer in a tall skinny cabinet, home to the inevitable bits & bobs that accumulate in a house. (The original Instagram post of this drawing was missing the original photo as I’d mislaid it in a way that shouldn’t happen with digital files. It was there, then it vanished, and now it’s back. Tricksy little dude.)
day 67
It’s a world of contrast. I picked up this image on a happy sunny day, laughing with friends, midway through my holiday and about to go on an adventure across the US. One year on and it all seems so different. Causes for alarm and fear seem to be ramping up everywhere, my friends across the other side of the world are in fear as large parts of their country are either on fire or under water.
And this is on top of the 21st century spin cycle we’re all hurtling through, and the bruises we get along the way. So if your ride is more bumps and bruises than beautiful right now, I wish you well.
day 68
Like many of the photos I take, it’s often the shadows formed by shapes and surfaces that catch my eye. Today’s photo is the detail of a fancy bit of architecture in Barcelona. Gotta love those wavy lines. And circles! Oh my, I always got time for circles!!
day 69
My inner magpie is also drawn to all the shinies as well.
Only when I see these two (yesterday & today) drawings and their photos side by side now, I notice how I translated gold into turquoise for the drawing in both. Like a reverse alchemy.
day 70
Today I’d like to introduce you to a couple of the inhabitants on my bookshelves: Tiger came from London Zoo last year, and Stripy Cat was a gift from a friend many years ago (he since acquired a single googly eye, at a glance it looks like he’s wearing a monocle, he’s that kinda cat yknow).
They live together in a wicker basket in a copper bowl along with some spare bootlaces and some other odds and ends. Of course. Welcome to another corner of my world 😉
Join me back here next week (-ish) for the next exciting instalment!
If you missed the previous parts, you can find them here:
Week 1 ~ Week 2 ~ Week 3 ~ Week 4 ~ Week 5 ~ Week 6 ~ Week 7 ~ Week 8 ~ Week 9
If you want to follow along this project day by day I’m posting on Instagram (where you can also see more WIP & detail pix) & Facebook
(and I’ll send you my ebook A Year full of Color as a thank you for joining)
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100 drawings: back on track
100 days: 57-63
“Blessed are the curious, for they shall have adventures.”
~ Lovelle Drachman.
100 doodles from 100 photos in my phone. The story continues…
When I set out on this project, I was talking about it with some friends, I remember saying how ‘it might not be 100 consecutive days, but I’m determined to see this through to the end”.
And sure enough, some days happen where life just takes up too many hours. Drawings don’t get finished or don’t get posted. But every day I do something in this little sketch book, some little finishing touches, some therapeutic scribbles, some color as a background. Something.
That was until August rolled around. And one week in, out of nowhere, I got sick.
Illness is something (thankfully) foreign to me. I’m blessed with a body that is mostly cooperative and easy to live in.
So I was utterly unprepared for two weeks of 24/7 hospital chaos after a ruptured appendix! A week or so later (My usual ‘what day is it?’ state is amplified right now) I’m still quite woozy, only functioning on about 20% of my usual energy levels.
But I’m back! and the daily practice is resumed. And I’ve missed you!
So let’s get on…
Here is week 9:
day 57
I’ve felt an affinity with these seed heads since I was a kid. They’re magical. They are like a totem in my life. I suddenly recognised this one day last summer, part of a bigger epiphany that words don’t do justice to. And then I saw these everywhere I went. This one was a cushion in a cafe.
day 58
Me n my shadow. And my big flopsie summer hat.
I have a habit of jumping forward in time and leaving notes for me-in-the-future. I do this I diaries and art journals. Silly things usually or a little doodle. This book is no different, I’ve skipped forward and jotted odd fragments of sentence, sometimes a question. I don’t usually look at it until I’ve done my drawings for the day.
Today’s page said “today I want to…”
From somewhere I heard the words “be long”. Long, like i am in this shadow.
Today I want to belong.
day 59
A Fish Dish. That’s all!
day 60
This is the stained glass cat who dangles in my kitchen window. She has udders on her back. Never noticed that until I came to draw her. Strange… Meow 😉
day 61
A good percentage of my photos are happy accidents, this included, it’s a photo of my tummy – but I loved the stripy pattern too much to delete it. I was wearing the same top as I drew this, so as a bonus, the two images combined in real life!
day 62
There’s nothing so cosy as candlelight, is there? This mosaic glass jar sparkles as the candle flickers. Surrounded by shadowy scribbles.
day 63
Today’s is an almost ripe rhododendron from Kew Gardens. Although now I look again it’s got an air of red cabbage about it.
Join me back here next week for the next exciting instalment!
If you missed the previous parts, you can find them here:
Week 1 ~ Week 2 ~ Week 3 ~ Week 4 ~ Week 5 ~ Week 6 ~ Week 7 ~ Week 8
If you want to follow along this project day by day I’m posting on Instagram (where you can also see more WIP & detail pix) & Facebook
Last Chance!!!
Until the end of August I’m offering a special discount in my Etsy Shop to all the folks on my mailing list – so clickety-hop aboard today if you want to snag a bargain!
(and I’ll send you my ebook A Year full of Color as a thank you for joining)
