AEDM 2014 - The end!

Woohoo, I made it.

30 continuous days of creativity.

Sometimes easy,

sometimes not so.

But before I go any further,

I'd like to say a big thank you

to Leah for organising it again.

This is still very much a work in progress,

but I think the dress is about finished. 

Today was spent applying a couple of coats

of broken china to tone down the blueness.

I still need to finish the face, hands, hair and wings.

And maybe do something with the background.

But it will be finished.

One day....

AEDM Day 29

Industriana clock workshop today

at the Cubby Hole.

This is the result.

It's the first workshop I've done in a long while,

and it wiped me out.

Early night methinks.

AEDM Day 28

The artists lament

Brush in hand,

paints are ready

acrylic smell

is just so heady

Had a head full of ideas,

wondrous images

now it's like a book

full of blank pages

Here I sit,

broken hearted

Nice blank canvas,

can't get started.

AEDM Day 27

Just scraping some paint around

and added a couple of bits of paper.

No idea where this is going,

possibly something to do with journeys

or travels

AEDM Day 25 & 26

I tried to post yesterday from my phone, but it didn't work.

So you get two day's worth today,

you lucky people!

 So here we are.

Another two evenings of tissue, glue, paint,

and watching things dry!

Not sure who this is for yet.

AEDM Day 24

Decided to give the painting a rest for today,

and get messy with paper instead.

Added a fabric spine to the book covers,

and bound an insert from some nice writing paper.

Now waiting for everything to dry.

AEDM Day 23

Added more detail to the dress and tidied up the area around the hands.

Still thinking about using some diluted blue acrylic

over the dress to soften the folds a bit.

Then I just need to finish the hands,

face,

hair,

wings......

I'm sure she'll be finished by AEDM 2015 ;)

AEDM Day 22

First stage of the dress/gown is complete.

It's darker than intended, so I'll need to find a lighter blue.

And I've come to the conclusion that I need bigger brushes

for laying down that much paint in one go!

AEDM Day 21

I write
I draw
I paint
I stitch

I create

I doubt
I worry
I falter
I hesitate
I criticise

but still I create

 I am an artist

AEDM Day 20

No angelic update today.

I've started on the gown/dress, 

but it's just a big patch of blue at the moment 

so there's not much to show.

So instead i'll show you something that I finished a few weeks ago, 

that I actually started at the end of the last AEDM!

 It went well initially,

but then ground to a halt 

(along with many other things).

But eventually I managed to get myself into gear and finished it,

(and I'm even happy with the face!)

just in time for the annual diversity exhibition, 

so at the moment it's on display in our local art shop/gallery.

This is my second work for Brigid,

in a more a more traditional style,

rather than the modern images of my Goddesses that I've done previously.

The Morrígan

Brigid

AEDM day 19

I'm still working on the face,

but I can't seem to get rid of 'the stare'.

At least it's an improvement over the flat look from last time.

AEDM Day 18

I wonder what this could be?

The start of a  handmade book perhaps?

AEDM Day 17

Here's something I haven't done for a while,

a card.

Or two cards to be exact.

It looks like I may be moving to a new job soon,

so these are for two people who I'll really miss working with.

AEDM Day 16

Believe it or not I've spent quite a bit of time on this today,

and the face is still a long way from finished.

But it's got to the stage now where I'm just making it worse,

as even acrylics need to really dry after a while,

hence the patchy look to her face

(and the flat expression).

No worries, there's still 2 weeks to go.

AEDM Day 15

Wings are coming along nicely.

Now for the scary part;

the face!

And for some reasson I have a hankering to listen to Hawkwind!

AEDM Day 14

I am a rock,
I stand alone,
Time comes and goes,
Events unfold, and flow
Over me, around me,
Leaving their mark
Some deep
Some barely noticed

I am a rock,
I stand alone,
Others pass by,
Together
Or apart
And sometimes they stop,
And look,
And lean, and rest,
Before continuing on

I am a rock.
I stand;
Alone

Written in about 2 minutes. Unedited, just a brain dump. Read into it what you will.

AEDM Day 13

First wing is starting to take shape,

although the pic isn't brilliant.

In other news,
Dizz is back in the land of blog.
Enter at your own risk!

AEDM Day 12

Starting to add colour,
Still a long way to go.

AEDM Day 11

Nothing spectacular going on at the moment,

It's been a busy week so far with a Creative Crewe committee meeting

and updating the Creative Crewe website,

but managed to start a poem yesterday,

and a preliminary sketch today.

AEDM day 10

Blackbird, crow and darkening clouds
Guardian and messenger
Portents to tell
From The lady perhaps,
The light or the dark?
Or both?

AEDM Day 9

Rememberance

We are the dead,
We are the ones who went before.
Once, like you, we were alive,
But that life was gone, in a flash.
The flash of a cannon
Or maybe the crack of a rifle.
We went to battle
Not with pride and hatred,
But with fear and sorrow.
Yet still we went.
And now, we watch from beyond the veil.

We are the dead.
We died for freedom,
For Ours and yours
And now, we say
Live your lives
But don’t forget what we did
And please,
Don’t let the donkeys lead again

AEDM Day 8

Another from the recent past.

This stems from an idea I came across when I was convalescing last year,

but never got round to using.

Until recently.

It's all to do with friends and family,

who's close and who's connected and so-on,

but instead of just following your heart

or who you think should be part of the inner circle because they're family,

you take a long hard look at things and actually score them.

It was an interesting exercise,

and it turns out my heart and my head are pretty much in agreement.

The background is a canvas that I'd randomly painted,

and recycled to be the 'scoreboard'.

And then the whole thing was painted over,

to give just a couple of peeks into what I know lies beneath. 

Just to keep people guessing :)

AEDM Day 7

One sock off, one sock on
He sits, quietly,
Motionless, 

Staring
A song plays in the background
Unheard
Time passes, a red glow in the corner
10.....
11.....
Minutes slowly passing
Clouds drift by
The magpies come and go
12....
13....
He moves
Another sock
A shoe
15....
16....
One shoe off, one shoe on
He sits, quietly

An ode to anaemia

AEDM Day 6

No wise words,

they're in the image.

AEDM Day 5

1st update pic for the Scary Canvas.

Still a long way to go and it's slow going at the moment.

Hopefully there'll be some real progress at the weekend.

AEDM Day 4

I've started on the background for the Scary Canvas™ 

but again it's nothing exciting to show, 

so I'm digging out some more images from earlier in the year when I wasn't blogging.

These were some small 4x4 canvas/canvas boards I did for the Gathering.

We had a mini-market where people could bring along some of their art and craft work to sell. Nothing overly commercial, just a chance to showcase your work and maybe sell a couple of bits.I managed to sell 6 pieces and trade one for a bottle of home-made mead so not a bad showing, and there's something satisfying about people who aren't family or close friends wanting to buy your work.

There were more - Valknut, Mjölnir, Triple Moon etc.,

but they sold quite quickly :)

AEDM Day 3

I don't have anything to show from today, or at least nothing interesting.

I've enlarged the sketch and started transferring it onto the canvas,

but it's nothing for you to feast your eyes on.

So instead I'm going to show one of few the pieces that I managed to create during the creative dry spell.

Aside from a lack of creativity, there's also been a lack of travelling this year,

I only made it to a couple small get-togethers and one camp.

That camp was The Pagan Clan Gathering, which celebrated it's 10th year,

and one of the things I loved were the meditation workshops

run by Charlotte from Infinite Dimensions.

This piece came about from one of those workshops,

which encouraged us to find our own mantra.

Mine started as "I can and I will" which morphed into this,

inspired by the Brigid,

goddess of Healers and Artists

AEDM Day 2

Here's today's contribution, and the start of my AEDM project.

Over the past couple of AEDMs I've worked on things that take more than a day. I don't work on them every day, usually over a week or so. This one is probably going to take all month, if not longer, due to the size. The canvas that I'm using is 36x12, a scary size for somebody who normally works on 8x8 or A5.

The drawing is on a sheet of scrap paper, and my next job will be to scale it up so I have a full size image to work from. 2x A3 should do it.

A strange figure emerges........

shambling into the daylight of creativity once again.

It's been a while since my last post, several months in fact,

and although there has been sporadic creativity and the urge to blog,

I haven't had the energy or inclination. 

I'm still struggling with low energy and fatigue,

but it's November, and it's AEDM,

so there WILL be creativity,

and there WILL be blogging.

Having said that, there's not going to be much today as I'm off to a wedding;

an Alice themed wedding, so today's creativity is me.

Pics will follow, but for now I'll leave you with the guest book I was asked to create.

It's A5, stab-bound, and yes, it is the right way round in the picture.

It's an Alice theme, so of course it's upside-down or back-to-front, 

depending which way you look at it :)