outline

More from The Alchemy. Page scan, followed by text.

Observing that we liked to make costumes and create our own identities, my mother taught us a technique that became a revelation to us.

She unrolled a bit of one of her tall rolls of paper. She suggested that one of us lie down on the paper while the other outlined the shape with a marker. What we each had was a perfectly crude approximation of our own small figure.

The idea, my mother said, was to then make a 'Self Portrait' by filling in the shape with any version of our self that we chose or could imagine!

I'm in my late twenties now and the ideas behind these early exercises in creativity and improvision (sic) are used by me every day in my adult life. I realized that the self portrait project was a metaphor for teaching me to create my own life.

The outline is the situation that you are born into. But it is up to you to design it any way that you imagine!

We had to make choices and envision ideas. Then follow through on them. It wasn't just the finished project. It was the process of the problem solving that was the most fun for us.

Your ideas, actions and choices create your life. Your life is your self portrait. Which in turn shapes your identity.

bottles

It's funny how when you've decided to do something for real, and not just fooling yourself or saying 'I really am definitely going to start working on initiating the process of thinking about doing this thing...'

...then you start getting little boosts out of nowhere. It's encouraging.

Anyway, here are the bottle pics that I promised. I like them a lot, but they seem a bit scratchy and I know I'll do better with the next batch, although I intend to do those in ballpoint too. The thing with these bottles is that you really need colour to make them pop, otherwise they're just not as interesting as the originals.

Oh, and another bit from The Alchemy, sans scan for now:

There is no having made it. You are always making it. That is the entire point. The making is where you always want to be. The revelation is the action not the subject.

Hence the label for my art posts...

more alchemical reactions

I don't know how Tori Amos manages to put her finger on exactly how it is I'm feeling when I'm feeling it, but she does. She put out 'The Beekeeper' a few years ago just when I needed it, and the opening song is one of my favourites of all time. The lyrics are almost painfully apt, and the melody is just lovely.

I've been listening to it quite often again over the past week, and I suddenly remembered that another favourite artist of mine--a Japanese illustrator named Aya Kato--did the art for the video. So here it is.

Tori Amos - Sleeps With Butterflies

I've also decided to upload a few pages from The Alchemy, the text of which I've been carrying around in my journal. Text doesn't really convey the feeling of the page though. So here's the one about Positive Doing.

More soon.

doors again

Only posting the best of the batch this time. I have been alarmingly productive in several directions the past few days. I think the energy of the past week is creating some sort of fallout of artistic productivity. Forward, always forward!

I think that's enough doors for a while. I probably have enough for stock graphics, and I was definitely losing focus toward the end. 

I do love drawing inanimate objects though. I've been getting interested in Chinese snuff bottles again, so the next post will probably have my pre-existing drawings of those before I start producing new ones.

one picture is worth combining with a thousand different words

You know what Livejournal has that Blogger, Facebook and Multiply don't? ICONS.

Way back before Livejournal or even the concept of online diary-writing existed, there were books like Terry and Neil's Good Omens and Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series, which used a device dating back to the medieval practice of illuminated manuscripts: the chapter-heading icon. Illustrations might have been a bit much for these books, but the little pictures that prefaced the chapter were a refreshing break from the walls of grey text, added a touch of interest (and even coolness), and gave you a little hint as to who would be in the next chapter or what might happen. If you saw a quintet of dice, you knew Mat Cauthon was getting himself in trouble again, or if you saw a snake with sunglasses wrapped round a capital letter, you wondered what on earth Anthony Crowley was up to now. (Or in my case, you just squealed 'EEE MAT!' or 'CROWLEY! YAY!' and read eagerly on.)

Icons are great because they're yours, even when someone else made them.* They can convey a general meaning to your friends or readers, while having a much more nuanced (and even different) meaning just for you.

For example, this might mean tea, or it might mean I'm feeling pensive, or maybe I wanted to draw attention to the mild absurdity of a teabag sitting all by itself at a window as if it was lonely or daydreaming. (Or people could attach their own meanings, none of them intended. A friend told me what 'teabagging' was slang for, and I really wish he hadn't.)

So I think I'm going to employ these little pictures from now on. They'll also give readers a clue as to whether I'm saying something they actually want to read, or if it's all babble about Batman and Wonder Woman again.

*in which case you give credit, of course. That said, the teabag photo belongs to Corbis, although I cropped and sized it into an icon. I will credit succeeding icons too. If there's no credit on an icon, it's all mine.

roda sketches

I'm an hour past my bedtime, but just wanted to post these before I went to bed. Everyone took such lovely pics of the BCD Batizado and succeeding days! I couldn't resist doing some quick studies of the roda matches.











These pics are from Ric (Esquicido)'s photos of the Sunday roda at the Lagoon. 5-7 minute sketches, Pilot Sumi brush pen on smooth drawing paper.

the Power

Back from Manila. Most significant part of the haul was something I bought on a whim, the last volume of David Mack's Kabuki. An excerpt:

I come to realise that writing is like physical exercise. What counts is how much you can do after you think you are done.

Then the real challenge begins. If you push through the barriers of your comfort zone, you hit a second wind. It is mostly just showing up and doing it that counts.

Sometimes it is painful. You might want to do something else. And you can think of infinite reasons to stop.

I discover 'The Power of Positive Doing.'

Positive thinking is great. It's a nice first step. But if you don't do the 'Positive Doing', it only takes you so far.

Want to quote a load more, plus post about the great wedding I attended and Avatar and all, but I gots things that need to get done. :)

Happy New Year!

After the tough year we've had, I wanted to show a bit of hope and brightness in store. Happy New Year!

Today we walked down the paths of our childhood...

...together.

They were shorter than we remember! But that's OK, because we do remember.

Thanks, Kitty and Mare, for having the idea in the first place, and for taking me with you on Memory Lane.

Lots of love,
Mahls

book poem

My uncle sent me a lovely little book of book quotes! I should really scan it as it's printed on old-fashioned letter paper and has lots of tiny engraved illustrations, but really I wanted to quickly post this bit I saw on the very first page:

By Charing Cross in London Town
there runs a road of high renown,
where antique books are ranged on shelves
as dark and dusty as themselves.
And many booklovers have spent
their substance there with great content,
and vexed their wives and filled their homes
with faded prints and massive tomes.
--Norman Davey