This week, as I was studying week 3 about recovering the sense of power, I had been going through burst of emotions on a daily basis, specially processing through all the emotions of shame resurfacing.
And I realised that one power the feeling of shame has on artists is not to let you do the things you wana do.Â
I observed that it has happened in my life a lot – the thing that is popularly known as procrastination.
Ever since I started writing the morning pages, which has only been 4 weeks by now, I’ve started noticing a change in me – I’m feeling more attracted towards mixed media. I’ve established myself as a landscape artist and have been teaching landscapes for the past 8 years, and I’m very good at it… yet I knew something is missing.
And over the past 4 weeks, I had started watching and doing some of the mixed media experiments.Â
One thing that particularly caught my attention was snippet rolls. I had been watching other artists create it like a zillion times on youtube, but felt paralised when it came to me creating them. So this week I decided not to step out, and rather try creating snippet rolls.
IMP: Once again Mr. resistance cropped up, and my mind started blabbering that I was too tired to do anything. It’s sunday afterall and I need to rest. I’ve been working hard all week, and sunday I shouldnt be doing anything.
I heard all of it and got to work!
First I created one with only scrap papers and old book pages as the base. It didn’t take long surprisingly, contrary to what my mind had been telling me.
I had a lot of scrap papers lying around, some painted papers, some old paintings that I tore up, old book pages and some scrap paper. Only 2 new pages I added to my scrap collection are 2 print outs of music notes. I actually had 3 whole notebooks of music paper when I used to study drums, but I had garbaged them long back, else I could have used them in this project.
I placed the scraps randomly without creating a neat border. Put a clip on it to close the loop and my very first snippet roll was done.
It was done in comparitively less time, so I started another one with fabric. And i decided to keep a clean edge on this one.Â
I tore up my husband’s old shirt to create the base with frayed ends, and organised the scraps pieces according to colors.
I was getting more organised by the second roll. Here is my scrap organisation.
The scraps had some grocery bag fabrics, my color charts, some wall papers, some dried color palettes (this is why I like using butter paper as palette for my paintings). And then this happened.
I created the spools using toilet paper roll and cardboards as the base in one, and mdf board in another. After creating the second one, I was blown away. I stopped my project, but I created one more later in the coming days. It was such an addicting method, that I couldnt just stop at 2.Â
And I created a 3rd one – this was only with a beige and neutral color combination. And backed it with a rolled cotton bandage that I had purchased years back thinking about mixed media.
I absolutely loved it. I think this is probably my most favorite one. Secured the edge with a pin, because it was curling and opening up like u saw in the previous image.
And just like that I created 3 snippet rolls. It was such an easy process that until you try it, you’d never know. I guess that’s with everything. Our mind thinks everything is difficult until we do them. So the most imp lesson I learnt from my week 3 artist date is – not to listen to what my mind is saying.
I must say my artist had an awesome date. She was thrilled and surprised at her own creativity. And she is looking forward to more dates with me! I’m glad I could make her happy 🙂
