Art Journaling

One of my favourite meditative activities is working on the decorated margins in my dream journal.

They are always different and often suggest living creatures, such as here a beaked being on the right, and a fox-like entity in the centre.

The process is simple. I use my water colour paints and a 0.4 Artline 200 pen. Today I used Quinacridone Gold and Scarlet.

Since this book is new and the paper is an unknown quantity, I’m starting with primary colour mixes. I’ve already noticed there’s a vast amount of spotting on this paper. Don’t yet know why.

I painted patches and streaks of the first colour round the margins surrounding the blocks to be saved for writing, and waited till moderately dry.

Sloppily over-painted with second colour, leaving some of the gold patches and streaks, and making new patches and streaks over the first, and any unused areas.

It doesn’t pay to be too exact. Wait until thoroughly dry. Some people use hairdryers to speed the process.

In my next session I use the outliner—I prefer black—to make lines wherever the colours change including in areas of shading, though it’s easy to go too far.

It pays to keep checking how the work looks, and whether any recognizable entities are cropping up, and then to give them an eye or ear.

Lego, Puzzle One

It’s harder to set up than it looks, even for me, and I invented it.

There’s one piece missing … it’ll be in the post as soon as I have my computer back and can get to my favourite Bricklink store … but I want to get begun on my next project.

I started it as an experimental thing seeing how these slopes could work together. One thing led to another.

Life Admin xyz …

This is one of those days that I need to “make my daily march (back) with the heavy baggage wagon” These words from Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching as interpreted by Ursula K LeGuin.

Meaning to me that I need to attend primarily to my physical and on-ground community needs.

I must be out of the house by 9 AM, spruced up and ready for anything. First an after-care eye specialist appointment that’s walkable. Then bus into the city for early voting on the Yes/No referendum, and a bank ‘appointment’.

I call it an appointment despite that they don’t know I’m coming.

If you’re interested, I’ve begun summarising entries into the Lodestar Timeline on its dedicated page, accessible through the menu.

‘How Art Catalyzes Change—Join Us for a Livestream Event on September 20’

While this event is already past, I want to learn about the outcomes. Just reading the first few paragraphs, I’m sure I can learn ways to rephrase my messaging which seems to be falling on deaf ears at the moment.

Prior to my cancer scare I was a deep green greenie. I volunteered as a Landcare committee member, biodiversity co-ordinator, group leader and the local ‘fungi lady’.

Did talks in science week at schools, talk-and-walks about fungi in the local arboretum. Joined Knitting Nannas, an activist group. I fitted my house out with PV and a watertank.

When I woke after the end of the treatment, about July 2021, I was ecstatic that I had survived. And a few weeks later, very confronted by the seeming lack of concern about the climate emergency. My usual sources had dampened right down.

I had nothing left of any of the above, apart from an abiding fear for plants and wildlife and above all, how my very young grandchildren, and everybody-else’s descendents are mean to survive.

I had to relocate to the next state for the treatment, which all happened during covid. I’m in a rental with no control over the utilities. I have very little energy. No local contacts. But am still largely online.

My flavour of activism is being rejigged …

A unique discussion on the compelling intersections of art, climate change, and social innovation.
How Art Catalyzes Change—Join Us for a Livestream Event on September 20

“Add new post!”

Seriously? I’m completely boondoggled … is that even a word, I imagine you’re asking … I’ll need to check that myself. It’s been a while since I saw it written.

That suspicion was right. Not the right meaning. The Navy has my favorite explanation … a boondoggle is a fun, but unproductive meeting.

So. Try again. I’m completely at a loss … not as descriptive is it?

But me going to the thesaurus from here and then trying to get back with a good word under my arm… will take me another half hour.

I’m at a loss. My writing is on my laptop and the external hard drive. My research ditto. Everyplace where I might check somthing, also inaccessable.

It’s Friday, and here in Queensland, Monday is a public holiday. I won’t be able to take my ailing laptop to a repair place until Tuesday!

Couldn’t take it today, yesterday or day before due to too much other stuff those days. I have ME/CFS and am constrained by a frequent lack of energy.

I’ve been training myself to take 2200 steps per day. If I go over my daily limit, I’m setting myself up for a three day crash.

The computer repair place visit has to be done on the same day I need to go into that direction for another thing. Three blocks distance is all it is, and three blocks back. It’s all I’ll be able to that day.

Life: Cataracts? Done!

Colors have improved! In this photo of a sunset during rain looking into the center of the complex where I live, lights are whiter, the pink clouds aren’t as pink as I remember them, but the greens are definitely greener. And there’s a difference now between the greens of the shrubbery and the green of the lawn. The palms at the back look grey-green. Being able to see more colors has also improved my depth vision.

Now to wait for four weeks of healing and having my brain adapt to my eyes’ new lenses, and adapt to how they can now work together before being prescribed new spectacles for reading … maybe.

An additional plus for me is that the original reason that I started wearing spectacles is gone too. When I was 17, I was diagnosed with astigmatism, and my new intra ocular lenses take care of that. I’m sitting here typing without any spectacles. Almost unbelievable after wearing them for nearly sixty years! That, below, was me about twenty years ago.

This, the second day after having my second eye done, I can already clearly see what I’m typing on my laptop, on my lap … a distance of 60 cms … that previously I wouldn’t have had a hope of seeing clearly.

One of the amazing things is how the quality of light has changed to a lighter and brighter tone. The sky is now sky-blue. Clouds are both whiter and greyer, and don’t look like thunderheads rightaway. I’ve had to trust my phone weather app for a couple of years already to figure out what to wear, or whether to take a brolly with me, to go out. I should now be able to learn again, to gauge the weather by looking at the sky, as I used to.

Previously I thought the walls of the complex where I live were a gold-cream tint. I discovered when I had my left eye done that the color is a more neutral-cream tint. The carpet in the unit I rent is grayish, not brownish. Still a “tenant-grey”, according to my son. It’s easier to tell close shades apart.

Another ability I have got again is peripheral vision. Anyone first getting used to multi-focals will know that feeling, of the world suddenly narrowing. I hated that, not being able to see out of the corner of my eyes.

I could go on and on. Colors of anything and everything have always played an important part in my life. I’m happy!

Lego: Skeletons

I had a great time over the weekend constructing a tiny ‘skeleton’ using Shaun AKA @brick.sheepa’s design that I discovered on one of my favorite Lego-dedicated websites, Tips and Bricks. My first result …

… with a couple of changes in the arms, where I was unable to fasten the hand-and-forearm component to components I don’t yet have. Never mind for the present, the creature’s arms are hanging together quite well with alternatives.

Shaun uses his skeletons to construct Star Wars figurines, and they look fabulous with appropriate helmets and weapons and customized with different colored body parts.

But, although I’m a dyed-in-the-wool Star Wars fan, my intention for these is for alternative characters to take part in the on-going storying. (Lol, though if I do end up going with these, I will need to rebuild nearly all my infrastructure!)

My first attempt at customizing, I put on a girl’s minifig head with hair on it. I didn’t like the effect. She looked like a body builder. My next try made her look like a robot.

Next, I played with some rounded elements to make her face, a bit of white hair and a cap. A skirt and top. The colors of her head and face can be definitely be improved on, they are what I had on hand.

But she standing upright! And has her own personality already. She needs a name. Got any suggestions?

What my table looked like … tidying afterwards aka sorting is complicated. Finding stuff is complicated. And I still have a 500gm bag of unsorted Technic elements. Nowhere to put them. Just need to find/buy a good set of little drawers.