My soul has the winter blues, already. Winter did not really come until Dec 1.2021, but it feels like eons ago. I am not a depressed person, but I weary of the restrictions and having to change who I am. Yes, I have covid fatigue. Who I used to be was an outgoing person. I loved going out to dinners with friends. I loved our weekly outings. I loved teaching my little private art students. I loved doing my weekly Wednesday morning art journaling classes. I loved window shopping. I loved have people over for dinners. I loved to sit in the coffee area of a mall food court and just watch people. I loved to be busy. I still love those things. I just am not doing them. Into this third year of restrictive living and I am tired of it. I am fully vaccinated. I follow rules so I, of course, wear my mask and try to restrict myself. Suddenly, I am realizing, I have left an old life and I am into a new one. This time, it is not grief. This time it is sort of a resentment that is coming on and settling down like a plant that has been taken from a garden and stuck in a pot, kept indoors, like the trumpet flower I have tucked in behind things in the garage until spring. I do not have SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder). I spent years of winters in Yuma, Arizona, not having to deal with winter. Now, winter seems to be part of this cruel monster that has taken over life. My very soul is withering like the stem of that plant in the dark garage.
I still keep busy. Yes, I still do my art and I still have one set of friends who come over every few days to play cards. We are all in the same garage, of sorts. I am beginning to struggle. I think that the group and doing daily art and blogging has become my entertainment, my few moments of ‘getting out’ of the doldrums.
I grab some art supplies from my desk and art, create, move that that space and place of peace and nurturing, of sorts, that comes when I fall into the meditative rhythm of creating art.
I pull out some craft foam and draw a face 5 x 8 “. I use a ballpoint pen and score deeply, but not taring through.
I grab a piece of back-cardboard from an old art pad and start cutting out shapes of the face I drew. I audition all the pieces before I glued them down. I let it dry completely.
Once I glued the pieces down, I saw that I need some marks and some sides to the nose, some pupils. I used dollar store spackle. Again, I let it dry, thoroughly.
Once it was dry, I used sketch book substrate, laid it over the craft foam where the raised cardboard face was. I used water-soluble oil crayon in black and scraped it over the paper so that it made a print. I tried different colors.
Then I wet a brush and sought to go from the dark to some nice colorings.
Once I had experimented with the black, I tried to get more color… aw yes, it was the flowers in the first trial that inspired me.
And, finally,
voila… I had flowers. A bit of definitive mark making and there she was.
You could try this technique with a gellipad, or glue cardboard shapes on to cardboard. I did try the brayer and I could not press hard enough to get much of a print, but you might be able to. Why not give collography a go and share your results with us in the facebook group?
©Carol Desjarlais 1.5.21
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