Doodling

Bead Journal Project and Sumptuous Surfaces have encouraged me to try and draw.

Trying to do fairies from a book by Linda Ravenscroft, proved very amusing, and I was pleasantly surprised by the result.

Linda Ravenscroft is a talented fairy artist, you can check her website here.

Little Big Ego

Little Big Ego - June 2008

Most of the time, I try to be good. Sometimes I pray, sometimes I meditate, sometimes I reflect on my good points and bad points. Most of the time I try to act and speak in fairness, i try to control my passions.

Sometimes, it pays off ; I feel calm, centered and in harmony. Then I'm happy and I feel I'm a worthy person, that I'm making progress (where to, what for, that's another question).

However after each period of fullfillment I get visits from very interesting creatures. Their leader is Little Big Ego. He is somebody, very full of himself. He screams and makes scenes. He says nobody ever listens to him enough, nobody takes him seriously enough and so on. He is very big, and very melodramatic. He has only a head, and no body.

Over Time, I have learnt he really wants me to pat his hand and give him a cuppa. So I try do do this.

To draw him, I was inspired by a fabulous drawing by Sydney Sime (1867-1941), diciple of Beardsley, which I saw in London a few months ago.

(c) Sydney Sime, "The Wily Grasser"
Fitwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Sumptuous surfaces

I have enrolled in Sharon B's "Sumptuous surfaces" course via Joggles.com.

In week 1, we must think about the design we wish to embroider and do some research on paper. I wanted to do something with the colour blue and began doodling around "blue eggs", a meditation on the subject of self protection. Also around tonglen which I sometimes practice.

Then, probably because Sharon B is Australian and also because I am reading a history book about textile dyeing, and am bewildered by all the weird interdictions that have been enforced in the past, I decided that I wanted to do a hommage to Helen O'Connell's discovery. She is an Australian scientist that has revealed 19 years ago that a special part of the female of anatomy is quite different from what we had been led to believe for the past centuries. If you feel comfortable with anatomy you can read more here. There was a documentary made on the subject which I saw a few years ago and dreamt about...

And so this is my design : 3 blue eggs and an anatomic border. The concept is : I am mother to two girls and protection of my young includes ensuring that they are in good physical and spiritual health and are not afraid of who they are. As a teenager I remember meeting artist Heidi Story in school and how she told us that she hadn't dared represent the middle part of bodies until she was about 40... Power over women is inflicted on their bodies and also on representation of their bodies. I have found it difficult to represent only the anatomy, so I see that I am not a very liberated woman...