If We Were Having Coffee…..

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you this blog just turned a year old! I’m glad WordPress reminds me of these things. I knew it was sometime around now.

If we were having coffee, I’d want you to tell me all about your week. I hope it was a good one with lots accomplished and time for fun. I’m going to need to take a few sips of coffee to warm up my voice before I attempt to speak. Yesterday was the annual university conference where all the various vision research projects get presented. I had a poster to present on one of the studies I am working on. I got to show pictures of the retina and there was a 3D virtual environment involved in the testing procedure. It is definitely one of the cooler research projects I have presented. This is probably why the poster was drawing such big crowds. The talk I gave for the poster was only 5 minutes long, but I had to speak loudly so the crowd could hear me and I had to repeat it nonstop for almost two hours. Now, my voice is all crackly and keeps coming and going.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you that despite the success of the poster and its award nomination, I’m still feeling rather low. I came home from the conference yesterday and just went straight to bed. I don’t know, maybe it is just exhaustion that is getting me down. When Hubby got home he brought in some mail for me. It was a package from my aunt. She sent some stuff that I had left at her place along with some new paint brushes and a new stencil. Very exciting! Check out the stencil..an eye diagram! Awesome! That cheered me up a bit.

If we were having coffee, I’d probably tell you about a friend and a colleague of mine. I am really worried about them. The colleague was supposed to fly in next week to work on that grant proposal with us but he has had to cancel on account of his heart. He has a weak heart and went to the doc thinking he had the flu. It turns out his heart isn’t sounding good, so he has had to cancel the trip and do a full workup. He is not the only one with concerning health problems though. Hubby and I had dinner with our friend Lynne last night. She is scheduled to have her surgery to have her liver metastasis removed in a week and a half. Her latest CT scan shows a new tumor. We are hoping it popped up on the portion they were going to remove anyway.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you my art class is tomorrow morning. I’m a little nervous. I hope it isn’t too clique-y. I’m also still doing the 30 Day Colouring Challenge from The Daily Marker. There is about a week left. I have been enjoying it. Here is a collection of this week’s stuff. Two of them are from colouring books. The rest I drew myself. I even used regular old crayons this week. It was fun to revisit childhood with a box of nice, sharp, new Crayolas.

If we were having coffee, I’d wish you a good weekend! Hope to see you for coffee next week!

This conversation coffee post is part of a weekly link-up hosted by Part-Time Monster

Share Your World 2015 – Week 12

This is Week 12 of Share Your World 2015 from Cee’s Photography. As always, thanks for great questions Cee!

When was the last time you sat on a park or garden bench for more than ten minutes? Describe the occasion.

I can’t remember exactly when, but I am pretty sure I know the “where” part. There is a park Hubby and I like to walk..or run in. It is a rather large park in the next suburb over. It has a pond in the middle a and a trail that goes around it. It is special to us because that is where he took me on our first date. He took me to see the fireflies in the forest there. It was breathtaking. During the summer months, we often go and walk around. If it gets really hot, we’ll sit on one of the benches by the pond and just chat. We did some jogging there last summer, I can’t remember if we walked and sat on a bench though.

Would you ever be interested in observing a surgery or do you turn away when the nurse brings out the needle? 

Both! If it is anything to do with me or someone I know and I get squeamish. If it’s a stranger though, I can handle it. I have always thought seeing an autopsy would be kind of interesting. During undergrad, I taught a systemic anatomy lab to other students. We used human cadavers and human parts. You get past the creepy/gross factor pretty quickly when you have to teach. The one part I never got comfortable with was the sagittal head section. It’s basically a head cut in half right between the eyes. They kept these specimen all together in a bin full of what we referred to as body juice. I’d try to grab one that was floating around with the skull portion above the juice. That part is easier to grab, less fleshy. You never knew though, if you were going to pull it up with the back of the head facing you, or the face side. The face side was always little unnerving, no matter how many times I’d see it.

Where’s your favorite place to take out-of-town guests?

I guess it depends on who the guest is. Some people would really enjoy going to a maple sugar shack which is in season here in Montreal about now, I think. Others, might prefer shopping trendy Montreal designers or seeing the Old Port. I think the one thing I like to do with everyone is go to the little village around the corner from where I live. It is really cute, especially at Christmas or in the summer. Not so much at the current time of year. The buildings are mostly historic ones and there are all kinds of little shops with different things in them. This is an old house that has been turned into a rather fancy restaurant.

The lake is only one street over too. The lake is best seen in the summer with the boats and the wind surfers out, or in the dead of winter, when the lake is frozen and the kite boarders are zipping around. Unfortunately, the kite boarders are done for the year. This is the lake at this time last year. There was less cold and white stuff last winter.

If you had an unlimited shopping spree at only one store, which one would you choose? Why?

Right now, it would have to be a local scrapbook store, Scrapbook Centrale. They carry everything I need for art journaling and drawing. I was there over the weekend and bought a few things; a book on portraits, some paper for art journaling, a spider web stencil, some portrait watercolour pencils and a funky science/steampunk stamp. I could have spent so much more in there!

Bonus question:  What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?

Last Week: Last week, I was stressed and my mood was really weird. There is less stress this week, but my mood still isn’t right. I guess I am just thankful last week is over.

This Week: I signed up for an art journal class next weekend at the store I mentioned earlier. I am looking forward to it, but I am also having some social anxiety over it. I’m hoping it will be ok once I get there and get settled.

DLP8 – It’s Worth Repeating

The Documented Life Project — Journal
(For more information or inspiration, visit the ladies at Art to the 5th)
February 21st Challenge, Week 8

Art Challenge: Repeating elements
Prompt: It’s Worth Repeating

Since I am behind with these challenges I have the benefit of seeing what others come up with first. Many people used basic shapes as their repeating element; circles, squares, etc. I saw one journal page that used cogs as the repeating element. Obviously, I loved this since I am a fan of the Steampunk look. That page inspired me to go beyond basic shapes and use something that I actually enjoy repeating…cupcakes!! Anyone who knows me, knows I love cupcakes. Hubby’s pet name for me is even “Cupcake”, lol. Anyway, cupcakes are worth repeating. I always find two are better than one! 😉

This time, I tried to seal the binding of my art journal. Paint keeps seeping through the binding onto pages that I’ve already done. I covered the binding with pink polka dot washi tape and then painted the pages with gesso. The tape appeared to have done its job. Next, I used gel medium to stick in magazine cut-outs of cupcakes. I also used a rose stencil to draw various shades of pink roses onto the page. I used Sharpies to do this. The regular Sharpies stopped working on the gesso pretty quickly. To my surprise, even the Sharpie paint markers didn’t hold up on the gesso. I switched to gel pens. They went on smoothly. I knew they were going to smudge when I went over them in paint though.

I went over the roses and magazine cupcakes in light pink craft paint. Sure enough, the gel pen roses smudged. Oh well. I did the lettering with a Signo Uniball pen on some paper cut outs I got in my stash from Creative thINKing. At this point, I put the journal away because I didn’t need it to make the paper cupcakes. Maybe that was a mistake. When I opened it again, the tape I used to seal the binding was all messed up and stuck to itself. I don’t know if that’s just what washi does when you bend it, or if the paint was still wet… any ideas?

The cupcakes were really fun to make, but they took a really long time. I used cardstock for the icing tops. I doodled two different types of icing and used them as templates to cut out all the tops. I decorated with Sharpies and gel pens. I made a template for the cupcake wrappers and used it to cut out bottoms from different patterned papers. Some of the paper was from my Creative thINKing stash and some was from my aunt’s collection. I drew lines on the cupcake wrappers that weren’t already textured. Finally I went to town with a fun little cupcake stamp I found in a $1 bin at a craft store.

DLP7 – Going Under Cover

The Documented Life Project – Journal, February 14th (week 7)
(For more inspiration or more info on this week’s project, visit Art to the 5th)

Art Challenge: Cover Up Good Stuff

Prompt: Going Under Cover

The exercise this week was about covering up the good stuff. They didn’t specify what the “good stuff” was, so I looked at some of the examples they provided. Some artists started their pages and then covered up doodles or layers that they liked with other layers while some did some journaling and then started layering over top of that. I decided my “good stuff” would be my research notes.

When I am writing a paper or something along those lines, I make notes from the research articles that I read. Writing it out in my own words helps it sink in better and I don’t have to worry about plagiarism and what not. Sometimes I draw diagrams to help explain things to other people. I also work with our lab’s data via paper and pen. I guess I am really a visual learner and it works best with pen in hand rather than typing it out.

I grabbed a bunch of my old notes. I tried to get a good variety; words, numbers, diagrams and different colours of pens. I tore them up and glued them into my journal with gel medium. I got the art challenge down but I still had to figure out the prompt. “Going under cover” makes me think of a disguise. Putting that and my research notes together got me thinking about how I feel at work. I feel like a fake and at any minute everyone is going to see through the confident, intelligent show I put on. I am constantly interacting with the experts in my field. I have authored a couple papers. I have even presented at conferences. I just don’t feel like I know enough to be doing all these things.

I found out that this is actually a common feeling among Ph.D. students. That’s what studies say at least. I am skeptical. The other students I work with seem confident, arrogant even. It’s called Imposter Syndrome. I defined it on my page.

Just in case you can’t read the photo, Imposter Syndrome is a psychological phenomenon in which people are unable to internalize their accomplishments. Despite external evidence of their competence those with the syndrome remain convinced that they are frauds and do not deserve the success they have achieved.

This spread started with my research notes. I glued a few strips of paper from my stash on too. I did a light layer of white gesso over top and a layer of blush pink acrylic paint over that. I was pleased that you could still see the lined paper and my writing through the paint. I used bubblegum pink acrylic to paint some blobs on the page. I used a large stamp with circles on it and pink ink to randomly stamp all over the page. I got stuck for a while at this point.

I decided to draw an eye in the middle of one page. The eye represents my research and my fear of people seeing through my act. The eye was done with watercolour pencil crayons and Neocolour II.

From there wrote the Imposter Syndrome definition in black signo uniball pen. I doodled a DNA strand above that and did some stamping with a butterfly. I have to work on my stamping, it is still coming out blotchy.

I figured I had to do something with those big pink blobs, so I started writing words related to work in them. The blobs that were too small to write in were turned into atoms…Rutherford-Bohr diagrams of Carbon. Why? I don’t know, I don’t really think about that type of science anymore, but that’s just what they made me think of.

It turned out to be a very pink spread. I like pink, so that’s ok.

J52 – Aromatherapy

Journal 52, Week 8

Prompt: Aromatherapy

I love coffee. I enjoy having my coffee and starting my day slowly. Coffee at home is always enjoyable. When I am able to have coffee at work, I have it while checking emails, getting caught up on reading or proof reading whatever presentation I am doing that day. It’s a rather calm part of the day. So the smell of coffee is kind of calming to me. That’s my aromatherapy.

Since this page is about coffee, I painted the background with coffee. It worked quite well! When the coffee dried, I sketched a girl enjoying a cup on top.

I coloured the girl with watercolour pencil crayons, Derwent art bars and Neocolour II. I had to use all three media to get all the colours I needed. I’m experimenting with faces a bit. I’m not too fond of this one, but I like her hair.

I wanted the side of the spread the girl was on to be calm because she was having her coffee. I wanted to other side of the page to look busy….as if the aroma of the coffee was keeping the chaos at bay. I used “Tea Dye” Distress Ink on dictionary pages to make them closer to the coffee colour. I inked the edges of the journal pages too.

The dictionary pages were “A” words. I checked for “aromatherapy”, but only “aroma” was there. I circled it in purple/pink to make it stand out a bit.

I wrote a “To Do” list on paper from my stash. I inked the edges of it like I did with the dictionary pages. I stuck a few plastic clocks on with E6000. I wasn’t sure if I needed glue that strong for them to stay on, but I figured gel medium wasn’t going to work. The E6000 was pretty strong, so I had to open the balcony doors to air the place out. It was cold!!

I wrote in words to fill the spaces that looked empty. The coffee quotes was written with a black Sharpie paint pen. The busy words where written in gold Sharpies paint pen and outlined with a regular brown sharpie to make them more readable. The rest was done with the same brown sharpie.

Paper ephemera courtesy of Creative thINKing