J52: Just Write

Journal52, Week 11

Prompt: Just Write

I tried multitasking with this one. It is an art journal page for Journal52 and it is my psych homework. I had an appointment with my psychiatrist last Friday. I didn’t mention my declining mood but maybe I should have since it has only gotten worse. I thought it was just the usual up and down at the time. What we did discuss was work. I am having trouble dragging myself through it. I’m not sure if it is work itself, or me being depressed that is the problem. As I was leaving the appointment, Psych said he felt he should give me homework. He asked me to write about work. He wanted me to write what I like about it without thinking about it too much. He didn’t say I had to write it out in my neatest handwriting or anything and considering I hadn’t used this art journal prompt, I figured why not make it into a page.

I’m not really sure what this exercise is supposed to achieve. I don’t deny that there are things I like about my Ph.D., there are just a lot of “but”s. I enjoy learning. If you aren’t learning, you aren’t evolving and if you aren’t evolving, well, you are pretty much dead. I know there are lots of different ways to learn. I just know the academic way of learning and I was good at it, so that’s the route I took.

I also like information. I like to gather it, break it down into small digestible pieces and then build it back up in my own words with my own perspective. I like to share this information with others too. Teaching those that want to learn is always a great experience. I have a bit of stage fright, maybe a lot of stage fright, but giving a talk at a conference can make you feel like a rock star.

I also get to help people, improve their quality of life. Right now, there is no solution for age-related vision loss. There are treatments to help slow the progression, but no cures. The doctors spend as much time with their patients as they can, but some ophthalmologists have to pack 90 patients into one day. They don’t have the time to explain everything. I can do that. I can answer questions and explain how to use various visual aids. We even have training programs that teach people how to use what sight they have left. Most importantly, I can listen. Sometimes, that is all my patients want, someone to listen to them. I can do that.

The reason I started down this path in the first place was because I was interested in vision, aging vision in particular. I was close to my Gran growing up, I even lived with her the first year my family moved to Montreal. Gran had Macular Degeneration (AMD). It got so bad that she was considered legally blind. This meant she wasn’t completely blind, she could still see light and movement, but no details. She walked around with the white cane, listened to audiobooks and was a member of the Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB).

Now, just stop for a second, imagine what it must be like to be a senior citizen, someone who has been depending on their vision for 65+ years and now cannot rely on it at all. You can’t drive, you can’t read, you can’t recognize people, you can’t shop without help because labels, prices and colours are hard to figure out and you can’t do most of your hobbies anymore because trying to see what you’re doing is too frustrating. Just imagine. It is worse when it happens quickly and there is no time to adapt. That is what happened to Gran. Most of the folks I work with get pretty depressed, but not Gran.

Gran was resilient. She had a great attitude. She was determined to stay independent and wasn’t going to let AMD stop her. She still went out on her own. She used her memory to get around the area she lived in. Once, she slipped on some ice and fell, broke her arm. She was out and about, cast and all a few days later. Her love of reading turned into an audiobook subscription. She used tools given to her by the CNIB to continue playing cards and doing cryptic crosswords. Gran even continued knitting! Of course, she could only do the patterns she knew by heart, but added her own little twist to them. These are two of the elephants Gran knitted. An angel and another one with a pink sweater, scarf and beret.

All in all, she lived 15 years with AMD. Gran was a remarkable woman. Her attitude was inspiring. Sadly, I know it’s not like this in all cases. That is what prompted me into this field. I wanted to help in any way that I could. I still do.

By the time I finished my writing, I was in tears. Gran has been gone for 11 years now, but sometimes it feels like it was just yesterday. I guess there are just some losses you never really recover from. I am pretty sure this is not the conclusion Psych wanted me to come to when he assigned me this writing exercise. Perhaps he wanted to determine if I was doing a Ph.D. for the right reasons? I don’t know.

Anyway, this is the page.

For those of you interested in the art part…..I started by drawing a few eyes here and there. I wrote around them with different shades of blue Sharpie. You can see the Sharpie through the back of the page, so make sure you plan to gesso over the back or something. I wrote in different directions with a combination of printing and cursive. I spread a thin layer of gesso over the writing when I finished. I used my old Blockbuster membership card to spread the gesso. I find you can get a thinner layer with the gesso than with a paint brush. I wanted the writing to still be visible. The eyes were coloured with watercolour pencil crayons and Signo Uniball pens. I went over the background with some pastel gelatos. You can see kinda read the writing. It’s a bit tough in some places. I then went through with a Sharpie paint pen and highlighted some key words.

DLP6: Don’t Stop Until You Get Enough

The Documented Life Project 2015 – Journal
For more information and inspiration visit the girls at Art to the 5th

Art Challenge: When Not to Stop
Prompt: “Don’t Stop Until You Get Enough”

This challenge was posted on Art to the 5th on February 7th. I’m about a month behind. At least being so far behind, I’ll never run out of journal prompts!

The prompt is from a Michael Jackson song. Do you remember where you were or what you were doing when he died? I was downtown. My friend and I had just gotten caught in a torrential down pour. We ran into a Ben & Jerry’s to wait out the rain, but it was too late, we were soaked. There were two girls working behind the counter. One girl was crying, the other comforting her. The second girl explained to us that the first girl was fine, just a big fan. When we looked clueless, she explained that Michael Jackson had died.

Anyway, I wasn’t going to do an art journal page on Michael Jackson, I wasn’t THAT big a fan. “Don’t stop until you get enough” made me think about school/work. I have definitely had enough of that! Why do I keep going? It’s because I haven’t got enough knowledge, I haven’t done enough learning. I don’t think you can ever get enough learning. There is always something you didn’t know, something you can improve upon….in my opinion at least. School/work and my pursuit of knowledge is represented by the eye chart (Ph.D. candidate in low vision). I scribbled other things around the page that I thought I could never get enough of; spirit, worth, motivation, love, joy, inspiration, kindness, passion, freedom, friendship and laughter.

This challenge was about layers which is something I haven’t done very much of in the past. A lot of people use old book pages. I didn’t have any books I was willing to sacrifice though. Instead, I tore recipe instructions out of magazines for the first layer. I shredded the pages into chunks and strips. I used gel medium to glue them willy-nilly all over the two-page spread. Any areas that weren’t covered I filled with lines or really sloppy handwriting.

The next layer was white gesso. I made it a thin layer so you could still see the recipe print and my chicken scratch through it. On top of that, I used blue craft paint and a stencil by Dylusions. The next layer was a variety of brown pigmented water colours. I added some stamps; clocks and keys with brown ink, but they mostly smudged off as I worked. The Snellen Eye Chart Stencil is by Tim Holtz. I stippled black gesso over it with a fat paint brush.

I wanted the images of the stamps to stay put. I thought maybe if I painted over everything with gel medium, they’d stay. It worked! From there I got out a bronze metallic Sharpie and and a gold Sharpie paint pen to do some doodles. Finally, I wrote the prompt in black Sharpie paint pen and doodle highlights on the letters with a blue paint pen.

DLP5: What Lies Beneath?

The Original Documented Life Project – Journal 2015
For more information and inspiration visit Art to the 5th

Art Challenge: Under paper
Prompt: What lies beneath?

I wasn’t sure what “under paper” was at first. Luckily, I wasn’t the only one. By the time I read the new challenge, there was already a discussion going on about it in the FB group. Under paper is the scrap paper you use to prevent whatever surface you are working on from getting ruined. I usually use a garbage bag for that…whoops. To make this week work for me, I figured I’d broaden the definition of “under paper” to include the paper I clean my stamps off on, the paper I test my pens on, test my doodles on and write my notes about different page ideas and quotes to use.

What does the prompt “what lies beneath?” make you think of?

A lot of people went along the lines of water and fish. Now that I think about it, that makes total sense, but that’s not what came to mind first. The prompt made me think of myself actually. I project the image of the person I want to be. I want to be smart, friendly, strong, well-spoken, kind, confident and successful. Really, all I am is kind…kind I can do well, but the rest? Fake it until you make it, right? Most of my friends, my colleagues and most of my family know me this way. What lies beneath is someone completely different. I second guess myself all the time, I get anxious and stressed over everything, I’m always exhausted, angry, lonely and just generally empty. I don’t like this person. I don’t want to be this person. Around others, I try to be the person I want to be, someone that they would like. Who would like a stressed, exhausted, angry person? No one. I can’t even stand to be in my own skin some days, how can I expect other people to tolerate me?

This is what my spread is about this week. The left is dedicated to the person I want/try to be. I started with gesso on the background and covered that with watercolour pencil crayons. I wanted the page to be colourful and bright. I used a stencil and some white paint to put the swirls in. I stamped a few hearts around the page with gelato pigment. I dipped a brush in water, rubbed it over the gelato stick and then painted the stamp. The hearts aren’t as clean as you would get stamping with ink, but it’s kind of neat looking. I used regular old pencil crayons to draw a cartoon of myself. Her smile is a little bit strained because she is acting a bit. Pretending to be happy and confident when you aren’t can be exhausting after a while, so the smile is a bit forced.

The flowers and circles were made using paper punches from my “under paper”. They were stuck on with gel medium. I outlined the circles with Sharpie paint pen and the flowers with gel pens. Any writing was done with a black Fude pen.

The right page was intended to be darker compared to the right. I used black and silver metallic watercolour pencils to colour on top of a layer of gesso. I used black gesso to stencil some bricks onto the background. I copied the lettering off the internet. I googled graffiti fonts, found one I liked and copied from the font preview. I saved the darker portions of my “under paper” for this side of the spread. Anything with more vibrant colour went to the other side.

The figure was done with regular pencil crayon and outlined with black sharpie. Instead of details, I made her a sort of shadow and filled her with words that described me. She doesn’t really have a face because she doesn’t know what she wants or how to become the girl on the other page. She is lost. The bits of under paper were glued on with gel medium and outlined in Sharpie paint pen.

I smudged white gesso along the bottom of the page with my fingers. I covered some of the under paper punch outs, but I guess that’s ok. I wrote the quote with a black Fude pen. Maybe next time I’ll use a ruler when I write.

“Things are not always what they seem; the first appearance deceives many, the intelligence of a few perceive what lies beneath.” ~Phaedus