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A world in poetry

I perceive the world in poetry
Creating painted magic with bare hands
Carving a piece of history
Tiny specks of making
Building unseen worlds
From forest floor and thoughts of trees
Paper-thin veils to other dimensions
Cardboard houses for ideas
Strangeness in familiar ways
The stories I can’t tell yet
Shimmering in hues of foreign skies
Making artefacts from civilizations never been in existance
Hoping you might grasp a sliver
Of what I see through the cracks of reality.

On Eloquence

I used to believe I was eloquent
but only while the words
were inside my head, tumbling about,
grazing the skies of my inner world.

Coming out they stumbled into a strange place,
not knowing how to tread and thread;
folding into strange shapes and knots
not suitable for linearity.

Written on a surface they line up well enough
arranged in neat stacks and rows,
escaping the confining dimension of time
by flattening out all the parallel pockets of space-time.

My hands are more eloquent,
able to add the dimension of shapes and colours,
speaking in crystal shards and strange crosshatched riddles,
and pouring my strange mental vision into shimmering fields of paint.

The connection between thought and soul and fingertips
– a strange one, multilayered, of nondimensional facets –
will whisper in rainy nights
of electric storms and forest wanderers.

 

Reducing Waste and Saving Money, Artist Edition

If you have followed my instagram lately, you know I’m playing with acrylic paint again. After trying more traditional painting, I’m now experimenting with pouring and liquid painting. This usually involves additional material like small containers for mixing liquid paint, stirring sticks, some kind of cover to protect the working surface, … which can add up to quite a lot of plastic and paper, unless you have space to keep an extra box of glass containers and all that jazz, and are very dedicated to thoroughly cleaning all materials right after a painting session.

As I’m not living zero-waste, there is enough single-use material at home that can be repurposed for painting and be used at least a few times before finally throwing it out. This way I don’t have to buy a lot of additional material for my creative hobby, while all this future waste is used as much as possible before trashing/recycling it.

A few items are

• Plastic cups from yoghurts and desserts are stackable, can be cut to the needed height, and are washable. I use these for mixing paint for pouring and sometimes for making circles on paintings. (Before getting this idea, I started using up some old disposable cups lingering in a cupboard. They are wobbly and tend to break.)
• Cheap chopsticks or small forks that come with convenience food or takeout are good for stirring, dipping, making lines, splashing …
• Canvases often come wrapped in thin plastic sheets, which can be used to cover cups containing rests of paint (instead of clingfilm), be scrunched up and dabbed on paint to create effects, or serve as surface protection under smaller paintings.
• I usually avoid plastic bags, but sometimes I buy too much or too big stuff to fit into my usual shopping bags, so a few manage to sneak in. They make great surface protection for small and medium artworks, still being small enough to be moved around together with the paining (I work on the floor most of the time, so I just drag them aside to let art dry out of the way); they are quite sturdy and can be reused and even cleaned it you want to – I just pull off the biggest blobs of paint after drying and call it a day.
• Big plastic covers are good for big paintings or wild paint splashing. For some reason I had kept the thick plastic wrap a mattress came in and got it out for my first clumsy attempts with thinned paint.
• Receipts for art supply orders are just paper and I don’t keep most of them (because I don’t do art for a living), so I sometimes use them to wipe my brushes/fingers or mix tiny bits of paint.
• Old newspapers are good for covering bigger areas. I don’t buy a lot of newspapers, but sometimes they are used as wadding in packets (there is a constant influx of second-hand technology and the like in this apartment), so there’s usually a handful around.
• Squeeze and spray bottles from cosmetics like shampoo samples or eco-friendly deodorant (which comes in fancy glass spray bottles here) are useful for dosing liquids. I have a spray bottle of water for art (and air plants) and I plan to put some floetrol into a small squeeze bottle later today because the original canister is really unwieldy for getting small amounts out of it.
• (Old fabric from torn clothes/sheets can be cut into pieces and be used instead of paper towels, though they have to be replaced quite frequently when used to wipe away acrylics and aren’t washed immediately, so I prefer using them for cleaning the kitchen unless I have a lot of these rags at a given moment.)

The only plastic I bought specifically for my art is my palette (which I’ve had for quite a while and will last until I break it somehow), a pack of plastic shot glasses for really small amounts of paint, and some small stuff like eyedroppers and tiny bottles with fine openings.

 

Alignment

Latest space-related art.

Updated Photography Portfolio

I took an hour tonight and brushed up my photography portfolio. Mostly I added a few pictures, adjusted the size to make everything look nice and even, and I also added some general location information for the categories “City” and “Landscape & Waterside”. Check it out :)

(I haven’t resized the photos in the “Sky” section yet – what do you think? Keep the bigger format or adjust to the smaller size I used in the other categories?)

Capoeira Wood Jewellery Sketch Dump

These designs are my property, so you are not allowed to distribute these files in any other form than reposting this whole post. Neither are you allowed to use these exact ideas to create anything intended for sale.

Now I need to find some light wood and some tools.

Oh, to live in simplicity (sermo in monte)

Oh, to live in simplicity, childlike, free to live in truth – a home made from solid rocks and fruitful trees, between saltwater and sky-wide joy.

Oh, to live like a dancing child in the fields, arms open to embrace the world in peacefulness – harvesting everything else with eyes of love.

Oh, to live trustfully, unafraid of needing a provider, offering nothing but an honest heart – and knowing it to be enough.

Yesterday in youth group we were supposed to take one or more sections from the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) and represent it in a creative way, be it a drawing, a short play, or poetry. I joined the poetry group, but my brain decided that just one form of art wasn’t enough and kept nagging me to draw a tree and write random stuff next to it. So without much effort the doodled tree and the words above ended up on my piece of paper. It’s loosely based on some of the Beatitudes, Salt of the World, Do Not Worry, and The Wise and Foolish Builders.

Kitchen Greenhouse Update: 418 – I’m a Teapot!

5:30 a.m. on a Saturday – creative break from writing my master’s thesis. I decided it was time for this old teapot to be turned into something beautiful. Hopefully I’ll find some lavender to plant it among the ivy.

Gallery of recent additions to my upcycling project – turning juice-to-go plastic cups into art. I like the combination of the clear cups and ivy growing upwards along the drinking straw.

Have a Toothless doodle

I’m frustrated right now, like this: (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻        (╯°□°）╯︵ /(.□. \)

But looking at the Toothless doodle I made this noon makes me feel better. Drawn without reference on the backside of a sheet in my notepad. Last real class at university. But my master’s thesis sucks, according to examiner #2. One month left and I’m supposed to do everything different than I do now and blah blah. So yes …  *looking at Toothless again*

And obviously I suck at drawing wings in perspective.