visual journal

Taking the time to play

| Sheree

I’ve always loved drawing.

At different times of my life, I was either really into drawing or gone off the boil from drawing.

Basically, if I allowed my drawings to come into contact with other people, that’s when my drawing would go off the boil. I wouldn’t do it, I’d let the practice slide because someone or other had said my drawing wasn’t very/any good.

Or they’d looked at what I’d shared and start giving me pointers on how to improve it. How to shade ‘properly’ or how to get things into ‘proportion’. Basically saying that what I was doing, instinctively and true to me, was wrong.

For large stretches of time, I didn’t allow myself to draw, to play because in comparison to others, my work just didn’t match up. Didn’t look like theirs.

And then one time, while feeling less than, while feeling the odd one out, not accepted or appreciated, I picked up a pen and started drawing again. I found solace and safety in the lines I drew.

Faces, I love drawing faces. Usually of black women. Seeing myself reflected.

I completed a 100 days of black women one time, a few years ago now and I loved where this challenge took me. It took me to a place and peace of accepting my drawings. My style, my subjects and themes, my shading and perspectives.

Fuck man, we’re all individuals, unique and no way are we supposed to or should be drawing all alike, to a certain standard or brief.

My drawings are an expression of me, and how I see/ move through this world.

I’m dealing with it. I’m embracing it. And fuck everyone else!

Some days ….

| Sheree

you’ve just got to start again. Begin again as if day one.

Day one. And it’s all about the colours.

It’s about laying the groundwork so when there’s an upsurge in energy, it’s ready to receive.

New visual journal from altered novel.

let this be the healing

| Sheree

after Danez Smith

let this be the healing

the out of time and space

to flow back to the source

of love & care

let this be the honey to the wounds

the joy within the unknown

the hope to survive

in the mouth of the dragon*

let this be the refusal

the movement underground

to protect our vulnerabilities

let this be the healing

*a line from Audre Lorde’s ‘ The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action’ in Your Silence Will Not Protect You.

Playful Palimpsests

| Sheree

I go to my local probably about once a week if not more. I was brought up next to a library, in Bradford and in Newburn. They were places I could go to for some sense of freedom and adventure.

The librarians knew me and would recommend books to me and events. They wouldn’t rush me, I was welcome to stay as long as I wanted.

Today, I love to pop in to see the book sales at my local libraries. As I have a few on my doorstep now. I flit between them, collecting worn and torn books that I repurpose.

I was brought up to know it was ‘wrong’ to write in books. They were sacred in our home. Probably because we were poor and if we bought books, usually from the indoor market in town, we knew it was money we couldn’t afford to spend on books. But my parents spent it anyway, as they valued books, learning and education. It was our way out of poverty.

I wonder what they would say now, if they saw what I did to books?

10p is all I pay for big, colourful children’s books, withdrawn from library stock. I have to feel the paper first though before I buy them. Even if only 10p, too shiny the page and the paint won’t grip it as well. The paint just swirls around and doesn’t stick.

I like my pages rough and matt finished. Ready to absorb whatever I put down on it.

This sketchbook was my side hustle for the last month. Side hustle to my main creative sketchbook. Here I just lay down colour and see what happens.

I like when what’s underneath the paint bleeds through. I like when the different layers of paint and pencil and pen bleeds through to the surface too.

It’s like a palimpsest. The marks beneath is the feeling I’m after. The haunting, the trace, the evidence of time and the passage of time. The archive is present now.

A 50 day streak

| Sheree

Yesterday marked 50 days of my creative sketchbook practice. 50 days of consistently turning up to the page to play and experiment.

What I’m learning is that I can trust myself to turn up for myself. I’m learning that my practice muscles can be strengthened. I’m learning that I love creating colour fields. It like what I create with visual journaling but different.

Here with these colour fields, there’s layers built up and then stripped back. Marked into. Scratched away to leave textures I like to see and feel. This practice is definitely expanding my palimpsest exploration and obsession.

I’m learning that I want this my creativity to be the main focus of my day and everything else is the add on, not the priority. Not the main meal. My creativity is my life source/force.

I’m practicing taking my creative sketchbook practice into my life. The attitudes, the risk-taking, the consistency, the trust in self and my art-making, these values and practices I’m carrying with me throughout my day, no matter who I come into contact with.

This creative sketchbook practice keeps me centred and focused on my feelings of joy and abundance. This practice keeps me present and checked in with myself, moment to moment.

On top of my visual journaling practice, this safe space of play and to {BE} me, is enough. Is more than enough to fill my day with bliss and connection. A practice that I’m finding opens up doors inside and outside of me, for me and others.

a morning well spent

| Sheree

Visual journaling in community is always time well spent.

Even if it’s their first rodeo, to witness the freedom, the mess, the expansion as paint meets paper meets card. Bliss. Magic. A gift.

Walking out with their own visual journals clutched close to their chests, promising to carry on the practice themselves, now they’ve got the power within their hands, hearts and soul.

A job well done any time the visual journaling practice is passed on.

I do believe it makes us better human beings. Better to each other and ourselves. Softer, caring and well-nourished.

Healing.

A archive of dreams

| Sheree

In preparation for a visual journaling workshop over the weekend, I’ve been going through past journal spreads.

I started visual journaling in August 2015. This image above is from a journal I created later that year. Back then visual journaling was a life line. It provided me with a path out of rock bottom and all it was, was dreaming on paper. Creating a safe space where I wouldn’t be judged or dismissed but where I was held.

Since this time, my visual journaling has morphed and changed. It’s needed to because my life and circumstances have changed so much since then. The world has also.

But the main premise remains – it’s a simple but powerful tool of connection with myself. It supports me in turning up in this world in all my fullness.

Wanted or not, I’m here and this practice keeps me present. Makes me present. Makes me pay attention and breathe.

Challenge completion, continue

| Sheree

A couple of days ago, I completed the 30 day sketchbook challenge, successfully. Not a day missed.

I’m really proud of this achievement as it proves to myself that I can turn up for my art-making consistently. That I can use my sketchbook as a place of play and wonder. A place to take risks, safely.

The importance I place on the creative sketchbook practice is immense but not to the point of paralysing myself and then not creating out of fear of failure.

The plan is to continue the practice. And I have been turning up each day since. I’ve been using my own prompts, following my curiosity, leaning into my own style. Listening to my voice.

The original course came with an additional 30 prompts. So I’ll start them when I run out of my own ideas. Then I can also restart the original course again and then explore a comparison between the creations and reflections of the first round with the second.

This is definitely, at the point, turning into an 100 days project, an just saying that as another milestone to meet and to keep myself accountable.

And again, I’ll keep the pages for my eyes only, not ready or even wanting/needing to share the pages I create or to move onto larger, external canvas or panels.

I do not feel the need or the call to create any formal work as yet or share. I’m happy exploring within my sketchbook and following where that takes me within the pages.

I realise that has been where I’ve gone wrong in the past. Skipping the sketchbook phase which I’m thinking is simply like the drafting stage of writing. The loose, trial and error phase, where we’re just playing. I’ve been missing out this phase and going straight to the big stuff, the art put into the world. The exhibitions, the judgments and appreciations.

And what I’ve produced mainly carried little meaning for me or messages for the viewer. I feel that it’s fallen flat and felt like a void. And I think this is because I wasn’t sure of my voice, my style, my meanings and messages.

This is what I’m taking away from this sketchbook practice now. And I’m so enjoying the process and I’m open to what surfaces. But I’m also patient and loyal in terms of showing up and doing the work. I trust all will become clear and strong and full in the process.