Art Attack!

Recently I’ve been doing a lot more sketchbook art and have found my own style. To get to this point I’ve been using a smaller sketchbook where I stick clippings and photographs to draw on one side, and draw them with pen on the other. The point of drawing in pen is so I can’t rub it out and get a better eye of perception. As I’m also one of those peoples that start sketchbooks with rubbish drawings -and always end up tearing out the first few pages, I’ve started from the back and am working my way to the front.

I’ve begun to like the work I am producing and scanned them in to put them up for sale on my Red Bubble shop. Here’s a couple alongside the original picture and some examples of ones I’ve put up and the products you can buy on my store.

 

Marlo Morgan Mutant Messenger

 

 

Marlo Morgan- a health practitioner from America wrote a book –Mutant Message Down Under-A Women’s Journey into Dreamtime Australia – about her “experience” in the Ozzie outback with one of the last aboriginal tribes the ‘Real People’.I was advised to read the 187 page book by my aunty and was told it was a mind altering book; it was, I fell straight into Marlo’s journey and became excited to finish it. Marlo was asked to go to Australia to talk about her practices to the aborigines’, a meeting which she thought would consist of tradition aboriginal foods and deep discussions, it was when she arrived she realised it was nothing to what she had imagined; she was asked to be released of all her goods on her into a fire (which she later learned was a sacrifice to the earth releasing necessities back to where she had received them from) and was asked to dress in a simple cloth fashioned as a dress. She was then led into a small tin hut and taken through a ritual. After all of her confusion she was told she had passed the test to walk with the aborigines and learn their ways for the changes of three moons which was three months. After excepting she had to do this walk she learnt how aborigines’ ate, sheltered, prayed, even used telepathy for communication; they believe the voice was used to pray, song, and if you have nothing to hide then you will become one with the people around you. She faced dehydration, starvation and miracles. Throughout the book, every page I turned I learnt more, I found myself changing my perspective on the way I see myself and how people act upon certain situations in life.

 

“Mutants (everyday people like you and me) have many beliefs; they say your way is different from my way, your saviour is not my saviour, your forever is not my forever. But the truth is, all life is one life. There is only one game in progress. There is one race, many different shades. Mutants argue the name of God, what building, what day, what ritual. Did He come to Earth? What do his stories mean? Truth is truth. If you hurt someone, you hurt yourself. If you help someone, you help self. Blood and bone is in all people. Its heart and intent that is different. Mutants think about these one hundred years only, of self and separateness. Real people think about forever. It is all one, our ancestors, our unborn grandchildren, all of life everywhere.”

 

I got about 150 pages into the book when I decided to do a little research for my blog; what happened to her after, what happened to the aborigines, what’s she doing now? And to my surprise I read that the book, to my disappointment, is actually Fiction! It wasn’t due to the fact that I felt lied to, although that obviously was a big part, it was the fact that I took what I had read so far to heart, I felt that it had made me understand certain concepts in the world and about human nature that I had realised before but not got my head round, I had felt that the book was putting into perfect words what I had always felt but never knew how to wrap my head round. Even though I was extremely disappointed in the fact that it was a lie and I’m still contemplating whether or not to finish it. But now you know the truth I would definitely recommend reading it.

Hate. Anger. All negative emotions are things you develop by choosing to feel these emotions towards certain things. Peoples. Places. How you express your emotions are your own choice.

 ISBN: 1-85538-484-1

J Tweedie – Feminists and the Right to be Ugly

Jill Tweedie 1936-1993 was one of Britain’s foremost feminist commentators and her article feminists and the right to be ugly – written and published february 1970 – was an article I found witty and deeply honest; she talks about her up-bringing being vanity banished as her father supposed she  “looked better than a slap on the belly with a wet fish, or she may pass with a push in  crowd with the light behind her” – harsh words for a young girl! presenting herself to a model agency she was told to go away, get her hair done, manicure her nails, iron her clothes and then come back, something of which obviously she didn’t do. i found after reading this article that its not a one way or a two way street for women and there vanity- bother or don’t- its road works and traffic. Something I picked up on in the article is, for example, you meet a guy and he tells you look beautiful, but what you want him to say is “oh you’re so clever, and smart i love talking to you”. You meet a guy and he tells you he loves you for your mind and your furious he didn’t realize you had bought a new dress and done your hair. the media has got so out of hand with representing women on how you should look with all these super skinny models and pouty celebrities you lose yourself.

“As far as I am concerned, a natural slut can languish unwashed, hairy, germy and odorous, if that’s the way she wants it, and other people should grin and bear it from her at least as much as they would her male equivalent… Many men are a good deal more interesting proving their masculinity to other men than they are in the women herself and the need to feel sure their choice is applauded by other men too.”