All posts by Sandy Brown Jensen

Mysterious Journal Class

How to Get Started With Your Mysterious Night Vision Journal

1 Comment

NOTE:  Cheryl Renee Long’s “Color Your World” Colored Pencil Sketching class begins Jan. 4, 2016 and is only $50. Click here to view the sales page and/or to enroll: https://app.ruzuku.com/courses/11010/about

NEW CLASS ANNOUNCED

In late February 2016, Cheryl Renee Long and the hard working behind-the-scenes crew at Toucan Create! will introduce a brand new online class on how to loosen up your creativity and really explore your artistic imagination drawing with gel pen or colored pencils on black paper. This is your Mysterious Night Vision Field Journal!

GETTING READY FOR THE CLASS

Here are some tips about some supplies you might like to get you started.

TALKING ABOUT PAPER

First things first! Check out the Toucan Artists Bookstore or your local art supply store and buy yourself a black sketchbook. Size is up to you, but personally I like something small that says “field journal” to me. The one I just started is by Artagain and is 9″ x 6″. It’s pretty spendy at $29.70. If I had my way, it would be about 5 1/2″ x 5 1/5″.

If you like working on a little larger format, the Pacon Basic Black Sketch Book, 8.5″x11″ is a good choice and only costs $4.99. I have been known to buy a sketchbook this large then take it down to my local copy center, cut the pages in halves or quarters and have the resulting custom-sized sketchbook spiral bound with my own cover on it.

After a break of a year or so, I (Sandy) came back to my Mysterious Night Vision Journal with this image called “Return to the Night Garden.” A “night garden” is another way to think about your imagination or soul. In this image, I am showcasing Sakura pens.

TALKING ABOUT GEL PENS AND COLORED PENCILS

When it comes to gel pens that glow in the darkness that is your Mysterious Night Vision Field Journal, one pen rules them all: the one, the only, the fabulous Sakura of Gelly Roll fame. Their huge line of pens glitter, glow, and pouf. Here are a couple of charts to help you better evaluate which pens do what:

This chart by Rachel Johnson shows what you can expects from the various lines of Sakura pens on black paper.

Of the pens that look great on black paper, Moonlight at $6.99 for a pack of 10 is the best. I know Souffle looks good, but it is a weird, three-dimensional ink that takes a couple minutes to dry, and then if you flip another page down on top it, the poufiness crushes down into a peculiar mess. Proceed at your own risk!

This chart, also by Rachel Johnson, shows the effects of the same pens on white paper.

On white paper, again, the Sakura 10-Piece Gelly Roll Moonlight Gel Ink Pen Set rules.

However, gel pens are not the only choice for your Mysterious Night Vision Field Journal; colored pencils work great, too. Cheryl Renn Long recommends Prismacolor:

Prismacolor has bright, true, rich color that glows in the nighttime sky of your Journal. You can get 24 pencils for $14.35, and that is the deal of the century, in my humble opinion.

“Country Farm Yard” is a sketch by Toucan Create! art instructor Cheryl Renee Long that shows off the versatility of Prismacolor. She used a pen to touch in her first outlines, as you can see by looking closely, then she used Prismacolor pencils to lay down color on color in places and to blend in other places.
A great way to get started with your Mysterious Night Vision Field Journal is to select a pen, close your eyes, and scribble. Then open your eyes and have finishing your scribble as a kind of coloring book page. What do the various shapes suggest to you? Which colors are calling your name? When you are done, give it the first title that pops into your head and write it down. Add the date and you’ve begun a great journey into “The Sky Inside”! (Image is from Sandy Brown Jensen’s MNVFJ.)
Source Imagery

The Lost Doll

8 Comments

The Lost Doll

By Sandy Brown Jensen

When I was a little girl, I was doll crazy. I dressed my dolls obsessively, and I was lucky enough to have an Aunt Mel who loved to make doll clothes for my girls.

I sat them around the picnic table and taught them; and I became a teacher.

I invited them to tea parties and cooked for them in my doll kitchen; and I became an avid home cook and dinner party hostess.

I read to them and became a reader.

I drew with them and became an artist.

What I am now, I learned by acting on The Doll Stage.

The Way of the Doll quote is from Rainer Maria Rilke, the great German poet who thought quite a bit about dolls. The art is made using the Bazaart app for iPad.

“Am I not right to feel as if I

must stay seated, as if I must wait

before The Doll Stage, or, rather,

gaze at it so intensely that at

last an Angel

has to come and make the stuffed skins startle into life?

Angel and Doll: A real play, finally.”

–Rainer Maria Rilke

My most beloved doll was a Betsy McCall doll. I took her on our family vacation to Glacier National Park. One morning, I got her all dressed for the day’s adventure over the Going to the Sun Highway and arranged her in a little tableau under a huge old oak tree.

Lost Betsy. I made this image just this week. At age 65, there is some inner compulsion to return again and again to the scene of the crime; the crime of abandoning a loved one to the wilderness. I began with two of my photographs, collaged it in the Bazaart for iPad app, then used the “Purts” setting in the Virtual Painter app for the painterly quality.

In the kerfluffle of departure, I forgot her until we were high on the pass, and then the parents said it was too late to go back for her. I was heartbroken. My mother, now age 89, has so many times told me one of the few regrets of her well-lived life was that they didn’t go back for Betsy.

In my memory, Betsy is still there, waiting for me. I have returned to Montana three times over the span of the ensuing five decades, and each time I have gone to that tree to look for her. At age 65, there is some inner compulsion to return again and again to the scene of the crime; the crime of abandoning a loved one to the wilderness.

The Angel of Lost Children. Bazaart collage and “Purts” setting in Virtual Painter.

Why does a doll, an inanimate object, hold such a place of psychic charge, of emotional power on The Doll Stage of my soul? She was my first loss; she went ahead of me and created the Room of Inconsolable Grief that is now always there just off stage. Betsy lives there in the good company of my father and a black dog named Fianna.

Dolls occupy a liminal space between the rational and the irrational, between form and its shadow, between daylight and dream. The psychodramas of childhood doll play became the dark well of Mystery that I draw on daily in my art, in all the details of a passionate life lived for and in art.

“The Time Travelers Appear Before Me On the Forest Floor.” I made this image this morning in response to the Daily Create challenge to think inside the box for once instead of outside the box. Again, the theme of the lost dolls in the forest spontaneously surfaces. I am on the left, contemplating their appearance once again. Yellow Bird, why do you come?

I return to the theme of dolls again and again in my Mysterious Night Vision Field Journal (soon to be an online class. Stay tuned by subscribing to toucancreate.com, the website for our online art classes.). I find them deeply satisfying. The dolls speak to me of my many interior worlds; they act out on The Doll Stage that is the theatrical doorway to the old growth forest of my mind.

 It turns out that I am the “Angel who startles the stuffed skins into life. Angel and Doll: A real play, finally.”

“Angel and Doll: A real play, finally.” Bazaart app for iPad.

Are you a doll lover, too? Some people hate dolls and find them creepy–I will write about that next time. Is there something in your life that acts as dolls do for me, as intermediary objects between daylight and the place where you do art, that waking dream?

Please share your thoughts in the comment field below, or the one at the very top of the page–between the two “The Lost Doll” titles where it says “Leave a Comment.”–I’d love to hear from you!

Daily Create, Mysterious Journal Class

Draw Your Dreams

Leave a comment
“Tree Woman with Fire Sticks” This image was more of a “waking dream” as I drew what spontaneously appeared in my mind’s eye. That is heart and soul of the Mysterious Night Vision Field Journal experience.

Today’s Daily Create is to draw a picture of a place you have been to in your dreams.

I think this activity is a good way to introduce a class that Cheryl Long and I are developing to run at the Toucan Create! Online Art Classes Creativity School sometime early in 2016. It is called The Mysterious Night Vision Field Journal. It is all about using black artist sketch paper, gel pens, and colored pencils to explore memories, dreams, reflections.

It is, in many ways, the opposite of Color Your World. In the Color Your World class, we are looking out at the world and making an artistic representation of it. When we have black paper, we have a dark blank slate. It is our interior darkness. It is the world of dream, of spontaneous creation. Here we may draw our deepest thoughts, our most ephemeral emotions, the world that lives behind our eyes. It is the well we go down to where we may draw up the water of our own personal Source Imagery.

This is a Dream Mandala in my Mysterious Night Vision Field Journal

In this dream, I am sitting with Mom at a cafe outside the Museum of Modern Art, although I have significantly and unconsciously labeled it “Musee.”

We see my dad, long since gone from this world, climbing the steps and entering the “Musee.”

That’s it, but this 2008 dream is still strong in me seven years later. You’ll notice (or maybe not) that I can’t draw. That matters not at all to me.

I am fascinated by the way the dreaming mind likes to rhyme. My parents were inseparable except by death, but even in death, dad enters the MOM-A. I think that speaks to their bond, which built the strong foundation of my life.

But the element that still engages me is the connection to me of Modern Art–and I have tried to live a life in art–and the cross meaning of “Musee,” or “muse,” that which inspires. In Greek mythology, there were nine Muses, and still today, each artist is said to have his or her own Muse or inner source of inspiration.

What I understand now about the dream is that my father’s spirit entered into the storehouse of modern art and became my Muse, an artistic spirit who still advises me. But I have to say these meanings only come to me now as I reflect on the dream so many years later.

THE DREAM MANDALA

In this Dream Mandala I am driving around a dark lake toward a volcano streaming with lava. I have lost my glasses, but I can see them floating in the sky

I love the idea of drawing such elusive inner experiences inside a circle. It is a spiritual or ritual symbol representing the universe. Knowing that, my dream fills up the space of the universe for the page of the moment and reminds me to think expansively, to look not only inward but outward.

Do you draw your dreams?

Source Imagery

Core Landscapes: Glass Butte, Eastern Oregon

3 Comments

Glass Butte, Eastern Oregon, September 2014. This painting is pretty good size, 15 x 23 painted on 300# Arches watercolor paper. I painted it plein air this last September 2014. I set up my supplies in the shade of a large juniper tree and just gave in to the sheer joy of being in high desert. 

If it is true that we each have a core landscape that brings us alive, then for me the high desert is it. I love junipers, pinion pines, sage brush; I have an affinity for skeletal rocks devoid of growth. I look for shapes, darks, lights, color and texture. 

Glass Butte is essentially a mountain of black obsidian. Obsidian is glassy, sharp enough to puncture a car tire, and exquisitely beautiful with colors ranging from the darkest shiny black to reds and grays. This painting is for me because

 

it takes me back to a September afternoon of sunshine, serenity, no time.

–Cheryl Renee Long
For fine arts watercolors of nature and birds at affordable prices, go to cherylrlong.com 

What is YOUR Core Landscape?

In this blog post, Cheryl talks about the concept of a “core landscape.” What do you think about the idea of a core landscape–do you have an interior space or exterior place that always calls you to your most essential self?

What is it? Leave your insights and ideas in the comment box, and don’t forget to leave your e-mail in the box at the right if you want to keep track of the upcoming conversation on this fascinating topic.

If it says “No Comments” below, just click there and add your and then the next person clicks on 1 Comment and so on!

46.5588603-121.640625
Uncategorized

:Magnetic Boots Dream

1 Comment

Magnetic Boots 
…comes from a dream of August 22, 2014

I am in a  beautiful, spacious gallery. I am working as a staff member that day with two other women. I realize there is someplace else that I urgently need to be. I ask them if they will cover for me. They agree and I leave quickly.

Next I am walking with a young man. He is over 7 feet tall. He has very black hair and white skin. He tells me he is only 20 and that the Guinness Book of Records will not yet give him the tallest man in the world status because he is still growing. There is another man somewhere in the world and they are in competition for the title.

He and I come to a yellow art studio in the woods. It has many open windows and he easily steps in through a window. I am too short to easily lift myself up to get through the window. I think he might lend me a hand and he finally does offer a hand but he is not really any help. I finally am able to get into the studio but with difficulty.

I wonder why I feel so heavy. I look down at the my feet. I am wearing my leather Red Wing work boots. They are covered with screws, nuts, bolts – bits of metal and one of them is sticking me in the foot, hurting me. I think, these are magnetic boots and they are attracting all kinds of heavy shit. 

–Cheryl R.Long

End
Since I had this dream I have resigned from my gallery and taken a year off from producing retreats. I have completed four paintings so far this month. My two classes are full. Two other classes simply went away. Space in consciousness. I guess I just need a lot of room. 

Uncategorized

Flag of Me

1 Comment
 I created this mirror photograph in response to a challenge to create a “visual palindrome.” A commenter on Flickr said I should make it the flag of my country. I love that idea –what does it mean? What would the flag of YOUR country look like?
Uncategorized

Full Moon Lantern Festival – Travel Journal

3 Comments

The Full Moon Lantern Festival in Chaing Mai, November 2013. 

Thousands of people in the streets near the Ping River on this full moon night. Each individual, man, woman and child released a large 2-1/2 foot tall white paper lantern into the moonlit night with little competing light to spoil the effect. Each lantern gently filled with heat as the candle caught the flame. It slowly rises to join myriad of others in the night sky. A soft breeze moved the lights slowly across my line of vision, each rising –  a disappearing pinpoint of light.

Not an orchestrated show but joyful event created by everyone, tourists included. I very much felt a part of this awe inspiring Thai festival.

Daily Create

Peace Like a River

2 Comments
Peace Like a River

(“How do you feel? Write about its opposite.”)

Push back against peace,
that river of green oxbowing
the high mountain meadow of my life now.
Freeze it right down
to the playful otter’s den;
iced juncos fall like raisins
from a Payne’s gray pudding sky.


Call all the bad birds:
Mock me, Bitter Raven, deride
my easy laughter with your own
ironic groan; prove to me
the cruelty of the real.
Carrion Crow, friend,
you have been pecking out my eyes,
forcing me down into darkness
with no extended wings. In the frozen
meadow, even the ravenous fox
has stopped, one paw up,
tufted ears cocked
for the sound of the poacher’s gun.
The river shifts, shivers:
a patterned craze of cracks

races to either shore.
Daily Create

A Dream I Can’t Forget

1 Comment

Using the Paper 53 app and a Pogo bluetooth brush stylus, I went to my Dream Journal and saw I had pasted in a Chagall reproduction to illustrate a dream I had of being outside my body, or, rather, I had two bodies and was in both at the same time. This is a loose “copy” of the Chagall and my dream both.

DAILY CREATE CHALLENGE: Draw an image from a sleeping dream you still can’t forget.

November 14, 2013