Day 28: Be Thou My Vision art project, Part 1

Quick catching up... I did this November 18th!

I had an idea for an art project for our piano nook (I know, how cool is it we have a piano nook?!?) a while back, and finally starting putting it together. I feel like it incorporates a lot of me, and I'll be glad to have it in our home.

Song.

Less than a year ago, I was listening to a group Joe likes (I like some of their songs) called Glad. On one of their a cappella albums, they recorded the song "Be Thou My Vision." Here's the first verse (here's the rest with and ugly midi playing the beautiful melody in the background):

Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart;
Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art.
Thou my best Thought, by day or by night,
Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.

I had heard it before, but that time it stuck with me. I immediately started to memorize it, and had it down fairly well in a few days (so many rhymes to mix up!). The following Sunday at our church's worship service, we sang it for the first time (that I was there for) - what a happy surprise that was! The song is frequently on my mind and conveys so much of what I feel.

Supplies.

Being the outstanding artist that I am*, I started with a trip to Michael's to see what canvas was cheapest. I ended up with two 9" x 12" canvases that wrap around the sides so that I don't have to frame it and it can blend in with the wall some. I wanted to have some texture to parts of the canvas, so I asked my mom how people add that. She suggested gesso, with the stipulation that the last time she bought it was the year I was born. Near the gesso, I found some lightweight texture stuff that I decided to give a try. For paint and brushes, I'm sticking with what I used on walls in my house. Here were the supplies:


Doodles: the foreground and background.

I have two forms of doodling. Both are relaxing to me, and both will be represented in this art project.

One reveals my obsessive behavior and involves patterns, often of simple geometric shapes. I would guess that this doesn't come as a surprise AT ALL to most of you. I'll explain how this fits in with foreground of the project more later. While it's not one of the shape ones, here's an example from one day at work when I was teaching / helping someone do an experiment (translation: sitting there three hours and answering questions as they came up):


My second form of doodling is the opposite: completely unplanned, unpredictable, and uncontrolled. I start by drawing one random line (swirl / squiggle / swish / whatever). I then look at the page, and feel like a line belongs somewhere else. I look again and see where another one goes. And again, and again. I don't see where more they belong other than just that next line I'm about to draw. If I'm using colors, I usually do one at a time, finishing with one color before moving on to the next. It's really fun, because the end result always surprises me. I've kept some of them, but they're still in boxes - I'll try to post one if I find it. THIS is the form of doodling the background takes one. Here's the first canvas, with my lines molded on (I used the non-scoop end of a plastic spoon) and the background paint (same as the wall it will be on). The picture makes it look a little brighter than it is, but you can mostly make out the textured lines:


I used my second doodling form to decide where the raised lines would go, and where the green paint would go on top of it. I DID have in mind how the song would go on top of it (the obsessive part of the painting), but I think that only effected this part subconsciously. (picture of the green layer of paint soon to come)

Aside.

I read and wrote about a type of dementia a while back, and my doodling styles described above where definitely on my mind, raising my curiousity at the time. The ties between math and pattern-type drawing makes sense to me... what about this other type? How do you all draw or doodle?

to be continued....

*in case you don't actually know me, I'm being very sarcastic - I don't paint. Once my husband (who paints even less than I do - at least my mom and grandma have talent) and I did another painting project for our living room, but that's all!