Morning Page 9/22

Monday, September 22, 2025

FINALLY indulged my desire to play with shapes in a wonky grid structure. My eye loves this kind of work in color, in black and white, using fabric, or paint or collage—but for whatever reason I don’t do this enough. I did hear a critical voice in my head at the beginning (‘what’s the point?’) but I know that is a lousy thought. Something someone might say who was conditioned by a culture to devalue visual play.

Am I someone like that? Absolutely not! But that doesn’t mean that voice—the Culture--doesn’t exist in my head.

Pressing on anyway, I quickly discovered (and rediscovered) what makes this kind of work valuable to me. Simply the pleasure of drawing with ink would be enough. But it’s also great practice in composition and shape language. Beginning with single line to draw the grid and shapes, top to bottom, I had to then keep going back and around to layer in different line weights and values, responding to the whole page for a final composition. And also, I started getting excited about how I could develop some of the shapes and patterns I created into other work. My mind was spinning by the end.

I am pleased with the final result. I love the wonky, hand-made quality and it just makes me happy to look at!

I also want to incorporate quotes I might stumble on that day in these Morning Pages, and this morning I included what Adam Ming said in his newsletter, The Ten Minute Artist: “Claire Powell says when you find your tool you find your style and I think there is a lot of truth to that.”

As a mixed media artist who couldn’t choose between ALL the art mediums, I have definitely honed down to my favorites, which are collage, gouache and yes, ink.

Tools I used today: Uniball Signo gel pens, fine tip and extra fine tip, .01 Micron fineliner and Zig Clean Color Real Brush Brush color ink pens.