New #introduction post!

I'm Alicia and I'm a fibre artist (#dyeing #handspinning #felting #needlefelting #weaving #crochet #embroidery #upcycling #sewing) with interests in #mandala #art #psychedelicart #sacredgeometry #neurographicart and #watercolors.

My family and I run a business called @Fibre2Fabric where we dye all sorts of exotic #fibre #yarn, and #fabric.

I live in the country with my partner and our 6 #cats, 3 #dogs, #snake and #crestedgecko where I enjoy my many interests. (#gardening #plants #herbalism #fungi #music #ukulele #piano #dancing #flowart #reading #writing #tarot #poetry #haiku #cozygames and I'm getting more into #opensource / #linux)

When I say flow art, I mean spinning props like #hulahoop #leviwand #puppyhammer #poi #staff #silkfans #firefans etc.

I love #languagelearning. I studied #German and #Spanish as a kid, took #Japanese in uni, and I'm currently studying #ASL #Cree #Tokipona #Spanish and #Chinese. I also dabble in #French and #Latin sometimes and I'm learning #Greggshorthand to write faster. Cree is my favourite language and Spanish is my second.

I've been cursed since childhood with that lovely trifecta of #heds #pots and #mcas. Healing slowly but surely.

Hope I get to meet even more cool people the algorithms would normally drown out on other social media sites. I love it here!

One of the hardest parts of maintaining my art practice is keeping up with it with I'm traveling. A lot of the mediums I work in are not ones that travel compactly, so I tend to use travel for doodling and neurographic art. I'm feeling antsy to get back home to my paint and to my gel plates.

It's still so strange to me that I've ended up turning to the visual arts as my primary mode of artistic expression.

When I was young, the performing arts were my primary focus that anxiety largely robbed me of as I aged. I've managed to find my way onto a stage now and then in adulthood, but it's never been a sustainable medium for me. My anxiety makes me hard to work with, unreliable.

A lot of the time when I'm creating my art, it's when I'm solitary. I find myself missing the collaborative nature of the performing arts, but am finding my own voice through paint and collage. It's just quieter and lonelier than I expected it would be.

It's been a high pain day, but my mental health has felt significantly better. It seems like a nerve is pinched near my left hip which has made moving around and sitting a bit uncomfortable, but I did manage to work on this one a little bit today.

I wanted to work on more, but my body is saying no more, so laying down and resting it is.

I find the hardest part to my art practice is getting started everyday, but having small low pressure things that I can do to get started that are the key.

Maybe I can't make a masterpiece today, but I can paint a few circles on a piece of paper.

I've been playing around a lot with watercolors and doodling lately, and watching a lot of YouTube videos of people who are doing the same.

I'm not in love with a lot of the experimentation at the moment, but I'm thinking of it more like a journey rather than fixating on a destination.

I expect this one will likely get torn up someday and be part of a collage, as it's on thinner paper than what's really good for watercolor.

Puzzle

Experimenting with puzzle themed neurographic art...

https://2-lisa-neuman.pixels.com/featured/puzzle-lisa-neuman.html

My first finished drawing post illness.

I started this one just before I got sick and was about halfway through it at the time.

It took me a week after getting out of the hospital to even think about touching my art, and at first I could only manage working on it for five minutes a day.

But the past couple of days I've been picking up steam... I drew for nearly two hours yesterday and about an hour today and finished it.

There are other things that I've had more difficulty getting back into though... Like my tolerance for scrolling through social media, even the Fediverse, is near zero. I just can't bring myself to muster up the energy to care.

I'm not judging it as a bad thing though, because I'm finding myself into other things these days... Like reading books and listening to podcasts while I draw.

One of the things I've been experimenting with a lot is digitally altering work that I've done on paper.

This one ended up being a delightful surprise.

Another day, another #wip inching closer to completion.

A lot of emotions and energy tied up in this one, as I found myself considering perceptions of relationships and living situations I find myself in... Heavy work where words sometimes fail.

I've been working on this #wip the past two days, thinking that I'm going to probably add some color to it next...

For some reason, color is one of those things that makes my brain freak out and say, "OMG! No! I'm going to wreck it!"

Trying to learn to not be so precious about it, take some risks and be wreckless.

I got the bulk of this one done last night while my brain decided it didn't believe in sleep.

Today's #wip... Most of this was actually done yesterday, I've been mostly keeping it horizonal with a headachy brain foggy kind of day today.

Another finished #NeurographicArt drawing.

I have a few of these now where the lines center on the middle of the page, and I keep finding myself fantasizing about making home decor with drawings like these....

Like, I want a bedspread and pillows... or to hang it on a print on the wall.

But I also have such mixed feelings about print on demand products, and find the whole business of pursuing that avenue overwhelming.

But truthfully, this is what I think about when I draw this stuff.

Today's #wip. I somewhat expect this will be finished before I go to bed tonight.

Today's #wip. I took a slight break from working on this one, because it's really dense and tedious and my hand keeps cramping up, but I think I'll be on target to finish it tomorrow or Monday.

I was going to post a wip picture of this one earlier, but I guess I got into it and finished it.

One of the things that never ceases to surprise me about being an #artist with #ADHD is the cumulative result of doing things five minutes (or sometimes less) at a time.

I can spend all day absolutely trashing on myself internally for not working on something enough because I'm not spending hours at once on it.... but in the end, it doesn't matter. The cumulative effort is what matters.

A couple of finished #SplatterPaint / #NeurographicArt pieces.

I got a little behind with posting these.

Then I moved on to some art...

This is the #wip of the day.