2012/365 - Day 219

the other thing I've been putting off working on

In the local ATC trading group I belong to we are making prayer flags.  Leann gave us a bundle of muslin panels cut to size (I don't remember how many) but we will get back as many as we trade for.

This was my first encounter with prayer flags and I was very enthusiastic about this project -- I still am -- but I was more than just a little bit lost for what to actually do for it.  I looked at many wonderful examples online and looked at traditional imagery and meanings and had a few ideas floating in my head, but they were easily put on the back burner until now...this is due on Wednesday.

Today as I worked on ideas/images I began to understand why I'd had so much trouble before.  Up until today whenever I thought about the panel I was more concerned with the trade and what to make to appeal to other people and possibly fit into their flags -- (apparently to something inside of me) a sort of Hallmark version.  I don't mean to suggest that's how it is for anybody else but me...I know that everyone who is working on the project is making their panels in their own ways and to have meaning for them.  Today it was revealed to me what my panels ought to be and how things would be pulled together and have meaning for me instead of just being a project I was trying to get through.

Gosh -- I have been so full of unexpected emotion as I work on my panel(s).  Now that I have surrendered to the idea I realize I still have some issues I need to work through.  I am allowing myself to feel all of it and cry and cleanse and release and -- maybe when I finally complete the panels and hang them -- maybe I can begin to move on.  Maybe.  That's the plan, anyway!  Yes, right now everything is right on the surface and very painful.  I feel really raw and vulnerable and I am hurting but I also feel that this is a healing project.  It is good to acknowledge and honor these feelings and memories and to make art and prayer to them and follow through and then learn to let go and move on.  Needless to say, I won't be participating in the trade...this is just too personal for me.

Okay -- I originally found the image here but  I would like to make a bunch of my own tiger images based on some of these.  

I started out with the red image and doctored it -- resized it, made it black, smoothed out the lines a little, added a fourth foot, etc.  Then I cut out the doctored image.

  

I printed out some words and cut them out and pasted the words and image together, changing the position of the tiger from laying down to standing up.  Then I scanned that page and doctored it in my computer's photo program to get rid of the halos around the cut outs.

For now, this is a start...and this is just the first mock up -- it would have repeating panels in different colors -- but here are the two sections:

I think the panels need a border of some sort and like I said, this is just the first mock up. 

And this is the second panel -- also in need of a border maybe...maybe not since it will be printed on the panels and that makes it not need one really.

I don't know yet.

No doubt I will blog progress on this prayer flag as I find my way and get more done.  I am not sure yet if I will carve the imagery and print it or maybe get the artwork together and then give it to a friend to make thermofax screens  so I can print them that way...it's all going to come together in its own time.