jodymonochrome - Tumblr blog

[jodymonochrome]

Is anyone else tired of social media?

Does anyone else crave real interactions with other humans?

You know, the ones you can relate to. The ones who share your weird interests like skulls and bugs. No? It’s probably just me. 💀🌿🦋

[jodymonochrome]

The Luna moth is a gorgeous moth, with a 4.5 inch average wingspan, found in North America. The beautiful traits of this animal are due to several morphological adaptations. The green coloration helps provide camouflage, the eyespots help to scare away potential visual predators, and the long tail helps to confuse bat echolocation. Both the eyespots and long tail are thought to misdirect predators to less vulnerable parts of the moth’s body. It is interesting that the adaptations meant to deter predators are the exact traits which attract spooky human types to become obsessed with this creature.

This is my most recent Linocut print in which I’ve added a granulating watercolor wash to the background.

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Just finished this tooth series. Linocut prints with watercolor details on wooden panels. I created a tooth and lavender print a while back and it has been one of my most popular pieces. But the design was created for a circular plaque and I decided that I was going to move away from plaques and move to panels. I had a customer leave me a wonderful review about a year ago which said “I secretly hope to see more toothy things here in the future!” Well I finally got around to making more toothy artworks and I’m super happy with the way they turned out.

[jodymonochrome]

I created this series to try and visually represent the challenge of chronic spinal pain. With each piece I create, I feel like I am that that much closer to effectively communicating that which is indescribable.

Hello my friends. Sorry for the long absence. I’ve been coping with a lot of pain over the last year. This has made it hard to care about social media very much. Chronic pain often gives me tunnel vision in which only the essential tasks get accomplished. But now I’m back and ready to make some changes to my relationship with social media. Any advice on how I can most effectively connect with others using this platform would be greatly appreciated. 🖤💀🖤

[jodymonochrome]

Lots of ribs this year! These are my favorite posts from 2021. It’s been a shit year for my physical health but such an awesome art year. I’ve advanced my skills, discovered watercolor, and built more of a following. I am extremely grateful for all the support you all have given me over the year. Thank you for the likes, encouraging comments, shares, purchases, and nice reviews. It’s all validation that I should keep going.

[jodymonochrome]

Our love will overcome adversity.

This is the symbolic meaning of dogwood flowers according to the book Floriography: An Illustrated Guide to the Victorian Language of Flowers by Jessica Roux. I thought it was quite fitting for this piece.

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September is pain awareness month. As a person who has a disease that eats her skeleton, I’ve leaned a bit about chronic pain over the years. For those who suffer with chronic pain, the best researcher and advocate for pain treatments is yourself. There is a huge list of non narcotic and drug free pain treatments that are worth cycling through, one by one, until you find the combination of treatments that work. Research, experiment, fight.

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Final ink and wash piece based on the collage I completed for the Morbid Anatomy class I took this summer. After deciding what grey to use in my work, I’ve also had to decide what kind of paper is best for pen and watercolor. Apparently Arches cold press ain’t it as the rough texture murders micron pens. Now to work on making prints!

[jodymonochrome]

Just finished this piece and I think I’m finally settled on what shade of grey to use in my work. It turned out to be an appropriate piece to work on at this time. I had big plans this summer to be very active but my skeleton has had other plans. My body has decided that consuming my spine is preferable to bike riding, painting, and generally sitting upright. Luckily, years of experience with chronic pain has left me with an arsenal of management techniques. And I will be coping by drawing more skeletons!

[jodymonochrome]

Haunted Garden Art Challenge

I participated in a handful of prompts for Grace Moth’s Haunted Garden art challenge last month. These prompts worked well with my current art goals which is to put in more practice for particular subject matter. I am hoping to get better at drawing bones, flowers, and faces. And I need more practice with shading with watercolor. Though I am happy with my work, it is still not quite where I ideally want it to be. But I see so much progress when I draw every day.

The pieces are sketchbook drawings for the prompts “bones” “flowers” and “ancient tree”

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Obsessed with sketchbooking these days. While in the midst of trying to finally finish one sketchbook I started it 2018 (not pictured) I bought 3 more... I was actually looking for one good watercolor sketchbook and one sketchbook that I could use for practicing pencil and pen drawing. I used to force myself to finish one sketchbook before I bought a new one but now I feel like I want to experiment with different sketchbooks and keep multiple sketchbooks for different purposes. Over the years I��ve learned that I don’t like wirebound or softcover sketchbooks and I need to start working with better quality paper. Here are my three watercolor and ink sketchbooks that are helping me to practice, experiment, and learn about different types of paper.

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The Zodiac Series: The benefits of reading your horoscope

I created this zodiac series as part of Mab Grave’s Drawlloween this past October. For those who don’t know, Drawlloween is one of the many drawing challenges that spurred off from the Inktober challenge. For each of these challenges, the goal is to complete one drawing a day for the month of October using a prompt list. I have preferred to work from prompt lists (such as Drawlloween and Abnormal Inktober) which include spooky words that are relevant to Halloween. Creating a quality drawing every day for a month (that you are not embarrassed to post on social media) is a real challenge. A lot of people completely give up, only finish some of the prompts, or decide to finish the list on their own time after October. The 2020 drawing challenge was my third year in a row, and I am proud to say that it was the first time that I finished the entire thing! I was also pleasantly surprised to discover that participating in drawing challenges has helped me to develop a habit of drawing (nearly) every day.

The zodiac signs were not on the official prompt list. I made them a part of my own personal challenge because I have been interested in researching them a bit more (and I feel as if the Tarot is a bit overdone lately). The primary questions of my research were about how astrology can benefit us.

How do we use zodiac signs, astrology, and horoscopes? 

Most people use the zodiac signs as a personality measure and astrology as a divination tool. I will not speak to the validity of either use. However, I will argue that studying astrology, reading a birth chart, or reading a horoscope encourages self-reflection. The vagueness of the information one can get from astrological records, forces one to think a lot about themselves and their relationship with their environment. Reflecting on the self is an important ingredient to cognitive based therapies. Because I personally do this all the time, I never considered that self-reflection might be difficult for others. But sometimes therapists need to spend time teaching their patients to pay attention to one’s thoughts and feelings before negative thinking can be overcome.

How is astrology beneficial? 

Other than a tool of self-reflection, there seems to be certain personality types which benefit most from using divination tools like astrology and the tarot. The personality trait which appears to have the most consistent correlation with horoscope usage is locus of control. Individuals who have a high internal locus of control have a high belief that their circumstances are within their control. The control in their lives comes from an internal source -themselves. Those with a high external locus of control believe that control in their lives comes from an external source. They have a belief that they have little control over their future, and they are subject to fate (I often fall into this category). Studies suggest that those who are more likely to read their horoscope, might have a more external locus of control. This makes sense if one is looking outside of themselves for a sign for how their future is going to play out.

There is zero harm, but in fact a benefit, of divination tools for my external locus of control brothers and sisters.  One recent study found that reading positive horoscopes increased positive emotions, increased cognitive performance, and boosted creativity.  This occurred regardless of the personality type but the boost to emotions, cognition, and creativity was stronger for individuals with a more external locus of control.  The researchers suggest that individuals who feel like they have a lack of control in their lives are more likely to read their horoscope, and in turn are more likely to gain positive side effects from reading their horoscope. 

This has got me thinking a lot about the power of divination tools like astrology and tarot cards for self-reflection, for boosting positive emotions, and as a self-help tool. Do people use these tools as a way to grow the self just as much as they use them to help predict the future? Can divination tools help someone with an external locus of control feel like they have more control over their life and their future? Can these tools be used for self help in getting though challenging times in their lives? I will certainly be back to this topic in the future.

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A short video of my printing process. This one has some fun music. 😊

Music: “One legged equalibrist polka” by Circus Homunculus licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. https:// creativecommons.org/ licenses/ by-nc-nd/4.0/

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The Buddhists teach that life is suffering. But it is much more beneficial to mental health to view life as a battle. Small battles must be fought daily, weekly, monthly, yearly. We must fight the vacuum of dark emotions, toxic humans, and negative self-speak. We must capture, embrace, and immerse ourselves in entities which make us feel complete to allow us to grow and thrive.

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How is it that the weeks go by so fast yet my Covid year has been the longest year of my life? Why do I have to sell the precious minutes I have left in my life clock to pay for health insurance? What are these magical chemicals in coffee and chocolate that keep me going?

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The study of psychology and the paranormal

Psychologists have been studying people’s paranormal beliefs and paranormal experiences since the 1800’s.  Two primary areas of study have emerged since this time: parapsychology and anomalistic psychology (the area of anomalistic psychology has been studied since the 1800’s but the term was not coined until 1989).  Both areas of research are extremely small in the field of psychology.  So small that many individuals who study psychology, do not even know both of these areas exist.  Although both fields are focused on the study of paranormal experiences and beliefs, there are some important differences (listed in the table below).

I’ve been studying these two fields for quite a while and have become disenchanted with both of them.    I feel as if parapsychologists spend too much time trying to prove to the world that psi exists.  They seem to ignore another anomalistic experiences and the research studies often lack scientific rigor.  Other recognized fields of science throw out research questions which are not supported with evidence.  But parapsychologists have been studying paranormal phenomena for a long time and still have not managed to gain enough evidence to claim a respectable seat within the field of social sciences.  Most social sciences have passed the point of showing that a psychological construct exists and have moved on to studying more interesting questions about the nature of the construct.

But I am also disappointed with anomalistic psychology.  This field has scientific rigor.  Researchers study the cognitive and perceptual factors which influence the perception of paranormal events.  The field integrates well with other areas of psychology.  However, anomalistic psychologists spend too much of their time trying to demonstrate that belief in the paranormal is based on cognitive mistakes and fallacies.  They spend too much effort trying to show the world how stupid and uneducated people are who believe in the paranormal.  Which means that they ignore those studies which demonstrate that the belief in the paranormal is NOT correlated with intelligence.  This means that people who believe in paranormal events are not stupid, poor problem solvers, or bad at critical thinking.  In my own personal experience, I’ve had scientists tell me ghost stories and other stories of events they could not explain.  

Belief in the paranormal is not isolated to the weird guy who sits in his basement wearing the tinfoil helmet but is extremely common.  GALLUP conducted a telephone survey with 1,002 participants in 2005, asking about their beliefs in the paranormal.  They found that 75% of Americans have at least one anomalistic belief.  Nearly everyone has a ghost story, checks their horoscope, or has a weird superstition they keep to themselves. 

What is missing from the research is a true study of WHY people believe and why people NEED ghost stories, folklore, mystery creatures, superstitions, and predictions about the future.  I am interested in where these beliefs come from.  I’m interested in how belief in the paranormal, and the stories of the paranormal, are weaved into the fabric of our culture.  I’m interested in why when someone experiences something unexplained; they often turn to a paranormal explanation.  I’m interested in what makes someone skeptical or refuse to be skeptical because they are holding on to a belief.  This has become my primary research question: Why do we need the paranormal?

This original drawing is available at jodymonochromart.bigcartel.com

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More little ink and watercolor skulls. I make small art because my studio space is limited but I also enjoy the challenge of the restriction. But I may be needing reading glasses if these pieces get any smaller. Lol.