Healing Therapy Centre Edinburgh - counselling and expressive art

Tess Post - Theme out side photography exhibition

I discovered this fab set of photos by Christina Webber in an
underpass off Buccleuch Street. It was such a nice surprise. They really cheered up a dreary underpass.

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Tess Post- Theme Zinfolds and Teaching
I taught a session at Edinburgh Uni the other day and I decided for the next couple of workshops I would make a zine fold journal for the students to take away with them. It looks at different types of journaling exercises on the inside and will have info about the work shop on the outside. I do love working in this way.

Tess Post - Theme Self Care
The illustrations below show how I make acrostic poems, I mind map ideas, then playing with the main word as a ladder build vocabulary around a topic. I find drawing the ladder in Capital letters and then other words in lower case makes it easier to read, colouring in the capitals achieves the same outcome. Being in the moment and mindfully drawing the letters really helps me be in the flow.

Tess Post - Theme Johanna Basford
Joanna Basford has a series of beautiful colouring books including the ‘Enchanted Forest’ and ‘Secret Garden! . As you know I like drawing my own colouring sheets so I was delighted to find ‘ How to draw inky Wonderlands’
It has really easy sheets to follow and pages to draw on. I don’t use pencil
first because it distracts from my getting into the flow, however if you want to have a go at drawing your own designs this is a great place to start.

Tess Post - Theme Doors
I find doors fascinating and I hadn’t done a North Berwick door series. So here we go

Tess Post - Theme Self care- beach art
I woke up the other day feeling really grumpy. I didn’t bring any art equipment with me when I visited North Berwick. Jon was horrified and complained ( he he he). I bought a lovely ‘how to draw’ book in a charity shop but it didn’t fulfill an itch.

I decided to go down to the beach and draw a mandala in the sand. I had to fight off a dog called Poppy who wanted my drawing stick and then got told that I had ‘missed a bit ‘ 🤣😂🤣😂.

However my mood improved out of all proportion. The image of me drawing from a distance was taken by Jon from the Airbnb window. Most of it was drawn with my right hand ❤️❤️❤️

Tess Post. Theme Image Blender
I am always looking for new ways to record things. I regularly use image blender to mix a couple of images. This time I wanted to mix up photos that I took on a whole journey from Edinburgh to Dunfermline. There is the lovely contrast of stations, fields and then the bridges. I am not 100% sure if the out come but I loved the process.

Tess Post - Washi Tape

I was clearing out my art stash looking for something and I found this fab set of washi tapes by Dina Wakley.

I like using washi tape as back grounds, for adding edges to pages , strengthening joints. If it’s good quality it can be ripped into thin strips - if you want to add colour or stick letters on top it’s a good idea to paint with transparent a layer of transparent gesso if its shiny.

Because I can’t use my hand properly at the moment using washi tape is a good way to add bits of colour or pattern to my collages. I have also used hand made stickers in the same way.

The Dina Wakley set has a good range of matching colours and shapes in the designs. It rips easily and has good adhesion because some of the cheaper ones just drop off.

Tess Post - Theme What makes me happy

I do like looking out of train windows and seeing what I can capture. Jon was with me the other day and said it was very amusing how excited I got taking the photos. It’s the small things!

I particularly liked the small white cloud against the grey sky and how the reflections from the windows disrupt the image. Journey from Edinburgh to North Berwick

❤️

Tess Post Theme Shop Art
Loving this writing on the changing room mirror in Fatface and the sculpture in the window. I like it when I notice things that lift me up. ‘August slipped away into a moment in time’

Tess Post Theme - North Berwick
We haven’t stayed over for a while - it was so lovely to be out in the sea really early. It’s warm and sunny today. I have gotten out of the habit of cold plunging it’s fab to be so wide awake and feeling alive

Tess Post - Theme Flowers

North Berwick is blooming at the moment. The street flowers are amazing and we had lunch infront of some amazing coloured beds by the war memorial. The colours were so vibrant they started burning out the cone cells in my eyes 🤣

North Bewrwick in Bloom today

Tess Post - Theme Paddling
I haven’t been cold plunging for a while - next week we are staying over in North Berwick so I shall definitely be getting completely wet. The other day I paddled. I can’t believe I had to wear a big coat and a scarf. It still felt really good.

Tess Post - Theme collage.
I have aggravated a nerve in my back and left arm so that I am unable to make art for any length of time at the moment. So I am making collages and not drawing or colouring in anything new. Acceptance and gratitude are helping and reminding myself that it is the process and not the end product that is the most important aspect of meditative and mindful art making. This is much more difficult than I ever remember- I am very amused at my self!

Tess Post - Theme Edinburgh Festival
The fringe has finished. Here are a few more pages from my leaflet art journal. A lot of it uses images and text from art exhibitions and the book festival. I still have a few pages to go !

Tess Post - Theme making journals
One of my favourite way of making journals for my art is to alter a book. My book of choice is the Faber poetry diary.

I have a few teaching sessions coming up so I was delighted to find a couple of old diarys second hand. They are hard back with nice quality paper.

The art journals become too thick if you don’t remove some pages . I use them to make blanks for clients. I add striped backgrounds with my art, origami paper and magazines as prepared backgrounds. Some times people are intimidated by completely white pages.

It’s a therapeutic exercise for me sitting ripping glueing, and then sewing the pages with pamphlet stitch

Tess Post
Loving the idea of this. I might have to have a go.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/a1w8QsMSqsroYeN9/?mibextid=WC7FNe

Tess Post - Theme trees
Trees appear in my art regularly. I photograph them, make teabag quilts, digital images, paintings and art journal pages. Looking through my photo feed I realise that I am slightly obsessed with them. They make me feel grounded and happy all through the different seasons. Here are a few images of my favourites and all the photos from my photo feed from the past few years. Do you have a similar feeling for them?

Tess Post - Theme Pattern
When I first moved to Edinburgh I was asked to do a commission based on a friend’s family collection of pottery. Working with sharpies again and I was reminded of this work. It set me off on my free hand mandala journey. This was 11yrs ago this month

Tess Post - Theme 1:1

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/qdxgfnoNBpa4pcAZ/?mibextid=WC7FNe

colour

Four art sessions under my belt and I am happy to share that I have truly discovered colour as never before. Through pencil, crayon, ink and paint I have plunged into the depths of colours to meet with their individual resonances and vibrancies. There is no going back.

This blue window, painted by my teacher Tess, , perfectly encapsulates my experience. No more standing at the window, peering out through the curtains. With Tess’s encouragement I have climbed through that window to experience colour at first hand.

Tess Post - Theme resist and acrylic ink
More wet on wet, resist work with my face to face client this week and some of her words as she reflected back on the process. We used a variety of resists, a plastic doily, acrylic ink and Brusho powder.

‘ Today I discovered that I can create amazing art working wet on wet. I felt myself diving into deep, luscious pools of colour that transformed not only the page but my own sense of being. As I stood up as I worked I felt truly empowered, owning my art and beginning to recognise the creative potential that lies within.’ AMP 2024

Tess Post - Theme Colour
I am working with a client 1:1 at the moment and she wrote a beautiful poem as a reflection of the colour work we have been doing. I wanted to make something messy so I drew out the poem ( with permission) in my hand drawn font and coloured it in with wax crayons. Then splashed and spritzed lots of acrylic ink all over the top! Such releasing fun - thought it’s very messy!

Notes
Put newspaper, kitchen towel and another sheet of paper under your work if using printer paper - you get two coloured papers for each piece of work

Add acrylic ink sparingly , spritz , let dry and add another layer in weak places if necessary. Tip paper to make colours run and fab off with kitchen towel if necessary

Uniball Eye water permanent pen
2 layers of waterproof wax crayons ( they make some for children now that are water soluble😮)
Magic ink +water spritz

Purple magic ink is a night mare it is very pigment dense in comparison to the other colours.

Always screw the lid back on after each colour use and I am standing mine on a kitchen towel and plastic plate after staining my white melamine table ……
It stains fingers so wash before you let it dry on your hands

Hand cream for afterwards ….

Tess Post - Theme art journaling
I am enjoying all the festival leaflets that are around at the moment and decided to make a festival art journal. I have one of Moyna Flannigans ‘Space Shuffle’ images on the front cover and have been making my own collages figures. Because of my dyslexia I really struggle to access information in grids ( which is the layout most consist of ) so it’s fun cutting them up to make pages

Tess Post - Theme instagram stories
As an easy piece of software to add text, stickers, music and borders etc. It is a fun app to use when making graphics on my phone. I am still enjoying the ‘Add yours sticker’ which lets you add your images to all sorts of other peoples templates. I would love to know if anyone has any tips about cutting out sections of images and making them transparent so that other instagrammers can use my templates ? ( especially if it is a cheap or free app that I can use on my iPhone )
Instagram stories

Tess post -Theme Colour
I found an orange door in Stockbridge the other day. There are rules in Edinburgh about what colour your front door should be. Particularly in the Newtown. I love coloured doors and orange as a colour always feel very grounding. You are supposed to use darker colours, red seems to be allowed but I am surprised by the orange - a lady who painted her door pink was taken to a council complaint colour police who made her change the colour- three times - she has gotten away with a pale creamy pink - who knew there was colour police ?

Tess Post - Theme Festivals
It’s Edinburgh Art Festival’s 20th year and they have a great series of exhibitions on at the moment. I have been to see a few. I was particularly drawn to Moyna Flaniganns female figures in space at the Collective gallery in the Old Observatory on Carlton hill.
She uses collage and draws with wire making beautiful fragile sculptures that hang in a large group in the show.

Quote from the List ‘ MOYNA FLANNIGAN
SPACE SHUFFLE • • 000
Space is very much the place in this new body of work by Moyna Flannigan, housed in Collective's City Dome. 'Looking For Piuto' is a multi-panelled frieze that sees a gaggle of women with Jackie-magazine eyes and Mean Girls attitudes process through history, mobile phones at the ready as they fall in behind a larger monumental figure. As time and space collide, this looks like an animation-in-waiting culled from some 1970s rad-fem SF comic book.
Space Shuffle's title piece is an array of cut-out shapes balanced on plinths or else hanging from the cosmos held by wires in what looks like a fragile film-set for some stop-motion fantasia.
Images of aeroplanes and horses adorn both works, as they do in the collages from Flannigan's
'Cosmic Traces' series, in which more solitary figures gaze up at the planets beyond, every one a star. (Neil Cooper)
• Collective, until 15 September.’

Tess Post - Theme Flowers
There are so many beautiful flowers around Edinburgh at the moment. I don’t know if it is just because of the fringe but I am enjoying looking at them very much. Here are a few of my favourites.