Art Journaling

A couple Saturdays ago I attended one of Mary Freeman's art journaling classes. I met her in blog land and just love the prompts and techniques she gives. So much depth and wisdom. This is the journal page and I had fun playing with all the different supplies and tapes.




If you ever get a chance to take one of Mary's classes you will love it.
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Race for the Cure

No long message to read through here but I'm joining the Race for the Cure walk this Saturday and would appreciate any donation you can give to support the cause.

Thanks!

Click here to visit my personal page.

A Little Bit Of Paint...

One of the challenges I have is how to photograph my work especially since the lighting in my house is so dark. So I bit the bullet and bought a light kit with a light box.  I have a smaller one but the lighting just wasn't bright enough. This one gives me something like 1000 watts.  I think I need some football field lights to not need the tripod.

I haven't managed a lot of creative time lately but I have managed a few new pieces during some crafty time with my girl friends. I so treasure that time of fun and laughter. We each work on very different things but the camaraderie is priceless.

Anyhow, here is what I've been working on. These three are 16x16 and I had fun playing with using an old credit card for laying down the paint and texturizing. I didn't have my tripod at the correct level for a straight shot so I'll have to take new shots at some point.

This next one will likely get a makeover. I'm not fond of the color that I ended up with but I had fun using modeling paste to give it a lot of texture.

Other than that not much is going on in my world other than work and work. Oh, and I am managing to exercise regularly and doing an eating program to get back to losing weight. It does require a lot of food prep which seems like way more work than the exercise portion. Sigh.

On another note I am going to Art and Soul in Portland this October and am very much looking forward to connecting with friends I met last year and learning some new techniques.

Well, time to head out to catch a late showing of Oblivion. Just love Scifi movies. Hugs!

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Catch Up Time...

Wow! I didn't realize how long it's been since I last posted. So, to catch up a bit, I'm going back to a lovely family trip at Thanksgiving. We had an opportunity to go to Marco Island, Florida and stay in a very lovely house. I so love spending time with my precious family, my brother, sister in law, darling niece, my sister, mom, and my aunt and uncle. There is more family of course but this was the crew for a wonderful holiday filled with fun and laughter and good food.

We had a grand time one day tooling around some nearby islands on a pontoon.

On one beach there were the ruins of what once was a cutting edge house on the beach. It is now an open air house in the water.

On the artistic front I've managed to make a few pieces.

On another note, thank you to all who keep checking my blog for updates. Hopefully I will do better. Things have normalized at work, at least for now. I do have to say I have lost some of my energy and I'm struggling to get it back. I seem to be in the mode of needling too much relaxation (aka laziness) on the weekends. Anyone have some tips? At the moment it really helps to invite friends over for crafty art time.
Hugs to all!

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Day 5...

Today was a class on texture with Mary Beth Shaw. It was a lot of fun. In all of my classes it was amazing to see all the talent and just how different each person's art came out.

So here is what I've started with a bit of the stages. I'm not done layering colors but the process was starting with a layer of texture and then use just two colors of paint along with white for changing values.















I love the style of simple, geometric based abstracts and I'm hoping with practice I will get better at them and develop my own style.

Oh, and I think I forgot to mention yesterday's class was with Laurie Mika. I can't wait to play with polymer clay some more.

Tomorrow I fly back to Atlanta and back to normal life. I sure will miss all of this creativity and hope to do something like this again next year.

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Day 4...

Finally, after staying up late two nights to condition a whole lot of polymer clay, I spent today creating a clay totem. It was fast paced but fun. I'm not done yet but I can create the remaining pieces at home. I still have to tint the face too.




Eventually it gets mounted on a block of wood for the base.

Tomorrow is the last day, sigh. I'm tired but I'm not really ready for it to be over. I have definitely met some cool new friends and had a lovely dinner with Erin, Denise and her husband Steve. We decided to break out and leave the hotel grounds for Mexican.

Well my eyelids are involuntarily closing so off to bed for me. Toodles.

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Day 3

Today was another painting day. I don't like the end result but it was an interesting process. I'm going to fiddle with it and then decide if I will start from scratch or not. Below is the progression and then a couple metal clay pendants. I definitely want to do more of that.















Yawn. Nightie night.

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Day 2...

So today was another interesting part of the process. My painting did not come out the way I wanted because I wanted it to be less collage and more organic but I think I like it. Here is a progression of it.



In the above pic we went through and marked portions we wanted to keep.



I got carried away and covered more than I intended.



Adding in some connecting marks but still feels too blocky.



Putting back some more flow and orange.

I'm not sure if it is done yet. I suspect not but we shall see. It does look a bit different in person.
Well, off to bed for me. Just spent an hour trying to figure out how to condition polymer clay for my Saturday class. More pictures tomorrow.
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Day 1...

Today was day one of Art Is You West Coast and day one of a two day class with Tracy Verdugo.
The class is called Sacred Marks and is all about using symbols and layering. I kept forgetting to snap pictures but here are two of the stages.








We shall see what it looks like after tomorrow. Right now it looks too chaotic to me but I know it is really just a part of the foundation.
Here is the bus we took to class and some pics of the area








Here's Tracy




And here are some pics of the scenery on the way to class












Off to bed now. Hugs!
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