I feel pretty

I'm 37 years old and had another realization regarding myself. I have never felt so pretty, so sexy, as I do in this point in my life. Even though I'm no longer as thin and tight skinned. I feel like it is because I understand what it means.

art journal pockets of inspiration

i have been meaning to start a new quote journal but i think i have morphed the idea into something else! instead of a new book to work in, why not art journal pockets! this gives me a really good way to incorporate my want to do this with a new project i am taking on which is being a part of tangie baxter's creative crew!

i used have a cork board that was COVERED positive quotes that i had collected. even friends started writing positive quotes down for me when they found them and knew i would like them, many written on post-its or other colorful paper. the majority of them were somewhat damaged when i had to take them down off my desk when i left work. I still have them and wanted to transfer or re-write them into a new journal, but i think pockets would be a much better idea!

i'll be working on that and the october challenges challenge 02-two part animal and challenge 3-a world of octobers this week, I's so very excitied!

i want to see you be brave

i haven't had as much creative time as i would like lately. but over the span of a week or so i have managed to complete a spread that i am exceedingly happy with. i can do this. i can still do this.

so, from start to finish, my process...

 

 

time to paint

 

 

i had some trouble with shading around her left eye and had to fix her.

 

collage background with pages of an old book

 

watercolor crayons

 

posca markers

 

finished!

 

 

i love to share my process if only a record of my learning. i love to look back over how some of my favorite spreads came together. i also love to be nosy and see what others are working on.

WOYWW #3

i got a late start today and didn't get to my desk or to my WOYWW until now.

my workspace this evening with the best socks ever!  i'm watching a video of tamara laporte for background inspiration because this is one of the spreads i have been stuck on. i plan on working through that tonight. remember, if you'd like to follow along with WOYWW you can do so here.

what it my journal spread looks like, this evening, as i begin working on it.  

collaging with some torn up pages of a book.

layer of watercolor crayons.

and since it's dinner time, i'll stop here and let this dry.

and i am so excited to be a part of tangie baxter's free art journal pockets class! things are coming together and i can't wait to start creating. come on over and check it out!

monday playtime

i haven't had a lot of time for art lately, but last night i got time to sit down and spend a few hours playing. it was delicious. literally, i had more coffee than i should have had.

i honestly feel a little stuck on some of my spreads with sketches on them lately. i haven't felt like coloring in faces, i've been choosing to play in paint and layers of backgrounds. they'll get done eventually.

so, last night i took a page that i had used to get my posca markers going. these markers are ah-mazing! i was looking for something to work mostly on top layers of art journal spreads but i have found that they are very helpful to me as i build layers in my backgrounds.

then i took some new red and blue craft acrylics and some sequin mesh. 

here, i took some white acrylics and pushed it around on the page. still no brayer so i am using an old credit card. then i put down a layer of watercolor crayons.

using my black posca i drew circles. i really enjoyed the free doodling here. it's not extravegent drawing but it was all about what i was doing right then.

next... tissue paper! 

a little mod podge and tissue paper is always a happy combination. 

on top of that, a smidge of metallic purple craft acrylics.

this is really only one of the many pages i worked on, i just picked the one i worked on most, i guess. i'll likely share the others as i work on them. i fully intend on filling this journal to the brim with arty goodness.

so, as i mentioned, i am feeling a little stuck on my spreads with faces on them. i expect that will be resolved shortly as i've signed up for tamara laporte's lifebook 2016! and with it i got not one but two of her online workshops! i've chosen fabulous faces and ultimate world of whimsy! i'm so very excited to get started!

i have a thing

i've discovered that i have a thing.

my thing is playing music while i cook dinner.

usually, as loud as i can get it without someone getting annoyed.

i dance. i sing. i truly enjoy myself.

i can't say that i have always done this because, honestly, i haven't been keeping track. but i can say that this is a solid habit of mine. my thing.

this is an action that is solely me. it is all about what i want, my moment. something that genuinely makes me happy. something unique my children will remember about me when i am gone from this world.

i love this little discovery about myself. i'm 37 years old and consciously discovering something about myself , as if i am finally knowing myself.

<3 me

bullet journaling and other good newses

i haven't disappeared, i've just been busy with non-art related schtuff. why? ever since upgrading to windows 10 my office 365 suite has NOT worked. i've repaired, reinstalled, and hot fixed until i was blue in the face, and i still can not get past an error having to do with the product key. this left me able to view the files but completely unable to even copy and paste content from my word files to e-mails. microsoft has been no help whatsoever on a product, that mind you, i paid monthly for.

all this has put me very far behind at work.

so, i gave up. i uninstalled office 365 and all components from my system and just opted to install open office and voila! problems solved!

most of this week has been spent playing a game of catch up as i update and reorganize all my work related pdfs and word files and send them out to my wine tasting hosts. now that this is all caught up i have time for other stuff again and i am about to get extremely busy!

today is october 1st. happy fall ya'll!

halloween is right around the corner, with thanksgiving and christmas hot on it's tail. for the first time in a couple years i am actually looking forward to the holiday season and looking forward to a bright and shiny 2016!

on the first day of (almost) every month i invest a little time organizing my bullet journal. i confess, the past month was an odd blur and my journal caught very little of it. what was caught was mostly the negativity i needed to purge from my brain. i don't know about most people, but for myself, it seems that i only write in my journal when things are going badly. i write the bad things down to get them out of my head. it seems to be one of the most effective ways for me to release negativity and move on. the end result, though, is a journal filled with bad. my children will inherit my journals when i am gone, do i really want them to read nothing but the bad stuff in them? no, they aren't meant for that. they are intended to collect everything from day-to-day life to memories of things we do together to memorable things my children do or say. i've been terrible about a number of other habits as well, which led me to come up with a plan of action to help track positive goals.
we'll see how it goes!

first up, i didn't get to do a woyww yesterday as i was knee deep in word files. i should have, it wouldn't have taken that long but i procrastinated until the day was gone. so here's a picture of this weeks workspace.

and on to the journal...

this is my normal 1st of the month spread. month's events at a glance on the left and a running to do list on the right that holds the larger to-do tasks, normally not the daily ones. this is list i keep running constantly and will migrate the items i do not get done into the next months list. 

next is the first day of the month entry (today) on the left and my new goals page on the right. i totally messed this one up this morning. i sat down to migrate information and hopped right in to the first days entry and THEN realized i had planned to make the goals page. after some searching on pinterest i found the idea again (i didn't pin it when i should have and had to research it). my ocd wants me to tear the page out and reorder them, but i can't do that in this journal as it is a hardcover bound moleskin. this is my very first bullet journal, i've been working in it since june and it definitely is a work in progress as some of the ideas on pinterest work for me and some do not. it has also been a lesson in letting things be because i have had this awful "don't like it, tear it out and rewrite it" mindset since middle school. i can clearly remember writing and re-writing my notes over and over again. in this journal, i have to let things be, i can't go tearing out pages. i could creatively cover them up in a number of ways if i wished but the rule has been to leave things alone even if i hate them since i started. i also refuse to use any sort of pain in this journal at this point.

 

and finally, i had to rework my key because i added some new icons that i hope will be of use. again, we'll see. some of the old ones i had on the previous key were virtually useless and had to be removed.

here is the index page so you can see what kind of things i keep track of. any and all empty pages are used for sketches which haven't been putting in the index. since i only recently returned to art there are not a lot of pages of sketches yet.

 

use my pinterest board as a launch point to learning more about bullet journals.


late last night i got the most wonderful e-mail! i recently started following tangie baxter because i love her artwork. i was so excited when i read that she was having a crew call to find people to help her with her online classes. i'm still very much a novice at art journaling, sketching, and painting but i knew this would be a great opportunity for me to have something creative to spend some time on, learn a great number of things, and network with some very creative people. so i put myself out there and filled out her application and i was so stoked last night to get this e-mail!

i am SO excited! i can not wait to jump in and start helping and learning!  

and in honor of throwback thursday, i'll leave you with one of my very first pages from lifebook 2012.

WOYWW #2

is it wednesday again? so soon?

where is the time going in such a hurry?

either way, i love wednesdays, it's time to nose around the desks of some of my favorite bloggers and see what they are up to! you can follow along by visiting the awesome julia dunnit's blog stamping ground.

i haven't really posted anything since saturday but i have been busy sketching faces in my art journal. i'm trying to retrain myself to draw faces and i'm starting to work on adding emotion to faces, slowly. 

i am loving it. there is nothing more cathartic than drawing a face to me.

so, for starters i've shared a better picture of my corner of the den.

i don't have the windows open fully but the morning is my favorite time to be out here as the light is the best!

 

the airplane you see in the upper right hand corner is not mine. my love builds them, puts electronics in them and flies them. he recently ordered an airbrush machine and both of us are so excited to see it come in. i'm looking forward to learning how to air brush a multitude of things from kids faces to those planes!

anyway, back to my corner and what is on my desk at the moment.

about to start shading faces.

a closer look at my favorite girl from over the weekend. inspired by tamara laporte and her fabulous faces class. i took a shot at this girl when i first started drawing and it was honestly pretty hideous. my inner critic has issues with this one too but she is leaps and bounds better than when i started, of course. i'll see if i can dig out the journal it is in for a throwback thursday post tomorrow and you can giggle with me.

i can't wait to start shading this one.

a couple whimsy girls from over the weekend. i actually started this one last week but didn't get to finish it until this weekend. much of saturday and sunday was spent on the couch watching football with my love and my art journal.

i'm experimenting with some different shapes in my whimsies.

 

this is another one i can't wait to start work on, it's not much at the moment but i have a lovely spread envisioned for her.

the ideas i have for this spread is heavily inspired by tamara laporte and a recent piece of hers called sister smoke.

this one was meant to be a whimsy but she has evolved into a round faced angel thanks to my 4 year old. i was sketching her last night and my daughter asked if she was an angel. i added a halo and rough wings and  said yes, she's an angel. i love when that happens!

i simply can not wait to use some mixed media techniques on the wings especially because i haven't been able to draw wings as of yet.

and lastly, another sketch inspired by tamara laporte and another recent work. i'm really looking forward to some of the classes on my wish list for the fall. learning solid background layering techniques can only help me out at this point.

i'm really having some issues with the positioning of the nose and mouth on the 3/4 face. i'll get it, though, if i have to resort to looking up videos or seeking out my old notes.

so, there you have it. that's what is on my desk today. what's on yours?

current favorite song to bounce around the studio to, macklemore's "downtown".

 

saturday night couch sketching

yesterday was a pretty broken day. spent most of the day incapacitated with a headache, sleeping. when i actually did emerge from my cave, i felt good. it was nice to watch the lsu game that my love had recorded for me. while i watched that game, i couch sketched. i haven't couch sketched in soooo long!

this is what i accomplished.

practicing faces.

this one is being inspired by a recent page that tamara laporte uploaded to her facebook group.
she's placed a little funny on the page for the re-creation of tam's page but maybe i can work something out.

this is the whimsy pair that i started the other day.

i'm not real sure about the hair on either girl.

i am hoping to find time today to color them, but we'll see. maybe i will just sketch over the weekend and start to paint monday. who knows?

today i learned...

do not mess with the pictures in your google account.
if you delete pictures there be aware that they are attached to your blog posts!

i can not believe i just did that.

i'll replace what i can but i've removed a lot of the photos from my phone and so it seems that i might have just deleted the back-up copies.

genius.

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edited 9/18/15 @ 4:31pm

google had my back. i deleted pictures from my profile and phone but my google cloud was complete!

it took me nearly all day, but i was able to locate my photos and reattach them to the posts.
i didn't need that today, but it's solved now!

thank you google!

what do you mean

i have a confession to make, i thumbs up-ed a justin bieber song today on pandora. yep, actually happened.  i was arting-it-out and bopping along to music when this song came on. i thought it was derulo or something. who knows, ok! sorry if that offended anyone, i really am. let's just put it this way, i *NEVER* listen to actual radio, unless trapped in a car, earphones & phone stolen, and forced to listen against my will, and i almost never listen to country, pop, and hip hop (which i am actually trying to incorporate, slowly, a little more of into my pandora). :)
so, after the song had ended and i went to see what had played and thumbs up or thumbs down some songs. i mortified to see what i had been... enjoying. ah well, good song, nice beat. props, boy. 

yeah, well... either way, it was "what do you mean".

there was no art journaling to be hand in my house last night. nope, there was a school project for my son. and, as i am ever the procrastinator (well!! some of my best work has been completed under pressure), we were putting it together the night before it was due. hey, how hard could a model castle be?  O.o

and since i have a four year old, we HAD to make her something while we made something for her brother. yeah, seems legit. so, they and daddy built a castle and a "store". then i helped them paint. we had a lot of fun, very much a family craft night.

my son's project. this morning, the finished product had labels on pretty much everything but i wasn't taking pictures that early.  nope.  :)

castle project for reading class.

and this is ari's small store.  

yeah, i already removed the toothpick flag.
within about 1 minute i had envisioned about a
million ways she could hurt herself or maim any one of us.
}:-]

and so, that's it for art in my studio yesterday. today i have actual spilling going on, so i may or may not have a post tomorrow.

happy friday!

still of the night

i actually completed a spread in a day, start to finish. for me, this is an accomplishment! especially as it is that i have recently rediscovered my creative self less than a week ago. it wasn't all that bad though, i had already built the inspiration for this spread before i finished the last one. it makes things go much smoother when that muse is already flinging ideas.

i've seen whimsies done by many an artist but i had never tried onr myself. always putting it off, never brave enough. i knew it was going to have to be a whimsy. for those of you who do not know, a whimsy is a term i've seen used in the style of a whimsical girl.  features are exaggerated and/or diminished; big head/small body, big eyes/small lips, elongated necks and extended limbs. tamara laporte has a short offering on whimsy girls in her free online course; art, heart and healing. she also offers a class that i have been dying to take called, ultimate world of whimsy. this spread has sealed the deal,  i am buying that course as soon as i have money.

so then, i happened to be looking into another class that i actually have access to, which is christy tomlinson's she art workshop, for ideas on another spread. when i stumbled across the she art phrases pdf. i have found quite a few phrases that i'd like to build pages and/or cards around, this one included. i've also started rebuilding my lists of lyrics as i love to build pages around my favorite song lyrics or lyrics that mean something to me.

so, without further delay, to the art!

my large eyed whims-me girl

i knew my girl would need a companion.
i contemplated another doll or a pet and settled on a kitty.
we'll call him nermal.

sketch complete, time to start coloring!

 

here i've watercolored the girl, kitty, and moon;
and then i have touched them up with my prismacolor pencils and blender.

 

a collage is the first layer of the background.

 

a few layers have been added. on top of the collage is water color crayons.
on top of that is white acrylic paint. once that dried i stamped some images in black permaink.

 

this picture was snapped after a few more layers.
on top of the stamping i added another layer of watercolor crayons and an additional layer of white acrylics.
after the white had dried i prepared to have some fun!
i placed white and black down to mix into gray and added some purple and blue and i intend on using my trusty
old credit card to scrape the paint all over the place.

this is actually after quite a bit of pushing and pulling the ink around for a while and then wiping some layers to give it the look i wanted it to have.

 

the finished page after refining many of the lines, shading, highlighting, stamping and writing my phrase.

well let me just say that i loved drawing my whimsical girl! i actually have another spread on the next page that i started sketching while paint was drying on this page. i will share those later, perhaps tomorrow!

my phrase was "she loved the stillness of the night". i love this phrase, it totally applies to me. i will often slip outside into my darkened yard and just enjoy the quiet stillness that is the early morning hours.

between now and friday i am going to try to complete one more spread, but i don't expect to have any posts to share over the weekend. there may be art, if i find time.

and with that, i am off to bed!

goodnight moon.

 

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edited 12:52pm 9/17/15

after posting my picture on facebook a friend brought it to my attention that i had misspelled stillness. *insert sheepish grin*

so i've uploaded the fix. :)

see! i can spell, i promise. just not at 2 a.m.!