Friday already, time flies so fast.... my computer is fixed so you get to see lots of photos from our week at the cabin! we've gone to the same spot for 5 years now.

We spotted 77 of these guys on our early morning hike! and herer's my haiku...

Seventy seven

little orange salamanders

in the morning dew

 It's become tradition I make a sand mermaid...

Below is the pond we hiked to, I just realized I don't even have a photo of the lake! I take so many every year I guesss I figured I didn't need any more.

And here's some pages in my sketchbook...

And here's a heart sketch for AyalaArt in red and white for Artists PlayRoom and the zentangle for IamtheDiva...

And some mosters for Butterfly effect...

Happy paint party friday!

it's friday already!

this week has gone so fast...
I almost forgot about doing this post I was so caught up in checking out all the treasuries on etsy with my mini canvas! they are all sooo beautiful and interestingIt's going to be sooo hard to pick one on sunday!
anyway...


here's the inspiration.....this is maybe the eaglet but it's stomach is whitish too so not sure but it's right where the daddy eagle always sat a little ways away from the nest...

and the sketch...

and more inspiration at Mcdonalds....

and more sketches...

watching the birds soar

waiting for the perfect shot

I always miss it

Linking to artists playroom for their drawing theme

butterfly effect for their bird theme

and haiku my heart

lines and colors and words, oh my

I've got a video for you this week of making this latest mandala.

It's a bit shaky  in certain sections as I handheld the camera while I was painting. Totally need a tripod I guess. But it's a first try so don't judge it too harshly! It's alittle over 5 minutes I think so just GO WATCH IT!!!! I really enjoyed making the videos, almost as much as painting so let me know what you think, and hopefully I'll get better as I go and I've started the next video already...

full of rich color

paint flows and blends together

dancing pen lines move

and......
One more Rainbow mandala,
and a sip of sangria to go.....

See you soon!

I'm linking to Paint party friday here

I'm also linking to haiku my heart here

and Butterfly effect for their flower theme here ( can you see the tiny white flowers I added, just a touch but my next mandalas is ALL Flowers!)

and don't forget to visit the artist's play room this week too with their rainbow theme, here.

rainbows

The theme over at Butterfly effect where, as most of you know, we are ALL PRETTIER!!!, is rainbows. I have always loved rainbows....

A few random facts...

**I wore ski sweaters in highschool because you could find them with rainbows on the sleeves.

**I owned a tiny 2x2 watercolor painted rainbow that Thom Klika made . He was the original rainbow man. He had a shop in Woodstock where my family went in the summers on our way to Cape Cod for vacations. He used to (before my time there) hand out hand painted tiny cards with rainbows on them. I had a jigsaw puzzle with the image of 100 of them on it  and an actual card which I seem to have lost over the 30 years since. :.(

** I painted a pastel rainbow on my bedroom wall when I was a teenager.

**I'm late for work or I'd think of more rainbow facts...



Here's one of my latest mandalas.... I started naming them...It's called fluid spring...

 Here's my son's rainbow!

These next 3 are from a lesson in Carla Sonheim's book that I'm trying to work through, and keep up with Cameron over at Paintmyselfpretty. It's a great book but if you want to see more lessons go to cameron's blog! In this one you paint random swirls of watercolor then try to find imaginary animals in it and sketch them in. I kept seeing faces but here's a few tries anyway...

see ya soon!

I found Danny Gregory's blog recently, (just click on it to go there) I'm sure most of you know him but I hadn't, I'm pretty out of the loop on current artists but I love his sketches and this week have been watching all his videos.... he's very inspiring!

As you can tell if you been by my blog much I keep going from one type of art to another  and his thoughts just made sense to me...to put whatever you feel like sketching in your book, making the mundane and ordinary, larger! So I realized I can do it all, I don't have to decide on one type and I can still put it all in my sketchbook with my notes, lists and such and just let it be a record of my days. Simple thought but it just struck me as a wonderful plan! like a totally radical idea or something...  I had been thinking I'd have to quit the challenges as it gets overwhelming , so that I could concentrate on whatever art I decided on as I have so many plans in my head for projects. But I put a few challenges this week in my tiny sketchbook...
 I need a bigger sketchbook!

\

I'm linking to Butterfly effect as their theme is eyes... I always draw mine as nooone else wants to pose for me. Eyes are a big deal to me as my son never used to make eye contact and now can sit and stare into my eyes, sometimes I realize he is staring at his own reflection in my glasses but it's still eye contact....

I did get this monkey from a photo on the internet and his eyes were what made me want to sketch him. I really didn't feel like sketching a monkey but that was the lesson in Carla Sonheim's book and you were to grab 4 different preselected drawing pens  before you even had a photo to draw of a monkey, and I was actually surprised how it turned out.  His eyes were green so I was glad I had 2 green pens but I actually like the orange and purple in the sketch even though he was brown in the photo...

Not sure if Cameron has her lesson posted yet but I will link there when she does, you should go see hers as she's following the book religiously!

 Here's some zentangles ... the first is for a challenge at IamtheDiva to use a tangle called the Fengle, it's really pretty... but not when I do it, to me it's very hard. I was not pleased with this one above at all...

 So.... come back tomorow I hope to post more mandalas...

bees fly from her mouth

My last two faces for the 29 faces challenge will have to be posted later today...
That was hard to keep up with but fun! I actually have a plan for something to do with all my ACEO's from this but i don't want to mention it yet in case i can't quite work it out.

Here's my entry to the butterfly effect for "the wild side". Not sure if i show my wild side much but the ladies i paint do, they are free and happy and don't care much for conventional rules and restraints.

I did this with another challenge in mind too, at inpiration avenue the theme is Bottecelli's primavera. I seem to be drawn to the nymph, Chlora, or the goddess of flowers. you should go there and check out the painting. I started this months ago then put it away and just finished it this week. I had meant to have flowers coming out of her mouth but when i got this far it didn't seem to fit anymore.

She also reminds me of  paintings i just loved by kit williams... i can't find the exact one but i think my favorite was one with bees coming out of her mouth...

I had all his books and would stare at the art forever, studying how he did them, years ago. I just googled him to see what the name of that painting was and i found an interview where he said he was very influenced by botticelli, which makes sense now seeing both.

Distracted....

photo.JPG, a photo by lelloavengers on Flickr.

The story of my morning a few days ago is typical of my life lately.... Hectic and scattered and distracted. It's my own fault, I start by walking to a room and instead of wondering why I'm there, I think, "oh, I meant to go to the pantry first", so I leave to go to the pantry and get there and think, oops, I meant to stop and get the scissors, so I go get them and head out to check on my son. He wants waffles so I pop two in the toaster and head to the bathroom again forgetting the scissors and have to walk back to get them again.... After probably another Circle around the house I actually manage to cut the tag off his pants, put the scissors away and get the waffles to him. Everything seems to involve 3 more trips around the house than would actually be necessary, but I'm still getting things done so all is good. I get him dressed, go to brush my teeth, (impressed with myself for remembering right off)check myself in the mirror, (which honestly most mornings I don't actually do)and therefore realize my outfit does not match. So I start to change, hear the bus out front, and run downstairs to get my son's coat on and see that he's taken most of his clothes off again. We do manage to redress and get to the bus with a backpack and lunch before they leave, which seems amazing in itself!
So now I have 15 minutes before I leave for work, and I have to testify in court today so want to at least appear put together.... I change my clothes 5 times, "put together" doesn't seem possible today so I give up and head out, snagging my head back when I walk out the door because I've gotten my scarf caught on the door handle,( you just don't want to even know how many times I've done THIS!)

So anyway, I'm about five minutes later than usual and driving up what we all call the gulch road, a very narrow, windy, curvy road with steep sides, I come upon a very bad accident, a head on collision that happened 5 minutes before I arrived.... Just when I normally am driving through. No one was seriously hurt, but I'm shocked because the cars look totally crumpled.

Anyway, this was my little reminder to wake up, get focused, organized and slow down to pay attention to the moment I am in! I'm really going to try to stop rushing and getting farther behind because of it....

Linking up to butterfly effect as the theme this week is storytelling.

my fat little goddess

I have been watching the videos over on Amy's Flutterbye (see sidebar) that she and Natasha are teaching on book altering. All the classes are FREE! and inspiring!

I love the reasoning behind offering it free... and I'm not sure if these are partially her words from somewhere on her site or mine (!?):

there's enough for everyone,

there's no need for all the artistic competitiveness

so share what you know...


so far they've worked through picking your book, thinning pages, preping, playing, painting the cover and putting in a zipper.... I'm still afraid of the zipper even after watching that one, plus my book is VERY old so the strings may not be able to handle the stress of the zipper. I'm still working on a portrait on one of the pages I collaged on, but here's the cover...

I may not be done, After seeing it here I think it needs some black words stamped in the background or something. Putting her on the cover does sort of make the book about a theme now, but that's OK, I want it to be full of powerful,
 strong,
 pretty
 women,
 and maybe stories of goddesses or such.

She sort of reminds me of the Venus of Willendorf or one of the other old ones, I could see it made of a tiny piece of clay on some long ago altar (minus the bright colors). and... just because I love them....

here's a few goddesses, some are based on real artifacts and some aren't.

Oh, I'm linking this up to the butterfly effect as their theme this week is also goddesses!

Control

This painting I did about a year ago and shoved away in the closet, but I thought I'd pull it out for the Butterfly effect's MASK theme... You'll just have to figure out the meaning behind it your self as I didn't put as much thought into it at the time as one might think, honestly,... other than creepy trees grabbing her waist, (really that's all they're grabbing, which isn't how it looks so that's part of why I put it away) and hands everywhere, I'm pretty sure it said something to me about loosing "control" of my life... so much happening that I had no say in... but you take it how ever you will...

Oh, and if you didn't see my last post... click on the Mr. Linky above and then click on the first one there, to see the post about my giveaway just for linking up with an interview of your own.... please play along... you have a whole month!

something new!

hello all, I've got a tutorial for my fiber art friday friends, sort of a tutorial... This is my first video showing how I created something so there are no fancy frills and edits or anything, maybe next time. And I'm sure I will try it again, as I think it's like eatting chips or getting a tattoo, you always want to do more...

Anyway, it's only 2 minutes so please check it out and let me know what you think...

The weather this week went from glorious autumn to rainy and cold and foggy...

This week I finished a watercolor butterfly and I'm mailing it to a butterfly effect project over at...http://twodressesstudio.blogspot.com/
read about the project here..
http://twodressesstudio.blogspot.com/2010/08/butterfly-effect-open-is-calling-you.html
to expalin  a little I copied this from her blog...

The Butterfly Project mandate is   to remember the 1,500,000 innocent children who perished as a result of the Holocaust  by collecting 1.5 million handmade butterflies. 

 In Spring 2013, these butterflies will then become a break-taking exhibition to serve as a memory of this event. 

This is such an interesting project... I've been to the Holocaust museum in DC and it's a very hard place to visit. So incredibly shocking and sad.
You can participate too... either through the blog above by mailing your butterfly there or you can do it on your own through the address she provides. At her blog she has photos of all the butterflies she's gathered and shipped out...

I'm linking to Inspiration Avenue , please go by there as they've got a blog anniversary going on, with freebies and more...http://inspiration-avenue-team.blogspot.com/
 They asked what inspires each of us... for me it's nature mostly, feelings and moods next, then there's always other's art... and holidays inspire me too, and the weather and people watching. etc etc etc...

and to the butterfly effect. their theme is wings.....http://whisper-to-whirlwind.blogspot.com/
and to creative friday, and of course... paint party friday!
http://paintpartyfriday.blogspot.com/

and Yeah to me, I won a copy of

Destination Creativity: The Life-Altering Journey of the Art Retreat [Paperback]

by Rice Freeman-Zachery   from Seth Apter's the alteredpage blog!!!...
http://thealteredpage.blogspot.com/    I'm so excited!
See ya next week...