dwelling

I  have been putting my mandalas up on the wall at work to add some color to a boring wall and it has given me  chance to ponder and dwell on each piece instead of getting my work done. I catch myself sitting and staring at each piece and as a result, I never think they're done so I have gone back to a few older ones and added more, way more....

A before photo...

An after...

Another before...

and an after....

and here's a zentangle for a challenge at Iamthe Diva..

Of course I am linking to Paint party friday!!!! I hope to visit more sites from there this week...
and if you missed all my sketches yesterday you can go to that page here... and...

I got invited back to do a palette for the keuka lake artist's program and I will have a work in progress photo for you next week!

permission

This book brought me JOY this week....I bought it months ago and hadn't read it yet.... but since I'm back to wanting to fill sketchbooks it was the right time to read it. And guess what.....in it  Cathy Johnson gives us permission to use our sketchbooks just as we want! I'm not being sarcastic .... that really makes me happy! It's so easy with art to think I should do this ... or that. or try to do traditional watercolors without my pen lines around my ladies, blah, blah blah and on and on. Maybe it's just me but I always get hung up thinking there's rules, and I don't know why since noone ever TELLS me to do this or that. I tell me. In this book she says do it however you want and gives lots of great inspiring examples of doing it your way. And just like I decided last week and wrote I was going to put it all in one book, I read the next day where she said to go ahead and put in zentangles and mandalas if that's what you enjoy doing. I think she was really talking just to me... really! so here's some of my random stuff I sketched, oh and my new sharpie pens that make it more fun to sketch.... I've actually almost used them both up in the 1 1/2 weeks I've been using them!

You'll have to go back to last week's post to see why I'm sketching monkeys....

 Tomorow I will have more  zentangles and more mandalas....

FineartAmerica

I have joined a few of you and have opened a shop in FineArt America. Wow, it was easy, and seems like a great way to go with trying to sell some art... Any advice please let me know as I have no idea how to get found on there. It's hard to be seen on etsy but I've been joining groups there and doing treasuries so I have  a following but this site is all new to me. My site is here....







I plan to add some of my mandalas soon....Thanks is advance for any advice.

color, color, color

When I think I'm done they just keep calling to me to add more color and more lines....

and here's two dolls, one old one new.... the first bought at an antique store and loved by some unknown boy or girl, the second made by my mother to try to save the first from my son who likes to toss her on the floor.

You can go to Inspiration Avenue to see more dolls this week....

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!

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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...

I  want to Share the joy this week with my zentangles. Just like my mandalas from last week (which i do have another of this week), I  can totally loose myself in doing them. With zentangles there are certainly some tangles that fit better together and you can think about balance of light and dark or loose to tight, and I'm sure all sorts of things why this would be better or that.... but the great thing is you don't have to. You can just pick up a pen and do it with almost no thought at all, and it absorbs your thoughts, blocks out your worries and almost always ends up looking great. 

The first and the 3rd,4th and 5th photo are for a challenge at Iamthediva where we were to use the tangle GOLVEN by Mariet. I did it then just kept on making more, i've got 3 or 4 more pges i didn't even get photos of yet. But here's a mandala  I did get done for paint party friday this week and paint and palette...

The palette is a nice new cheap kids set that looks like I hardly used it....

I might be back soon with a goddesss piece for 13 goddessess... not sure if i'll get it done... have a good week!

share the joy and my last 2 faces!

On the left is Darla's friend Pammy.... She loves fuji apple pear lifewaterand drinks at least 2 a day. she also checks her horoscope daily along with her biorhythm chart on the internet. She's a health food nut and doesn't ever litter. She's recycles and worries about the environment and global warming. She's adopted a whale on line and a donated to over 10 charities. Her worst habit is she eats a whopper every day for lunch, but so far her cholesterol is fine. She's tried to quit but her car seems to be programmed to drive there.

Then there's Clarisse, she has 4 cats; Chandler, Joey, Dick Chaney and October.... She also has 23 cans of artichoke hearts in her pantry and she would be hard pressed to explain why if you put her on the spot.

So sorry the 29 days are over, but as all the ladies of my 29 faces are members of the Secret Skirt Society, which i never got around to telling you about... I may have more stories about them later...


For Share the Joy, I wanted to share how much I am enjoying painting mandalas. There are so many millions of ways to decide to color them in let along how to draw them, and there's no difficult trying to make it look like your subject while you draw, it's all so esasy. Then you get to the watercolor part and it's just peaceful and beautiful to watch the watercolors flow onto good watercolor paper, I will someday try to make a video of painting them as it's just as fun to watch as it is to do it, well for me at least....

oh and for paint and palette I am showing my totally messy watercolors I use to paint with, looks horrible as I mix right in with the paints most days then have to go wash it out later.

And as I  have posted "almost" every day this month i will take a break and not post tomorow and link this one up with paint party friday, so go check them out as well, always so much inspiration there!