Work In Progress

That seems to be the theme for me the last couple of weeks. Work.In.Progress.

I don’t have much finished, most of my art is currently in the “work in progress” stage.

We’ve had a lot of visitors lately and there is more to come!

So, normal life has been not at all “normal” and has sort of been happening between bouts of visiting and other distractions.

As a result, I haven’t really been able to do all that much art and the little I do get done, seems to just add to the work-in-progress pile.

 

This is not an easy state for me to be in - the perpetual WIP, without something finished and filed away - is not something I revel in!

However, these days, when I find an area where I am supremely uncomfortable, instead of “making it go away”, fighting against it, resisting it or pulling some superhuman efforts out of my hat, usually at a great price to myself, or, decide not to do something just so I don’t add to the pile -  I try and lean into it and embrace the discomfort.

I say “try” because some days I’m more successful than others with this!

 

But, I am learning so much about myself! So much to clear, so much to let go and so much to open up to!

Having a perpetual work-in-progress pile in my art, is just one of those discomforts in my life right now. There are many more. How did I get so lucky?

 

But, I am learning to really appreciate the discomfort! It’s that message that tells me something is up!

• It tells me that there is an opportunity to let go of an outdated way of thinking/feeling/acting.
• It tells me, that I am learning to recognize and leaning into my vulnerabilities, something I would have avoided at all cost not too long ago!
• It tells me that in this moment, on this day, in this situation, however minute, I am practicing courage and I am opening myself up to not only vulnerability, but also change!
• It tells me I am one step closer to being authentically me, and one step further away from needing to be “perfect.”
• It tells me, that at the other end of it, there is so much more opportunity for ease, joy, gratitude and expansion!
• It tells me, that I am  also a constant work in progress and that that is a good thing! Sometimes it’s also a difficult thing, but it’s never not a good thing!

 

And with that, I will show you one of those work-in-progress pieces from my pile.

 

I decided to go big on a face, to really practice features. But not only that, I also learned a new (to me) method of painting with gesso, watercolor crayons and black ink  while I was at it! It’s nowhere near finished, but it is starting to take shape!

 

 

 

 

 

“Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity. It is the source of hope, empathy, accountability, and authenticity. If we want greater clarity in our purpose or deeper and more meaningful spiritual lives, vulnerability is the path.”
― Brené Brown

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Happening Around Here Lately

Hello everyone! I feel like I haven’t posted in a while, even though I had daily posts going on every single day the last 20 days! Phew! I hope you enjoyed the 20/20 series!

For those of you who are subscribed to my newsletter, I’ll be sending out the download link for the e-book to the series later today!

 

1. Happy Spring, everyone!

Look who I finally captured on “film”! I get so many hummingbirds in the garden and they let me come up quite closely, but I’ve never had a camera handy when they do! Until now!

   

 

 

Things are really happening in the garden as we’re moving out of the “winter” veggie harvesting and into the “summer” planting. I put adverted commas, because the dessert seasons are obviously not like the usual seasons! We’re having a little bit of a lull, right now, while the various summer veggies are getting there! But I still have plenty to keep us happy!
I have to say though, I am REALLY looking forward to the zucchini, cucumbers, beans and melons that are currently growing! Won’t be long now!

 

2. I’ve been working on my first portrait. It’s a gift for my father’s 70th birthday.  I am all at once fascinated by the thought of me doing even a single portrait and astounded that it actually looks like him!

I was somewhat in the zone when doing it, but haven’t been able to do another portrait of similar “skill” since! Go figure! Now, how do I go back into that zone?

 

 

3. I’ve been busy playing with my Gelli Plate! So much fun! I am working on a separate post on this however, so here is just a little preview.

 

           

 

4. Lifebook 2014 has had some more rocking lessons, in particular the last two I worked on, which was one by Tamara Laporte and the other by Anna Dabrowska, aka Finnabair!

 

Tamara’s lesson was on the “paint over collage” technique, which took me from this

 

 

To this:

 

 

Anna’s lesson was on her collage technique, which was quite fascinating! My take on the lesson took me from this:

 

 

To this:

 

 

The final collage was a little hard to photograph, as I used primarily shimmer mists to color the collage and they don’t photograph well! In real life the colors and objects have much more distinct colors and the separate objects stand out much more in their own right than the photo suggests. But you get the idea!

 

I am so glad I decided to do Lifebook 2014! We’re only in March and I have already learnt SO much and I just love having all the different artists show us how they do what they do!

By the way, if you’re thinking you might want to join too, you can! It’s not too late! Once you join, ALL the lessons are available for you to download and do at your own pace!

Even though Lifebook 2014 has a somewhat overriding theme every month (this month it is “celebrating connections”,) the lessons don’t build on each other, so you can jump in at any time and do the lessons in any order!

And for those of you that don’t want to do it because they think that the inner mean girl would never let them post their work or enjoy any of it - Lifebook has an amazingly supportive community, with EVERY level of artistic ability fully represented. Really, from ABSOLUTE beginner, the I-never-even-held-a-brush-before kind of beginners, to professional artists!

Anyway, as you can see, I’m really, REALLY enjoying myself in Lifebook 2014! It rocks!

 

5. I want to leave you with this awesome reminder by Ira Glass, about the creative process!

 

 

Yes, yes, YES!

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Happening Around Here Lately

1.) Storing paint.

The other day I had one of those forehead-smacking, why-didn’t-I-think-of-that kind of moments when I read somebody’s tip to storing acrylic paint!

Up until then, I would paint a little dot of the color in the bottle on top of the lid, so I could easily find my colors. The problem is, that it required me to open all the bottles, had to wait for the dot to dry before I could store them and quite often, depending on what light I had in the studio, the dots wouldn’t show the subtle color differences clearly enough!

Well, turns out there’s a much easier way!

Store them upside down!! No-brainer, right?

Not only does it make color recognition much easier, it also helps with easily dispensing the paint in the bottles that are less than all the way full. And, it also stops the paint from drying out if the cap happens to be on less than perfectly closed.

2.) A quote for today. This has been so true for me lately. Well, it’s true all the time, let’s say it has been more relevant lately!

“Sometimes your only available transportation is a leap of faith!”

-Margaret Shepard

 

3.) Inexpensive Light Box.

I used to have a lovely light box for tracing, embossing and pretty much anything I needed to have illuminated from behind. The last time I pulled it out of the cupboard to use, I saw that the D batteries had dumped all their not so lovely content all inside the light box and essentially irreparably ruined it.

When I went to look for a replacement, I remembered just HOW expensive these thing were. And honestly, I don’t really need anything terribly sophisticated - I just need something that doesn’t take up too much space and shines a reasonably bright light through various thicknesses of paper!

I came across this Crayola Light Up Tracing Pad and I thought I’d give it a try. It was less than half of what others cost, and with two young kids in the house, even if it didn’t work for me, it would get used plenty!

Well, let me tell you! I LOVE this thing!

It’s thin, it’s light, it stores away easily, it gives me what I need light-wise and I’ve used it a LOT for quite a few weeks now and I still love it!

What do I use it for? I find I use it for many things, but one of my main uses for a while was sketch transfer.

Well, when I first started doing faces, I realized that I was really holding back because I didn’t want to “ruin” the expensive paper with too much erasing. Yet, I found that if I sketched on cheap paper, I was more willing to experiment and go with the flow. If it didn’t work out, nothing much was lost!

And as a beginner sketcher, you HAVE to practice and have to be willing to make mistakes and “loosen” your wrist and all that. And every once in a while, even while just playing around, you’d manage to create something you actually liked and then how do you get it to your good paper?

So, once I had it sketched onto the cheap paper and to my satisfaction, I would then use the light box to trace it onto my hot-press watercolor paper. Double the work? Yes. But it’s worth it to me!

And as I grew/grow more confident, the less I need to do the double sketching.

4.) The big 20/20 event is starting on March 1st! I you haven’t heard yet, I have gotten together with some really talented ladies and we put together 'The Big 20/20 Event'.

The event itself is all about creativity, ideas, instructions and all things inspirational. we have got a whole host of gorgeous contributors on our team, and they have some fantastic tutorials to share with you.

Here is a sneak peak of what I will be giving one of my tutorials on.  Yep, I’m doing two!

5.) Yum!

These are grain-free/paleo Spaetzle! So easy to make, so yummy!

I slightly modified this recipe for Paleo Pasta and prepared it in the traditional “Spaetzle way” with the most delicious result. And much less work than pasta!

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Transition

The other day, I sat down to do one of the Lifebook 2014 lessons and within the first few minutes of laying down my colors, it went a completely different way!

Now, in days gone by, I would have made myself got back to the lesson and do it “properly,” but these days I go with the flow much more. I do follow the whispers a whole lot more!

So, I also did this time.

And this is what emerged!

 

{Transition}

Art Print available in my Etsy Store.

 

I am starting to LOVE going with the flow in my art! Somehow it always just depicts where I’m at, even when I wouldn’t be able to express it in any other way!

The piece above is done with acrylic ink and colored graphite pencils.

 

I feel like a lot is transitioning for me right now in all levels of my life. Nothing major really to the outside world, I’m sure. More quiet little changes, large and small shifts within, letting go,  transitioning into new ways of thinking, feeling, doing and perceiving.

 

YES!

 

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.

Richard Bach

And YES to butterflies!

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The Evolution Of An Intuitive Painting

For week 8 in our Lifebook 2014 class, we had a lesson from the lovely Alena Hennessy.

She led us in a short meditation, then had us write a letter to self/universe/god/angels, all before we started with our painting. There were really no rules or definitive instruction on the painting per se, other than paint and do what you want to do, do what feels  right, express what you feel guided to, paint as freely as a child!

 

I loved it! I often meditate before doing my art these days and I am getting more and more into the intuitive painting kind of style, so this was just right for me! Thankfully it was also a holiday today, so I got a little time to play! It was great, and quite surprising, what wanted to come out of me today!

 

 

And I actually remembered to capture a few stages along the way, so I can show you just how one of those intuitive paintings can evolve!

 

 

This is what I started with. Lots of color! Sprays, drips, splats, scribbles, a stencils. I just went for it!

 

 

Then I toned it down a bit with some white acrylic paint. Some brushed on, some brayered on, some smeared with my fingers. It all was very random!

Then I drew some acrylic ink scribble flowers with the little dropper, right out of the bottle. I also took an old gift card and ran it through some acrylic ink, which I then scraped onto the painting. You can see them as the vertical lines in the painting.

After that I had to sit with it for a bit. I somewhat had a notion of where I wanted it to go, but I couldn’t quite “grab” it. In the end I took a pen and just started to doodle.

 

 

First the large circle on top, then moving on to the middle one and finally I doodled the last circle into the flower petals that were shining through from the previous layers.

 

 

Next, some more dotting and decorating around the circles. Some really free-motion, “let the hand do what it wants and then see what you’ll do with it” kind of stuff! It is SO freeing!

 

 

Then I needed some shimmer! It’s hard to capture it, as always. You can see it a little better in the photo rather than the scan. From this angle you can see the rather more intensly yellow-ochre patches. Those are the perfect pearl shimmers.  Not that they look that yellow when you look straight at the painting. You just get a little shimmer!

 

 

We were encouraged to put a mantra or some positively inspiring words on our painting. I kept on trying to think of something short and sweet, but in the end, what it always came back to, was this excerpt from Theodore Roosevelt’s speech, that has had me so inspired and fascinated for quite some time now.
It was about time that I did a page featuring it!

 

 

It reads:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.”

YES! Yes, to daring greatly!

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