anais nin... and angelic flight.

what do they have to do with each other? nothing, really - except that was what my art was about yesterday.

Angelic Flight was another doodle piece... i never know where a piece is going when i start to doodle it -but this one quickly became angel's wings in it's early stages, so i added a head and body...

Anais Nin... what can I say... this quote resonated deeply with me.  I've done a lot of harm to myself by putting up layers of shielding around my heart and soul, and have begun the process of peeling... and healing.  it's going to be  a long... hard... journey.  but i am going to relish every moment. 

this is a 10x10 canvas, the background was done entirely by hand, no brushes, acrylic and ink.  the bud is watercolors, watercolor crayons... this was a fun, messy piece - i'm including a shot of my hands as I did the background. 

risk...

watercolors in my BOD... book of days with effy wild...  sometimes you just need to vomit things out into your art journal.  that's what they are there for. 

serenity, courage, wisdom

today is the day i have waited for my entire life.  today is the day i get my tattoo.

i have wanted a tattoo for as long as I can remember.  because my husband wasn't a fan, and told me he didn't want me to get one, I listened.

but the call of the tattoo was strong, and I am my own woman now.  Approval or disapproval - it's my life, my body and my wish.  I am not doing it to hurt anyone, or as an act of rebellion.  I am doing it because it's a beautiful way of expressing myself.

At first, years ago, I thought I would get a dragonfly.  After all, they are my totem and I've got them all over my house in different forms.  But I could never decide on the right dragonfly... or the right colors... and the spot I chose on my body, my hip bone/abdomen, felt good but not perfect.

then i started being torn by images of a bird flying out of a birdcage.  Representing my need to fly and be my own person... that's when I realized that the perfect image had not come to me yet.  I knew I needed to be sure about what i was going to look at on my body for the next 100 years.

one day a few months ago I was scrolling through Pinterest looking at Recovery art and quotes and saw a photo of a girl's foot - with the words 'serenity, courage, wisdom' tattooed along her arch.

I've had that proverbial ton of bricks moment before, but this one slammed into me like... a proverbial ton of bricks.

i knew, and knew without a shadow of a doubt, that this was the tattoo, and the placement i wanted.

the words represent the most important prayer in my recovery, the Serenity Prayer.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,  courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

The location... one of our AA slogans has to do with 'look down at your feet - they are exactly where they are supposed to be'.  Which means that nothing happens by accident.  I am where I am right now because that's where my higher power has put me... He certainly knows better than I do where I need to be.

It is 8:30am... and at 11:00am I will be in the tattoo artist's chair.  I will be alone.  But I will have my higher power, and all the people that support me, and all the people that have listened to my hopes and dreams for many years, in my heart.

I will come back and add photos when I get home.  I had to write the blog post now because I knew it would be hard to do when I was looking at my foot all afternoon.  :-)

Ok it's 1:15 - I'm HOME and here it is... I tear up when I look at it - this is so huge for me... and i love it with all my heart.

sick of me yet?

this is what happens when I'm off of work, home alone, weather stinks, blah blah blah...

threw together a quickie - sometimes the quickies are the most fun.  ;-)  this is a 5x7 canvas panel.  I tinted modeling paste with some cheap acrylic paint - turquoise.  spread it on like buttering bread... let it dry. 

some white gesso in a stencil, and some Dylusions spray...

I drew a quick silhouette and cut her out of black paper, glued her down, glued down the quote which came off of a card given to me on my celebration last year. 

Her hair is all Stickles.  Gives that shot of bling to an otherwise muted canvas...

since i know my sponsor doesn't haunt my blog (i'm not sure why, everybody should) i can tell you all that I'm giving it to her for her celebration this week. 

wanna be.

it's no secret that i am a doodler - i mean, after all, that's what got me teaching, the love of mindlessly letting my pen track it's way around a piece of paper.

there are hundreds, if not thousands, of doodle classes online. (mine is the best, but i'm biased)  Zentangle has been the 'thing' for a while now, and i love the look of it. 

but i'm lazy.  i am the laziest tigger you will ever meet.  instead of taking a zentangle class, and there are free ones all over, i will google zentangle images and just try to replicate the technique.  LOL 

i give zentangle artists all the credit in the world - it's truly an art, and maybe someday i'll actually learn how to do it.  until then, i just play.

a cleaning out contest.

in addition to finding my tim holtz art under the tablecloth, I also found 2 Blanche prints - both are the 'checklist' blanche.  this one:

I would love to give them both away. 

All you have to do to be eligible for one is leave a comment telling me something fabulous about YOU.  You can tell me more than one thing, cuz I know my blog readers have tons of fabulous stuff about them...

make sure you also give me your contact info, so that if you do win, i know how to reach you!

if you share my blog on facebook, pinterest, twitter... come back and tell me that also for another chance to win. 

I will have the random number generator choose 2 winners tomorrow afternoon at 3pm tigger time. 

xoxo

one of those non-artsy posts.

although i can tie it in somehow, i know i can.

Last week i gave up using Splenda.  I'd been reading about the dangers of artifical sweeteners for some time, and i'd been using a LOT of Splenda every day for a few years.  When I say a lot, for me a lot was 5-6 packets a day in my cawfee or tea.

I decided to kick the Splenda habit, and a little over a week ago i had my first cup of cawfee with just my creamer in it.  it was good - and i really didn't miss the Splenda.

for my tea I grabbed honey instead.  and  I liked it.

(please forgive my alternating between using a capital letter when needed and not using it - i type without using them and then go back and try to fix them, but i don't always get to them all)

two days ago I noticed while drawing that my hands didn't ache.  my hands ALWAYS ache, are always stiff and sore... I was constantly rubbing them.  It was to the point that I had trouble holding my steering wheel for any length of time, the pain was so bad...

and I always chalked that up to arthritis.  I know i have arthritis in my finger and thumbs, so I would just pop more ibuprofen and pray for pain relief.

When i would get up out of a chair, the first 3 or 4 steps were always taken in pain.  back, legs, hip, shoulders... again - i chalked it up to being almost 56 years old.  I expected pain.

but two days ago i didn't have hand pain.  then I thought about driving all the way to the halfway house to teach on Friday... and the steering wheel didn't hurt my hands... and i was getting up out of my chair without wincing and hobbling.

the only change i've made is the Splenda...

I immediately googled the words splenda and hand pain and i guess I shouldn't have been surprised that i got page after page of results.

so, I'm not saying for certain that this is what was causing my pain, if it was, shame on me for using it, and shame on Splenda makers for selling it, since it's obviously not in all of our heads...

for this moment in time I will just embrace the fact that my  hands don't hurt.  which makes me draw more.  so see? I tied in the art part.  ;-)

xoxo

secrets... and 'the MAN'.

i have a dirty little secret.  in my studio (which is my spare bedroom), my table is constructed OVER the twin bed.  this way, if overnight company arrives, the table can be dismantled easily to accommodate them.

let it be said, while this has happened, i am curled up in a fetal position in the corner of the room... not only because for a day or two i will be losing my studio, but because the 'storage area' under the table, on top of the bed will be shown.

this morning i decided to tackle the underneefy bits of this studio.  the down and dirty, the toss underneath the tablecloth, the cast aside canvases, papers... half finished projects... the supplies i think i may need someday... the scrapbook paper that i cart down from my attic paper rack, and never seem to be able to bring back up again... my vestiges of various Michael's trips, bags of 'things' i get on sale...

it's amazing how much you can store on top of a twin bed when it's completely hidden from view.

this is what my table usually looks like - you can see the vinyl tablecloth that protects the table top, and provides me with hidden storage.

so while i'm underneath the tablecloth just now, i pulled out a project that i did a couple of years ago. 

those that have known me for a while know that i am obsessed and in love with tim holtz.  he knows this, and i believe any restraining orders have been lifted at this point.  ;-)  I JEST. 

we've been friends for many, many years.  from the very first email volley between us back in 2005, i've never gotten rid of any words he's written me. 

i chose a few of the most endearing sentences, and printed them out.  glued them (using ranger glossy accents of course) to ranger fragments.  (in fact, i ran out of fragments halfway thru and mario came to the rescue... love my mario as much as my tim)

it's kind of like my shrine to 'da man'.  my first art crush, and one hell of a nice guy.  he's put up with me all these years, he MUST be a nice guy. 

his fame has grown, but his humility and grace remains the same as they always were. 

so - why is this piece of art hidden under the tablecloth?

NO clue.  but it won't go back under there.  :-)

wanna see my pears?

<chuckling at myself>

I took a freebie art class at our public library this past weekend.  A local artist, Pam Jones, was teaching pencil techniques. 

She is one amazing pencil artist - her work looks like photographs!! I wish she had a website that I could link to show you all.

I learned the very basics some time ago from Suzi Blu - in an online course.  So I'd done the value scale, and shading in the circle so that it looked like a ball... but it was great to do it again with a live teacher in front of me, guiding my journey.

Then she taught us how to use a grid to enlarge and copy another image.  This was ok... not my cup of tea and probably won't do that again.

THEN she showed us how to take an image, like a photograph - and make your own by making your own carbon paper.  THAT was cool. 

She made it so simple that even I could draw pears. 

These aren't done.  In fact, since Sunday I've done quite a bit more shading but my tummy hurts and I'm whiny and lazy and don't want to photograph them again.  ;-) 

But here's my pears...

5th time's the charm...

a few weeks ago i started a commissioned canvas for a girl i went to high school with.  it was to be a gift from her son to her daughter at the daughter's wedding shower next month. 

Simple enough, Sharon let me know the colors 'burgundy, but not red burgundy, white and black'; and the quote 'i found the one whom my soul loves' and that she wanted the names of the bride and groom and the wedding date on there. 

Got it.

Did one 25% of the way and hated it. scrapped it.
Did one 50% of the way and screwed up the modeling paste and made a mess.  scrapped it. 
Did one 50% of the way and screwed up the paint and made a mess. scrapped it.
Did one 100% of the way and hated it.  hated the color of burgundy even though it was my 2nd try at burgundy.  scrapped it.

Contacted Sharon and told her of my issues - and told her I just couldn't get the right shade of burgundy and it was throwing me in to a tizzy.

So I mixed the burgundy I had on hand with some purple, took a fresh canvas and a brush and just swiped the color quickly over the canvas to see the shade.

Not bad.  I showed Sharon.  She said "That's IT!"

ok then.  from that moment on it all came together in a whirlwind.

and this is the result.

fate...

the past few weeks have been a barrage of GodWinks (what some might call coincidences) about relationships and expectations and empathy and sympathy, love and Higher Powers... many discussions in private groups on facebook about life and love and turning your will and life over.

the other morning i was drying my hair and words started flying at me in my brain.  it was freaky and almost ascary - i couldn't stop them, i could actually SEE them.  (it was a typewriter font, in case you were wondering)

i had to put down the dryer and get them written down.  i can tell you that these words came to me from a power higher than myself - and make me shiver and cry in a good way every time i read them.

i asked my friend cary if she could meld a photo with the words and she did... and i am grateful.

it's all about the steps - the steps that saved me.

Wow... I need to get caught up!!

I haven't uploaded in 2 weeks - BAD tigger.  Life has been a bit insane, working on a commissioned canvas that keeps giving me fits, but I think I have it under control now. 

First - in my BOD (book of days with effy wild) I did a funky girl that I really love. I'm not a pink kind of girl, but I love pink and brown together.  I wrote the dang poem too. 

Then, I made twin canvases for my hallway.  they are 4 x 12 raised canvas.

THEN, today I worked on something that has become very near and dear to my heart.

my word for the year is 'fire' as you all know.  my project this year is a 12x12 raised canvas.  with me coming out of the flames... the word isn't on there yet, and may actually get written along the 1-1/2" sides.  (it's a tall canvas).  I used tissue paper over a garage sale print, a printed out paper photo of me, vintage music book paper for the wings... hit the background with Dylusions, painted the flames with regular old acrylic paints, and stickled the hell out of the wings.  i kept adding more and more and didn't like it... until i dragged my pointy thingy thru the wet stickles and LOVED the result.  i'll add a closeup view of it.  the Dylusions came up thru the book paper and into the rock candy stickles, creating a dreamy greenish hue...