A Boy's Vision

Everything is Possible, or Whale in a Bowl
78/100 in 100 creative challenge
Acrylic on paper, 5x8

Another piece commissioned by my kids. He asked for a whale in an aquarium, and I thought I'd try round instead of square. And paint makes me feel like it's more finished. He's really into aquariums, terrariums and pets right now. He's moved on a little from making movies, but he may be back. Oh the obsessions these kids have.

Anyway, he picked these colors. I never would have picked them. But once I started, I could see how they would work. G, however thought the whale blue was too dark and he yelled at me to change it,(ah those tantrumming clients) however, I held him off until the colors were all in and he could see what they looked like together. I said I would change it if he didn't like it, but in the end, we were all satisfied. These colors remind me of a boy's outfit. Brown cords and a bright shirt. Actually, I think this would make a good tshirt.

The words are mine, of course.
B is for Blocks, or build.
79/100 in 100 creative challenge
Golden Fluid Acrylic and Pitt artist pen on paper, 5x8"

This was first a sketch of a block tower G did. I was impressed with the precarious tilted balance of it. (please no one mention the unfortunatel phallic appearance. I didn't notice until later, but I still like the colors and paint treatment.) Then G demanded that I paint it and these are the colors he chose... sort of. He wanted multicolored blocks, but I went ahead and did green.

Anyway. I've been thinking about my inspiration and about my self imposed constraints, lately.

When I first thought about getting back to art, after having my kids, I thought the only/best way to do it was to integrate my daily life (mothering) with the art, allowing my kids and my day to inspire my art. When I first got back to this blog, that's what I was doing.

When I started to paint every day, I carved out the time to commit to making art, but I created a limited theme to work with. That's when I started Flying Girl... or when I took her up again. She was an image I first painted in college. I limited myself to Flying Girl so that I didn't have to come up with new inspirations every day. It allowed me to get back into a routine and to explore my craft and to expand my definitions while not making me crazy trying to figure out what to paint every day.

I'm very thankful to Flying Girl even if I don't always paint her everyday.

I've kind of gotten off of the "limiting my creativity to one theme." I think I've broken into the painting habit and no longer need such tight constraints to feel comfortable. I have gotten used to being an artist. I can now do Flying Girls or Travlings or Flowers or sketches of my day or Child Inspired drawings. It feels good to expand, but there was a time when having that freedom would have frozen me up. There were too many choices for me to go deep.

Where in your life do you think it would serve you to have fewer choices, instead of more? Where could constraints allow you to go deeper into your life, your craft, your experience?

Commissioned Works, Demanding Bosses (aka My Kids) 73-77

Fom Us To You... or Aquarium
73/100 in 100 Creative Challenge
Water Color and Pitt Artist Pen on Paper 5x8e

Sorry for the bad pictures. I ran out of light this weekend. And also had some more blips on my internet service, but it was a minor issue and soon resolved.

However I would like to share with you what I've been painting these last couple of days.
My son requested an aquarium with a shark in purple, that we could send to people in the mail. The next page was based on Ivy's insistence that I give her goldfish.

Love and Fishes, or Goldfishies
74/100 in 100 Creative Challenge
Watercolor and Pitt Artist Pen on Paper, 5x8"

I think she meant crackers, but first I painted this. I figured it would go with the Aquarium and could be a kind of greeting card. We'll see how it turns out.

The words were my own invention. Seeing as neither of them are literate yet, I could push the boundaries on this.
Bloom Where You're Planted
75/100 in 100 Challenge
Watercolor and Pen on paper, 5x8"

After she got her goldfish crackers, she was tired of all the marine life. She demanded I paint flowers. And instructed me as to which colors they should be.

Purple Flower
76/100 in 100 Creative Challenge
Golden Fluid Acrylic on Paper 5x8"

Then she wanted a purple flower. At first she was quite perturbed when I was drawing the little funny looking stamens and pistils in the center, but she got over it as soon as I added the paint. I would just like to say that the brown leaf is there because she demanded it be brown, not green, no matter how I tried to convince her it should be green like the other leaves. I was surprised to find that the brown served to ground the painting and add that little sense of frisson that happens when you combine things that aren't expected. I did go and add the brown outline to integrate the leaf into the rest of the picture, and then I put in the scallops, because, well, that's what I've been doing with my personal flower pictures lately. I'm liking the patterns.



Anemones in Pink and Green
77/100 in 100 Creative Challenge
Golden Fluid Acrylic, Watercolor, Pen and Pitt Artist Pen on Paper, 5x8"

This one is my favorite. It was started before the purple flower but finished after as I added an acrylic background to the watercolor flowers. The flowers were Ivy's request (pink) but she got really mad when I drew them all in before I painted them. She wanted me to go one by one. A micro manager, that one.

It was actually inspired by a picture in a Martha Stewart magazine. I never realized how cute those little button-like buds were.

It took me a while to figure out what I wanted to do with it, but as Id worked on the purple picture I started to get an idea about colors and patterns that would conflict with the pleasing composition of the flowers. I like it. It almost looks like crochet. Lacy.

All of these painting are in my journal. I stopped painting in my journal when I opened my etsy shop, as I wanted better paper for my pictures. But you know what? I really like this anemone one and I might just sell it as prints, anyway.

I've been trying to do more art journaling not for sale so that I could get back to what art has always been for me, but if I do something I like, I can still sell it.

Speaking of selling, I am finally starting to list my backlog of paintings. There are so many, it's one of the reasons I don't feel guilty about artjournaling. I don't "NEED" a new painting in my shop everyday. I have plenty. So if you want to check out the new prints and originals (yes, one of a kinds) then head on over.

Flying Girl Does it Anyway, or Follow Your Bliss 72/100

Flying Girl Does it Anyway, or Follow Your Bliss
72/100 in 100 Creative Challenge.
Golden Fluid Acrylic on paper, 5.5x8.5"

Sometimes things don't turn out as I planned. This painting is different than what was in my head. Sometimes what is in your head doesn't translate into the actual painting.

Sometimes you have to adjust your vision to what is. What is on that page. What supplies you have on hand. What abilities you have. What is in your life. What reality is.

How do we reconcile the dream with the reality?

In my life, I am constantly revisiting that dream, that vision. What is it that I am really focused on? Am I getting stuck on trivial particulars, when it's really a deeper desire I am looking for? Am I expecting it to look a certain way? Am I expecting it to be a certain result when it's really the process that is most important?

Have you sense that I'm not just talking about this painting?

This struggle keeps opening up larger in my life.

This following of dreams while still living and loving the moment. This large vision and small steps. This acceptance of what is.

For instance, in regard to the 100 in 100 days creative challenge... In my dreams, it looks a lot more organized than it is. I am on top of maintaining my blog and keeping up with the other challenge folks (sorry guys). I am painting amazing finished works every single day at the appointed time with good cheer and constant inspiration (haha). I never get pouty. I never drop paintings I don't like. I list to my etsy shop every day. I expand my circle. I get amazing opportunities just because I am. I write a book documenting my journey and helping people along on their own. I hold workshops. The world opens up before my waiting, paint splotched hands.

Hey, listen. Reality is, I also have to live a life while I'm painting, and sometimes that life is tough. I have to take care of my kids 24/7. I have to eat and to sleep. I have to roll with the flow of my days, good or ill. I have to deal with financial stuff and interpersonal stuff and family obligations and my own sometimes rotten moods.

I can't do all that is in my dreams. A lot of those dreams aren't very realistic. And if I could follow my dreams step by step, what would I be giving up? Do I really want to give up those things? I think that achieving your dreams also takes a good deal of work, a good deal of focus, but also a good deal of revisioning. You have to keep focusing in on that dream to make sure it comes clear.

When I think about that dream again, I try to picture what my 100 days will look like at the end.

Will it be organized like a calendar? Will every day be laid out for me to see all the good intentions? Will I be able to check of my accomplishment one to a hundred and know I hit all the marks? Will I have 100 out of 100 like I said I would? Will I get an A?

Is that really why I am doing it? I'll tell you... those numbers get me anxious. If I fail to hit 100 does that mean I fail at my challenge?

Why am I doing it? I am doing it to challenge myself. To grow as an artist. To build up a body of work. To experiment. To develop a creative routine and practice. To build community. To have something to say. To understand what I feel. To explore possibilities. To try new things. To document my journey. To calm my nerves. To live into my ambitions. To show my kids what it's like to be creative. To envision something and then to take small steps towards achieving it. To pass the time. To have some fun. To enjoy myself. To get a kick out of it.

If I think about those goals, I'm doing just fine... although those last three... I think I get so worried about painting count that I get stressed and anxious and forget about the fun part.

I am coming back around to revisioning my goal.

My largest goal, I think, is about life. It's about keeping my center and raising my kids and being true to myself.

Now... if only I could figure out the balance between reaching for my dreams not yet actualized and living a full life right here in the present.

Turning Negatives to Positives

Inspiration board, Home
71/100 in 100 Creative Challenge
mixed media art journal

This is another exercise in making art for my own benefit instead of just my etsy shop. It won't be sold, it's just for me. Just the way I used to do art.

This is actually the endpaper in my journal. When I bought it, I didn't open the book to check out the pages, but when I started it, I realized the first few pages were a little torn and rumpled.

Boo.

So I turned a negative into a positive and collaged it all. I usually leave it blank and fill it with quotes I discover over the course of the journal... but I've been keeping quotes in my organization notebook. So why not?

Another thing this inspiration board does is help me focus on creating the situation I want to create in my life. I want a new home, but not just any home. I want something that fits my needs. I've read elsewhere about how writing a letter to the universe, or some such variation on that theme helps to bring these wishes into reality.

All I can say is it can't hurt... but it can help. I think it's better to focus on the positive, on what you want to create in life than on what you don't have. When you are putting energy into negativity, nots, and absences, you get negativity, nos and loss back. In other words, the universe confirms your energy for you.

So if you put positive thoughts, gratitude and abundance out there, does that mean that the universe will confirm that energy? I could use some of all that.

So focus on the joys that are. The life that is available for me. The world I want to create. And the things I have at my disposal to take steps toward what I want to manifest.

Along those lines, today I was trying to organize my art, put them into little portfolios according to what I want to do with them. Prints, Originals and I had a pile of work I didn't want to sell because I thought they were not done or not my best work. I got out an archival box where I was going to store them, and inside, I found a whole pile of work that is etsy worthy! I had forgotten about it all.

I have SOOOO much work to put up in my shop. I guess I took an etsy hiatus, but never really stopped painting. What an archive.

This is abundance.

Sometimes it feels like a bit too much and I get overwhelmed...

But that's another topic. Focusing on fears, anxieties and overwhelm.

Maybe I should just go back to the positivity.

Butterfly/Believe, 70/100

Butterfly/Believe
70/100 in 100 Creative Challenge
Acrylic on paper, 5x8"

Here is the image that came to my mind.

Life, for me lately, has been kind of like living in a cocoon.

It's been small and constrained, rather dark, confined.... and yet within the bounds of the chrysalis, full of growth, creation and activity.

I have to say that if I thought my life would always be this confined, I would be quite miserable, but because I have faith, I truly believe that this is just a developmental stage and things will open up and take to the sky soon, I can stay where I am, busy with the work of transformation. Busy with the work of growth. Busy with the work of metamorphosis.

Of course, sometimes it is hard to remember that the darkness doesn't last forever.

Sometimes you need a little reminder. I do anyway.

Hence, my butterfly.

Hence, the whispered word.

"believe"

Three Flowers

Joy... Is... Because...
67/100 in 100 days creative Challenge
Acrylic and Pitt Artist Pen on Moleskine Paper, 5x8"

This is a little different from what I've been doing lately. I know I started it when I had extra pink paint. I just painted a whole page with it. Then later started going, without really thinking about it.

I started with the colors and flat paint and it just seemed very bland to me. Then I remembered all the hatch marks I'd been loving while doing the Wreck This Journal challenge. And the floral patterns, and it just grew from there.

In my head, I'd like to turn this into a greeting card with this on the outside and inside "You are You." with a place to fill in 10 things the sender loves about the reciever. I don't know where the idea came from, but I'm kinda liking it. Let's see if I can figure out how to do it all.
Love Is...
68/100 in 100 Days Creative Challenge
Acrylic on Moleskine paper, 5x8"

I did this one the next day. For some reason, it reminds me of dancing. Probably because I painted it during so you think you can dance.

You know, these swirls and patterns used to be the way I doodled. I would do paisleys and mandalas, eyes and flowers, grids and scallops and shells and seawaves. They covered every note book I have owned for the last, oh 20 years. To me they were just doodles, but as I've looked around the web, I've seen people selling what I would have cast off as little nothings. Very interesting.

I thought I'd try incorporating some of what came out of me in the past into my current art. I don't think that anything we have ever done is really wasted. I think the things that really matter come back into our lives when we are ready to appreciate them.
I wonder what kind of card this could make?


Home... Heart...
69/100 in 100 Creative Challenge
Acrylic and pen on Moleskine Paper

This is the last one. I don't feel like it is quite as successful as the other two. I remember I painted it by color lottery... pulling the paint bottles out of my bag and going with whatever colors I picked.

I also finished this much later. When I found these. I painted them while my computer was down and I'd forgotten I'd done them. So when I was looking for a new page to start, there were these three paintings. Woohoo!

It's like Christmas in August.

What things from your past crop up when you don't expect them. How can you turn them into something you can use for today?

Flying Girl After Many Revisionings, or I am made of dreaming

Flying Girl After Many Revisionings, or I am made of dreaming
66/100 in 100 Creative Challenge
Golden Fluid Acrylics, Pitt Artist pens on Paper, 5.5x8.5"

I have been working on this painting for quite some me. If I had finished it when I started it, it would probably be # 45 or something like that. I started out thinking of Klimt. Then I turned it pink. I added squares. I added pink and white dots. Then I turned it pink and sky blue. Then it sat around for days (weeks?) as an unfulfilled idea.

Then yesterday I looked at it and said... well this is not right.

I added gold dots ontop of the pink and white dots. I added purple dots on top of the gold. I outlined everything in purple. I outlined everything in gold. I added teal dots on top of the purple, like peacock feather eyes. I painted the pink dress purple. I painted the sky blue sky into twilight. Blech. I painted the pink and white hair purple. I painted the dress white. I painted the sky storm gray. I added the white thought ribbon. I painted some words in. I painted some blue in the dress ontop of the still wet white. I painted in some black birds flying. I outlined the thought ribbon. I painted out the words in the thought ribbon. I drew in some swirls. I drew in some raindrops. I painted out the birds. I added more swirls. I decided I liked the rough unplanned look of it. I liked the weird color combos. The empty spaces and the random additions.

I have always had a problem with pretty. I think my first urge is to always paint pretty.

And yet I am drawn to rough and slightly ugly. I am drawn to powerful, and primal. Stuff from the gut.

I have a hard time painting ugly though. It almost always feels wrong unless it is pretty. But pretty is shallow to me.

I have been working on finding the balance between pretty and from the gut.

It's very hard.

Maybe the difficulty is within myself. Maybe it's my definition of "pretty" that has made the limits. Maybe I'm showing my neurosis. As a pretty girl, I have always run from being the "pretty girl."

Where do you find your long held ideas are getting in the way of your art? How are you limiting your own creativity and holding yourself back?

Are you afraid to write that novel because someone told you it was a waste of time? That you weren't good enough? That you can't succeed? Are you afraid to push yourself with your paintings because you're "not an artist, you're just messing around"? Are you not getting up on that stage because you aren't the kind of person to be in the center of attention? Are you only painting landscapes because portraits are too hard? Are you only doing acrylics because oils are too intimidating?

Explore what you are scared of. Explore what you are afraid of having people think.

Hey, paint a picture (or write a poem or do a dance) about it.... it couldn't hurt.

Travelings Through the Rainstorm, 64 and 65

Travelings in Green and Gray
64/100 in 100 Creative Challenge
Golden Fluid Acrylic on paper, 6x9"

I like this one. I like the grays. I like the movement of the green. I was inspired by rain and the colors of a downpour.

And this painting was not solo. I painted with this one

Travelings/Rainstorm
65/100 in 100 Creative Challenge
Golden Fluid Acrylic on paper, 6x9"

This one was inspired by what I saw outside my front door in that downpour. It looks like a broad, distant landscape, but really, it's the shadow of a car outside and on the other side of the street, a house with trees behind it.

I like that it doesn't look like that.

Anyway, I"m still discombobulated, so until I get my head and the rest of things at least partly organized, I'm going to keep this short.

Two paintings today. I have another one for tomorrow. Maybe by tomorrow I'll have another yet. I have some things that need to be finished.

This is just to say that I am back on line, but am not together enough yet to really post

My cat likes to do photo shoots. I think the close up the fangs is particularly fetching.

Shout it again!

I'm back online (barring any malfunctions in the new system, and perhaps a switchover to a new modem in a few days) and it feels good.

I am totally behind. I have lots of paintings to post. I don't even know what day it is in 100 in 100 days creative challenge. I don't know how many paintings I have or what numbers they have. I am totally discombobulated. I missed the end of Wreck this Journal and still have journaling to do.

But I think I've figured out some photo things, and I think I can start out life with this new computer with an organized system for my photos. I don't know how I will save all my old photos on the other system. It's such a big project. Blah. But that is not the point.

The point is I am back. And working on getting caught up. Bear with me. I should be able to post some new paintings today.

Stay tuned.

Uh Oh Spaghettios!

Hi people. How ya doin?

I just wanted to jump in here to say that I am down for the count.

Well, my computer is.

:(


I am trying to get it all back up and running, but have no guarantees when that's going to happen.

All is well.

While I work on the tech problems, I am taking this time as a vacation from the internet.

I think maybe it's a good idea that I take a break.

I've already started writing in my journal more and doing some tarot again. I'm reading more. Remembering that I had a life before message boards.

I'm still painting, and trying to keep up with my 100 paintings in 100 days, so I hope you all are too. And I hope you keep up your everyday creating and your writing and your wrecking and your blogging and everything. There will be lots for me to do when I come back.

Can't check the blogs, now, and I'm sure my googlereader is groaning for lack of my attention. I don't want to think about all that I'm going to miss. Sigh. I'll probably be able to check my email occasionally, but not regularly.

Anyway. I could be back on as early as tomorrow, or maybe a week or so from now. Depends on all that damn technology and compatibility and how it all works out. Wish me luck.

I'll miss you.

Maybe I'll break my internet addiction, though, and be able to live a normal life... as soon as I figure out what a normal life is...