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Showing posts from 2013

Serendipity & Leading an Altered Life

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The Art Every Day icon was on my blog for most of November, which is also when I last posted. It isn't that I did work on art every day, it's just that, well, I'm in workshop mode. Ever since I left  Random Arts  in September, I've been in a painting frenzy! A two-day workshop with  Misty Mawn  was a great start but I needed more, wanted to expand my brushes... I'm currently taking a course called Serendipity, with the lovely and talented  Juliette Crane ! It's a year-long class with different techniques, supplies and project each month! Highly, highly recommended! I am stuck on September though, wanting to secure a few things, like faces (still!). My daughter told me yesterday that the girls in my paintings aren't smiling and I said happy lips are harder to draw/paint. Last night I drew 30 mouths, thankfully noticing a bit of improvement. I'm going to try to make the deers in the headlights less grim. I hope all my art pals (and everyone else) i

Yay, I'm published!

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Good News: Quotes Illustrated, by the fabulous  Lesley Riley , has been published! I am very honored to be included in this incredible collection (thanks Lesley), so if you're interested it's on Amazon or you can email me for details. The Art Every Day icon was on my blog for the second half of November, which is also when I last posted. It isn't that I did work on art every day, it's just that, well, I'm in workshop mode. Ever since I left  Random Arts  in September, I've been in a painting frenzy! A two-day workshop with  Misty Mawn  was a great start but I needed more, wanted to expand my brushes... Stay tuned for more tomorrow!

Art Every Day Month

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November is Art Every Day Month,  an event hosted by the fabulous Leah Piken Kolidas. AEDM is designed to encourage daily creativity, which I manage most of the time. I do NOT, however, always or even usually post it, so, here is my first attempt at a dog (hahahahaha, or should I say woof)!  Check out the site for a list of participants and consider signing up. Leah states that the rules are made to be broken, meaning there's no penalty (self-imposed or otherwise) for not posting daily. And, it's the 6th but that doesn't matter either, glad when an art pal reminded me that it's better late than never. What's on your table today? Peace and blessings!

two heads are better than one

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After living with the feeling that I'd gone as far as I could with faces, I discovered the next challenge - color. And texture. Incorporating some of my texturing techniques and creating layers - with varying degrees of visibility - opened a whole new channel in this process.  I felt a little bored, maybe frustrated when I finished the series of 45 faces (ha, for me that's a huge series), and it worried me. I fretted, during an illness-flare week I stewed, trying to reason my way through the Big R (resistance, thanks Steven Pressfield ). I caught phrases running through my head like, "I'm not a real artist, I can only get to point X," and "why am I doing this anyway, there are so many more experienced, far more talented face makers out there..." Not quite fast enough to silence them - yet - but I'll bet anyone reading this knows just what I'm talking about - monkey mind! Then I saw a post on a friend's Facebook page an

30 days and 42 faces later

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I had just found my groove... using my photography and writing to create mixed-media pages. Then I went to Random Arts (the coolest place ever) for a painting workshop. Being familiar with paint and loving Saluda seemed like good enough reasons to go.  Like I said, I hadn't painted a single face before. Ever. I suppose it's logical, then, to return and do nothing in the studio except paint faces. Forty-two to be exact. And I'm still not completely sure why I'm doing it, just trusting that there doesn't have to be a solid reason other than the fact that I'm creating and learning. These are posted in order of occurrence. I've felt like a beginner since I started making art. Every time a finish a series using one voice, I switch languages (thanks to Lesley Riley for that metaphor!). But this bender has been one of the biggest surprises of all considering that I've never ever been inspired to paint faces before t

About Face

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They say you can't teach an old dog new tricks. Artists, however, continue learning and growing  until the cows come home. If your ducks are always in row, well, life gets a bit stale. Goofy metaphors aside, I do believe in ditching my creative comfort zone often enough to keep things exciting. And I certainly did just that last weekend!  The ever-fabulous Jane Powell hosted the Drawn to Paint workshop at  Random Arts . You may not think Misty Mawn was the instructor based on my favorite piece (one of the exercises was collage painting - my fave - and I did get a bit carried away), but I do like this guy. Is there any experience more fulfilling than being in the company of talented, funny women who, being fellow creatives, just get it - very few explanations needed?! Not for me. I do wish I could travel more often but given the chronic illness that wipes me out, and my family, it's just not a reality.  If you haven't been in the company o

Thoughts on Friendship

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Invisible Illness (Awareness) Week  has begun! In keeping with the theme, another of my choices is to be my best possible self. And that includes reaching out, sharing, caring, helping when I can... all qualities of being a good friend. There's an old saying, to make a friend you first have to be one. True, but. Sometimes those of us with chronic illness get overlooked, passed by as though not being able to  able make the party means we don't need to get an invitation.  The text I used in this piece of art, called Thoughts on Friendship, is an excerpt from a friendship 'manifesto' I wrote several years ago, after experiencing what I call being tossed from the merry-go-round. When life as I knew it ended and, unlike those with visible injuries and acute illnesses (especially cancer - God forbid), the carousel kept right on turning without me. Don't get me wrong, my family has always been really supportive and I do have good friends. But there were a coup

I Choose To

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The theme of this year's National Chronic Invisible Illness Week is "I Choose To" and one of my choices is to always be emerging from the cocoon, seeking the new and extraordinary, finding and using wings that had been dormant, not settling for a life spent crawling. Well, not all the time. I wake up and wait to see how I'm going to feel for the day and more often than not it's so-so, meaning, no errands, social events or major chores. So, I choose to go to the studio, put on my headphones and blast my fight songs - Rage Against the Machine, Led Zeppelin, Three Days' Grace, Rolling Stones, Tool, well, you get the idea. And then I  gesso a page,  prepare for takeoff... I most always start out with a layer of texture - paper, trim, stuff that will give my page depth. By then I usually have a photograph in mind and I choose a color palette. Hopefully with one or two colors I haven't used recently. That's when I reach high altitude. Paint o

Joyride

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Heading to Saluda tomorrow - one my most favorite home away from homes! The workshop will be fun and amazing (and surprising, I hope, considering I don't do faces:) and I so look forward to the company of other artists, along with the fabulous Jane Powell , proprietress of all things cool, funky, creative and unusual! This piece is another in the series of watercolor pages I've done incorporating my photos - the options are proving to be endless, thankfully! Can't wait to try some new techniques - always a treat. Stay tuned for Invisible Illness Week !! Until then, what's on your table?

you think you've seen it before

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We've been to our place on the lake a hundred times (well, not exactly, but close). I love the familiarity of watching the birds chat at the feeder when it rains and the squirrels aren't draining the food. The way the gravel in the driveway pinches when I take the three steps to the garage to get a cold water, the fawn leaping out of my way when I take the 4-wheeler out for an early morning cruise, and the comforting smallness of the cabin.  Our love for the lake isn't about speeding across the open water for miles, it's about relaxing, exploring and for some of us, fishing. And for me, the only and best exercise possible for anyone suffering from chronic illness -  swimming. A way to work my muscles against the resistance of the water and restore a bit of strength to my aching limbs.  So, we go to the same cove most of the time. If we're early enough there's privacy and it's stunningly beautiful. I never tir

Garden Fairy

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While combing through photos I found the garden fairy that I've used for my avatar since I started blogging from the Altered Attic. The statue is in the front yard of a friend's house around the corner; I saw 'her' on one of my photo walks several years ago.  I started with a cutout of the fairy and a background, and no clue how I was going to merge the two. But since it's 'just watercolor paper' I figured that trying one process/step would lead to the next so I shut my brain off and started playing. Foraging through the far corners of the studio, sifting through supplies and treasures I don't often use proved very useful. The wings are gorgeous lace from my Flights of Fancy stash and I worked on them for quite a while to alter the ivory and blend them with the rest of the colors. I used Golden's pearl mica flake paint and love the texture and the hint of sparkle (so subtle it doesn't show up in the photo:). I continued digging

old photographs, scissors and baby wipes

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This is one of my favorites (so far - ha). Jim and I were wandering around the small town of Cynthiana (Kentucky) and walked by an old store front and noticed these dolls mounted and stuck in a dusty corner, and I took a quick shot.That was back in 1988, maybe 1991, a long time ago to say the least! I'm still a bit stunned by the number of pieces I've been finishing and I love that the detail, texture, quirkiness, weathered or rusty surfaces I loved to photograph then are the way I paint now.   Having a chronic illness prevents me from roaming the countryside in search of interesting subjects. I've tried digital collage - wow that is such an entirely vast new universe - but love getting paint on my hands so for now I'm sticking with acrylics. And reinkers, pan pastels, stencils, fabric, paper scraps, old window screens, wallpaper*, fibers, embossing, resist, beeswax and other stuff in my studio. I'm so fortunate to have been able to collect such a diverse,