Just pictures and a tiny amount of words

It is so difficult being an adult sometimes....

Today I am treating myself with tenderness, nature, good company and honest art.

xo

101 BIRDS - Painting #28

My art journal... after a long pause

Hello! I'm watching you!

Not really. The eyes belong to a face that's in my art journal.

I haven't played in my journal in months, but now I feel the need again. Out came all the toys - paints, pens, collage sheets, watercolors, pogo printer (love it!) etc. etc.

I hope to make journaling a daily habit again. But before that I really need to clean and reorganize my studio, and make it a welcoming place... Right now it is difficult to find a spot to journal and that is very frustrating.

By the way, did you know that if you ever considered buying one of my collage sheets you have to have a pretty deep pocket to afford them? Look at the price I put on this kit:

Not bad for three sheets, right? All joking aside, I am glad that I noticed the mistake and corrected it quickly, because it would have been really embarrassing to hear what people think of that price. Do you know that etsy people enabled immediate download for files, so now it is easy to play, no more waiting for sellers and emails and attachments. I think that's great for sellers and buyers (I am still working on updating all of my listings).

Hope that you are doing something fun this weekend!

xoxo

Love your inner bunny

 Do you ever feel like the weight of the world is on your shoulders? That everyone you know is telling you their worries and sad stories because they know you will understand? And sometimes it overflows, it simply becomes too much...

I recently woke up in a daze, shaking and whispering nonsense... completely traumatizing my poor husband.  It took me a while to understand what is happening, and I finally managed to tell him. I was already in my safe spot when I could whisper in his ear that I feel like a white bunny, scared out of it's mind, shivering but unable to move or do anything.  Surrounded by warmth, love and understanding soon I felt better, but the echo of the feeling remained.

Later in the day, as I was driving, I had a strong picture in my head... I knew exactly what I want to do and couldn't wait to start. As soon as I came home, I opened a package of paper clay, found a square piece of wood and let it flow out. I am so happy with the result! It shows exactly what I was feeling, and the love that somehow always cures everything. I love my bunny! 

Interesting thing is that as soon as I woke and saw the image of the bunny in my mind, I immediately decided to treat myself. Not to judge whether I should be stronger, or process things differently... I just thought of a scared animal and with how much kindness and gentleness we approach it, and decided that it is the same way we should treat ourselves. So I did. And maybe some of you are stressed out and overwhelmed and need to do the same thing, so that's why I'm sharing. Love your inner bunny, be gentle and caring and soon it will be better.

By the way, I did everything on this painting except paint the eye. I knew that it is a very important part of what I wanted to express and wasn't sure how to go about it. Lucky for me, my daughter is fearless and talented. I simply said what I wanted, and she painted it exactly the way I could only imagine (thank you Hana). 

Happy June!

Cuteness in my journal

A line of sweet characters lives in my journal. Ok - the last one on the right is not cute at all and I don't like her and she might quietly disappear into the night, but the other three are sweet enough to make me smile.

I love taking online workshops! As there are more and more of them, I became very picky. But I still do it because I am curious and because they make me feel like I'm not alone in my studio. I adore watching how others paint and how their magic happens.

"Paint Happy" - a workshop by The Secret Hermit (aka Micki Wilde) made me really happy. It is probably one of the best workshops I ever had. It made me want to paint - you know the feeling when you can't wait to wake up in the morning so you can paint? That's pretty much how I felt.

I actually did many of the exercises she shows. One of them is a combination of words and paint, but in way that I have never seen before. The process was really healing so I plan to use often.

So that's mostly what I've been doing this week. I made something less cheerful too, but I will leave it for a separate post. It's Friday and almost June! Happy weekend!

Giveaway winner

Thank you for participating in the giveaway! I didn't want to use the random.org this time to pick the winner, so I made individual cards and quickly sketched different illustrations on them. I can't tell you how much I enjoyed it! I put a time limit to it - 60 min, so there was no way to over-think anything. When I finished, I saw that something wasn't quite right with the numbers... I guess I can sketch, but I can't count :-) That didn't worry me, because my plan was to pull a card from a bowl, so numbers were not even needed.

  I placed the cards in the lovely fabric pouch Sharon made for me, mixed them well and pulled out one, as you will see in the video (the video doesn't show in Google Reader, but you can see it on the blog).

Congratulations Linda! I hope that you will enjoy the book as much as I do :-)

Thank you, once again, to all the participated!

Playing with paint

It is very difficult to read a book about techniques in acrylics and not pull out the brushes and play. My work looks nothing like the work of Julie or Chris Cozen, which is a good thing, as it would be really sad if we all made copies of each other, but I used many of the techniques they describe, and smashed them all together in my three paintings. As you can see - I stayed in my comfort zone with the theme :-)

There are two more days to sign for the giveaway! If you didn't already - go to the previous post and leave a comment. I'll be back on Friday to announce the winner!

These three paintings are listed in my etsy shop - worth seeing even if only to laugh at the name I gave them.  I admire the people that find or think of meaningful names for their paintings. I am (obviously) not one of them :-)