A cart full of happy

 For the last three months my paintings were displayed at a huge salon/gallery in Novato, CA. I loved seeing them in "open space", displayed on big walls and nicely decorated rooms. Today I went to pick up the check for sold paintings, and get the rest of them home. This is how I transported them to the car - it was a cart filled with happy colors.  

 As much as I wish that they all went to new homes,  I must say I was also happy to see them. Still, I don't have enough place to store them, so I will probably start listing them on etsy tomorrow. 

Random Tuesday Stuff

Burst of color in my mailbox! Janet thought that I might need some happy colors to cheer me up and sent me this postcard. How wonderful is that? I thought it would look good posed on my flowers, but they are so fluorescent that the bright colors of the postcard just melt in.

So I took another picture where it shines in full glory. Thank you Janet, I absolutely LOVE it!

I wanted to show you how I color coordinate things in my life.... I make smoothies the color of Bart's eyes. This lovely artist (and author to soon to be published book) gave me a link to this woman several months ago, and I can't stop trying almost everything she posts. This smoothie could be my favorite desert in the future. To me it tastes better than chocolate... which is very high praise. (BTW, if you are interested to know what is Bart looking at - it's Downtown Abbey. I am lucky to have resisted it up to now, because now I can watch all the episodes at once (free on Amazon Prime). I'm completely enamored with it...)

These are snippets of the first 24"x36" painting I started in months. Do I still know how to paint? We'll see. I'm fighting the gremlins and constantly urging myself to continue... that this is just the beginning and warmup, that they will start looking less like aliens and more like something else as I move on.

And for the end, another thing that falls into random Tuesday stuff - my husband "the Wizard" (seen here sitting under a light fixture in a restaurant) just sent me a link to some music that he knew I would love. Maybe you'll love it to. Click HERE if you want to hear it.

HAPPY TUESDAY!

101 BIRDS - Painting #25

Day later

Several short hours after I posted my journal page yesterday, the mean virus finally caught me... and promptly sucked all of my energy. So don't bother to try the concoction, because obviously no amount of vitamin C and ginger could help (which makes me for some reason angry). Here is a random picture I snapped last night... he can't make me tea, but just looking at him snuggled with his toy makes comforts me.

Journaling with iPad mini

No matter how busy my days are, I am still having fun making daily pages on my iPad mini. Sometimes I spend only a minute on a page, and some days I spend much more time. Like yesterday...

I wasn't feeling the best, so I snuggled with my iPad and started drawing in app named Procreate.

I love that it has levels that enable me to move things around, add a background, remove it, put it back again etc. without starting everything from the beginning. You can see the progression of the drawing (painting?).

It is difficult to stop, as you can continue working for days, so I usually stop when I know I don't have too much time left to play. After that, there is another big decision to make - do I want to put my painting through one of many photo apps, and if I do - what kind of effect I want to use? The following nine versions were done in a matter of minutes. The possibilities are limitless, so I try to make a quick decision.  

This time I decided that I like my painting as is, and left it that way. I uploaded it to Noteshelf, which is  what I chose to be my journaling app. I typed in the recipe, journaled by writing with a stylus (love that!), doodled a bit and called it finished.

I hope that no viruses are chasing you, but if they are - try the recipe. It worked magic for me (and it's pretty tasty). xo

A fun technique to try

I usually don't have too much time for art on weekends, but try to sneak something in when I can. This is something I did on Sunday in less than an hour. I used my very inexpensive sumi ink and a brush, and on regular office paper very quickly made many sketches of birds. 

Working this fast and with a brush that I can't really control allows wonderful, imperfect characters to show up. And it is deeply relaxing, which for me is always a plus.

Now I have many drawings to play with. I chose a random one to add to my journal. Since the paper is thin, I simply glued it on - not worrying about the edges showing, and then painted over it and around.

As silly as it is, I really love this face. I don't think I would have ever done it if I tried a more careful approach with my brush. 

I wanted to see if the ink will transfer - and it did! You can still see some paper fuzzies on the image bellow, but I was happy how quickly and how well it transfered to an already textured and painted background. 

So there it is... something quick and fast to try in your art journal.

I hope you'll give it a try.

An armful of happy

"I saw these beautiful sunflowers and thought of you..."

What a way to steal a heart that's already been his for ages :-)

101 BIRDS - Painting #24

Back to my bird series... Will I make it to 101 this year?

February Free Collage Sheet

 I'm a bit late, but better late than never. Here is my collage sheet for February - free for you to download from the Printables tab (on the top of the blog). Just last month I said that I will try to create a collage kit each month... and I already didn't do it. At least I am keeping with the free sheet :)

The way I chose to use the image from this collage sheet is as a transfer in my journal. 

 I added some collage bits and paint, and now the page is ready for me to write. 

When will that happen, nobody knows as I feel more in the mood to play than write most of the time.

Let me know if you use it how it turned out. xo