Carry your childhood with you

A black & white day...No, not really.... Lots of colors in my day and on my painting.
Thinking about my childhood...
My parents...
The "little me"...

She remembered goose-bumps she felt as a nine-year-old.
- sold -

Re-working the pages

I am nearing the end of my journal and it's fun to look back and turn pages from the beginning. While I enjoy most of them, there are several that I just couldn't stand... at all. There is no rule that you cannot change your journal pages, so that's what I did - took a paintbrush and added more paint. This lady had a kerchief on her head (or something that was supposed to look like it). It looked wrong... I added meaningless colors around her head and found the words that were expressing what she (I) is trying to say and now I'm much happier.

The second one is a total disaster! I can't remember exactly, but I'm pretty sure that I was looking at someone else's work... don't remember whose. I'm sure that I admire the work of that artist, but my version simply doesn't look right (to me).  I was tempted to just gesso her over, but before that decided to express what I feel about her. That was enough. Now I can look at the page and smile - it shows  exactly what I feel.

Friday already? Weekend again? How wonderful!

Need a good laugh?

If you do - take a look at my pitiful garden. Funny? Or sad? I don't have a green thumb obviously... Want another look? Look at this:
And to think that 3-4 months ago I was writing that I want to be a farmer... My garden looked much better then.  My dh is more successful (he takes care of all the other plants). We planted a grape wine this year and were rewarded with grapes! How cool is that? Can you see me in this photo?
We quickly produced wine from our grapes... Not really, but they were a nice compliment to the wine we bought. 
I will not give up... I am going to plant a fall garden and hope that it will look better. It's all a learning process, right?

Weekend pages

It was her night....
I had three things on the list for the weekend.

1. Clean the garage (with help)

2. Go see a movie (Julie&Julia)

3. Play art

Happy to report that I did all three! The garage is smiling at me, the movie was fun, and the art was fun too. I couldn't paint a nose on this poor girl.... tried but it wouldn't work, so I decided to leave it as is and add a laughing bird. Why not? Of course, now I see that my arrows look like whiskers.... so she maybe wanted to be a cat girl. I might go back to her later.

Afternoon journal fun

Yesterday afternoon I wanted to paint outside. To make things easy I just picked a yellow, blue, red, white and umber, two brushes, water and pencil and sat in the afternoon sun. Then I painted with no plan, no reference photo or anything. This is still a new process for me. I used to have to look at something. Now I don't want to (most of the time). I am learning to trust the brush and just allow myself to follow it. So relaxing.Then I heard some unpleasant news and decided to go inside and work on another page. I'm not happy with the writing (on this page and some others). I would like to have a pen/pencil that will not be too visible and yet - more visible than what you see on this page. I tried different things but I just can't get the effect I'm looking for. Maybe I'm asking for too much. Oh well.... looking for it is part of the fun.
Happy weekend!

She hoped

I remember that I painted this sweet face once before... I'll have to look through my journals and find her and see how much she changed. My new love is painting on cardboard. Just ripped sides from a cardboard box. Very fun! For some reason this one needed a "frame", so I stitched it to a piece of watercolor paper and very thick and richly textured art paper. Adding a little glass bird made me happy. And, yes Sharon, I look at it now and see that (yet again) I forgot to sign it (I hear your voice telling me that all the time). Still thinking about Elinor... that's where where the words came from (and also the paper - it is from her stack).

- available on etsy -

Thinking about Elinor

I never had a chance to meet Elinor.
Her son is my neighbor and he said that he knows that his mother would like for me to have her art supplies, so he gave me boxes and boxes filled with 'stuff'. It was very overwhelming, as he was emotional.. and I was too. I thanked him, cooked him a soup and baked him a chocolate cake. I also told him that I would take good care of his mother's things.

I spent the afternoon getting to know Elinor through her choices of art books, looking at the amazing supply of thick, white watercolor paper, touching her brushes... I was even lucky enough to receive several of her paintings.

It made me sad. It also made me look around my own art room, my books and supplies and wonder who will be thinking about me one day. I sat to my journal and painted this lady. For some reason I think she looks better when she's upside down. Don't you?