Trying different things

I was playing with different materials over the weekend, doing the assignments for Misty Mawn's portrait workshop. This one is painted only with inks, white acrylic paint and a black pencil. I completely overdid it and lost most of the color, but it was a fun thing to do and it looks different than my usual colorful stuff. 

The following one scares me  bit.... It's obvious that I didn't have much control over her, because if I did I would not leave her looking so serious (or angry or scary). I finger-painted her face with Shiva paintsticks. As I painted the telephone rang at least 3 times, so I left color fingerprints on it, on the remote control too... very messy. It was very interesting... the paint under your fingers just calls you to keep on going, adding, rubbing.... fun. Now if I would only have time to practice some more with the paintsticks, maybe the face would turn out the way I want it.

I was pretty comfortable with the last exercise - big girls' crayons and white paint. I've did that many times before, so I just relaxed and painted (while watching NCIS rerun again... I'm addicted). This girl looks familiar. I was actually surprised when I finished painting, and went through my old journals to see if I painted her before, but I couldn't find her.

There is one exercise left... she made it look easy, but I know it will be challenging for me. I'll show it if I decide to try.

Sun and radishes, bye-bye January

I'm just dropping by to say HI and to show you the wonderful weather we had this weekend. After a lot of rain, sun decided to smile on us again. I 'harvested' radishes from my garden. Notice how normal they look on the top photo, and then see how tiny they really are. Funny! Good thing we don't depend on my little garden to feed us...

Bye bye January, you went too fast....

How I painted the journal page from the previous post

Trying to learn how to make videos, figure out the program... not going really well.... it took me many hours to get the 3.5 minutes shown here. But I'm getting there. I tried (successfully) adding words that explain what am I doing. Moving forward, there's so much more to learn. xo

Journaling without words

Soooo..... I sat in front of my journal without an idea of what I wanted to paint. I added several pieces of masking tape and thin paper scraps left from a transfer from a previous painting. Then I though about the weather and how it is making everything very gray. I picked up some raw umber and payne's gray, mixed them with white and started pulling the brush over the spread. A funny "Friends" rerun was playing on the laptop beside me.

Then these two showed up.

It didn't take me long to understand that I painted myself and my daughter... Not that we look anything like the painted girls; it was more about the closeness between them and the sad faces. Probably my wish to still see her with pigtails and pink flowers and not as a teenager that is sweet but sometimes wears me out  completely (like just before I painted this).

"I'll do it later." "Why do I have to do it now?" "Why can't you wait 10 minutes?"

Looooong discussions about why things should be done before we get lost in the computer fun or something similar.... very loooooong discussions, a million and one 'fact' why she is right and I'm unreasonable. Exhausting. Can't she just "do it" and make my life easier?

It's a phase, right? Part of growing up? For both of us, I think.

Painting exercises in my journal

Another one

I might be hooked to making videos now... I think I stopped being shy very fast :-)

Thank you for the encouraging comments. They really helped.
Here's another one.

My first video

I sent an email to my friend Sharon just minutes ago. This is what I wrote:

"OK. I did it.

I can't believe I did it.

I don't know how I feel about it.

......................................................

Me showing the world my messy table and how I paint. yikes.

Did I tell you I didn't have good grades in art in school? And wanted to hide my paintings from everyone....

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I think I'll reward myself with coffee now.

Me on youtube.

Weird."

That's exactly how I feel. Out of my comfort zone. That is good.... it's good to open up.

The painting is available here.