Portrait of a lady and her cat

Our cat has been extra cute lately, so I guess that he was on my mind when I painted this. Actually, I don't know why I painted it the way I did. It feels weird not to have a background with a lot of texture and mixed up color. No stencils, stamps, transfers, layers over layers over layers...

Maybe it's not finished.
Maybe I'll add all those things and show you a different painting some other time.
And maybe not....

Isn't it great that we can do whatever we want with our art? I wish we can do the same thing with other things in life... jump in, make a change, and then change it again if it doesn't feel right. It's easier and much less scary to be brave on canvas...

Today I'm loving purple

 

Have a Happy Weekend!

Not pastel

As much as playing with pastels was fun,

jumping back to fat, saturated layers of heavy-body acrylics

felt great too.

Pastel fun

I had a 30% off coupon for Dick Blick. Doesn't that sound good?  Stacks of PanPastels caught my eye. I saw them on blogs, but never in a store. And look at those colors.... they were too yummy to pass by. So I didn't. I chose the most colorful stack.

As soon as I got home I opened my journal and started experimenting. It was fun and fast and relaxing.

I had to use all colors..... and was pretty proud of this next girl (until Hana said that she looks like she's bruised.... hmmmm, I guess blue and purple can give that impression).

I know nothing about pastels, so I just played. I noticed that they are soft, highly pigmented and very 'smooshable'. I wonder how will they look on watercolor paper. Or pastel paper. I guess I'll have to visit the store again :-)

I like

I like wearing my crazy Vibram five-finger shoes everywhere.

They feel amazing whether I walk on sand or relax in my yard or go to the supermarket. It's fun seeing people's reactions to them. So far no one asked me anything, but I saw many surprised faces.

I like learning from other people.

Following the tutorial from DJ Pettit's blog helped me transform a picture of my overgrown garden from this:

to this:

Following another link from this amazing lady enabled me to play with my photos and quickly create fun things like this:

And this:

And then I couldn't stop playing in Photoshop, so I explored the color layers of cabbage and loved it:

I like following links.

I clicked on Misty's link, which led me to this version, which inspired my husband to pick up his guitar after many months of non-playing...

.... which then inspired an evening filled with music, wine and love.  

You just never know where clicking on a link will take you...

I like nut butters.

I don't think I'll ever buy nut butters in a store. It took me less than three minutes to put a pound of walnuts, little maple sirup and cinnamon in the food processor and turn it into a smooth butter. YUM!!! So good for you (if you can stop tasting after one or two spoonfuls).

I like buying art supplies.

Do you know what this is? More about it later....

Staying positive

Staying positive is a choice.

I almost stamped "Staying positive is a chore". Yesterday it felt like that. 

Realizing that my subconscious was about to make the mistake made me laugh.
And made staying positive easier.

This is such a colorful painting, but unfortunately the colors don't want to be pictured/scanned.
No matter what I did the colors look washed out. Weird..... 

I wish you could see it in person. It's much prettier.

Stay positive!

May beauties

Look how big!

Our roses are amazing this year.
There are hundreds of fragrant flowers and I love them all - the ones like the one above that are past their prime, or the tender, water droplet covered beauty bellow.

Happy May!