Feeling Exposed!

 

I joined Facebook a few years ago and didn’t do much with it until recently.  Being separated by distance, my art life is not usually shared with my family and my family life is usually not shared on my art site.   Lately the two have been converging and it feels weird. All of a sudden friends and family are seeing my art and my art friends are seeing my family conversations and I’m feeling a little exposed.  

But I do enjoy Facebook and if you’d like me to add you as a friend, I’ll do it if I know your Facebook name. 

New Art

This was a little something I worked on for the 30 day challenge.  This is 9 x 12 on Canvas board.  The background is scrapbook paper.  The girl is painted with colored pencils and acrylics.  The flower is a 3-D silk flower and brad glued on to the image.   I want to live in that castle but I’d settle for having hair that looked this good. :)  I’m easy. 

I started another abstract but it's still sitting on my studio easel half finished. Maybe tomorrow night. 

More for the 30 day Challenge

 

 

The above are two ATC’s I made for both the 30 day challenge and a swap at ATC’s for all.

 

I think this is a unfinished.  I may come back to it later.

How to survive a bad news

 

These past 2 weeks have been very hard to deal with.  First we find out that my mother’s breast cancer may have returned and that it might include skin cancer from the radiation treatment from the last time she had it.  I don’t yet know the extent of the treatment she will go though because she has limited mobility and she doesn’t want radiation again.  I don’t blame her.  Unfortunately, she lives in New Mexico while I’m in California and, for reasons you’ll read in the next paragraph, I won’t be able to be with her as much as I should be and I feel terrible about that.

Now if that wasn’t bad enough, I learned today that due to the economy my husband will probably be taking a 20% pay cut to help cut costs and keep the company running.  He asked me what I thought about that and what can you say and stay supportive except that 80 %  is better than nothing.  To myself I say, that pay cut is going to put a real crimp in my being able to visit my mom.  This just couldn’t come at a worse time.  And yes I still blame Bush !!

So how have I been coping? Thanks to Gary Reef’s 30 day challenge, creating art has really helped me maintain some semblance of  calm.  I lose myself in painting for a few hours at a time. It’s helped tremendously. 

May 11 th

May 12th (and 13th and 14th actually)

May 13 th

May 14 th

This painting started out as some thing entirely different and morphed into some thing that helped me deal with my own sense of mortality.  It has a lonely, sad feel to me.

I wish I could post these more often but since my scanner has been on the fritz, I have to photograph them and then edit them and it’s taking more time than I have right now.   I need a scanner and I better get it before that pay cut goes into effect. I cheap one is all I need for now. 

Thanks for reading.

More from the 30 Day Challenge

Continuing on in the 30 day challenge:

May 5th: Copper Swirls 12 x 12 on wood

There is something about copper that calls to me.  Aged copper especially. There is a gorgeous building in Sacramento that has a copper roof with a verdigris patina that I love to look at every time I drive by.  This painting reminds me of that roof. OK so the roof doesn’t have swirls….. what can I say? :)

 

May 6th:  Silver Love (for lack of a better name) 6 X6 canvas

The silver paint bubbled when I tried to blow dry it and I loved how it looked.

 

May 7th – In My Happy Place  12 X 9 Canvas Board.

The flower is 3-D paper flower that is replica of the one directly behind it on the canvas board.  My husband really loves this one.  He’s directed me to frame it!! He’s such a sweetie.

Trying to get out of my funk

I’m back to blogging after two weeks away.  As you know from my last post, I went to NM two weeks ago to visit my girl and her husband.  We had a really fun time and I really hated to leave.  If I hadn’t also missed my husband while I was gone, I might have extended my stay.  But since I’ve been back, I’ve been in a funk.  I felt like my heart is split in two, one part here in Cali with my husband and the other in NM with my girl.  sigh…..

It’s helped that we have spent our weekends working on the bedroom/bathroom remodel.  We now have two walls up, complete with sheetrock and another is almost stripped away so we can add the third.  (I meant to add some pictures today but they are still in the camera.) And yesterday we bought the most beautiful frosted glass door for the bathroom.  It’s gorgeous!!

I also signed up for the 30 Day Art Challenge on Gary Reef’s Mixed Media Arts site.  It started May 1st and the idea is to complete one piece per day. and we are not supposed to go back to the piece another day to finish it.

I’ve decided that the main focus for the 30 days will on abstract art.  I may need to vary from that sometime in the 30 days, as I have to make 3 ATCs before the end of the month, but so far I’m staying on track.   Now I’ve never created abstract art before but  I thought I’d give it a shot. As you’ll see in a bit, it’s quite a stretch for me.  Not sure I’ll get the hand of it but if  one turns out good I’ll be happy.  …..OK don’t laugh ( well at least not so loud that I’ll hear you), here is

May 1st:

May 2nd:  Falling into place

May 3rd: Going in Circles

 

How do you stay inspired?

Oh my gosh, I almost forgot

My dear friend, Aimeslee of Paper Paisleys, nominated me for the Kreative Blogger award on March 31st and I forgot to thank her for the honor and I also forgot to follow the rules of the award.  I meant to do this a long time ago and some how time just got away from me and it slipped my mind.

The rules governing this award are as follows:
List 7 things about myself:

1. Even at my age I am still a jeans and tee-shirt kind of woman.
2. My favorite dessert is cheesecake.
3. Spumoni ice cream is one of my favorites.
4. I love Greek food, especially Gyros.
5. Last summer we grew eggplant and we had so much I had to freeze it.  I have had to learn so many new ways to make so we don’t get bored. This is one of my favorites:  Melitzanosalata Agioritiki (Athenian Eggplant Salad)
6. I drive a red Mustang convertible.
7. I used to own a red Triumph convertible that I named Scarlet. I loved that car.

Here are a few bloggers I think deserve this award:

Adagio - http://adagiobeadcrafters.blogspot.com/

Giggles - http://happytiler.blogspot.com/

Connie -  http://alteredroute.blogspot.com/

Renee - http://circlingmyhead.blogspot.com/

Kim - http://kimsartbythesea.blogspot.com/

Jean Marie Lemire - http://jeanmarielemire.blogspot.com/

 

Be sure to visit them as well as Aimeslee at Paper Paisleys

Painted Flower

 

This is one of the paintings I’ve been working on.  I really like how it turned out.  I’m a little sad that the image doesn’t do it justice.  My scanner is on the fritz and camera phone was a very poor second choice.   I couldn’t adjust the color properly to make it look like the actual painting. 

I’m flying tomorrow  to visit my girl, her husband and my mom in New Mexico.  I can’t wait to see them, especially my girl.  Even though I talk to her 4-5 times a week by phone I still  miss seeing her beautiful face.  Unfortunately, it will be a short trip. I’ll be back on Monday morning.

Creativity Where I Can Find It or What I Did Last Weekend

And again I haven’t had much time to finish any art work this week.  My creativity had taken on a much larger project.  What am I doing?  That really should read ‘What are we doing?"  My guy and I have been planning a bedroom/bathroom remodel since we moved to this house almost three years ago.  And for one reason or another the remodel has off and on and off again.  The biggest reason is the economy and believe me when I say we knew the problems with the economy were coming even before it was officially called an economic downturn.  So after receiving several $50,ooo estimates for the project we decided that it wasn’t a good time to go forward with it. 

However, I knew that if we really wanted to, the two of us could build it ourselves (excluding the plumbing, that we’ll have to hire out).  But it took quite a while convince my guy that we should do the bulk of the work.  He kept telling me that he was too old to be doing that kind if stuff. Please, he’s only 50… and I’ve got a few years on him and I think we can do it if we set my mind to it.  After all, the two of us remodeled the kitchen in our last house and it turned out beautifully.

What really helped my case is that my guy’s older sister (she’s my age) and her husband built their own house with the help of their daughters (no sons to help). Literally, built their own house, walls and everything and they did it in a year.  

Mind you this project has been planned out for a while now. We have our drawings, and above older sisters husband who is an architect has been here to give us lots of advice and it  has been discussed to death.  So we finally decided that we really needed the closets, badly, and that’s where we would start. and we would do it slowly so as not to kill ourselves.  So three weekends ago we went out and bought lumber, hauled it upstairs and let it dry for two weeks.

Then last weekend we started. we cut the wood and framed out three walls of our closet.  Here is a picture:

 

Do you see the walls behind the framing?  This weekend we will be putting up drywall so when we knock those walls down we won’t get a lot dust in the bedroom. 

My closet will be on the left and my guys will be on the right side.  They will each have high ceilings for the extra storage. The break between the framing will be a hallway that will eventually lead to the bathroom.   The inside will be made up of Ikea closet units. I can’t wait because ever since we ripped out the bedroom closet (it used to be behind the white door on the right), we have clothes in all the closets in the house. I can’t find anything.

My advice to anyone considering doing something like this?  Get a framing nailer.  It saved us and each section of the wall was put together in ten minutes. 

Well, I haven’t been totally art free but I just don’t have anything finished to show you. I am working on two paintings. One is a floral inspired by Georgia O’Keefe due to the Gray Reef ning site. And the other is the portrait I’ve talked about before. When I get done with the floral, I’ll post it.

Saints and Sinners

The Saint, on 6” x 6” canvas

Here’s a project I’ve been working on for a little while.  It’s of Saint Anne, the patron saint of seamstresses and tailors.  The background papers are sewing pattern paper and a page from a book that just happened to be about sewing.  That was serendipity as the book itself was not about sewing and the page was the first one I opened to when I picked up the book.  

The background color was a blend of several colors from my pastel box.  I really love using them for backgrounds because they blend so well.  I used Krylon Fixative to set the colors.

I found the image of St Anne and printed it on my laser printer and transferred it to the canvas using the Chartpak blender pen I wrote about earlier.  I enhanced the color using acrylics and colored pencils.

The scroll at the top is a rub on and the flower is from scrapbook paper.

 

The Sinners:

In my last post I wrote that we were going to Stinson beach for the weekend.  We did and had a wonderful time.  We walked on the beach for hours just talking and laughing and getting sunburned noses.  We enjoyed every minute of our time there.  My husband is such a doll…dreamy sigh. 

Here’s the sinner part: While we were sitting outside a local restaurant waiting to be called for dinner we saw a big SUV pull out of it’s parking space and smack right into a Mercedes car parked on the street.  As he pulled forward after hitting the car, there was a huge dent on the car door.  OUCH!  However, when the guy pulled forward he acted like he hadn’t hit the car.  I could tell he didn’t  intend to leave a note or offer to pay the car owner for the damage he caused. 

I didn’t want to confront the guy but I couldn’t let it go either. I decided that the best thing to do was give our name to the restaurant hostess in case the car owner came looking for information.  The hostess went out and got the license plate number of the guy who did the damage and left a note on the car after the SUV driver left.  I don’t know what happened as the car owner hasn’t called. But I felt better after leaving our number as witnesses.   Years ago I had a similar thing happen to my car but I was lucky because the guy who hit my car left a note for me.  I just wish these guys had manned up and left the note themselves.