Art in Bolinas

My husband and I spent Saturday and Sunday on the coast celebrating our 23rd anniversary. I can hardly believe it’s already been 23 years that I married the love of my life, my best friend. But because things haven’t been easy recently, we were really looking forward to some badly needed stress relief in the form of a ocean visit and together time getting reacquainted with the things that made us fall in love all those years ago.

Saturday we left home and drove two hours to Stinson Beach where we were going to spend the night at the quaint Sandpiper Inn. We enjoyed each others company, the sunshine, and always gorgeous Stinson Beach. We got there early and spent almost the entire day on the beach. First we walked and talked for hours and hours. Then had a few drinks, ate dinner and went back to the beach to watch the sunset. What a lovely day it turned out to be!!

Sunday after breakfast and another brief walk on the Stinson beach, we hopped in the car and drove a few miles to Bolinas. We found several art galleries and a wonderful museum but what really WOWed me was the painted beach wall.  It was a free form, ever changing wall of organic art. Hand painted art, stencil and graffiti art and even a face carved to a rock.  Take a look at all the beautiful photos I was able to take with just my IPhone.

This is the Gothic Dolphin:

 

Surfing Frankenstein

Surfing Raquel

Pack It In, Pack It Out

Stone Faced Girl

 

Aren’t they awesome? I came home inspired !!

Adversities – letting go of the fear

The quote is “Adversities do not make a man either weak or strong, but the reveal what he is”….by Faith Forsyte

When you’ve been through a lot bad things in a short period of time, don’t ever ask….’What else can go wrong?” because, ha ha, you’ll soon find out.   

My guy and I have been going through some financial and family adversities recently and I’m sure there are more to follow.  My guy, I’m sure, fully expected me to be freaking out by now as I would have in the past. However, about 8 years ago, when going through a different hardship, I learned that there are some things you can’t do anything about. And if you can’t change it, there is no sense in freaking out. So I, the control freak, learned to let go of the fear of failure, the fear that If *I* didn’t do it it wouldn’t get done. It was a liberating experience.

I’ll bet it has my guy wondering why I’m so calm. And I’m sure he’s wondering if I’m holding it all in and am ready to explode. 

No, I’m really not.

Frankly, I’m still hopeful that things will work out in the end and so I’m not ready to throw in the towel and yank my hair out just yet.  While I hate the gray in it, I’ve grown partial to having my hair on my head.

Plus my art journaling helps.

In the words of Kurt Cobain

 

“Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are.”  Leslie Herger from the Art Journaling ning came up with this great quote as a journaling prompt.

It’s a simplistic face but I like it for the quickie it is.

 

 

So what’s up with you?

Cutting up my credit card

Thanks to Beverly at the http://artjournaling.ning.com/ I am back to art jounaling on a regular basis.  I told myself after Kelly Kilmer’s class that I should be working on my own prompts. That choosing my own was the best way to work on finding “My Style.”  But after the slump I have been in, I decided to get my mojo back any way I could and if it takes someone else’s prompts to do it, so be it.  Some of the prompts strike a cord right away, some take a bit longer.

March 2nd Prompt: Credit cards

This prompt came at a very opportune time.  Chase Bank, who took over after WAMU went belly up, had just sent me a replacement card for the WAMU card. So I had one to cut up for this prompt.

March 3rd & 4th:  Blue and Doodles, respectively. Not much to say about this one, except the background is watercolors instead of my usual acrylic paints. The flowers are colored with watercolor pencils and/or Intense pencils.

March 5th & 6th: Past and Present.

Yes that little girl is me as a child. Since my mom passed, I’ve been going through old photo albums and I found this kid picture of me I wanted to use. Today was the perfect time to try a new method of image transfer.

I used an ink jet transfer method to get the image onto the journal page. after testing, I think I prefer the toner based method more. The water based Ink jet image is easier to mess up. 

The Here and Now side was done with a stenciled image of me that I created a few months ago after taking Mary Ann Moss’ Stencilery class. I’ll probably use it a few more times because I like how it looks. :)

 

I’d love to hear what you do to get out of a creative funk.

Rev’ing up the engine

 

This is the journal challenge prompt for March 1st at Art Journaling Ning site.  The page is based on a photo taken by my dad on one of his many fishing trips. I scanned the photo and enlarged it from it’s original 3.5’ x 5’ size. I tore the edges of the photo and I glued it down to the page. Then used acrylic paint, markers and rubber stamps to finish it off.

Don’t you just love the out of whack perspective on the tracks?  LOL.

Handmade Journal

Today is the start of the March Art Journal Challenge at http://artjournaling.ning.com/ Yesterday, I realized I didn’t have a journal to work in. So what to do? I looked around at Micheal’s for a journal  with watercolor paper but they only carry journals with sketch paper. I like to scrub my pages and I’m always afraid that the sketch paper will tear.

I really didn’t want to drive to Davis to the Borders bookstore to buy a moleskin so next best thing?  Buy a pad of watercolor paper and make one. The last journal I made had only one signature and I wanted to make one with enough pages for 30 days of journaling so I needed 15 pages or between 3 and 5 signatures. I opted for 5 five signatures of 3 pages each.

My book cover was made from illustration board and painted Pink with Brown polka dots.  But I made a newbie mistake when creating the holes for the stitching. One, I was in a hurry and I didn’t let it dry thoroughly. and two, I used a awl instead of a Japanese screw punch to make the holes in the cover. So as I was punching the holes, the edge split. I think the eyelets will keep it in place. If not, oh well, lesson learned. But I like the way it looks.

Another thing I would do differently is use thicker thread.  I used quilting thread so I think it will hold up but I would look nicer with thicker thread.

I found this really wonderful illustration of the Coptic stitch on Youtube. I recommend it highly.

 

Here it is! By the way, the brown dots are scrapbook paper glued on the pink cover.

I love it. Can’t wait to start using it.

I’m Back in the Groove

I set some art goals for the New Year and what happens? I stop creating art regularly. Why? Well, a myriad of reasons, one of which is that my mother passed away last month (not unexpectedly) and I’ve been depressed over it. I’ve wanted to work on some art project but haven’t been able to really motivate myself.  My studio has remained dark and lonely.  It hasn’t helped that it’s been raining almost daily for weeks. 

I finally forced myself out there today and finished two pages. The first is a quickie to get me drawing faces again:

 

The second was inspired by a John Mayer song titled “Who Say’s I Can’t?”

 

What do you do to get out of an art funk?

Coming in 2010

“He will come into
the world roaring
and will promptly take
over our hearts and minds.”

 

 

The above is a sonogram of my first grandchild which, we just learned, will be a beautiful little boy!  Yay!!

One World One Heart winner

Alas the 2010 One World One Heart Event has come to an end.  Can you believe it, this years even had 1105 participants? It was so much fun blog hopping around to meet the participants.  Unfortunately due to some unforeseen circumstances I didn’t get a chance to visit every one this year.  Luckily the blog/participant list will remain posted for a while over at Lisa’s blog: A Whimsical Bohemian I’m going to try and visit a few more before the list is taken down.  Oh and before I forget, my thanks to Lisa for hosting the event again this year.

Anyway, here is the name of the first winner:

Kathy from http://www.calkatthejewelryjunkie.blogspot.com

The second winner is:

Jingle from http://justjingle.blogspot.com/

Kathy will get to choose which prize she wants and Jingle will get the other prize.

Congratulations ladies and thanks for visiting and entering.

I’m ready for my close up Mr. DeVille

Other than the OWOH zentangle journal, I haven’t been inspired to create art in almost two months. Sad I know. I have to get my butt out to the studio soon.  However, ever since I went to New Mexico for Christmas I have been very inspired to make New Mexican food. NM food is different from Mexican food, it’s much hotter. When we were in NM we picked up 10 lbs of hot, chopped green chili. Hot green chili is not something we can get in California. California doesn’t have the climate or the taste for growing the hot variety that New Mexico is known for.  As you may have gathered from an earlier blog post of mine (click here to read), I, or rather we, have an obsession with all things chili.

But alas, this post is not about chili.  In our house you can’t eat chili without making flour tortillas or “torts”.  And in our house, these wonderful little round discs are a source of love, comfort and joy. Not only do we make them as bread to go with our New Mexican food (like normal folks), we make them when we are feeling in need of comfort food. (Like weird folks.) The whole family makes them.

Here is my recipe for the Breshears Family Torts. If you aren’t interested in how to make torts, you must at least scroll to the end of the post for a really cute pic.

Start by preheating a cast iron griddle (or any type of griddle you have) using a medium to high heat. Approximately 7 out 10 on the dial.

2 cups unbleached flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp.  salt
1/3 cup BUTTER FLAVORED Crisco
2/3 cup warm water

Note: For this recipe you must use BUTTER FLAVORED Crisco. It makes a big difference in the taste.

Mix dry ingredients in a large bowl. Add the BUTTER FLAVORED Crisco. (Are you annoyed yet by my use of all caps for BUTTER FLAVORED Crisco?). Use a fork to cut in the shortening.  Next add warm water a little at a time until your dough is soft and not sticky. Knead the dough for a few minutes but do not overwork.

Separate the dough to make 8 even sized balls. Dust each ball with a little flour and, using a rolling pin, roll out the dough so that it forms a round disc.

But don’t worry if the torts don’t come out perfectly round. It’s hard to do so without using a stencil. Ask my family, in the twenty plus years that I have been making them, they rarely come out round. Sometimes they look like alien shapes.  So imagine my surprise when, as I was rolling one out to photograph, I heard it say “I’m ready for my close up Mr. DeVille.” Isn’t it pretty? No? I guess it’s just me.

 

Roll them out so that they are approximately 1/8” thick. A little thicker is good too.

Place your tortilla on the hot griddle. Cook for 1-2 minutes per side. Use a spatula to flip to the other side. When they are done it should have lots of nice brown speckles. as shown below.  Keep an eye on them because they burn quickly when you aren’t used to making them.

By the way, cooking torts does not distort torts into alien shapes. The one shown here is different than the almost perfect one above and more like my usual odd shape. 

Place them in a towel for serving immediately or in aluminum foil to keep them warm for later. You can also use a tortilla warmer.

They are ready to be served! Enjoy!

And last but not least, no discussion of torts is complete without this picture:

 

This is my guy and my girl keeping me company while I made torts back in Aug 1989. They used to steal bit of dough to make eye patches and mustaches. It was so funny. I hope she doesn’t kill me for showing it to you all.

Thanks for reading.