Thoughtful Friday 159

"Life is your art.

An open, aware heart is your camera.

A oneness with your world is your film.

Your bright eyes, your easy smile

is your museum."

Ansel Adams

Creative Every Day

I had a fun day recently with a new art friend and we decided to have a go at this little tutorial
We started off with some lining paper to try things out first before we got to using our somewhat expensive watercolour printing paper.

Firstly we spritzed our paper very well with water all over then we used sumi ink and a variety of brushes, sticks etc to make lines and wow, see how the ink fuzzied when it met with the water

Then we used circle shapes (the bottom of jars, cellotape dispensers etc) in various places, all the time bearing in mind that this was going to look like a map

Then it was time to add colour!  Jill, in the tutorial recommended we use Twinkling H20s which I think are now rebranded as Cosmic Shimmers but anyhow they are a water colour paint with sparkle.

I only had a few of these paints but it was oh so relaxing just to fill in the spaces with these colours - this one is using the special watercolour paper.  I haven't decided what I shall use this for yet - could be the covers of a book as Jill suggests or a box or something else.  I am down with a fluey cold just now so lots of time to think about it!!

Thanks for stopping by.

Thoughtful Friday 158

"Perserverance is the name of the 

path that leads from

uncertainty to celebration."

Mary Anne Radmacher

Thoughtful Monday 157

"Love is not love

which alters when it alteration finds."

William Shakespeare

Thoughtful Friday 156

"The field of creativity that exists

within each individual is

freed by moving out of ideas of

wrong-doing or right-doing"

Angeles Arrien

GPP Street Team Challenge 59

Oh how I love Michelle Ward's challenges!  I haven't been able to do the last couple because of time and even now I am just snucking in under the finish line!!  A great idea to do a Ta Da list for 2011.  A chance to look back and be surprised at all your accomplishments.

I have so loved the Strathmore online workshop 1 (with Traci Bautista) that I thought I would do something in that style so picked a background from one of the pages in my A4 size journal which was already painted with acrylics and watercolours and which had one or two light stencils on it.  Then I set to work with some oil pastels, some copic markers

some delicious Indian Ink and a Tippex white out pen and here we are.  Then for the accomplishments themselves I wrote in a red copic marker all round the images (I think I could keep adding to it actually as I keep remembering things even now!!)

A bit of a closer look

I had great fun again doing this.  Thanks so much for the inspiration Michelle!

Thoughtful Monday 155

"The best thing you can do

 is to get very good at being you!"

Starlings in Winter

image courtesy of newsandstar.co.uk

Chunky and noisy,

but with stars in their black feathers,

they spring from the telephone wire

and instantly,

they are acrobats

in the freezing wind.

And now, in the theater of air,

they swing over buildings,

dipping and rising;

they float like one stippled star

that opens,

becomes for a moment fragmented,

then closes again;

and you watch

and you try

but you simply can't imagine

how they do it

with no articulated instruction, no pause

only the silent confirmation

they they are this notable thing,

this wheel of many parts, that can rise and spin

over and over again,

full of gorgeous life.

Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,

even in the leafless winter,

even in the ashy city.

I am thinking now

of grief, and of getting past it;

I feel my boots

trying to leave the ground,

I feel my heart

pumping hard.  I want

to think again of dangerous and noble things.

I want to be light and frolicsome.

I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,

as though I had wings.

Mary Oliver  (From 'Wild Geese")

Thoughtful Friday 154

"Our fears are more numerous than our dangers, 

and we suffer more in our imagination

than in reality" 

Seneca

Finished pieces

A quick look at the finished pieces following Traci Bautista's workshop

I really loved using a correction pen to do the white outlining and doodles and Indian ink for the black

This was workshop 2, using more stencils, watercolour crayons, pencils, ink and allowing the paint to drip drip drip!!  Very freeing!

Creative every day - the weekend!

I am loving the new free Strathmore online workshops and thoroughly enjoyed these doodling techniques from Traci Bautista and especially using the Indian Ink to outline!