Scavenger Hunt and Online Retreat

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100 Mandalas, art journal, gratitude, humor, Kathryn Costa, poetry, Retreat

This week and next week I am participating in an online retreat with Kathryn Costa of 100 Mandalas. I am really enjoying it very much and she has lots of fun activities intended to help participants live an Inspired Year. I feel like I am off to a really good start. It is not too late to sign up if you are interested! We are not yet halfway through.

These journal pages have a couple of layers to them. The first layer I did this morning. It is a practice called “morning pages” that Kathryn encountered from another artist whose name I cannot recall. The idea is that you write 3 pages of notebook paper full of whatever, but you have to write 3 pages. I figure this book is much larger than a notebooks and I tried to write kind of small. It is only day 1 of this practice, but I really found that I enjoyed it and it made an interesting background for the rest of the stuff.

The next layer is the mandala that I created for the February meeting of the coloring club. Here is my sketch and color auditions of a torus mandala full of love. The colored image is from one of the flyers for our club. We will meet February 4 & 18th. One of the participants in the online retreat used Tim Holtz’s Distress Markers for one of her mandalas and I really loved how it looked so I have ordered some for next month’s coloring club meeting. So excited!

The top layer is from an activity from earlier in the week. Kathryn directed us to go through magazines and cut out words and phrases that spoke to us and then see if there were groups or topics that arose from these selections. The left hand page is my more serious groups and they seemed to have some synergy. They have to do with social justice and race issues in our country, my health problems, working together, and the healing benefits of coloring. I like the juxtaposition of the issues of people of color with the current fad of coloring – it seems like there might be some healing that can happen here – I will need to think on this one some more.

The right hand page is a little bit more silly. I love the way found phrases come together to make “poetry” and it usually tickles my funny bone. Some combinations that I like on this page are:

Serendipity     Answering your questions

The promise of      Wonderful Wacky Women

The carefully crafted    artists in the village   work wonders

Get a move on!   add a little zip   Pops of color and pattern    In bloom

I liked putting “Seize the Moment” next to the dates for coloring club. 🙂

And I had to include “Need Warmth without overheating?” As a woman of a certain age this has become a VERY IMPORTANT TOPIC. Unfortunately, I did not buy the product that was associated with this phrase.

And what collage of mine would be complete without a cat so I included “I love cats” which indeed I do.

What tickled your funny bone today?

Thriving Gratitude

Tags

100 Mandalas, art journal, Art Journal Every Day, gratitude, zentangle

I really had fun assembling these gratitude journal pages and I hope they bring you some joy, too!

I already posted the watercolor experiments that turned into the “Thrive” page. That may be my word for the year. I’m really trying to make the most of my days. Both of these pages started with napkins from meaningful events. My younger son had a birthday last week and the other was a beautiful napkin that was part of a Buddhist teachings group I go to when I can. The elephant and the tree represent a story about the four friends that our teacher was talking about. It is about helping and being helped. It is fitting as I cannot drive myself much, especially at night and my husband and friends have been so generous with me. The “moon” behind the trees is a page of mandalas that I drew for a new coloring page. My vision has been so much better lately and I have been drawing so happily! When I was mixing the paint for the tree and the elephant I decided to use the layered acrylic paint from my pallet as an embellishment on the page. The black gesso background really resonates for me during the winter. It has a lot to do with finding delight in the darkness of winter.

Have a beautiful day!

Winter Flowers

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art journal, feather, flowers, paper flowers, watercolor, Watercolor pencils

Just messing around last night and today. This will go into my gratitude journal.

 

RIP David Bowie & Misc. Gratitude

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Altered book, art, art journal, collage, gratitude, watercolor, zentangle

These journal pages include a lot of sketches and practice work. Also, I realized I had not marked the new year and I thought I should get that in here. I usually start a new journal with a new year, but I’m really loving this book that I am altering and I plan to stick with it until I’m out of pages. The photographs of Andreas Feininger are so gorgeous. It is lovely to let bits and pieces show through as I did on these pages or to allow the picture to help enhance my journaling as on this page layout from September.

This week marked the passing of David Bowie and Alan Rickman (Snape from the Harry Potter movies). Both were fabulous artists and I am sorry for their passing. What a wonderful blessing though to have lived at the same time as they did! I was fortunate enough to join my sister, Janine, to see David Bowie on the Glass Spider tour. We were somewhat disappointed because we were great fans of his earlier work, but I’m so glad we got to share the experience. Of course our favorite song was “Janine.” We spent many happy hours singing and dancing to Ziggy Stardust and his other albums.

In my previous post you saw the product of my thank you cards and this shows some of the progress. I really enjoyed painting the old book pages with watercolors. I used my Dr. Ph Martin’s watercolors first on wet pages.  I was inspired by some of the art I saw at the Eco Squared Exhibit opening.

They dried a lot lighter than I wanted so I went in with my Crayola watercolors to make a wall of color on each page.

I am really happy with the way the colors blended and pooled. These old pages really soak up a lot of water and are kind of fragile. Fortunately I have a lot of pages to keep experimenting on. I really loved how the thank you cards turned out when I cut out the letters.  I used a bunch of the scraps on this gratitude journal page layout. I also included a technique that I saw at the Eco Squared show. One of the artists had cut out areas of paper to let text or musical notations to show through. I, of course, had to add a layer (or 2) of color in my interpretation.

I was so happy when I saw that I could have the words “drawing” and “circle” show though the cut parts. I was going to do some illustration on top, but I really like how it turned out with a simpler design.

My latest mandala is the antithesis of simple design. My vision has been good enough that I was able to make the kind of mandala I really love to draw – super fancy.

Have a beautiful day!

 

Sharing gratitude

Tags

cards, collage, gratitude, Thank you

Here are some Thank You cards I made tonight for some of my wonderful friends. I did some mono-printing on a gelli plate on the map for the top one. I played with watercolors on a page from a >100 year old copy of the Pilgrim’s Progress for the bottom card.

Say yes to thriving

Tags

altered art, Altered book, art journal, gratitude, gratitude journal, Journal 52, Maya Angelou, quotes

I have been working in my journal, even if I haven’t been posting. Here are 2 page layouts that represent the beginning of the year. I’m also rejoining the Journal 52 community and the prompt to say “yes” to something.

This layout is composed of some of the practice pieces from the new art I made for the exhibit I have been talking about in my recent posts. I’m trying to keep my mission in mind as I am really struggling with depression lately. My gratitude journal is an important piece of my defense against depression. This quote of Maya Angelou has already helped me through some difficult days and I hope to live up to it this year. Thinking about how I can thrive really keeps my mind occupied in a healthy way. Expressing gratitude for my husband and friends, music and books, and the beauty that I can put on a page really help me turn a day around. I’m still having really dark moments, but playing with paint and paper and loved ones keeps helping me say yes to the wonders of life. Having good enough vision to really make all kinds of art is such a marvelous boost!

I am doing well enough, health-wise, to get back to yoga classes and I am SO grateful for that. There are a lot of layers of meaning in these 2 pages and not as much careful design on the left hand page. The most important component is the things that went into the making of my husband’s birthday card. I can not express how grateful I am for his love and kindness. He is the most generous soul I have ever known and I am so lucky to share my path through this life with him.

The Clean Rinse by Naomi Shihab Nye

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Hawaii, Naomi Shihab Nye, photograph, poetry, quotes, The Clean Rinse

I read this poem today. I really love it. I hope you enjoy it too.

EcoSquared Art Show January 2016

hatcharthouse

EcoSquared is a SMALL WORKS art show, with an upcycling theme along with affordable pricing. Every piece is under $200 and all artwork is sized between 4″sq. to 12″sq. and of course, incorporates upcycled materials. Thus, EcoSquared. The show will run for the month of January.
As always, Hatch only represents Wisconsin based artists with the majority being from the Madison area.
The artist reception will be Friday, January 8th from 6-9pm. Most artists will be in attendance to talk about their work and refreshments will be served. Check out the Facebook event page here: https://www.facebook.com/events/165167217178992/

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New Art in Exhibit!

Tags

collage, Eco Squared, Hatch Art House, mandalas, Maya Angelou, quotes, Seed of Life, upcycled art, upcycling

I finished 2 more pieces for the Eco Squared exhibit. One has a quote that shares a place of prominence for this year with the Wordsworth quote in my last post.

“My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.” Maya Angelou

Seed of life mandala

For sale and on exhibit at Hatch Art House in Madison WI for the month of January.

Welcome to 2016

Tags

Begin, beginnings, Christmas lights, crochet, photograph, snowflakes, Wordsworth