8-25-16 ~ 365 Days of Spirit Art Journaling ~ Day 7 ~ Mindfulness

8-24-16 ~ 365 Days of Spirit Art Journaling ~ Day 6 ~ Let My Ego Go

8-23-16 ~ 365 Days of Spirit Art Journaling ~ Day 5 ~ Connected

8-19-16 ~ My Art for the Week ~ Day 3 and Day 4

            365 Days of Art Journaling for Artists

Sponsored by Art 2 Hearts and Nancy Baumiller

My Artwork for:
 Day 3 ~ My Path 
and
 Day 4 ~ Invite the Light 

 Day 3 

If you cannot read the roof at the bottom right, it says...

Avoid Hurtful and Toxic Friendships

Day 4

Day 4 

Day 4


Etegami for Day 4


My Doodling Journal
 
 I press every flower petal I can find in a very large and old wine book
about the wines of the world. It is heavy and really does the job well.

Sorry about the dark spots. This is in my Doddle Journal on the tan paper.
I have not figured out the correct way to take pictures of the pages, yet.
We think the top leaf is from an elm from all the trees at back of house. 
Bud and I think the second one comes  from one of our maple trees. 
The dark spots looking greenish/blue spots and are here and there all over the leaf.
As you can seem it also has a hole in it.

This is the first time I have ever tried to sketch  mandala freehand
so please excuse the wavy lines. It was the best I could do.

This post is linked with:
Paint Party Friday~Week 24
Lunagirl Moonbeams
Sunday Sketches~Week 4

8-12-16 ~ My Week in Art ~ Day 1 and Day 2 ~ Genie Robinson

My Etegami This Week

My Stippling This Week

First I sketched from a photo I had taken a picture of North Mountain popping up its head threw a bobbed wire stretched fencing and power lines. I do not like in general the way it turns out, but I love my fencing.That top piece was really curved and way up above the rest. Maybe a larger animal stretched it trying to jump to freedom.

 Just for Fun

Oh, how i miss my quilting, but my sitting with my back does not allow it.

Last week I saw where one of our bloggers (I cannot remember who...I'betting old) but it immediately reminded me of just how addicted I am to Hershey bars...DAY and NIGHT ( I always eat one before I go to bed) ...and MIDDLE OF NIGHT. I know they are bad for me especially at night considering the sugar on my teeth,  my digestion cycle , and sleep, but I still wake up and head for the fridge (they get soft here from the hot weather) tiptoeing TRYING to be quiet so Buddy does not hear me...hehehe.  That is so silly. He always hears me and knows what I am up to :=-)

 Doodling

One night I was thinking about my quilt and the beautiful vintage silk one my DIL gave to me, I decided to try creating a Doodle Quilt. This was so much fun.

 While walking I saw many, many Passion Flowers on the trail. They are very prolific at this time of year. I had never seen them before so I took some pictures and then came home and had a bit of doodling fun with it. The most fun was adding color though the petals on Passion Flowers here is usually blue or lavender.

Last but not least, I have joined a group called 365 Days of Spirit Art sponsored by Nancy Baumiller.
This group is not for experienced artists in all sorts of medium, a beginner is welcomed. You can join in at any time. Nancy has created a Face Book page for all of our contributions:
Art2Hearts. I have only made Pages 1and 2, but it is a start.

The Beginning

 Page 1  - My Truths

Page 2 - Be Brave

This post is linked with:
Color Me Positive
Paint Party Friday
Sunday Sketches from England #3

8-1-16 ~ Summer Fun

Oh, how I would love to be floating in the water at the beach with this poison ivy. It would feel SOSOSO good. I am smiling thinking about it. Thank goodness it's better. I can actually go out in public ,and I am no longer itching. Am even sleeping at night. I still have a red color to much of my skin, but no rash. I can live with that as long as it is not itching. People.....if you are as ignorant as I am about this stuff...please go to the internet and print out pictures of Poison Ivy and Poison Oak especially if you love being out in the woods or digging in the garden. I am in an intensive self imposed course of teaching myself how to identify it during all 4 seasons because the colors do change. I do NOT ever plan to get this grim, miserable stuff ever, ever, ever, again.I sound like Terry Bradshaw on TV and that infomercial telling us all to get a shingles shot if we have ever had chicken pox. I do that!

Visit Try It on Tuesdays to see more pictures that make you SMILE.

6-22-16 ~ A Little Bit of Everything

This week my body has been consumed with Poison Ivy.  Monday will be 2 weeks of itching and places are still coming out. I took Prednisone for a week and am now depending upon Benadryl to do the trick. I have had to stay as still as possible in the house so turned on the AC in my living room and bedroom and spent most of my time in the old blue chair. I did a bit of everything trying to keep my mind off of the itching and worked daily on my Etegami. It was an art filled week, but I managed to turn a pile of lemons into some delicious lemonade.

Let me start with the culprit. Just looks like a week. In Florida a block from the Atlantic all I new were pretty flowers, cockroaches, scorpions, mosquitoes, sea gulls, sand pipers pelicans, and alligators......not Poison Ivey. Well, I know it now?

This is the culprit and it is right beside the front porch step in Buddy's

 herb garden.Fortunately the bug man who comes monthly to spray the house

is not allergic to it, so he pulled it all out and hid it.

http://bluechairdiary.blogspot.comhttp://bluechairdiary.blogspot.com

The Story of My Magical Garden
I am linking up with Art Journal Journal (In My Garden There Is) and Cheeky Challenge. (In the Garden), and Creative Tuesdays (Pond).

Several years ago, my family won the lottery and in our large back yard lot I decided I wanted us to build a safe place for children to come and visit. It had to have a goldfish pond like my church had when I was a little girl and one with a marble seat all the way around it so the children could sit there, dangle their feet in the cool water, throw in their pennies for good luck, and watch the goldfish play. And, then you, Alexandra (Sunday Sketches), I thank you for all you taught me in your classes and loving to try to put a little bluebird named Alexia in all of my drawings. They add a very special touch. Every Sunday it was the happiest time of my day when we went to the Episcopal Church, Bethesda-by-the-Sea in Palm Beach, Florida. It was sort of like a home a block from our home. I also had to have LOTS of colorful flowers just like Bethesda, some seats where they could sit and rest, also like Bethesda and even a swing set for a bit of flying fun. As you can see, the children have come and look to be having a grand old time. Once again, we have my "inner child" coming to the surface. I am a child at heart. I do not want to leave my happy place...my garden and goldfish pond.Wouldn’t it be Wonderful if you could win the lottery and then create an area like this at your new home?

Here is my second watercolor from my gorgeous Seeing Flowers book I wrote about last week.
I did try use stippling on the pod of the cornflower.Alexia is here.
I want to thank my blogger friend, John of Sinbad and I on the Loose, for introducing me to stippling.His work with birds is out of this world.

This is the cover I created for my Doodle Journal.

Here is page 2. These are all words and phrases that

hold much meaning for me. Since all the paper is tan,

 I decided to add some color to the piece.

Page 3 ~ A collage of little doodles and some pictures....and lots of stippling practice. It is hard to do.  Last week I saw one Stephan Stark's  page where she shared with us some spectacular and colorful doodle patchwork. I fell in love. She even showed us the process she went through. I thought it was such a cool idea, and since I had already started a doodling journal, I decided to divide it into 8 rectangles and just go for it. I did not do a rough draft. like she did  I arbitrarily gel penned colors and in particular, the flag with the red, white, and blue stripes in that order. I looked on the internet to see if there was one, and there was... the flag of Paraguay. FYI...there are 37 flags with these colors.


This is a digital copy of a watercolor card I sent to a friendwho had lost her son.
I've decided I am not gong to buy any more cards but instead will paint them.

Last but not least are all of my studies this week painting following the art form of etegami. Thank you, Carol from Creative Harbor, for introducing me to this method of watercolor painting.These are all post cards I did this week, and they are in the order as I painted them. I was curious to see what my name would look like in katakana, so I have written it on the cards. Am trying to make me stamp with the symbols for "genie".The stamping is always in red.

 How the background turned out blue in the photo I do not know. 

The background was white.

In addition to Art Journal Journey, Creative Tuesday, and Cheeky Challenge, 
I am linking to:

Paint Party Friday

Sunday Sketches

6-17-16 ~ It's Sunday Again

It is time once again for Alexandra's Sunday Sketches at Blue Chair Diary.

Congratulations to you, Denise, being chosen the winner of Alexandra's contest for a new Sunday Sketches logo with a British theme.  Your watercolor is just out of this world. I LOVE it! Kudos to you for creating such a precious painting.

I am also linking up with Paint Party Friday.

I need to tell myself this each morning when I get out of bed...."I Can and I Will".

I found a Strathmore Toned Tan sketchbook (80lb paper-50sheets) at Michael's, and I just had to have it. This is what I did on the first page.

I used a Micron pen and a red gel pen.

Do any of you know what kind of a bird this is? The picture was on the front of an old nature magazine of Buddy's which he had finished reading. I tore off the picture and then threw out the magazine so could not look up what it is.  I asked Bud if mine looked like the one in the picture, and he said the beak was wrong and there were other things that needed work. Oh, well, I tried. At least he was willing to give me constructive criticism. I am going to try again this week to see if I can paint it better. 

As always, my best friend, Weezie, and I are the two girls having tea up on the roof deck.

I bought the book Seeing Flowers this week, and I painted this Beardstongue from one of the gorgeous photographs in that book. There is another book, Seeing Trees, that my granddaughter has, and it is every bit as beautiful. So, I went to Amazon to get the tree book, and it was there that I discovered this one on flowers. Here in the info on it and links to both books.

Seeing Flowers 

Discover the Hidden Life of Flowers

Photography by Robert Llewellyn

Written by Teri Dunn Chace

 https://www.amazon.com/Seeing-Flowers-Discover-Hidden-Life/dp/160469422X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1468778086&sr=8-1&keywords=Seeing+FLowers

The Amazon link to Seeing Trees is:
https://www.amazon.com/Seeing-Trees-Discover-Extraordinary-Everyday/dp/1604692197/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1468778156&sr=8-4&keywords=Seeing+FLowers

Yes, we live way way out in the country so I LOVE barns.

The hat on the left belongs to the little girl and the one on the right to the little boy.

Since Alexandra is leaving for England, I was thinking about the old pictures I had of the precious British children in their traditional bonnets. I just couldn't resist trying to paint them.

7-7-16 ~ Children and Music

"I would teach children music, physics and philosophy; but the most importantly music, for all the patterns in music and all the arts are the keys to learning."  ~ Plato

I wanted to draw a picture of children playing music for The Three Muses this week - the prompt is Music - so I searched stock images on the internet and found a vintage photograph which was perfect. The children were standing on the table playing their oversized instruments...sososo cute. I just couldn't resist trying to paint it. It reminds me of being 4 or 5 when my parents bought me an old preacher's folding organ which he'd used when moving from church  to church. On that old organ, I took my first piano lessons and have adored music every since. In the fourth grade they gave me private pastel art lessons and that was the beginning of my love of art. My parents left out the physics and philosophy which is a very good thing because I am definitely NOT a left brainer. 

7-3-16 ~ Sunday Sketches and Art Journal Journey

Today is the day for Sunday Sketches over at Blue Chair Diary.

I am also linking up with Art Journal Journey.

5-12-16 ~ Flowers from Spots, Dots, and Splashes

Flowers 

The prompt this week for Try It on Tuesdays is:

Spots, Dots, and Splashes

For this art journal page, I glued two pages together so the ink and watercolors wouldn't bleed through. Then I took one of my flower cutters and cut a form from heavy card stock. I went around with it dabbing Tim Holtz's Antique Distress Ink Stains and then sprayed them with water. After they bled, I sprayed on some of his Distress Spray Stains and used some of the his little distress pads to add more color. When I finished I could see the beginnings of leaves and flowers all over the page. Some of the bleeds I used as stems, and others I drew in myself. After the page really dried, I outlined with a Micon pen turning the spots, dots, and splashes into flowers. Because of my quilting background, I decided to put dashes around all the flowers, stems, and leaves to give the feeling they had been sewn onto fabric. This is my first time ever trying something so free form in nature.