doodling

My kids and I are listening to an audio book at home and whilst listening, we've been doing some doodling and drawing.  I had a lot of fun doing this. When I don't know what to doodle, I always start with my initials which is why they are so prominent.  But the woman is not supposed to be me. Oh well.  I never thought I would get into the zentangle thing, but I looked up some patterns on Pinterest and added them in. It was neat to see how everything intermeshed.

Empty Nest necklace

I have a dear friend whose daughter just went off to college.  Wondering how to support her, I came across some how-to tutorials on Pinterest for making a nest necklace (this one and this one).  I also found a quote which said something like "They may leave the nest, but they never leave your heart." Inspired, I made this:

Take care of yourself

A friend of mine came over last weekend and wanted to do some healing art.  We each worked on an intention.  Mine was self-care.  Self-care is such an interesting thing.  We know we need to do it and it is the last thing we do.  I am really working on self-compassion and giving myself permission to take care of myself in my practice right now.

 I had this idea of how do I fill my cup.

 And I realized, there are a lot of ways I sabotage self-care.

Just a fun, quick, little piece to get creative juices flowing again.  I like how the cup kind of looks like it has wings in the final piece.  The red around the cup is actually paint that I've peeled off of a table I'm refinishing.  Some of the wood of the table stuck to the paint.  I love how this looks.  Which means I'm stuck with the heat gun and peeling more paint rather than going to another method which might be quicker.  Oh well.

Stay Cool

A lot has been happening at my house-- three sets of back-to-back guests within 2 weeks.  My husband left on a business venture for 3 months.  School is getting ready to start.  My art has suffered, but this card has a good message for me.

I'm really pleased with how this turned out.  I didn't decide to add wording until I'd already carved out most of the fan.  I drew the words on backwards, directly onto the block.  Glad I didn't get any turned around!  I'm going to carve another set of words: "You got this" to go on the inside of the card.  Stamped with black Versafine inkpad and rubbed Tim Holtz wild honey distress ink on edges.

DLP #35

August Theme: Faces, the Human Form & Characters
August 29
Art Challenge: Self Portrait
Journal Prompt:  Mirror Mirror

For this page, I used some "out-takes" of the self-portrait I did for the Carving Consortium multi-color swap recently.  I like that each one is different, just as we are different every day.  I included a test print in the lower left corner of the first color which I used to help figure out where my registration lines would be when I printed.

The journaling is a quote from Sufi Mullah Nasrudin and says:

How are you?
Perfect, thank you.  I am traveling incognito.
Oh?  As what are you disguised?
I am disguised as myself.
Don't be silly. That's no disguise.
On the contrary, it must be a very good disguise, for I see it has fooled you         completely.

Spectrum: Heart Beat with Andrea Schroeder

Started doing art again last week, but then company came to town and I didn't have time to post any photos. Taking a quick moment to post these before more company come today.

This was an exercise with Andrea Schroeder called Heart Beat.  She gave a lovely guided meditation to fill your heart with love and then create from that space.  For me, there was a lot of tension and fear in my heart.  So, that's the space from which this was created.  It's still so neat to me to start doing art with no preconceived idea of what will come out.

Sacred No with Rachael Rice

One of the exercises in Spectrum was working with the Sacred No (facilitated by Rachael Rice).  I enjoyed it a lot, although not all of the axes really spoke to me.  I'm curious what it would be like to make your own axes to measure.

Rachael used indigo india ink in the background, but I didn't have any, so I did the Derwent color blocks.

 I decided I wanted more depth so I went back in with a stencil and white ink and blue distress ink.