Antiques, Sunshine and a Sneak peek

hi friends!  Today I went to the Annual Christy Antique Show. It is a huge event with many antique vendors. What a fun time! I'm glad I took a camera along, as there was some interesting stuff, lol! like the photo you see above. Don't ask me what it is, haha! maybe paper mache??

The weather was perfect, hot and sunny, no clouds...although I ended up getting a sunburn on my arms. My friend asked if I wanted to use her sunblock before we left the car, and I thought I would be ok without. Well I was wrong, after a few hours in the heat, I was searching out shaded areas for relief.  
I didn't buy too much as there was so much to look at, it was hard to choose.  I picked up some antique cranberry glass buttons and black lace to use in a future painting, and I saw a primitive folk art  painting I really liked, see below.

If you haven't been to an antique market or show, you should try it. Even if you are not into antiques. I only started going the last few years, and you never know what you will find. I look for anything to use in art, and have a small collection of antique post cards and ephemera that I use.  But then I go and cover them with layers of paint, lol! like my latest painting....I adore her, and she is almost done, so I will show you a teeny tiny  sneak peek for now.

 I love the look of beeswax on a painting, but it tends to dull it, which is the whole point....for this particular painting I used more subdued color, so I'm debating whether I should use a gloss varnish to add some shine.....once I finish, I will show it.

thanks for reading!

sweet poison, and my latest cheeky girl

It is so hot today! I refuse to turn the air conditioner on, since we haven't had a real summer for the last 2 years. I am sitting in my tiny little art room, it is so sticky, but I wanted to get my cheeky American girl finished, and varnished. I'm also listening to a great program on Hayhouseradio.com on healing spices. You may as well learn something while you work right?
I was reminded of the benefits of cinammon, so I promptly went to my kitchen, got a large glass of water and added a cinnamon stick to it. Water is another thing I forget to drink, I'm sure I'm not the only one.

There are so many easy things we can do to improve our health, but we have to make the effort. Most of them really don't take that long. I get lazy...but then I hear about another person struggling with illness, and am reminded how fragile this life is. I remember hearing a phrase that said basically make time for your health, or make time for illness. I have blogged before about my addiction to sugar.  I am in the process of cutting back, but it is not easy.  I remember learning that cancer cells need sugar to thrive, so you would think that kind of information would do it, but nope. I still continued. Why is it that caring for ourselves is so difficult?
Or perhaps it is the fact that sugar -especially the High Fructose syrop, is addictive and hard to stop.

I picked up a book out of curiosity from my library called the Belly Fat Cure and skimmed it briefly. His plan is not really a diet, but a change in how you eat, and one of the things he does is tell you to cut your sugar intake to 15 grams per day. When I look at a food label, I normally look to see how many carbs are in it, since all this time I thought that was the problem. Well I was in for a shock, sugar is everywhere! even in so-called healthy 100% bran cereal!! All this time I only considered things like cookies, muffins, and cakes as the things I needed to cut back on, only to find sugar lurking in almost all processed foods.

This was reinforced by another article on the dangers of sugar I read on Mercola.com.  This concerns me because I don't think we realize how dangerous it is, and by blogging about this, I hope some of you do a little research of your own. I don't want any more people to deal with illnesses that can be avoided by eating a more natural diet. I'm just saying know the facts, and make an educated decision when you are buying your groceries.  And if you think drinking diet soda is better, think again, it is poison! .The information is all out there if we want to see it. . Our lives are way too precious to take for granted, it's time to treat our bodies like the temples that they are.

thanks for reading, and stay healthy :-)

Busy Sunday

hi friends!  this weekend is flying by so quickly. It's a good thing tomorrow is a national holiday. I spent the
morning at an antique market, it is open every Sunday during the summer, and is huge! it takes hours to get through the whole place. I normally go there looking for old books and vintage ephemera to use in my art,  or paintings I may like.  I ended up with 4 vintage children's books, and a nice horse painting.

Afterward I went with my dear friend to her boyfriend's farm and took some photos of the horses. Of course,  the weather clouded over, just like the 2 or 3 previous times I went there trying to get good pics. Once we finished, and sat down on the porch with a coffee, that's when the sun came out again. I'm starting to think I am  jinxed, lol! I know the best photos are the ones with lots of contrast, with a nice blue sky in the background but it wasn't to be this time, but I like this pic of mama and baby horse.

 Last night  I started some more whimsical owl ACEOs, including this one featuring  2 owls at a drive in, complete with popcorn and soda.  After all those angels I have been doing I felt like a change.
Thanks for reading! enjoy the rest of your day

Blonde Angel

hi friends,  yes, another angel, but I tried to do blonde hair this time...it's not so easy.  Yesterday was such a gorgeous hot day, the first in a long while, so I made myself a coffee, and sat outside with my sketchbook. I worked out details on some ideas I had a while ago, and maybe this weekend will try one out,  after I clean up my workspace, what a mess!
It was never this bad when I did simple acrylic painting, but the moment I discovered mixed media, look out! not a single piece of paper gets thrown out now, as well as anything that may be added to a painting.  I've heard this from other mixed media artists, lol! I'm sure we all peel glue off our fingers every night before bed.

Another thing I'd like to get to is actually making my small art room feel more like a creative space. Maybe some nice Christmas lights hung on the window, and a tealight holder  to keep on the desk I work on.  This is supposed to be a creative area, and it looks anything but.  It amazes me I can work in such a cluttered area, but right now, it's the only space I have. I do know artists who work on a kitchen table, and they manage just fine. We got to make the best of what we have, and work around the limitations. You somehow focus on the work at hand, but I'm tired of not being able to find what I need due to clutter.  This sounds like a good project for this long weekend.

What are your plans this weekend?

Fly

Hi folks, it sure took a lot of thought to come up with today's post title, lol!
This is just a short post, showing my latest mixed media angel, my 3rd one in the last 2 weeks. Once I finish catching up on some blogs, I will be starting another one.  May as well take advantage when you are motivated, because you never know when you will hit a little art 'slump', especially now with the nicer, sunny weather.
have a great night!

Endless Night

Every night and every morn

Some to misery are born.

Every morn and every night

Some are born to sweet delight

Some are born to sweet delight

Some are born to Endless Night

God appears, and God is light,
To those poor souls who dwell in night;
But does a human form display
To those who dwell in realms of day.

Hello friends!  I  finished my latest mixed media painting called  'Endless Night'. After the pink angel I showed on my last blog post, I needed something a little darker.  I must say though, that this painting flowed so easily for me. It was so much fun, and I didn't have to think or plan, it just came together.  I'd say it's my favorite one in a long time.
She is based on the poem 'Auguries of Innocence' by William Blake, which I had memorized a while ago. One of my strange quirks that people don't know about me is that I love memorizing poems, just for the fun of it.  The lines you see above are from that poem, and I have added some on the painting, which I then covered lightly with sheer paint, and tissue paper.
There will be a companion painting for this, a lighter one, born to 'sweet delight'. 

thanks for reading!

Pink Angel

hello lovely people! I finished this mixed media angel tonight. She is a bit different from the original sketch I planned out, but once I got to this stage, I was afraid of ruining her with the idea I had. You will have to wait and see the next one I do to know what I mean. I went crazy with the background, using a few different techniques, and lots of gold leaf.
She's quite pink and glittery, just like my screen name, lol!

For the next one I think I will pull out my book on color  and try something with maybe yellow and green, for spring.

thanks for reading!

Too much TV, not enough art

After finishing my last painting, I've kind of been sitting around not sure what to do.Well, that is not entirely true, I've been watching lots of dvds. I got hooked on a TV series called Wildfire. It's about a girl out of juvenille hall who is taken to work on a horse ranch. Of course there is a love triangle involving the ranch owner's son, and the son of a rival ranch. If you are a horse fan, you will enjoy this series. It started off a bit slow, but once you got to know the characters, you will want to keep playing the next episode, and then the next.  I just finished Season 3, and now am hoping they will release the final season.  They left you with a cliff hanger, and now it is bugging me not to know what happens.  Those who live in the US are so lucky,  there is a site called  hulu.com where you can watch entire episodes. For me in Canada, I can't access it, so have to wait for the DVDs.

I also finished watching  'The Horse Whisperer' which I saw when it first came out, but couldn't remember.   What a fantastic movie, with gorgeous scenery!  The first few minutes are heartbreaking, and feature Scarlett Johansson when she was only 14. I would definitely recommend this movie if you haven't seen it already.

 Well, I suppose I should continue working on the painting I showed last week. I'm stuck right now, and not sure what to do next, so I may as well just play, and see what happens.
thanks for reading!
xoxo

Mother's Day Art and a WIP

hi everyone! I thought I would show my latest folk art painting. You may have seen the rough sketch for this last week.
What a relief to finally finsh it. I changed the background 3 times!  nothing seemed to work, so after adding some nice vintage papers for texture, I ended up gessoing over it, and trying another color. That didn't work either, it was the wrong shade of blue. So out comes the white gesso, and then I came up with this one which I am happy with. I wanted the mother and her kids to stand out against a shabby background. Now if you can't tell, the kid on the left is a boy, lol! and my very first one. I think he's kind of cute :-)

Next up, is a work in process I am doing for the Gut Art class taught by the awesome Mystele. Working with this much color and this loose is very new for me, but I'm loving every second of it. Can't wait to get back to it. This may not look  like my style, but I really enjoy learning new things. There are so many online workshops out there, and I believe in learning all you can about something you are passionate about. Art should also be fun. I realize I never play at art, I am too serious, and spend countless hours trying to make sure a painting is 'perfect'. It feels good to let go of that, and let a painting go where it wants to.
thanks for reading!

Sunday Sketch and a page from my Sketchbook

I can't believe I haven't blogged anything since last Sunday! Time sure got away from me.  Here is my Sunday Sketch,  which I did last night in bed. It's a bit rough, but I was working out a face I will be putting on canvas soon.  The other two are just folk art girls that showed up to fill the page, lol! 
If you would like to see more Sunday Sketches by other participating artists, check out Sophia's blog
Blue Chair Diary.  It's nice to see this weekly group growing.

A Page from my Sketchbook

Time for my weekly peek into my sketchbook. Except this time, it's not in my sketchbook but on a loose sheet of graph paper. I have a little secret...my favorite way of sketching is to use pen on graph paper. I'm obsessed with it. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if I had several hundred loose sheets lying around with sketches, and handwritten ideas on them.  Folders are filled with these loose sheets, and I keep weeding through them, trying to get the freshest ideas at the front, but they are soon buried with dozens more pages. I swear I am out of control!
One benefit to using graph paper is that you can easily line up eyes, and other features quickly. If you are a beginner to drawing faces, I would highly recommend you buy yourself some graph paper, and draw out your lines for your face. It's easy to see when you have mistakes, and easy to correct (use pencil for this).
Once you get a perfect sketch that you are happy with, take some carbon paper, and trace it onto a good sheet of drawing paper.  It sure beats measuring with a ruler, and trying to get things lined up.

 The page you see above shows some of my folk art ideas for mother's day. The one on the left with the boy and girl is one I am painting right now.  It's also one of the sketches I showed last week,  with a bit more detail.  Hopefully it will be done by tonight and I will show it here. There is nothing glamorous about these pages, it's simply a matter of getting ideas out of your head and onto paper, where you can have a permanent record.

Thanks for reading!