So I played...

hi everyone. You know I have done probably hundreds of owl ACEOs, and  realized that I have never put them on anything larger than a baseball card...so here is my first painting. I wanted to really loosen up on this, and just play. I wanted to use pretty colors that drew me, and forget about realism. Folk art is one of my favorite types of art, yet it can be tricky to do (for me at least...I tend to try and control my paintings). What fun this was!  I can't wait to do another one. 
Now I would have had more art to show you, but I got sidetracked by  Pinterest, lol! Wow, that is a wonderful tool!  It's like an online bulletin board for all the good stuff you find online.  I had to join Twitter though, in order to get access.  I'm slowly being dragged into the social media world :-)

Last weekend was a complete disaster art wise, so rather than fighting it, I sat down and sketched a red riding hood character. One of my favorite things to do is faces, so this was very relaxing. Mind you it is a rough sketch, and I experimented with watercolor crayons on the face, as well as pencil marks. It was fun to just paint without needing it to be perfect.  It's a great way to try out new things, as some of you have commented. 
Well, back to work for me -if I can drag myself away from my computer
thanks for reading!

A Valentine's Day for all

Love after love

The time will come
When with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other's welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you have ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Derek Walcott

Happy Valentine's Day!  Not all of us have someone to share it with. I certainly don't.  Doesn't matter.

I came across this perfect poem for today. It's a poem about reuniting with your self and finding the one perfect soul that has always loved you...YOU

When everything you touch....

turns to crap!! yup, that's me this weekend. Have you ever had one of those days when you have such high hopes for your art, but nothing seems to work as you envision? It's been like that all weekend for me. I had such great ideas, leading up to this weekend  that when Saturday finally came around, I couldn't decide where to start....so after wasting hours on indecision, I started. And guess what? it was garbage! I mean really bad!  In the garbage bin it went.  Then the next idea, then the next....oh boy, maybe I should have made this a week to sit back and watch movies. Because art didn't love me this weekend. Try as I may, my art didn't feel real, it felt fake, like I was forcing it, which  I was.

So what do you do when you are ready to give up? Play.  Just play with your art, don't put limits on it, don't expect it to be pretty, or something that you can sell. Experiment, and don't be afraid to paint over the whole darn thing when you realize how bad it is. That is how we grow. Not by our successes, but by our failures. We learn how not to do something, and we make that ok. Don't ' beat yourself up, just paint, or sketch, with no goals in mind.  This is the lesson for me this weekend.  Right now I  feel like painting  little red riding hood on watercolor. I don't know if anyone will ever see it, but after scrapping so many drawings, it's the one thing I felt like doing. So I got no art to show you.

Not all was wasted this weekend, I finally joined twitter. I only joined because it was tje only way I could join Pinterest, which sounds like every artists' dream.  I have no idea what I am doing, lol! but will slowly try and figure things out.
Wherever you are, I hope you are having a lovely weekend. Be blessed, and love your life! It's the only one you got!
xoxo
betty

Does music move you?

After a bit of a dry spell, today I finally had the urge to paint a face.It's funny how music can move you. Yesterday I was shopping with a friend, and a song came on, that I remembered from many years ago. It was so haunting, that I pulled out my pocket journal, wrote a few lyrics so I wouldn't forget, and went on with my day.
Today I pulled out my journal,  googled the lyrics, and found it was an old Glen Campbell song. I cranked up the sound and let the melody take me away. In the middle of the song, I had an idea for the very last page of my Art and Music journal that I started several months ago. The last page has been blank all this time, (although I had painted the background, I couldn't decide what kind of face and lyrics to put on it). Just like that, I had the answer, and wasted no time getting my pencil out and drawing the girl. This is the end result
(sorry for the bad photo, but I had to take it indoors, with poor lighting)

Ok, can you tell I have serious issues with my handwriting?? It is beyond terrible, lol! there are a couple of online workshops on creative lettering, and I think it's time to take one of them :-)

So, months later, all it takes is the right song, to move me into action. Have you ever had a song that does that to you, that inspires you? For me, it's usually oldies, as I don't like today's music. My Youtube playlists are full of classics from the 60's and early 70's. That's just the music I seem to resonate with.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on music, and how it affects you.  Go ahead, name your idols, or your fave songs. I have too many to mention, but over the years, I've shown some art on my blog that was inspired by them.

for you young folks, if you are curious about the song, here it is:



thanks for reading!