Week 2 in Creativity

This week I began my Year of the Giraffe online class with Carla Sonheim. This month it's all about drawing the giraffe. Giraffes are so cute! I dug through my pile of unused journals and found a nice handmade one with a cover that seems suited for all the giraffes that will live inside of it. Eventually, I can go back and add watercolor to all of the drawings but for now, I'm just doing various drawing exercises and my goal this month is to draw as many different giraffes as I can. Here are some practice pages I've done this week, in a collage form because I'm currently obsessed with making collages:

Drawing the Giraffe

This week I worked on blind contour drawings, drawing with the wrong hand and gesture drawings. Next week will be all about realistic drawing of the giraffe!

I'm still recovering from the flu with a lingering cough and some plugged sinuses but I was able to have a Creative Saturday with my friend Cynde who had the flu over Christmas. We figured she was safe to hang out with me in my art room. We worked on making our own Spirit Cards...these are cards that have words to encourage the spirit such as Healing, Dreams, Hope, Faith, Learning, Love etc...My cards are going to be themed with birds and the words are based on the myths and legends that each bird is associated with. I worked on The Blackbird first, which is a bird of Prophecy, so my word for the card is DREAMS. Just like a regular deck of cards, the backs are all the same. That is going to be time consuming because I chose to design this as my back:

Birdy Love

Here is the front of the Blackbird card:

i giorni della merla means The Blackbird Days which are the last two

days of January and the first few days of February. I put the saying on the card because I loved it, but I depicted the Blackbird at night since it is associated with prophecy and dreams. :-)

Here is an artistic shot taken with the Hipstamatic using my newest lens/film obsession:, the Tinto 1884 lens and the C-type Plate film:

Dreams

Cynde worked on a teacup design Spirit Card with the word "healing". After working for a few hours in the morning, we had some healing comfort food trying a new restaurant in town that has grilled cheese as it's main theme...yum, grilled cheese!

Adam Good Bar & Grill'd restaurant. The menus were attached to old album covers! How cool is that as a way to reuse and recycle? Pretty darn cool! And the food was damn good too! :-)

Some damn good grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch!

Finally, Cynde and I headed to Barnes and Noble for some dessert and some inspiration. I ended up getting a cute new journal to record my birdy sightings, as well as Carla's new book "How to Draw Imaginary Creatures". I already have her Drawing Lab book so this will be a perfect companion piece! I also found that one of the blogs I follow Creative Thursday has a book out! So of course, I had to get that too. Throw in my favorite painting magazine from Britain, Leisure Painter as well as a bird magazine and I'm good to go!

Creative Inspirations

I continued to process images from my archives. I feel like I'm making a dent, deleting more than I am processing which is a good thing since I'm almost out of room on my laptop!

I can't wait to be at the beach again...just one more week and then a birding getaway with Lita!

And finally, I continued getting up early enough to take pictures of the sunrise. This week had some pretty dramatic skies so missing out on extra sleep was totally worth it!

Sunrises, Week 2

This week there won't be anytime to be creative as home improvement projects are taking the front seat. I will however finally be on my first birding outing of the new year so I am definitely looking forward to that. I just hope I keep the flu from coming back! 

Have a wonderfully creative week dear friends!

Friends, Flamingos, a Faerie and a Farm

It seems that yesterday's Creative Saturday with Lita was sponsored by the letter F. We decided on a digital art day because we both miss working on that medium so much. With my tendinitis and her wrist pain, it's hard for both of us to work on our Wacom tablets. But, we bound our tendons with braces (hers made with a sea-sickness band...hey, whatever works!) and got down to business. Two friends working on different images side-by-side, a second eye to check for composition and color, to encourage the path and to laugh off the pain. Lita worked on a faerie and I worked on (and finished!!) two images. One was a textural work of an old, run down farm (Nichole, that one is for you!) and the other was born from a dream...a flock of flamingos in the misty morning swamp.

Flamingo Dream
Mixed Media on Watercolor Paper

The flamingos started out as an image in a dream I had which I then started as a watercolor. I scanned the watercolor into Photoshop and painted more flamingos and used brushes and textures to make the dream into reality. This is pretty much what it looked like in my dream, although it was more faded and distant. This is the second piece I've created from a dream I had. The first was this piece:

Patches & Crow

Mixed Media on Canvas

Dreams are a great source of inspiration! Now, If I could only remember more of them!

For my second image, I wanted to create a take on Andrew Wyeth's painting Christina's World but when I started working on it, I didn't want to add any figures to it. I like the scene just as a landscape. So with textures and brushes by Distressed Textures, I went to work creating a painting-like image. I was quite happy with the result and it didn't even take me that long!

Lost Summers of My Youth

Of course we couldn't have a Creative Saturday without stopping by Barnes & Noble for a little inspiration. I picked up this great watercolor book called Watercolor Secrets 200 tips and techniques for painting the easy way by Robin Berry. Her work is amazing. If you like watercolor you won't be disappointed with this book.

Have an awesome weekend everyone and remember to take some time to be creative!

Worldwide Photowalk Day 2010

For today's Creative Saturday, Lita and I got up early (4:30am!) to head to Hollywood Beach to participate in Worldwide Photowalk Day 2010. After a few sunrise shots and a group photo, everyone headed off to do their own thing and Lita and I strolled down the boardwalk to find interesting and odd things to shoot. Here are a few of my favorites from the morning:

Sunrise on Hollywood Beach

Mod Shadow Girls

Beach Pairs

Yellow and Blue

The walk was suppose to be from 7am until 11am when the group would then meet at a restaurant for lunch. However, after two hours of walking around in the sun and humidity, I began to get heat stroke so we decided to go to cool off in Barnes and Noble until it was time to meet for lunch. As is typical whenever Lita and I end up at Barnes and Noble, we lost track of time and missed the lunch get-together so we went to Friday's for lunch instead.

Lita at Friday's, snapping pics of pics on the wall. :)

After refueling, we headed over to Home Depot to get paint chips to use in a future Exploration task as well as Michaels where Lita purchased some watercolors and I got some decorative paper. All in all, it was another inspiring and creative day!

Into Another Year Goes She

Sunday was the birthday of my creative soulmate, the beautiful Lita!
We celebrated by taking a quick day trip over to Marco Island. Neither of us had been before and we were excited to see what adventures we would find. Now, we usually don't go with map or plan, just get there and see what happens! We headed to the islands South Beach first and took a few shots of the beautiful white sandy beaches.

South Beach, Marco Island

Sea Oats

Although not as many shells as Sanibel, there were some nice finds like jingles, clams and cone shells.  Birthday Girl collected the nice round flat jingles to use in future crafting.

Sand Shark!!

Laughing Gull who is not laughing over the catastrophe happening in the Gulf of Mexico which is now affecting Florida's shorelines. 

Of course we had to do some shadow shots on the beach.

After a short time on South Beach we headed over to Tigertail Beach. As we were walking down the boardwalk towards the beach a guy leaving said to us "There's nothing down there to shoot". I loved Birthday Girl's response which was "it's subjective" which is true as we can always find something to shoot. We continued walking and came across a playground. Birthday Girl gets motion sickness easily so I was the one who got to fly through the air and pretend I was seven years old again!  What fun!

When we made it to Tigertail beach the first thing we saw was an Osprey who flew right over us with a catfish in his grasp and landed on a tall post. We quickly hurried over and snapped several shots of this beautiful bird of prey.

Once this raptor began drawing blood, it was time for us to move onward. We met a Londoner named Tiki Tony and he told us how to get over to the Gulf of Mexico which involved crossing the lagoon. We were a bit nervous, afraid of falling with our camera equipment but we love being adventurous so we carefully made our way over to the west side of the lagoon.

We laughed and giggled the whole way over...feeling the soft, slightly slimy seaweed under our feet.

Almost there birthday girl!  I love your adventurous spirit!

When we finally made it over to the other side we walked down a path that had tons of cute little crabs running in and out of the brush. The sound they made when they all started moving at the same time was like a stadium full of people all clicking their fingernails together.  It was quite the symphony!

The lagoons at Tigertail beach were stunning. It was a beautiful area teeming with life, like this little stretch here that had silky seaweed to hide the silvery minnows darting about:

Adding to the experience, I became one with the seaweed.

After our morning on the beaches, we had a wonderful lunch at NeNe's cafe followed up by a visit to a little chocolate shop where we met another Englishman, this one from Birmingham and where we discovered a Lita doll! It was this little plush doll that looked just like her! Of course I had to get it for the Birthday Girl and once she posts a picture of it on her blog, I will link it here so you all can see this little Lita lookalike! 

We wanted to do the trails at Rookery Bay in the afternoon but for some crazy reason they have the trails closed on the weekend. We then headed back over Alligator Ally to our local Barnes and Noble where we went a little nuts and bought magazines, a book on writing and a huge book on Pinups. Birthday girl and I are already getting inspired from it and have some digital ideas that we will be creating in the coming months. The Birthday Girl also picked up a great book called "How To Be An Explorer of the World" and it has tasks that get you more involved and in touch with the world around you.  This week we will be starting the tasks together and blogging about our explorations:

As Birthday Girl says goodbye to another year, our day together reminded us both that you can grow older without growing up. Keeping that spirit young and adventurous is important to longevity.

So, as she leaves one year behind and steps into another, she will keep her heart light and full of love and nurture her soul with creativity and child-like laughter and her loved ones will benefit from her joys! xoxo

Daughters of Poseidon

Daughters of Poseidon

What better way to start the Merry Month of May than a Creative Saturday with the lovely Lita! We left at 6am and headed up to Jupiter to Blowing Rocks Beach where our goal was to take images of us in various costumes to use as stock in our digital art pieces.

The scenery at Blowing Rocks Beach is one we will definitely come back to for more shoots.

We also did some impromptu portraits. 

We accomplished our goal of shooting stock but today ended up much more unexpected and organic than we had planned. Somehow, we ended up IN the water.

I was fine with being in the water as long as my hair didn't get wet. The sea other plans for us!

We laughed a lot as we usually do when we are together!

We suffered for our art: Lita got scraped and cut from the rocks and I sprained my toe and could hardly walk but troopers that we are, we continued onward to John D. MacArthur State Park where we took more stock photos and where I got a bit silly and did a jig on top of a picnic table despite the foot pain:

This picture truly expresses the joy that I had today getting to spend some time with Lita AND feeding my creative soul!  The day totally warranted a little dance of happiness!