Monthly Watercolor Swap-September

Watercolor swap with Inga continued with our September exchange.

Inga indulged my love of birds and sent me this gorgeous Kingfisher done in a zentangle style:

In exchange, I sent Inga a dolly drawing and titled it "Miss Autumn":

So much fun! Already working on this month's swap. Stay tuned!

Monthly Watercolor Swap

Inga and I met through Postcrossing.com when she sent me this lovely, geometric watercolor postcard all the way from Germany:

It was so exciting to finally receive a handmade watercolor card that I suggested we do a monthly watercolor swap. I've never properly learned watercolor but it's the one medium I'm most drawn to. We decided a swap would be good practice for both of us so we began our first one in August:

Inga's postcard to me was so adorable! I love her hat especially since I collect vintage hats:

In Between

I sent Inga this bottle of Absinthe:

The Green Muse

Now we wait for September's swap. What have we each created? Stay tuned! ;-)

Back to Creativity!

Finally! The pool and patio renovations are finished for the most part. I'm still having a custom potting table with sink built for the patio and furniture has yet to arrive. Oh, and the pool is green right now. But let's not dwell on the negative and instead focus on the positive! I finally got a chance to enjoy a weekend at home with no workers. I processed images from my archives:

This one is from a trip to Charleston in 2009! Yes, that is how far back my unprocessed images go. :(

And one from a trip home during Christmas 2010:

My mom's cat Bozo, a tuckered out Tom who is quite the scrapper as you can tell by his poor ears.

Today was also good for traditional art. I started a painting of a dragonfly (to be shared later this week!) and completed a watercolor for Catherine Constance. We are swapping art pieces across the pond. She is sending me a little French girl drawing and I'm sending her a watercolor of my wildflower thicket. I wanted to create something that was very me and as you all know, my garden is just that! :) The hand-lettering freaked me out a bit as I was afraid I would mess up and spell something wrong and I was doing it all in ink the first time out.
But it turned out a-okay and will now be on it's way to Catherine. Catherine lives in France and is such a talented artist. Check out her blog.

"The Wildflower Thicket". Watercolor and ink on 8x8 watercolor paper. 

It felt good to be creative again. I'm not good with distractions and renovations are a big one. The only thing I managed to do while the patio was being torn up was go to the mall and Butterfly World (thus all the pictures of butterflies I've been posting on Flickr and Facebook) and I did one little sketch in my Moleskine that had a nod to Cubism and I practiced drawing hands:

Sorry for the blurry photo but I took it with the iPhone at night. :)

In the Moleskine: practicing stylized hands.

Other than that, the last few weeks have not been motivating or kind to my creative brain but I'm ready to ratchet up the creativity and go full steam ahead...at least until the driveway/walkway renovations begin in August. I do have a plan to escape somewhere fabulous when that happens. A place where I can still be creative with the camera. For now though it's back to processing photos with breaks to the art room to play with pencils and paint!