Wordless Wednesday: Lady Lavender

Lady Lavender Passionflower

(from my garden)

Unfinished Business

Last week I joined my friend and creative sister, Nichole in a goal-setting partnership. By putting our goals out here in blogland, we were sure to be more committed in finding the time to live a more creative life. It worked! We both found ourselves doing art, photography and other crafty things all week long despite the responsibilities that come with life! If we can do it, so can all of you! Even little moments, like writing down an idea in a journal or notebook count towards living a more creative and light-filled life.

This week my goals are about unfinished business. I have too many non-creative obligations this week to start new projects. I have tons of unfinished paintings, digital and traditional.


Digital art goal:
My first goal this week is to complete the digital painting of a pinup girl I started last year during a Creative Saturday with Lita. Here is where I left off:

She needs a lot of detail work and her face needs to be rounded more. And according to my grandmother, "her mouth ain't right". So, back to work. I would love to complete it this week and then post the steps taken to get to the final result. 

Traditional art goals:

Where traditional art is concerned, I have several unfinished oil paintings. Oil painting is what I do best when it comes to traditional art methods but living in a swampy, tropical climate really put a damper (pun totally intended!) on my love of oil. I paint the way the old masters used to...building up thin layers of color over an under painting of light and shadow. Each layer has to dry before applying the next. And it takes a really long time for oil to dry and even more so down here in Swamplandia.  But, I really want to get them finished. Especially these two..Still Life Pears & Copper Pots. So, I shall buckle down and work on adding layers this week. In addition, I plan on continuing with my watercolor lessons. The next lesson is learning to paint clouds & skies. I'm also going to continue with the Exploration tasks by doing #17 this week! 

Photography goal:

This week I have scheduled a photo shoot with Leanne. She needs new head shots as she enters her third! year at Tisch at NYU. Where has the time gone? She is soon to be 20...I took her original head shots which helped her get accepted to NYU back when she was just 16!

Last week we spent a day shopping together and bought matching "boyfriend" sweaters. We are going to plan on doing a shot together wearing them...and maybe some hats. :)  My goal is after the shoot, to process all the pictures right away and not have any of them still sitting on the card by week's end.

So, another week of goals has been set. I wanted to do a journal prompt as well, but realistically I'll have to put that off for at least one more week. I think I may have too much on my creative plate already! Anyone else out there planning an artful week?

The Week in Art & Photography

The week started with creative goal setting and for the most part, I accomplished what I had wanted for the week with art & photography. Earlier in the week I was able to complete Exploration #16 & create a digital image that had been in my head for quite a while. On Friday, I spent the morning photographing a beach that I had never  been to. Of course, life has a way of always interrupting even the best laid plans so not everything got done and some things weren't even attempted. Goals that fell by the wayside were to complete a page in every art journal I have going (I knew that was a lofty goal. I manage a few but not all!) and to work on a Pinterest inspired project and/or start some Bunco decorations. But to quote Scarlett O'Hara: "Tomorrow is another day!"

Watercolor doodle, practicing Linda Davenports way of drawing faces.

The watercolor lessons continued with learning to do grass. For some reason, I found this lesson challenging, more so than doing trees. I think I may need new watercolor brushes!

A page done in my vintage-themed Europe '94 journal.

Pages 3 & 4 of the 2012 Sketchbook Project. I still need to finish painting Sacré-Coeur.

One of my other goals this week was to finish processing all the images from Day 1 of the Cumbria Way. These were my favorite that I processed this week:

Lunch at the wall. After being rained on for two hours. :)

 Osmotherly Ent. It kind of reminded me of the Whomping Willow from Harry Potter.

Purple Trees. My lens had broken and wasn't focusing correctly for most of the trip. However, despite that and the rain, I still managed to snag a few images that will forever remind me of the trek.

I hope everyone one had a creative week! Remember...art is good for the soul!

A Morning at the Beach

In sticking with my creative goals, I had a morning of photography planned for today and I had decided to check out the beach at Red Reef park. It was a glorious morning! A breezy day and quite warm but as soon as I put my toes in the sand and felt the salty humid air on my skin, I felt so relaxed. I spent some of my morning shooting and some of it just sitting and watching the sea. Totally worth getting up early for!

Morning Ride Over the Atlantic

 Caution 

Rockin' Red Egret

 Along the Beach

Beach Text

 Lone Piper

Rock Barnacle

Bikini Walkin'

Sea Spray

Stay Clear of Surfy Campers

(what the hell? it made me laugh!)

I hope these images made you feel like you took a little stroll along the beach with me today! Have a lovely weekend!

Wordless Wednesday: The Earth Fluttered

Magic birds were dancing in the mystic marsh. The grass swayed with them and the shallow waters, and the earth fluttered under them. The earth was dancing with the cranes, and the low sun, and the wind and the sky. ~Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings


Resource credits

Exploration #16 Survey

Exploration #16
Survey
Create a simple survey of at least five questions. Give it to a sampling of people. Document the answers in a way that is interesting and readable (for instance, as a graph, spread sheet or pictogram).


One of my creative goals this week was getting back into doing the exploration tasks from the book "How to be an Explorer of the World".  Since I already had my watercolors out, I decided to make the graph in a traditional art way instead of on the computer. I surveyed 18 people with these five questions:


1) What is your favorite city in the world?
2) If you could have any super power what would it be?
3) What is your favorite cookie?
4) What is your favorite smell?
5) If you could sit down over coffee or wine and have a conversation with anyone from history, who would it be?


Here are the results (click on it to see it larger):

For the favorite city, I was surprised that most people chose a USA city, including Las Vegas and Big Sur. The most popular European answer was my favorite city, London.

I have a lot of caring friends as most interviewed chose the ability to heal others as their super power.

Chocolate chip, in some form or another (with nuts and/or oatmeal) won hands down. There were lots of choices of specialty cookies such as Butter Cookies, No Bake Cookies and Snickerdoodles.

Most people prefer the smells from nature and flowers. Lilac was the clear winner there. Food smells included popcorn and fresh brewed coffee.

And finally, it was a tie between having a sit down with a world leader or a creative artist. Henry VIII & George Washington versus Leonardo da Vinci and J.R.R. Tolkien. 

My own answers?

1) London

2) Flight

3) Chocolate Chip with Walnuts

4) Sweet Almond Bush

5) Oscar Wilde

So, one creative goal this week completed! Now...off to create that digital piece I mentioned yesterday!

Objects d'Attitude

Oh, hello August! I can't believe your here already!
The summer is skimming by and I've been trying to paddle upstream for the last few months.
It's been easy to be inspired, less so to be motivated.  I seem to do better when I have a creative
sister to push me, collaborate with me and keep me to a plan. My friend Nichole, (who has been paddling upstream as well, but with just one paddle!) has jumped on board with a plan to keep each other motivated by blogging our weekly creative goals on Monday and posting the results as we go along, or at least by Sunday. Sometimes it helps to be accountable to someone other than yourself! So without further ado, here are my creative goals for the week:

1) Finish Exploration Task #16. I really must get back on this journey as it opens the mind to what "art" can be and helps one break out of the box.

2) Create a piece of Digital Art. It's been a long time since I've done something digital. I have an idea...now if I can get it done in one day without the tendinitis rearing it's ugly head.

3) Do a page in each of the following journals: Dolly Art Journal, Europe 94, Sketchbook Project, Mixed Media Journal and the Nature Watercolor journal. Oh god. This seems daunting. Hmmm....No! I CAN! I WILL!

4) Do a project from my "Things to Make" board on Pinterest. This may or may not include items for my Mad Hatter Bunco party upcoming in February (yes, I MUST start now on it! I have lots of ideas!)

5) Head out with camera in tow to somewhere I've never been for a day of shooting nature. Take lots of water. It's damn hot out there.

6) Process the remaining images from the first day of the Cumbria Way and post to flickr. This is the most daunting because I took hundreds each day and combing through them to just keep the best is hard. Sometimes even a overcast, dull grey picture will evoke a warm  and sunny memory!

WHEW! Looking at that it does seem a bit challenging. But, I've already started by doing a page from The Awe-Manac:

Name today: Creatively Bound


Make a collage of several objects that have attitudes.


When I began to make this collage, I realized all the things that had "attitude" to me where things that technology has killed or is in the process of murdering.

Objects d'attitude

(or death by technology)

11x14 Mixed Media on Canvas

Enjoy the week ahead dear readers and I hope you all find time for Creativity, even if you have to pencil it in on the schedule! And Nichole, let's get busy girlfriend! xo