Card making again

My friend Kerin has gotten me back to making cards again. I had thought I would have to wait for Christmas before I made anymore cards since I lost my cardmaking mojo....but she must have flicked on some dormant switch...

There are some photos here over the weekened of what Kerin and I got up to... the photos aren't quite exactly card related but it was fun. Go see... lol

I have been straying ... a little jewellery making... a little tin altering... teaching myself how to quilt.. so far i have done a sample quilt but still yet to learn how to bind, fingers crossed i can understand the book instructions.. an unfinished landscape of a little shed/shack out in the paddock, not sure when I will pick up the brush again..
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Anyhow, here are some cards.. you can't quite tell from the pictures but the stripes are all 3 dimensional.. not patterned paper :o)

Yayyy it's finished

I am sooo sooooo happy right now... i didn't think i could do it but i happy with it...
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YAYYYYYYYYy i hope my dad will love it... i think he will comment on the lack of animal factor... will a cow drinking from the river be too weird... i've only ever seen them in the paddock.... he wanted an autumn scene... but i'm too scared to paint red and orange trees..
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This was the first time i painted on loose canvas and i really don't know why i have never done it before. Weird i thought after i painted on it.

You can see a close up version of it at this link on my flickr album. I actually loaded a larger size but looks like flickr resized it.

River gum

39 by 50 cm

acrylic on loose canvas

Lang Lang and father at Carnegie Hall - Horses

I recently saw a concert by the pianist Lang Lang on tv and then found this clip on youtube. It's so cool how the clip clop of horses can be done using the chinese string intrument.. thought I would post it here :)

2 gum trees and a lonely cow

I couldn't wait to post.. This painting has been going on for weeks and each week a little is added to it. It will have more cows, some pebbles in the sand, some grass fixing.

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I don't know if I was passionately motivated to finish it like my other paintings in one sitting but there was a lot of patience, silence and a curious persistence to carry on.

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My dad has requested an autumn landscape but the idea of painting red and yellow trees make me cringe because of the difficulties in it. I'm not sure I would understand how to balance bright colours. If that fails, he is getting this gum tree painting.

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Apart from this painting, nothing much else is going on in my neck of the woods. Anyway, here is the painting.. You can see a larger version of it here (Flickr album)

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acrylic on canvas

Work in Progress - oil painting

Hello,

i'm back to teaching myself how to paint ... it feels like i'm fumbling in the darkness trying to work out how to make things look the way i wish they would look. It is all very frustrating.

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This painting actually started 6 months ago. It was a bluer picture then with little brown or yellows. Then i decided to make it a brown yellow painting. May add some more cows later, i'm not sure yet. It's alright........ by far not where I would like it to be. Oil painting seems harder than acrylic. Maybe i'll try painting the same scene in acrylic and see what happens.

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I had a disaster with apples few weeks ago and abandoned it. i dunno. i lose interest so easily but have this desire to work through the difficult issues. I will paint a million gum trees if i have to and grass.. why is grass so difficult to do.

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Anyway.. this painting isn't finished yet. I thought i would post something...

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PS at least the cows look cute.... hehe

Blogging break :)

Just a little note to say I won't be blogging for the next few days but will pick up the Misty January journalling again on monday.

Yellow and pink

Yellow was better than i thought but i have never used it on it's own. It was always a colour i used to enhanced another.

But it wasn't as bad as pink.. I am not a pink person. There is a story behind it.

When i was a little girl, my mum decided to paint my room pink, and along with that were pink pillows and bedspread. It wasn't a nice light pink.. it was a brighter than bright hot pink and when night came, we had this orange night light at the stairway next to my bedroom... and it shone into my bedroom... and the hot pink became red like a furnace. The stairway light would cast long shadows from objects in the bedroom, towering across the ceiling and i would be shaking in the bed terrified. I must have thought it was hell. I cannot quite remember what happened after because many many years later when i visited that room again, it was no longer pink. So while others think of nice pink bunnies and flowers, pink reminds me of monsters...

The pink house below is a reminder of that pink room. I think it will be my first and last pink item. Initially i drew a pink monster... then thought i didn't think anyone would understand LOL so i painted over him and presented this tamer version of the pink monster.

Red

This painting started out with a painting of a man with a tree on his head all in dark red LOL and slowly it changed into this.. not too sure if i like it but i like the background... :o)

White

So this is white... she is letting out the butterflies in her tummy hehe :o)

Green

Here is my entry for the colour green... :oD

Orange

This is my entry for the orange theme.. i almost chickened out of the colour orange... couldn't think of anything except oranges and i had to stop the urge to paint some!!!!

Green the next colour is going to be a challenge... hmm

BLUE

I can't believe how much art i have done for the month of january! and i am currently work full time!!! It has been fun so far For this week on Misty's blog, we are doing monochromatic coloured journal pages.. one colour for each day this week!!!!!!!!!!!! i don't know if i can do it... but i'll start and see how i go.

The first colour is......... BLUE.. i did this tonight. hmm next entry is orange... what can i do for orange.. hmmmm i need some sleep now... nite!!! :)

Self portrait - 'Painted'

'Painted'

acrylic on canvas

i was so excited painting this portrait.. it was unfolding as the painting begun and i can't hide how happy i am that it turned out the way it did.. this painting technique was sooooo cool. In a way it's impressionistic in that there are lots of layers of strokes and graduation in colour and texture. You can click the picture to get a closer view of the textures. i love how it's not perfect and i love big buttons!!! i can't wait to try another painting like this.

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but what should i paint next? i usually get my ideas when i'm stuck at my desk at work or in the shower... i'm one of those people who cannot do anything when forced.. a lot of the times i just sit and wait.. sometimes i wait for weeks on end for a particular idea to ripen and when it's ripe for the picking, then i can paint.. If i try to paint before, the painting feels like it lacks what it could be.. it's like waiting for time and movement to converge, or be in sync. The most frustrating times are when i plan to do something and my heart wants to do something else.. it is just a disaster.

The Big Red Chair
acrylic on canvas

Few hours later.....

I managed to fit in another painting for this weekend.. this was a painting i had wanted to do for a long time but never found the time or energy for... I am loving being part of Misty's journal challenge/ sharing. It has been fun discovering new blogs and feeling connected ..

More portraits

I have been reflecting...

Deafened by the voice of desire
you are unaware the Beloved lives
in the core of your heart.
Stop the noise and
you wil hear His voice
in the silence.
~ Rumi

This new portrait is about the relationship between the the inner self and the form, between the 'Nameless and the Name'. Where the form is seen as the door into the love that has no boundaries.
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It is about trying to communicate what it's like learning to live inside out, to understand infinity in form. Surrendering by acceptance, going inward and letting go, and learning about why nothingness is not empty.

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More on journal - self portrait

i have been looking and looking inside myself to see what made up 'me' for this self portrait exercise.. the interesting thing I realized was that if i wasn't looking for anything in particular (with no preconception of what i was), i didn't find anything. It felt like me starring into myself starring back at me silently saying " so you've seen the real me, *silence*"
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I think I was trying too hard in the last post to paint a portrait that looked like me but i felt that it wasn't what i wanted to convey. On the surface I am this and that... but i wanted to paint what i really was about deep inside, past the flesh, the face... past obligations and should's and shouldn'ts....
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Tonight I sat down and told myself that i was under no pressure to create.. i was just going to paint something simple with myself in mind but without preconceptions. .
I started out by underpainting the face with cerulean mixed with titanium white.. and in dark areas, i highlighted using burnt umber.
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Then i roughly started painting in the skin with the blue mixture.. blue representing the spiritual element and then i layered on some tinted smoky white colour over the blues. So you can see the blue undertones coming through underneath. Lastly, i highlighted areas with lighter skin colour.
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This was so much fun and although it doesn't look much like me, it does feel a little more like me than the one below.
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I will try another one tomorrow.. perhaps with clothes on LOL
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:o)

Journal challenge - self portrait

This is a little unnerving to post.

Okay I was supposed to do a self portrait for the journal challenge and it wasn't an easy task but at least i tried it... it was a surreal experience.

Art Journal continued....

i tried to scan and also take a photograph of the latest journal entry but couldn't quite get it to show all the textures on the picture... white is a hard colour to scan!!! I applied crackle medium to the entire painting.. then painted over it.. so that it looks aged. What i learnt is that while the top layer of paint is still wet, you can actually scratch marks by just scratching it with a sharp point , pen nib etc... Part of the face has been drawn by scratching and later enhanced with colour pencils.

It's been so much fun seeing what everyone else is doing on their journals. There is a list of blog sites on Misty's blog.. I am feeling so inspired but work starts on monday.. i realized at a friend's place yesterday that i may have forgotten my work computer's password.. oops

Let's see if i can fit more playing tomorrow :)

Here's to a Great Year!

Well, it happened. 2008 came and left in a hurry. As I went about treating the day as any other normal day, I started to become conscious that today was the first step into 2009. Maybe slightly superstitious but i thought that perhaps anything that ocurred today would set the precedence or standard for the rest of the year.

So I made it a point to do some art, as I didn't think a year without art would go down well... I listened to something on my ipod that was good for the soul, I didn't snack on account of my ongoing diet... tried to stay out of trouble as i often do... all up I had a pretty good day. So here's hoping for all, a great year with good intentions.

There was an invitation on Misty Mawn's site to work on our own art journal for 2009 . I hadn't worked on my own art journal before and thought what a great idea to compile a book of mixed media art with journalling... so I started my cover page today. I am naming my Art journal "The Story of the Nameless and the Name'. Have no idea what else is going into the journal but here's what I've done today. It's all paint, finger painting too.. i did try to do a gel medium transfer but it failed... LOL.. oh well...

Happy New Year everyone!