This week’s inspiration comes from this pin. I loved this one and wanted to see if I could do anything that resembled it at all.
It’s all watercolors. I did it while I was getting my hair done so it’s more haphazard than usual and I don’t love how it ended up but that’s ok. I still am glad I tried.
prompt says: today i know what it feels like to work toward letting go of
I wrote about releasing, letting go of all the past I am holding on to. Letting go of things i hold on to all day long.
Today I Know is a project for 2014. You can read more about it here.
Life Book week thirteen was taught by Dyan Reaveley. I sat on this one for a long time but then when I finally sat down, I knew I wanted to use feathers. I used the Crafter’s Workshop stencil to draw them and cut them and then I colored each of them with different mists and stamped them with writing stamp. and then outlined the edges.
I then couldn’t decide what to do with the background. I tried like five different ones. When I finally, finally tried black, I loved it. Everything was easy from there on.
The writing says: You get to shed parts of yourself that no longer serve you.
a few details:
but here we are.
Remember This is a project for 2014. You can read more about it here.
So the first part of being creative is changing my perspective. Listening from a completely different perspective. Slowing down and seeing other possibilities. Stopping my default reaction to things. Really taking the time to look at things multiple ways. Each time an opportunity to listen arrives, I will be asking, what would other perspectives look like here? What’s his/her perspective? What’s mine? Is there another?
The fun lettering I used here comes from this pin.
The image here is from this awesome pin.
Listen with Intent is a project for 2014. You can read more about it here.
This week’s inspiration comes from the line drawing class I took with Lisa Congdon back in March.
I drew these with a size 1 micron and used the watercolors to color. The background is also watercolors. I am not such a fan of it but the goal was practice so I am trying not to judge myself too harshly.
prompt says: today i know that many people in the world are
I wrote about how many people feel broken in their own way.
Today I Know is a project for 2014. You can read more about it here.
As promised, here’s my month of painting faces which is what I chose to do for the month of May for my monthly art projects. I signed up for Judy’s painting faces class the minute I read about it.
I love Judy and knew I would love the class.
Despite the really unwise move of putting the wrong date on my calendar, I finished the whole class anyway. I started it one month late, when it was already finished. I just got into the class and did each assignment on a day in May.
I ended up with a range of faces, some I liked, some I really didn’t. But I got a lot of practice, which is what this is all about.
Here are the twenty faces I made:
Another thing I learned in May was that twenty is the perfect number for these projects. Like I mentioned yesterday. I learned the magic of twenty from this project.
I need like a million more hours practicing my faces but, for now, I am grateful for this month.
This week’s simple remember this was done for My Mind’s Eye. It was a page where I wrote never ever give up with washi tape. Then I painted the page, and then I stripped the washi and added some black marker. and ta-da!
and here it is without the black marker:
which do you like more?
a lot more about this can be found on the My Mind’s Eye blog.
Remember This is a project for 2014. You can read more about it here.
As I was prepping to write about my month of painting faces, I realized that I never wrote about my month of Lettering Quotes back in April.
When I was originally planning my monthly art projects for 2014, one of the ones I really wanted to do was this lettering exercise. I specifically signed up for Lori Vliegen’s class with the intention of doing this.
I am really grateful that it had the exact intended effect.
I started small with writing in my notebook and unsure of exactly what to do. My first five were basic and warm-up:
then I decided that I was having enough fun to pull out my watercolor papers. Each morning, I would pick a quote that spoke to me, find an image that I thought went with the quote and I sat down to make them both. I then colored it with watercolors and water color pencils.
and, most nights, I used the page and the quote to write my blog post.
some days, I struggled with what to draw but I still wanted to keep going.
Other days I didn’t know how to change things around so it would keep being interesting. But then I realized interesting is not the point. Practice was the point. So repetition is part of practice.
I tried to pick quotes that really inspired me. I am not one of those people who collect quotes so I didn’t have an arsenal. I just looked at a few sites and made a pinterest board with ideas.
I then used that board each day to pick one. If I found myself spending too much time picking something, I’d force myself to pick the very next one I looked at. That usually motivated me to pick quickly.
All in all, I ended up with 26 of them. I’ve come to realize that a good number is 20. If I can do 20 of something new each month, I am making tangible progress and it’s good practice. 20 also means I don’t have to do them on the weekend if I don’t want to.
I loved doing these and had to tell myself that I couldn’t continue on to May. It’s important to me to switch them around. So for may, I did faces, but I might come back to this on another month of this year.
Most importantly, it made me less scared about writing, which was exactly what I had hoped to achieve.
On to another month!
A new month and a new intention. This month, I wanted to do something fun so I decided to pick Listen Creatively. How can I change things up? How can I look at the same thing differently? Can I get creative with my listening? What would that look like? What would that sound like? I am not sure what to expect from this month, but I am open to being creative with it.
The creative lettering I used here comes from this pin.
The image here is supposed to be watercolors.
Listen with Intent is a project for 2014. You can read more about it here.
This week’s inspiration comes from this pin. I am still obsessed with figure sketching and I loved this one.
I drew the dresses in pencil then drew again with 0.005 micron and used the watercolors. The background is also watercolors. I also added some gold mica powder. You can see better in this other view.
prompt says: today i know that it is time for me to replace my
I wrote about good and bad news and how i listen for the bad and how i want to replace this point of view.
Today I Know is a project for 2014. You can read more about it here.
believe in impossible things. dream big dreams. live the dare.
By the time I did this piece, I had run out of quotes. So I ended up taking some of my sheets from The Walk and pasted them on my page. I love how the wording turned out. I think it was a reminder to the deep parts of myself.
I could use a lot more of these.
I want to believe in impossible things. I want to be brave. Maybe the line between stupid and brave is thin but I still want to dance on it. I’ve always been conservative. Safe. I do the right thing. I make the wise choices.
Not that I didn’t make mistakes but in the grand scheme, I’ve consistently played it safe. It’s what I do.
But when I read “live the dare” it lights up my soul. I want to live the dare. I want to dream big dreams. The big dreams of my childhood are all met (and I am really grateful for that, of course.) and the only down side of that is that it’s time for new dreams.
New big dreams.
I think that’s fuel for the soul. At least for my soul.
So what are your big dreams? are you living the dare?
This quote says:
The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra.
This one made me think a lot, too. I don’t really know if I agree with it. Is it really just “little” extra or is it a lot. Maybe it’s better to say a little extra every day. Because I think it takes a lot of work to be extraordinary.
I am a firm believer that we can all be extraordinary in pretty much anything we want to be (okay, yes there are some exceptions but fewer than people make it out to be.) and that the trick is consistent and persistent effort. And not just blind effort but concerted effort. Effort that involves critical thinking, growth, and forward progress.
When people tell me that they don’t have the brain for languages, I have to stop myself from calling them out. The fact is, languages might come a bit more easily to me now that I know many of them but, in the beginning, they were just as hard for me. I studied. A LOT. to get to where I am. When I learned English, I read incessantly in English. When I was in Japan, I spent hours every single day practicing. Just to get mediocre at it.
It wasn’t luck or genes. It was hard work.
And yes maybe some things come easier to some of us on a fundamental level. But it still doesn’t mean you can’t get extraordinary at math, it just means you might have to work harder than the other person. Which is something you choose or don’t choose.
But saying it’s not in my genes takes the choice away from you. It puts you back into the victim mentality and I dislike that. It also feels like a cop out. Like “too bad for me, i guess i am just not wired that way.” when it really is more like “aren’t I lucky, I have this excuse so I don’t actually have to put in the time and effort. I can just say I am not wired that way.”
Ahem.
If you don’t want to do it, that’s fine by me. I think there’s freedom in owning that. Just don’t confuse it with “can’t.” IT’s not that you can’t, it’s that you don’t want to do what it takes.
Which is fine. And takes me back to the quote. It’s not a “little” extra in my opinion. Extraordinary requires passionate amount of extra. Consistent. Disciplined. Obsessive. Truly, deeply, joyfully doing something enough to get really good at it.
Maybe if you’re passionate enough it feels like it’s only a little extra?
This quote says:
What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us and when you bring what is within out into the world, miracles happen.
I like the idea of this quote. I like what it says. But when I really think about it, I am not sure I understand it. Is it just saying “be you”? Is it saying when you fully own who you are and step into it, miracles happen?
I am not sure 🙂
Alas, the quote really speaks to me anyway. I like the idea of bringing what’s within me out into the world.
This year’s been an interesting one for me so far. I find myself going up and down a lot and there are chunks of my life where I want to be doing more, better, different. I want to feel less overwhelmed and less purposeless all at once. I know that sounds weird that I can be both but I feel like I am.
I find I am much more productive and happy when I am stretched thinner. Partly cause I have a purpose. I like having things to do. It’s easy for me to spend my days alone, relatively unproductively (or even if somewhat productively, maybe not growing in all the ways I would like to grow). And I want to be bolder, stretch in ways I haven’t before so I can see what I am capable of. So I can see what I do and don’t like. So I can be willing to show up.
I’ve been doing a lot of things in the last few years but I don’t think I’ve been showing up a lot. Maybe a little more than bare minimum. Sometimes a little less.
And I want that to change.
Most importantly, I want to stop aching about things. I noticed that many times a day, I find myself aching for different things. To draw better, to be healthier (and thinner), to teach my kids more or whatever. These thoughts come and they overwhelm me. They make me sad and then they leave and I am left with the sad aftertaste.
I don’t want to ache anymore. I want to do or let go. Either is ok. If I find myself aching to draw better, then I need to pick a project where I draw more and regularly. If I want to sit with my kids, I need to just do it. Not much more to it than that.
And If I don’t want to do what it takes (because most of these are indeed hard work) then I need to let go of the ache. To remember that it’s my choice to not do it (and it’s a perfectly fine choice) and to genuinely let myself off the hook.
So that’s my plan for the next week. Pay attention each time I wish for things to be different. Then either make a change or let go of the wish. No more burdening myself with it.
Sounds easy but we’ll see if it’s so.
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projects for twenty twenty-four
projects for twenty twenty-three
projects for twenty twenty-two
projects for twenty twenty-one
projects for twenty nineteen
projects for twenty eighteen
projects from twenty seventeen
monthly projects from previous years
some of my previous projects
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