Tuesday, September 03, 2013

Keeping Up With 29 Faces

Okay guys...here goes more faces! Terrible lighting, so I'm asking forgiveness in advance.



Sunday, September 01, 2013

Moonshine Day One!


In this session of Moonshine, I intend to...create faces, explore the waning ovaries in my body and enjoy the last rays of mothering sunshine that my body offers but at the same time, I intend to enjoy my lovely daughter at the peak of her motherhood. She’s the most amazing woman ever...mother to a lovely son and devoted wife. I look upon her as my hero and I idealize her choices and her strength. She is the complete embodiment of the Mother Herself. 

As a woman who respects the Sacred Feminine in my concept of God/dess, the Mother-time was the most ideal time of my life. I used to think that Croning would be all I ever wanted. I craved being 45, free of my monthly flow, and having grandchildren. Oddly, the truth is that I miss the monthly waxing and waning of hormones and the feeling of being able to get pregnant. I believe that the Mother aspect of the Goddess is in many ways, the strongest. Creation. Birth. Life...

My intentions are to explore the faces of the Mother in this session, especially the Elven ones that have recently been showing up in my art. I want to enjoy another class with Effy Wild and to travel deeply into the spiritual road of the Mother Goddesses. Entering autumn, my favorite season, this is a perfect moment to grow and expand my knowledge of the Mother in all her forms. I’m looking forward to exploring the Inner Realms and seeking out the Mother. 

For fun, I’m engaging in 29 Faces! I can’t wait to do a face a day. Most will be quick sketches, but I’m going to love the challenge!


Saturday, August 31, 2013

29 Faces in September!

I'm participating in 29 Faces in September! I can't wait to start. Along with Moonshine with Effy Wild, I'm excited to sketch out 29 Faces. What's cool about it is that it's any form, any face, any medium...and you connect with others taking on the challenge! Time to start...See the button on my sidebar for the link.

Friday, August 09, 2013

Folk Art Faces

I'm going to be taking Effy Wild's "Moonshine" starting September 1st and am pretty excited about the entire process. She has a cool portrait style. I'm also considering Tam's Gypsy girl portraits, but the finances say..."Nope" at this time.

Enjoying befriending folks OL and doing a little art journaling. I'm developing some techniques of my own and the folk art portraits I do are so much fun. I wish I was motivated enough to hit the Etsy store hard w/prints and such. I'd also like to get into CafePress and the like. I'm thinking on it. Might not make any $$ but I could enjoy finding out if anyone else likes them. I'd love to share them w/people beyond an occasional blog post.

So, here's the latest. She was a super quick, no-graphite sort of girl...you can easily see the corrections and yes, the fun! Loving the set of Prismas. It's awesome having such a wide range of colors.

She's progressed way beyond this...her face hasn't been finalized though and she has pink/purple hair thanks to Jen Gott who suggested taking her into the realm of fantasy.

Saturday, August 03, 2013

Blogging and Books...

So, time to blog...Inspired by Effy Wild and her month of blogging. I can't imagine blogging daily, but I can try. Today was a great day w/the daughter and the grand boy. We went to Mr. K's and I grabbed some books last minute...got an amazing amount of credit. Won $24 on lottery tickets and bought a couple more for the $300 million Powerball. If I win, life will be sublime. Grin. Tough, but sublime.

Rough last 15 for my dear friend Jen. Life sucks and yet is awesome for her. May the Gods bless her this Lammas.

Time for some art...

Monday, July 08, 2013

Pam Carriker

http://networkedblogs.com/MVUE3
I'd love to win a spot in this class! Can't afford it, but it looks quite good!

Jen and Art

My art partner and I have danced around sending art back and forth and I received a lovely sketchy portrait from her and I have a little growing stack of stuff to send her. She wants what was a super quick sketch on an envelope which I'll post below. I also have a great article she sent me about herself and a lovely child she cared for at the time I first met her. I have the envelopes. I will pack them! Hugs to her and her new relationship! I wish her the very best!

She's basic, quick, done in Sharpie in about a minute. Hope she really loves her...

Friday, May 17, 2013

Ady!



I'm hoping to win a spot on Dreamy Faces with Ady Almanza. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=4633600290437&set=a.1174914905464.2023097.1605837004&type=1&theater

Triptych in My Little Journal


All part of a fantasy triptych for Juliana Cole's class! This sketchbook is almost used up. I'm not going further with this at the moment. I'm enjoying the process, though. It's fun and rewarding. I like making fantasy faces from my imagination. Ignore the wonky perspective on the castle walls. I sketched it quickly then said, "Eh." It's all for fun. Koh-i-noor woodless pencils do not work well on mixed media paper covered with craft paint. They certainly aren't Prismas. Usually they're really rich in color, but over painted surfaces...nope. The angel was done in Col-Erase by Prismacolor. They're softer colors and the leads are a bit harder than regular Prismacolors. They're awesome for erasing, though!





Thursday, May 09, 2013

Mother's Day

Got my first Mom's Day gift in the mail from Michael and Vince. They live in CA and I miss them both so much! Thank you, thank you! You brightened my already pretty good day! I love you guys!

Monday, May 06, 2013

Sidhe

Sketch in progress for a possible larger work...

Field Notes...#2 Completed for the MOMENT

I managed to complete the Touchstone exercise for the moment. I know I'll alter it more as time passes, but for now, I'm at a stopping point.

Saturday, May 04, 2013

Beautiful Charleston

Just a few lovely shots from a spot on King Street on a cloudy, windy, GORGEOUS 62 degree day...Thanks Holly and Sly for these.








Friday, May 03, 2013

Field Notes: Mixed Media Sketching/Chapter 1 Exercise 2 Examiner Extraordinaire



Chapter 1: Assignment #2: Examiner Extraordinaire Enjoyable background making from "Field Notes: Mixed Media Sketching" tonight. I enjoyed working on the first layers of a natural background. This is one awesome course!

Acrylic paints in Lush Foliage, Tan and Climbing Vine, metallic paints in two different golds and bronze. Tim Holtz Distress Stains in Peeled Paint and Vintage Photo. Selected nature photos from my collage stash. 

WIP...




D&D Character

Hey, this was supposed to be my D&D Character, not ME! LOL...


I Am A: Neutral Good Human Druid (7th Level)

Ability Scores:
Strength-10
Dexterity-19
Constitution-13
Intelligence-18
Wisdom-17
Charisma-18

Alignment:
Neutral Good A neutral good character does the best that a good person can do. He is devoted to helping others. He works with kings and magistrates but does not feel beholden to them. Neutral good is the best alignment you can be because it means doing what is good without bias for or against order. However, neutral good can be a dangerous alignment when it advances mediocrity by limiting the actions of the truly capable.

Race:
Humans are the most adaptable of the common races. Short generations and a penchant for migration and conquest have made them physically diverse as well. Humans are often unorthodox in their dress, sporting unusual hairstyles, fanciful clothes, tattoos, and the like.

Class:
Druids gain power not by ruling nature but by being at one with it. They hate the unnatural, including aberrations or undead, and destroy them where possible. Druids receive divine spells from nature, not the gods, and can gain an array of powers as they gain experience, including the ability to take the shapes of animals. The weapons and armor of a druid are restricted by their traditional oaths, not simply training. A druid's Wisdom score should be high, as this determines the maximum spell level that they can cast.

Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?, courtesy of Easydamus (e-mail)

Thursday, May 02, 2013

Viking Girl

Last night, I spent about 20 min...maybe 30 drawing, painting (with watercolors) and scrubbing pan pastels on this girl I liked her. One arm is too big, but who cares? She's a sketch and was a fun one at that. You can see the difference between the one with and without a touch of pan pastels...


 

Field Notes - Sampler!

Yep, I took off making a sampler for Juliana Coles awesome class "Field Notes: Mixed Media Sketching and I did a neat, organized mark-making review of most of the tools in my "Journal Mobile Unit." Juliana, who is a major part of the class and is very involved on a one-on-one basis gently explained that she wanted messy, yummy, juicy and experimental. Mix them up, play and discover...so my pages went from this...
and this...
to...
Yes...and amazing, delicious, outrageous, riotous exploration of the things that I wanted to use and carry everywhere. I settled on some alternate markers, Golden Fluid acrylic Titan Buff and Turquoise (Phthalo) and Folk Arts' French Vanilla and Patina. (Obviously my fav colors are black and turquoise!) I'm still working through the marks and I'm sure my kit will be changing based on what I need and since I have one box already set up for life drawing, I know that this will evolve further. 

I'm having great fun in her class and after Initiation, I have to say that I'm hooked! I doubt I'll ever miss another of her classes and I'm hoping to lure her to South Carolina, to piratey Charleston, for a class! (Fingers crossed!)

Thursday, April 25, 2013

Moonshine!

http://effywild.com/moonshine

The ever-wonderful Effy Wild is doing this majorly awesome workshop and I so want to be a part of it! It looks like much fun...hmm...

Friday, March 08, 2013

March - In Like a Lamb, So Far

Wow, it's been a tough couple of weeks. I'm in the midst of a wicked flare (thanks MA for teaching me the meaning of the term "Wicked") and it's been hell. Stress over stuff always blows. One of my kids has nasty cellulitis and I'm worried about that. Worried about taxes. Worried about interpersonal relationships. Worried about money. The usual...LOL.

Anyway, trying to keep the focus of this blog to art and spiritual exploration...that's what Lothian is to me. It's where Gawain was born (possibly). It's a spiritual place in my mind. It's one of those Other Side places where I might reside in some form. My Ka or my Ba or parts of my soul are possibly there.

Check out the mermaids. I had a lot of fun with these! More to come. Between drawing folk art face from my imagination and life drawing, I'm enjoying the process. I'm also attempting to embrace the "Extreme Journaling" concept, but I'm finding my own path.



Anna


Anna

Anna





So, lets add some art. I did some life drawings recently at a Meetup (those are awesome for quick, couple-of-hours of art) which I consider an Art Date for Myself. I'll toss those up and possibly some other stuff.

Monday, February 11, 2013

Ann Bonny

I did a really fast layout that had it's focus on pirates and it's the result of my "Letter in a Bottle" exercise. I have always been fascinated with Ann Bonny.

I did a two page spread on pirates...focused on Ann Bonny, the female pirate out of Charleston, SC. The locals rumors is that she was a debutant from South of Broad - the richest part of town. She fell for the wrong kind of man and took to a life of crime. Her father tried to send her to the plantation he had outside of the city, but she escaped with her lover (possibly Calico Jack Rackham) and went onto a life of crime. Rumor also has it that after she 'escaped' her death sentence for piracy, she returned to 'high society" and to a life of being a wife to her originally intended betrothed. Hmmm...fascinating. I had a past life in Charleston/Bermuda just after the heyday of piracy and it's always fascinated me. Nope, I wasn't Bonny. My last name was Tucker in that lifetime - one of the only ones I've discovered via an indepth past life regression. Irony...I had my youngest son in this life in the hospital founded by my son in that life!

Sunday, February 10, 2013

Initiation Extreme Journaling Workshop

An amazing thing happened on the way to the day after...Jule Coles gave me the chance of a lifetime. I signed up for her Quickdraw workshop and she wrote to me and said she was giving me the opportunity to join her in Initiation. Amazing woman. It wasn't the cost difference. The fact that there was $150 there between the said and unsaid was and is huge, but that's the sign that she's an amazing soul...a warm soul. The thing is I've bought stuff from her before - as many of her booklets as I could afford so that I could learn the process, never imagining that I could actually take a workshop with her responding and helping me along the way.

That being said, I found a book months ago...and set it aside for some future altered art book. A book with purpose that hadn't found it yet. I chose to go so far as to even thin it to prep it for future use. One of the first assignments is to start finding pics to collage of your perfect studio. What's amazing about this book was that it's title "Style for Living: how to make where you live you" says it all. It has awesome line drawings of incredibly artful spaces all through it. It was published in the mid 70's so it has yellowing pages yet the brownish ink makes it all the creamier.

I did a face. She turned out to be the green-haired Goddess of the book. On the page opposite, last night, I found some K&Company sea-themed cutouts and found this amazing palm tree. I'd looked through a Rolling Stone that was headed for the garbage and found this crescent moon necklace that was stamped and I tossed it in with a gear ring picture. The palm went alongside this. (Not realizing I was making the SC Flag...). Ghost Adventures was focused on the Charleston City Jail and it's art school in the background and I opened the only travel mag I could find (I bagged up my mags and hid them from myself) and pow! There was a two page article with a map of downtown Charleston. I found other pics that related and before I knew it, I had a collage with 'my' studio. My world.

Using intuition, I started blind and the God/dess said something very important - you are here now. You. Are. Here. Now. Oh...and Begin. I did a prayer page to help me get everything done I need doing and to protect my loved ones. I had already done a page on pain and that's hidden below my beautiful (if far from 'perfect') Goddess.

My art will start popping up here along with some photographs of my world. I need to be mindful and I'll use the camera's eye to find a way to do that. I need to blog. I need to start making this count. I have a wonderful, free opportunity here and it's time.

Rain?