SOUL COLLAGE

I made my first Soul Collage tonight. It is called "Vulnerability and Strength". I was going to put a flower over the US on her forehead but decided that it looked better without - it was too much.

I have been carrying my camera again. I got out of the habit of it after my other one got stolen out of my bag. I carry it in a small bag around my neck now so it is handy and safe. The blossoms are popping out all over now, we had a lovely warm day today:

We have a lot of Blue Heron's around here and I was lucky enough to get a couple of good shots. I don't know if it was the same one in two different places or if it was actually two Heron's:

They are such beautiful birds. There is one that fishes off the pier just in front of my apartment. It is so amazing when they take off and fly.

I have been working in Finding Water every morning and doing my morning pages. I also had an artist's date today. I have this urge to do a mixed media picture in pink with cupcakes and suckers in it so I went to the cupcake store and took a couple of pictures and took pictures of suckers and cupcake stands to inspire me. I had a lot of fun and walked a lot. I also bought some scrapbook paper - pink of course and found some flowers at Michael's on sale. They are in jars and I have been looking at them since the store opened but wouldn't buy them because they were $16.95 - ridiculous price. Today they were only $6.99 so I had to have one of each colour of course. It's not safe to let me out of the house these days. I just had a run on buying beautiful journals!!! I have no idea what I will do with them but I HAD to have them!! LOL! I love my art supplies and stationary!!

FULL MOON DREAMBOARD

I decided to to do a Full Moon Dreamboard for the first time. It took me three days but I finally finished it today. It was a lot of fun. My heading is My Happyness Quest and my topic for this month is PLAYFULNESS:

Getting in touch with my child self and playing is my goal for this month. I got the idea of The Happyness Quest from a book I saw called The Happiness Project. The word project sounded a bit left brain so I changed mine to Quest and put a y in Happyness - sounds more fun!!

When I was out wandering about on Saturday I bought two books. The Secret and Finding Water by Julia Cameron. I have her other two books in the trilogy - The Artist's Way and Walking In This World. The first chapter in the book is Optimism which is exactly what I need. Getting back to Morning Pages and Artist's Dates will be a good thing for me too. It has been a very gray, wet winter in Vancouver and I really feel like I need something to lift me up.

Someone gave me the connection to Soul Collage www.soulcollage.com which looks like fun too. They are small collages on cards 5" X 8". There is a video on the site if you are interested.

IMAGINARY TRIP TO IRELAND AND MORNING SKETCHES

Last night I did this sketch of The Matchmaker Bar from Lisdoonvarna, Co.Clare. Once a year there is a Matchmaker Festival, so if you want to find a partner visit Lisdoonvarna during festival time. I have never drawn and painted a building before and I actually had fun doing this. The reason - it was a sketch and I didn't have to worry about lines being perfectly straight. I decided not to use a ruler and that was really freeing. I am learning a lot in this class:
This morning I decided to take the plunge and sketch some faces I had found in a magazine about a week ago:

Then I did a couple from a prompt in Carla Sonheim's book, Drawing Lab.

This one is a one-liner, it had to be done without lifting your pencil from the paper:

This one is done in the style of Picasso and was drawn by turning the page 90 degrees every time I had finished each part:

These two exercises were also very freeing. I have been more of a realist and haven't switch in to this fun, abstract style of art.

Finding new pathways is really interesting, freeing and fun!!

WHAT NEXT????

PLAY

My favourite time of the day is the morning when I can stay in bed until I feel like getting up. This morning I woke up at 4am. I couldn't get back to sleep so I took my medication which I have to take an hour before breakfast, took four books from my bulging bookshelf and sat in bed with a hot water bottle perusing my books. One of them was The New Creative Artist by Nita Leland. She inspired me. I have been wanting to keep a sketch book but there is something about drawing that paralyzes me. It's not that I can't draw it's just something that makes me anxious and I get stuck. Anyway, I decided that sketching in bed in the morning was a good time. So I gathered my supplies: watercolour pencils, Faber-Castell waterproof pen, gel pens and started. I hopped (well, not quite hopped??) out of bed a couple of times to make my breakfast, (I eat my breakfast in bed) gather paper, scissors and a glue stick and ended up doing a collage. This was fun and I had been creative before 8am - a great way to start the day!!! Okay, so it's not sketching but it is something creative!! Notice the page on the left is dated Nov. 21/o7. I have many sketchbooks I've started and then left after a few pages. Does anyone do this?

I love having so many books as a resource to get me inspired.

Happy creating everyone!!!

IRELAND

Two more watercolours from Ireland. I definitely need lots more practice!!

I'm back, yet again. This is my calendar for March:
These are my watercolours for my Imaginary Trip To Ireland: