Moving Again!

How many times have friends told me they would never again help me move.....every time. LOL  Just look at that sad exhausted little face. It's her own fault. She is my bestie and want's to be closer to the grandkids. The poor thing used to live with me, but now we have separate apartments. At this point we will continue to live in the same building. I don't know if that will ever change. You never know what the future holds. She put up with my stuff long enough. Not easy for a minimalist to do. I love stuff. I love having my stuff surrounding me. My art supplies keep multiplying. I want to try everything and I tend to hold on to those things because I may not be wanting to do that now but again in the future pick it up again. So if my friends want to try some new craft, they come to me to see if I have it. I probably do. That being said, moving is a bitch. Yea, not fun. Most of my friends know better than to come around. LOL  I really thought when we moved here, that we would stay. Don't keel over. We are only a few days in. 

The view from my desk. 

This was the dining room area. Now floor to ceiling boxes. 

Come to think of it, this looks much like it did when I moved in. Oh my. You'd think this was an entire homes worth of stuff. I do pack most items in small boxes to make them easier to move, especially since all of us are rather falling apart. Aaaand since all my friends have gone missing, I have to be able to lift it all, just in case. Fortunately, my bestie is great at talking others into helping. I think I am at least half packed. I still have my over sized paper, acrylic paints, fabric, pictures and mat board. Oh and finish packing the drawers and break down my cabinets. We left them whole when we moved here and the sides started to break where they are attached. I'd like to have them remade in solid wood if I can afford it, but for now, they need to make yet another move. 

Then there is cleaning. Yea, this is 3 years of smoking by my computer. I had cute vinyls up and this is right where I sit the most. The drippy on the top is from when we had bed bugs and they sprayed.

I am trying to keep some polish on my nails so they will grow. I just did these today. A light lavender, #43 Broadway Nails and deeper lavenderish periwinkle,Wet and Wild Megalast #213C On A Trip, with 2 different top coats.    Over the Wet and Wild is a glitter Pure Ice called Over You and on the Broadway is L A Colors CNP688 Cutie                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

Please ignore the grayish stained cuticles. I had black base on last week and it just refused to come completely off.

Spring???

I took this picture yesterday to show off the crab apple trees in bloom already. To make it interesting for my art friends, and to show off my work in progress. I am painting the ASL Fantasy Native American War Pony Beginner tutorial in Acrylic. This is where I left off after adjusting the head a bit. I plan on working on it some more today.

I was on the computer and listening to a drawing tutorial and thinking about the rule of thirds and doodling. This is what I made. Tic Tac Oh! I was using a Sketch and Wash pencil, so I was able to add a little shading.  Then I drew a bunch of junk on my desk. Wow! I am impressed with my self. LOL

Here is the drawing I posted the other day before I painted her in with Brusho's. It's just a basic face sketch and here she is all colored in. I adjusted the color a bit on the second one so it would show up better. This video was my inspiration to give it a try- watercolor painting with Magenta's Nuance pigment powders  by Creationsceecee

 

Magnolia Watercolor Painting

I painted along with Lindsay, The Frugal Crafter when she did a Magnolia Watercolor Painting   on February 25th. I did look at the image on Paint My Photo. They are such pretty blossoms. I used one of my little watercolor journals that I made for my cruise to the Bahama's last year. I painted in the car and a couple of times on board. For my journals I cut watercolor paper to 5.50x7.50 and used my Bind It All to punch and bind them together on the O-wires. I also cut a couple of pieces of chip board for the covers and decorated them. I added a pocket to the inside cover of each for tickets and other goodies that I might pick up.
I enjoyed painting along with Lindsay and some day I will learn not to be so heavy handed with the color. That is going to be something I will have to work on. I don't think it turned out to bad for a beginner. I tend to be heavy on the colors no matter what media I use. I do love the look of watercolor, so I will keep on trying and maybe some day I will get that lovely transparent look. For now, I will settle for, it looks like what it is supposed to be and you can actually tell what it is. LOL

Pears

I made my way to the begining Art Quest which is to paint pears with only a picture on paint my photo to go by. Big Art Quest Begins. I sketched them out on watercolor paper and then colored them in. I had done the background first but it looked aweful. I had wet the paper well and tried to drop the colors in and they were not spreading like I wanted them to. I ended up pilling up the paper trying to get them to spread out. So I trace the pears on heavy vellum type paper that I have.  I covered the pears with my mask and wet small sections of the background and tapped on some Brusho Crystal Color in black. It is my favorite because of the mix of burnt sienna and blue crystals. Then I resprayed it to spread the color. After I finished the background I lifted my mask and found out that some of the crystals had gotten under it and splattered on my pears. So much for being careful. LOL I guess I should have made sure it was down better. I also got a little more shadow on the bottom pear. I still love the way it turned out. 

This is my first stab at the acrylic pears. The background ended up being a lot darker than I wanted and you couldn't see the shadows. So I decided to sponge in some burnt sienna on the background to warm it up. I like the way it turned out. No it is not a masterpiece but for no instruction other than paint the pears in the picture I am quite pleased with myself. Had I done it as my very first painting, I think it would have looked very different. After having done a couple of paintings with Cinnamon's guidance, I had at least a few ideas about how to make certain colors. I can't wait to come back to this in a year and do another for comparison. I think it will be a lot of fun to see how much I have learned by then and how different I am at working with these tools.

 

Bat Cat and Fireflies

I did this one several weeks ago in the end of February with Cinnamon Cooney's wonderful Youtube tutorial called  Black Cat Bat Kawaii. Sadly, I lost my internet connection for an hour in the middle of it. I kept going, and thankfully it is acrylic, so I could go over anything I messed up. 

February 23rd we did this fun painting Dandelions and Fireflies . I think my troll likes it.

This scary creature was supposed to be a cat. LOL I was flipping through videos and saw a challenge video....to draw with your feet. Yea, crazy! I had to try it. I started off thinking about drawing a cat and the ears were ok from there it all went downhill, The eyes were definitely a bit un-cat like and then the mouth. Ugg! I realized it looked more like a bull dog, so a bull dog it is. Not bad at all for being drawn with my foot. I continued switching feet and trying to write my name. So this mess was probably the best that came out. I had fun giving it a try though. 

This is a drawing I did. It has been finished with watercolor but I don't have a picture of it. I'll have to post it when I get a chance. 

Mono Printing with the Creative Palette

These are some of the goodies I used in this session for printing. Stencils, a rubber comb, some plastic canvas. As you can see, I really don't clean my stencils.

This is what my creative palette monoprinting plate from Stampendous looked like when I was done. Also on the right is the newsprint pad that I clean off my brayer on. I was also pealing paint off of the palette to see if I could get some good sized pieces to use in artwork. I love letting the layers of paint dry on the palette because in each successive print a bit of that paint will stick and give you surprise colors. Here are a few of my prints that I thought looked the most interesting.

I used a package of cheap watercolor paper for these. It was definitely not anything good enough to watercolor on. I got it to use for cards but it wasn't even good enough for that, so waste not want not. I used it all up in one session of mono printing. I am thinking about making a journal out of all the printed paper. Maybe printing on both sides and then adding stamping and other things.

This one I decided to stamp a border with my new stamps from Stampendous NK Studio Marks. I won these stamps and I must say they are perfect for grunging up packgrounds and using with the Creative Palette. The flower is from the discontinued Blossom Beauty stamp set from Stampendous. Not sure why it was discontinued but you can still get the beauty face stamp. Anyway, I did a whole page of the flower with water soluble crayons and then die cut them. Some of them I layered. I want to write a saying on this to matt and frame it. I just need to decide on what and practice writing it. LOL