Into the Wild Zentangle Series 5

It has been pretty busy around here.  My mom and niece spent last week with me and that was a lot of fun.  We had a rabid raccoon hang around the house which wasn’t so much fun.  I was hoping it would leave, but I ended up having to call Animal Control.  And now Alana is spending the week with her cousin.  Also, I have a huge 18 x 24 painting that I’m working on as well as a dog portrait and barn scene.  All three are a slow process, but I hope I can show you some new art soon.  In the meantime, I have a new pattern to share with you:

Izland Flower

I’m sorry that this pattern is a little rough, but I lent my sister-in-law my pattern book so I had to redraw it.  She loves Zentangling now:)

Here is my W.I.P.

ENJOY!

Be Well and Happy

Into the Wild Zentangle Series 3

No Wild Series patterns would be complete without this one.

I must confess this one is my favorite and a lot of fun to draw.  And below is my W.I.P.

I’m looking at my variation of the crock-e-dial pattern and it looks like an ear of corn, so may I’ll just make another pattern out of my mistake and call it korn-y 🙂  I really hope you are enjoying these patterns.  If you are incorporating my patterns into your own work I would dearly love to see it.

Be Well and Happy!

Into the Wild Tangle Series

I have hundreds of Zentangle patterns that I’ve collected over the last couple of years and I have loved incorporating them into my own Zentangle art.  And although I plan to use them for many years to come I really wanted to come up with my own designs and share them others as a way of giving back to the Zentangle community.

I don’t know if these designs meet the criteria of the Zentangle philosophy, so these designs won’t be submitted, but they are available to anyone who does a search.  These patterns are a little different because these are in a series,  but they still  can be repeated in just a few steps.

In lieu of a completed Zentangle of Into the Wild, I will be drawing a W.I.P. so I won’t give anything away.

This is Gir-af

 

 

 

 

ENJOY!

Be Well and Happy!

 

Artistic Funk…

was horrible.   It made me feel lost, sad and ungrateful.  I felt lost because I have lived and breathed it for so many years and now nothing.  Sad because my heart craved it, but my mind and body will not be forced to cooperate. Ungrateful, because I have every medium known to man kind and more paper than I will ever use in my life and it sat there untouched.

I decided to take an active approach, so I could nip this thing and face it head on.  I went to the library and checked out some books on creativity.  The high points and thoughts from my research were:

Find my muse.  Yeah…Find my muse?  Muse- ok  that just means  my inspiration.  What usually inspires me to draw and paint?  Got it!  Mad, sad, happy, glad, bored, busy, tired, hungry and full. Pretty much anytime was usually the right time.   Next, what do I draw or paint?   I draw animals which is mostly dogs and cats, and I have been dabbling in landscapes, but I don’t paint much of anything.  Last, what would I like to draw or paint?  I have no idea.

Keep ideas on index cards.  I thought that this technique was for writers.  But hey, what do I know.  They wrote the book, it got published.  I deemed it worthy of checking out so I grabbed some of my daughter’s cards and stashed a few around to jot down ideas.  I can’t tell you how helpful that was.  I used them as grocery lists and scrap paper.

Find my voice.  I still haven’t figured that one out… They may be talking about style? But that is just as vague to me as finding my voice.

Change Mediums.  Well, that may work.   I don’t paint very much and I have all those acrylics, watercolors, and gouache going to waste.

Relax.  Are you kidding me?  I’m as relaxed as person can be without prescription.

I thought most of these ideas completely ridiculous taken individually until I stumbled across this:

   The desire to create knows not good or bad and it ignores technique and critique, it just is. -me

    I wrote this quote as part of my personal New Year’s resolution.  And boy am I letting myself down.  A person should not have to remind themselves to have fun.  But tucked away in my hot pink binder, I did in fact do that.  And I have ignored it completely. Now the book isn’t quite as stupid as I thought because even though it wasn’t on a note card, it was on a scrap of paper.   The muse is finding inspiration in the boring and mundane.  Relaxing is to play like a child.  A child never erases because they never mess up.  Everything is a work of art and they delight in the experience.  They don’t care about complementary  or tertiary colors. And they don’t care about a value scale.  They don’t worry about blogging, etsying, or bitsying  unless we are talking spiders.   And my life is a change of mediums..Mom, Wife, Woman and Person.

And come to find out I have been creating.  I have been sewing, cooking, decorating, creating memories, even created a couple of decorative abstracts, drew a dog, quite a few zentangles and now creating worry.  lol…  A pencil and a brush is not all life has offer, yet some how I convinced myself otherwise.  I’ve been so narrow-minded and now I feel very foolish.

I am sharing this embarrassing moment with the hope that you will not fall into the same trap that I did.  And if you are going through something similiar…Remember, life itself is art and creativity, the rest is just icing on the cake and will come when it comes.

After all, we are all works in progress.

Be Well and Happy!

Zentangle 6-2-11

      Yep another Zentangle, which means no real artwork from me.  I am working on another portrait, but I haven’t finished it yet.  It’s a little out of my comfort zone. So it possibly end up as something pretty cool or it could tank.  That’s why I don’t post a lot of W.I.P.  because it could very well end up being W.I.T.  (work in trash)

We just got back from spending the long weekend holiday at Emerald Isle, North Carolina.  We had a pretty good time. Except right now, I feel like I have been sitting on the a stove eye nekked.  OUCH!  My whole backside is burnt extra crispy.  It makes me so mad.  David and I had said on the way down that we were going to sunscreen…sunscreen….sunscreen.  And I did using a 45, and I still managed to burn.  I guess I just stayed out on the beach too long.  Next time, I’m taking 80 sunblock!  But I still managed to have lots of fun.

Now it’s back to the real world.  David is Florida for work and it’s just me and Alana. So, I’m going to end this post and do some drawing before she gets home from school:)

Be Well and Happy!

Full of Wisdom…

Graphite on Bristol Smooth

      This is the first time that I have ever seen an animal in picture or in real life  that actually looked wise to me, very Yoda(ish).  This dog looks like he or she has seen it all. 

     I had a terrible time with the nose and the long hair coming out of  (his or her) ears.  But I think it turned out pretty good, I like it.  And it felt good to draw, it’s been awhile since I have scratched out a puppy or atleast a puppy at heart… 

 

A Tour…

We have a really small bedroom and trying to figure out what to put in there was really difficult.  But I think we did a pretty good job maximizing our space and I love it.  As promised, I’m posting the results of our labor. Beware!  There are a lot of pictures:)

 This is our new bed.  We have been wanting a leather headboard a LONG time, so this is a real treat.  The beautiful handmade quilt was a gift from Mrs. Ottaway. 

We wanted nightstands on both sides of the bed but there just wasn’t enough room.  So David bought shelves with some polished silver floating shelf brackets.  Presto!  We have night tables on both sides of the bed:) Above the bed is more storage with reading lights that David installed under the cabinet.  The lights are on a dimmer which is great.  Loving to read like I do, this is perfect because now he can sleep and I can read.  And the curtains?  I didn’t make them.  The fabric I wanted was more expensive than just buying some panels.  The curtains touched the floor, so I did shorten them. 

This is at another angle to show you the shelves on both sides of our bed and cabinet.  We also installed an outlet so we can charge our phone and use our computer in the bed if we want:)

This rug inspired a lovely argument.  I loved it and he hated it!  We went to Home Depot and Lowes a half a dozen times with me being irritated and David praying that I would like something else.  It never happened.  I won.  And now that the room is put together he likes it as much as I do and had to admit defeat. hee hee

This wardrobe fit perfectly inside the inset of our wall and replaces a dresser, chest, TV stand and jewelry box and it’s huge!  On the left side there is three cubicles with fabric boxes, a shelf for sweaters, a jewelry drawer, a wire rack drawer, and 6 long drawers.  Below is with the right side open to give you an idea

See how long the drawers are?

This is a very tall and narrow unit.  It holds my perfumes,  make up and other crap.  It will be a great place to store books too.

 

 These are the paintings that I managed to complete over the weekend.  I had no idea what would look right so I just grabbed a bunch of tubes that matched the colors of the room and I painted stripes in metallic and the bright colors of the quilt and rug.  I like it, it’s simple and colorful.

     Also, I believe these paintings meet one of my creative resolutions, I did say that I wanted to paint an abstract.

Through this whole experience I learned a valuable decorating lesson.  If you have a small room, the more free floor space you have the bigger the room looks.  It doesn’t translate in the pictures much, but our room looks alot bigger even with the huge furniture. This is very handy, because my other rooms are small too.

That’s it for the virtual tour.  I did warn you that it was going to be a long one. 

I hope you enjoy your day:)

 

Be Well and Happy!

What the…

This week has been an odd one.  I thought since I had been pressed and a little “stressed” these past couple of months that I would just relax and just do my normal everyday thing.  You know the drill straighten the house, do the laundry and cook the meals no more and no less.  And in my free time I was just going to read and blah blah blah…But what really happened was that I straightened, did the laundry, cooked the meals and paced.  And I paced. And I paced.  I bet I walked 15 miles in my house this week. I thought maybe I just need to sit somewhere and draw a little, that didn’t work.  Then I thought maybe I would try reading again.  After reading the same line 15 times, I decided that reading wasn’t working for me either.  Then I pulled out my excel book (I have been teaching my self to do spreadsheets and workbooks) and I couldn’t manage that either.  I could have been a really good housewife and tackled some cleaning jobs, but come on!  I’m not that hard up!  And here it is Friday, and I could’nt muster up anything.  This Zentangle is even old.  What ever is making my internal batteries low, I’m not liking it a bit!  I would say that I’m just tired and I need more sleep or something, but I’m not tired and I can sleep as long as my body needs to.  I just feel like I want to do something, but just too lazy to do it.  Do you have days like that?  I sure hope this passes…

But in the meantime, I hope you like my Zentangle and I would like to wish all the moms a very happy Mother’s Day!

Be Well and Happy!