Ode to Flowers

I am just about to burst to share this. I spent all day Friday and Saturday alone in the studio creating!! This collage incorporates a lot of my artwork - small backgrounds and little pieces - a lot of fabric pieces that I drew on with watercolor crayons. Such a fun piece!

My "Ode to Flowers" LOL

New Marker Art!

5" x 7" 4" x 6"

Wanted to share some new marker drawings with you. I plan to use the one on the right in a collage (I think). The sale on markers (see earlier post) ends tomorrow; I'm thinking of going back again before it's too late and getting MORE MARKERS!! Somebody stop me! LOL

Alive!

The daily quote from Blissfully Art Journaling's yahoo group is this quote! I am reposting this journal page spread from February 2009 in response to that! I love this quote, and I like how these pages turned out. So here they are again...

"Don't ask yourself what the world needs, ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs are people who have come alive." - Howard Thurman

Musings and Giving Thanks

I was just looking back over a post from October when I was doing colored pencil drawings. (http://daloweartist.blogspot.com/2009/10/e-mail-to-friend-decided-to-share-my.html)
Although what I said in the post was true - I realize now that I can't put myself or my art in a box. I can't stick to just one medium - that's not how I work. I go through phases, lots of phases!

I recently hit a sale on markers - a mega sale - and I went hog wild with markers for a few days; then I might read a blog post or a book on collage and get excited about collage again for a while; I might miss splashing with watercolors one day and decide to do that...as you can see my blog is rather disjointed, but it's obvious when I look back through all the posts that I'm having fun; I'm discovering myself; and I'm playing! I am so thankful that I have a job that I love and that I make enough money to support all my playful phases and fancies. God has blessed me so much.

I was very overwhelmed and down Wednesday, and I finally realized that I needed to go straight to God with all my feelings - of course, the bad thing is that first I vented all my frustrations to a couple of friends and I regret all the things I said and the mood I was in...it's funny how one day life can seem so fantastic when just a few days earlier one can be so disheartened, critical, and grumpy. I'm thankful that God knows all about our moods and various "disorders", quirks, and idiosyncrasies and He loves us anyway. Psalm 139 - he knows when I sit down and when I get up and he UNDERSTANDS my thoughts - I love that. God understands!

I need so much work, so much refining...I pray that God will forgive my ungrateful heart, my pride, my critical spirit, my envy, my judgmentalism, oh how I need Jesus - I am so thankful that we have an Advocate, a Saviour, the Prince of Peace. I am so thankful for Jesus Christ and that because of His sacrifice on the cross I am God's daughter - think about it - a Daughter of the living God! Now that's something to be thankful for - something I can't even fathom! I've been Adopted into the family of God - forever! God is so patient with me, so full of mercy - I pray that He will continue to have mercy and grace as I learn to walk with Him and reflect the Character of Christ - I fall so very short.

I am blessed, truly blessed, and very thankful tonight.

I want to thank all of YOU who follow my blog, who read my posts, view my art, follow along with all my phases and play along with me. Your comments are so encouraging and it makes me so happy and fulfilled to share my art with you. I have had almost 6000 visits to my blog since its inception and that is incredibly rewarding to me. I can hardly believe it! Thank you all so very much.

Thank you for letting me muse and ponder tonight.

Happy Thanksgiving Weekend to all of you!

Painting Glass and Ceramics

I have been busily and happily painting glass and ceramic pieces all day! Dots, dots, and more dots! Happy Day after Thanksgiving! Black Friday at its finest in my opinion - avoid the crowds, lines and sales and spend the day in the studio!

Today's Lunch Journal Spread

Last night I went to sleep thinking about how I wanted to splash watercolors around in my Aquabee sketchbook. I grabbed my little Crayola palette filled with tube colors and headed out the door this morning. Finally, lunchtime came and I opened to a page I had already glued an e-mail and a tea bag paper into and drew my coffee cup - I never get tired of drawing this Longaberger Tomato colored coffee cup - however, I never feel like I totally capture it either. (Notice the coffee stains on the pages - I poured a little coffee from this morning out of the cup and sat it into it to purposefully make a stain on the page LOL) Once again, I feel as if I overworked the washes a bit. I want to lay down the color and leave it in is pristine, fresh state - but I can never seem to do that - I just keep going back into those first washes, dabbing here, dabbing there - until I have a mess and wish I'd stopped a long time ago!

What is great is the absolute JOY doing this journal page brought me!! I'm telling you, there is nothing like splashing watercolors to make my heart sing!! And it has been singing all afternoon since then. I have so missed my little palette of watercolors and my lunchtime watercolor session - I must get back into that habit. Hey, the Thanksgiving holidays are coming. I can splash away in my studio for the next few days! Happy, Happy Thanksgiving everybody!!

Word of the Day - Journal Page

Today's journal page: word of the day - INFLUENZA
My daughter has the swine flu. The moment we've all dreaded...

I've been home from work with her today - I like how this page turned out.
The page on the left is from a dictionary - defining the word "influenza".
That's about all I've been able to concentrate on today.

We did have a very colorful start to our day - Grace's bowl of Trix - it was

so pretty I had to take a picture : Trix are for rabbits, not for kids :-)

We learned the truth of that as it gave her an upset stomach later. I was mad

at myself for letting her eat it. I offered to make her something for breakfast (honest),

but she didn't want anything I suggested - so we resorted to Trix - mistake...

The Accoutrements of my Morning at Work

Inspired by Diana Trout's Journal Spilling - at lunch today, I glued all the papers from my morning tea and coffee and journaled about my morning here at work. My favorite coffee cup, my mouse, my phone... etc. Not exactly "art" to some, but oh it was fun! Such a release to do something creative and on such a rainy day when going out was not appealing. I used line and watercolor, stamping, collage - all the processes I love so much - in creating this. I'm pleased with the composition, the way the red ties it all together and most of all the FUN I had doing it. Thanks to all the wonderful artists and authors who've written such inspiring books!!! (Why the word accoutrements came to my mind, I have no idea - but here it is - the "trappings", if you will, of my day...) Happy Wednesday everyone - go create something fun!!

A Kid with Her Toys

I haven't blogged in a while. Not because I haven't been busy with art, in fact, the problem is I've been too busy with art to blog. My mind has been whirling lately - positively teeming with ideas - my cup runneth over. Way more ideas and supplies than time to implement them. Isn't that usually the way of an artist...

So... remember my marker sale I told you about... well here are the results of not one but THREE visits to the store to take advantage of that sale. I also purchased this ArtBin to put them in. You must remember that I also have another, older selection of markers about half this size or maybe 3/4 of this again. A sickness, yes -- quite probably... BUT I have been using the markers - more results of which are below - small 3 1/2 x 5 drawings. And, oh, what fun I've had doing them!



Now -- a problem I've had with markers is their tendency to fade when exposed to light. In fact the fading was very bad - so my solution to this is pictured below - Krylon UV-Resistant spray.



I don't have any idea if this works yet, but I felt I had to do something to try and preserve the gorgeous color of the markers. I can't sell them until I know if they will fade away in a few months. I hope this works!!

Now -- for my newest passion - only days following the marker craze...

Glass Paint





I went out yesterday and bought glass paint and tons of glass and ceramic pieces from the thrift and consignment store. Rescued! to turn into art pieces! I plan to give most of these as Christmas gifts and would like to set up a display in the local coffee shop and sell them.

I started this about 2 or 3 years ago and then I got rid of all my glass paint reasoning to myself that I didn't have time or space for so many different art endeavors. Well, for the entire time since then, everytime I go into a thrift store and see glass pieces I feel this intense yearning to paint glass and regret that I got rid of all my paint. So finally after much arguing with myself I just DID it. And when I do something, I don't do it half-heartedly...

See this tub...



It's at least 3/4 full of glass pieces, mugs and saucers. Yes, I go all out - the whole hog! No starting out slowly for me. I want to paint glass, and paint glass I shall!! I have probably patroned my local art store this month to the tune of over $100! Not to mention all the book making and fun supplies I purchased at AC Moore and Office Depot on Wednesday last week during my fun day off.

I also dream of writing. I want to write a book - I don't know if it will be fiction or non-fiction. I thought Christian fiction and became really inspired after joining American Christian Fiction Writers - a yahoo group and voraciously reading Christian fiction. For my birthday a friend gave me a gift card to Barnes and Noble and with it I purchased SARK's book Juicy Pens, Thirsty Paper, which I've wanted for a while. SARK's writing is so colorful (literally) and so expressive. She combines her art and her writing by hand-writing and illustrating her books. I like that! I have a story to tell, I'm just not sure how to tell it.

I suppose it's all these passions and dreams that keep me alive and happy. I get so excited and then I tend to feel overwhelmed by it all - that's where I've been today. I tried to paint the glass pieces (pictured above) and couldn't get into it -- kept dropping things and making a mess... so I stopped for now and will come back to it later on when I "feel" like it.

I just gathered my bin of markers, my Derwent Inktense pencils, my Niji waterbrush, and my little pack of paper and walked into the living room. My husband looked at me shaking his head and said, "You're like a little girl walking in here with more baby dolls than she can carry. Bringing your toys with you and carrying them gently so nothing happens to them."


That's me -- a kid with my toys... I'm going to play now. Would you like to join me?

The Marker Craze Continues...

You may remember the drawing below from prior posts - I had put it aside to think about the background and where I wanted to go with it in general. Then I rediscovered "THE MARKERS" and here you go - progress again.



It's a beautiful day and life is good --- God is good.

I CAN'T STOP!!

I'm having more fun with my markers!!

A New Drawing Using my Markers

Prismacolor Overdose!!

Look at this!

A local art supply store is selling Prismacolor Art Markers for $.50 each - yes, 50 cents!!!! Can you believe that! I am so excited; like a kid on Christmas morning, or a kid in a candy store - good grief!! I bought all these - I went yesterday and today! Who can resist!! What's sad is, I probably owned this many again already - but 50 cents each!!!

Below is a little drawing I did using these and Prismacolor pencils.

I'm having way too much fun!!