Water World Stage 2

Ok, technical first from this newbie, as yet imbued with more passion than skill but learning:   Now you can start to see detailing added, though this is *very* far from complete.  I needed to enlarge the image to get the intricate detailing built up in layers, and you are starting to see that begin to [...]

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Water World: New Work in Progress

Ok, this is not the first phase of this new piece, just because I failed to scan the earliest step, but this will have to stand as Stage 1 (b).  Stage 1(a) was the background, which was drawn in graphite, then shaded to get values, then light colored pencils, followed by watercolor, and it isn’t [...]

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Tend Your Garden

  This was a doodle gone wild, I guess.  Wasn’t well the past couple of days and doodling was about as much as I could handle.   It started as a mandala but morphed to a zentangle without a theme, just drawing random patterns, and the next thing I knew, I was looking at it and [...]

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Angel of Mine revisited

I wanted to take another stab at this piece at an earlier revision, as I really liked it, even if I didn’t like the background, but once I got the background/context, I had problems with the media at the time.  I have reworked the wings and coloring and light on this version, and I am [...]

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Go Ask Alice

Ok, the “art and technique” of it all first.  This was done on 9” x 12” 120 lb cold-pressed watercolor paper in mixed media, with altered image transfer (only the hookah-smoking caterpillar) which I redrew and painted, so little of the original image was left intact, and the rest is entirely my original work.  The [...]

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Family Tree

Another one that I’d been working on recently. Too easy when things are tough in a family to forget the moments that we’ve enjoyed together. As I was working on this, my first cousin died tragically, the circumstances of which underline the importance of remembering the goodness that you’ve shared together across generations. This journal page cheers me up & makes me smile. the tree in the main image is the pecan tree from my grandmother’s house, which really was literally the family tree for me, as so much of the good parts of my family life as a child took place in the vicinity of this tree. It reminds me of so many important lessons that I eventually learned as a result of what took place around that tree, though it took decades in some cases for me to get the lesson.

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Turn the Light On..

This is the 4th and final stage of this mood journal series. Here, I have reached the conclusion that, as always before, I have always found solutions to the toughest problems that I have had to confront, and solution/resolution to the current problem will be found within me, as well. Rather than looking for answers (illumination/strength) from outside, clearly I have the ability to come up with my own solutions that work for me, and I just need to focus on figuring that out by putting my energy there.

This final installment stands as a reminder to me of my own power to move these seemingly solid hard walls. Historically, the tougher the problem that I have to solve, the more energized and focused I get, and the more powerful and amazing are the creative solutions that I develop. While it may appear that I have been cut off at the knees (literally in this picture), and bound to stone structures that haven’t been moved in centuries. Pretty compelling representation of (seemingly) impossible obstacles. Yet, it is clear that, despite the current situation, that power comes from within, and all that I need still exists in me. So now I simply need to gather the information and develop the action plan. Removing the emotional obstacles (negative perceptions) is key.

I have developed one image that has the 4 stages together, because it helps me to clearly see the progression and transition:

I really like how much more effective this was for me, and I intend to do more.

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My first art journal stage 3

In stage 3, I finished developing the majority of my self-portrait:

The detailing in the wings and choking poison ivy really builds the sense of the great potential and the severity of the perceived constraints and potential harm without solution. Of course, it’s not the whole story, because the perception at this stage is clearly one of helplessness without a sense for a way out of the dilemma. Seeing the image gives me a clear picture of how I am seeing myself at this stage, and enables me to sort of look at myself from the outside, and to think about whether it is realistic, and if there are other ways of seeing my situation. It’s the most encouraging message that I could get when facing doubt, and by putting irrational fears into an image, it enables me to expel them. At this point, there was real momentum built around completing the process in the final stage (next post).

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My first art journal stage 2

Here’s stage 2:

Here, I decided that what I was feeling was that I had the ability to do really great things and could fly in the figurative sense, at least, and had done so many times in my career and personal life on multiple levels. But what I was feeling was constrained by various things, and I wasn’t sure what to do about that. The longer it took for me to get past the things that were getting in my way, the more confined I was feeling, and the more difficult I thought it would be for me to overcome this. Here are the beginnings of wings and strangling vines (actually poison ivy, which will become more apparent in subsequent stages). I was pleased with the concept, but these things needed more work.

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My first art journal

Ok, so it was recommended to me, a “word” person, to try doing art journaling instead of a traditional word journal.  Given that I have never considered myself any kind of visual artist, the very concept was intimidating to me.  Heck, I’m left-handed, and I’ve always considered my handwriting to be so bad, that the [...]

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