Hello!

I have to admit that I loved my time away, living. Did not get to do as much as I wanted do art wise. Good things are that I did get two considerable art teaching projects in the last 6 months yay! Better than starving artist but certainly can't hang my other hats. I am not complaining. 

I've really been exploring me, the directions I want to go with my art, and enjoying a bit of a reverse back to some old styles and I have really been enjoying abstract lately too. I think I would like to settle somewhere around abstracted realism-ish. LOL

I did have some time to fool around this afternoon and was happy with the results.

Hope to be here soon with a video and some more fun stuff including some workshop announcements.

xoxo

moi!

A quick hello

Popping in with a quick hello. Lots of things going on here, mostly good but really keeping me busy. One of those things is I am working a couple days a week with one of the local schools doing art! The vice principal and myself applied for an ArtSmarts grant though the Manitoba Arts Council and we got it! I have done a few collage classes with the kids already and I think they are pretty pumped. 

I will come by soon and fill you in on all the goings on, and I have so much news. 

This is  a short video demo I did for my two classes this week. I had them write journal pages with their personal local history on it which they were to paint and collage over a portion of it. Thought it would be cool to share the vid.

Be well

xoxo

the fairy!

Hello fall.....

Yep, it's here all right. When it is cold enough at night that you have to turn the furnace on in the morning to warm up the house you know it. That's ok, I love fall. Love fall colours, just love it all. 

I scooched off to my studio today to work on a video that I am doing for Mystele's ning group. I am excited to have been offered a spot in October as their featured artist of the month. It's exciting.  

I am just going to share with you a little something I like to do with old book pages to clean my palette. I literally mop up the left over paint with the pages, I hate to waste the paint.

Now, I did use one of them for an accessory on one of the paintings I was working on today. Here is a sneeky peek. If you want to see the full painting including video you will have to run over to Mystele's ning page in october to see it ;)

Hope you tune in to see the finished painting, would love to see you there.

xoxo

Faith

Yes, though sometimes it is hard to find and even harder to keep, it is necessary. Without it, who would we be. 

I often have a hard time keeping faith in what I am doing as I work on a piece. You have this fabulous idea that looks so good in your head. Then it starts to pour out and feels even better on the canvas. In the beginning the colours are pure, the strokes are free and you just flow. Something emerges and you go with it.  Then it hits, that deep dark ugly part that you try so hard to avoid. Slap some more paint on that might fix it, or I could move in this direction.... then yuck. What now? Pull out some rubbing alcohol and some sand paper and take out all your frustration on that canvas and when you have something left that you would like to add something to... you go with it. 

Handpainted paper video

Before I check out for the weekend, hubby is home and the weekends are so short. No time for blogging. hehehe.

Sharing a video I did couple weeks ago. See you next week.

Quick post

Just popped in to say hello.... I am still here! I am doing this fabulous and did I mention free workshop with Traci Batista HERE and this was one of my doodles unleashed! I actually made a video of it, it is not edited yet. Someday I hope soon.

When Traci messaged me and asked if she could showcase it on the blog I was tickled. She is a lot of fun if you want to come a check it out.

For now I will leave you with these words of wisdom I gave my hubby today. We were talking about personal growth, and the inevitable failures that come along with it. I told him in a text Fail=Grow. He replied "you're right, but failing hurts."

My response:

"not when you change the way you think about what it meant to fail."

 If you see each failure as an opportunity to have figured out what didn't work and a chance to figure out what will then it turns failure into success.

That is Roberta's words of wisdom for the day. I still have a hard time seeing my failures as discovery successes myself. I like that, Discovery Successes. I should write a self help book.

xo

Mixed Media Encaustic

Well, it has gotten cold here and it is pretty much impossible for me to do the encaustic painting. I just don't have decent ventilation. One thing I did do however, since it is just one little pot of wax to warm, is to wax one of my old unfinished watercolors and engrave details into the wax. I used a raw amber paint to rub into the engravings to bring out the detailing. It was really fun.

 And here is a close up of the detailing on the trees.

 We started Christmas decorating last night. I find it so hard to get into the spirit when the weather has been so weird. We really don't have much snow and that is not really the norm. I remember one Dec 5th the weather getting so warm that the snow began to melt but, we must have had about a foot and a half of snow already! I have said it before and I am going to say it here. I think that the tsunami's and the earthquake in Japan.... the earth has shifted or something and the axis is different and has changed the seasons. Our fall lasts longer, spring takes longer to get here. Just weird.

Hope everyone has a lovely weekend.

xo