International Fake Journal Month 2015

For the second year, I am participating in Roz Stendahl's International Fake Journal Month. I will be writing as Lily Roberts, the character I created last year. This year Lily will be writing poetry. If you are interested in following that, please go to this blog where I will be posting daily. Hope to see you there!

What's Ahead for March

The long month of February with snowfall after snowfall and lots and lots of shoveling,  extended into the first week of March. But now, coinciding with the time change, Spring seems to be making its way back.

And with it, lots of new opportunities:

I am taking another Botanical Watercolor class with Cindy Gilbane of the CT Natural Science Illustrators. That runs until the first week of April.

On Saturday I'm taking part in an online SoulCollage workshop entitled Come As You Are, led by Anne Marie Bennett. That runs for four weeks.

On Tuesday, March 24th, I begin a ten week training program to become a Master Naturalist with the CT Audubon Society. This is a program I have been waiting for almost three years to be offered.

In addition to doing the at home work for these courses, I am also preparing for the SoulCollage Facilitator training I will be taking in early April, also with Anne Marie. That will be held in Massachusetts.

April is also International Fake Journal Month and I want to do that again as well. I have an idea for how I will approach that this year and would like to get started on that.

So much to look forward to and to juggle along with ongoing work and the beginning of spring garden chores.

And lastly, next week I find out if I have been accepted to Yale Divinity School and the Institute of Sacred Music. I applied to both back in November and have been patiently waiting to hear. Their decision will alter the months ahead in one direction or another. If I am accepted, I will concentrate more on the immediate tasks/chores that need doing so that they are completed before two years of full time study. If I am not accepted, or accepted but not given much financial assistance which might cause me to decline acceptance, I will move ahead with the Plan B steps I have ready to go. If I am accepted, I will be sure to do a post explaining why I chose to apply there, what I plan to study and where I see my future headed.

I'll post again next week. Until then, enjoy the unfolding of this new season.

A Month of Printmaking

A friend of mine is out of town for the month of February and has graciously allowed me to rent her studio for the month. She has a small printmaking press that I will be able to use. This is going to be a great opportunity for me to get to finish some projects and work on ones that have been in my mind or in my notebook for a long time. Having a place where I can lay out my materials and not have to share a press with anyone else is going to be shear delight! Whenever I take a class or workshop, there are always others waiting to use the press.

I plan to spend three days a week there, weather depending. A winter snow storm just finished dumping 14" of snow here. We are still shoveling out. The parking lot at the studio won't be cleared until mid morning tomorrow. I hope to get there tomorrow.

I will post photos of my work in progress as I do them.

Turquoise Calling Part II

I added some mark making to begin to add detail to this intuitive painting.

I'm satisfied with what I've got so won't be adding anything else for now.

Turquoise Calling

Last winter I was craving the color Magenta. This week, the colors turquoise, cerulean blue, blue greens and saps greens have been calling me. I started a Pinterest board for these color combinations.

This morning I had the strong urge to paint with these colors. Realizing that watercolors fit the criteria I was looking for as stated in my previous post, I pulled out these colors from the watercolor and gouache tubes I have. Working on a watercolor block, I began.  Over the course of the morning I covered the surface with color.

I am letting this dry, then will come back and begin adding some sort of details with markers, oil pastels and more paint.

Creative Play Time

One of my New Year's Resolutions is to be a bit more spontaneous and carefree in my creative process. I have always been a serious, thoughtful person, not given much to frivolity. Everything I do, I do with an intention. This sometimes prevents me from actually being creative. If I don't have a clear outcome for what I am thinking of doing, I tend to dismiss it. But over time I have been learning that it is more about the process than the product. It is the time spent being creative that feels so good. But the time (or desire) to work on a specific piece isn't always available and as a result, I don't spend time in my studio. I want to change that. I want my studio to be a place to have fun all the time! I spent a few days cleaning up and clearing off counter space. There is much more to do, but for now I am taking a break from that and working on a few things. A few just-for-fun or just-because-it-interests-me things. Not creating for the sake of selling or exhibiting.

This morning I had the urge to create something large. As it was snowing quite heavily, I could not go out to my husband's workshop to get a large piece of Masonite to use as a support, so settled for a 20x30 inch piece of foam core. To this I taped a sheet of drawing paper. Wanting to work quickly without having to set up, prep and clean up, I decided to work with dry media - colored and graphite pencils, crayons and oil pastels.

Listening to a "mental" recording of a favorite song, I closed my eyes and drew, with long sweeping movements, how the lyrics and music felt. Then I began coloring in the resulting shapes. This is so different from what I usually do, but so freeing as I have no plan and no desired outcome. It will become what it will become. I may like it. I may hate it. It doesn't matter, as long as I continue to enjoy the creating of it. There is much to discover in the actual doing. 

In Progress

In Progress

Update: I worked a few times more on this but decided I wasn't enjoying it. I didn't like the way my hand and arm were smearing the graphite and I didn't like the tediousness of coloring in the areas. I was looking for something spontaneous, but I guess pencils and oil pastels don't offer that when trying to color in large areas in a short time. So I ditched this. But I learned from it!

As far as this progressed

Artists and Artisans in Paradise 2014

Tomorrow is the BIG DAY. I have been working with the Stratford Arts Guild Show Committee for the past four months to make this a spectacular must see show and destination. I think we have done everything we could possibly do. Now we just need people to show up, enjoy it and buy art!

I have also been very busy most of this month (and earlier this summer) creating work for this show. I wanted a nice body of new work for it. It would have been great to complete a few more pieces, but am pleased with what I was able to do.

Here is some of what I recently created:

Working with the drawings of a few weeks ago, I created these three 14x11 panels. 

Garden Cosmos Series Mixed Media

Wanting to work with the vintage ephemera I have been collecting (see my Instagram account for more on that), I began this new series I am entitling Natural History. I would have liked to have competed at least two more of these for the show, but ran out of time.

Natural History I

Lastly I wanted to do a few more sets of Garden Songbird Silhouettes. I really love working on these little guys. They make me so happy. Both for painting the cute little birds, but also because many of the vintage papers I use are from my Grandmother. Seeing her handwriting and other pieces connected to her fills me with joy. She was a special person in my life. 

Painting As Therapy

I found out today, after waiting three weeks for results, that I tested negative for Lyme disease but the lab failed to test for the other tick borne diseases. When I saw the doctor three weeks ago I expressed my concern that I thought I might have babesiosis this time. And I still don't know if that is the case.  Guess I should be thankful that it isn't Lyme this time. (Though it could still be; negative results are not a guarantee that it isn't present and active.) Have to go for new lab work. Sigh...

In the meantime, I have been pushing through my days, doing what I can and resting when I need to.
I did start the Cosmos Flowers mixed media paintings on Tuesday. I've completed the first and am working on the second today. Here is a progress shot:

I'm also developing ideas for some collages. Here is a shot of that: