September 29- Something fun

September 29 – Something fun.

Something fun!

This could be a tricky one, because

“Something fun” is different to everyone.

Whats Fun for me, might not be for you

Just like, I love green and you love blue!

“Something fun” for me is, camping!

Although they way we do it- has been called glamping!

It doesn’t matter what you call it, spending time in the great outdoors

Wins hands down from doing mundane chores!

“Something fun” for me is travelling, hopping on a plane,

Or taking long road trips, I’ll never complain.

Seeing the world around me is so much fun!

I can never imagine saying “I’m done!”

“Something fun” for me is being creative.

Whether its art,drawing or crochet, I find it to be very meditative.

When things upset me as they often might,

Scribbling in my journal gives such insight.

Gluing and glittering, slapping on paint,

Art is surely not for the faint.

“Something fun” at times for me can be- cooking

When Im in the mood, whip up a new recipe from a cook book

Or used a well worn recipe its worth another look.

Throw in a glass of wine and get outta my way-

I could work in the kitchen all day!

Then there are days when my “Something fun”

Is more of a laid back boring one.

When the rain is pitter pattering on the roof

I like to curl up with a really good book!

I can get lost in worlds far away, or somewhere much closer-

I can step into the life of a music composer!

My Dad often said “You always have a friend when you have a good book”

And “Never to judge a book by its cover” so I open a chapter and have a quick look!

So my “Something Fun” might to you seem a bore

But for me, reading a book is never a chore!

#poetember #kickinthecreatives #blogfestSeptember

September 14- Twirl

Twirl.

I know a little girl,

When music plays she loves to twirl

She spins and spins and never stops

And her favourite dinosaur is triceratops!

I know a little girl,

Who knows all about the planets,

And sings about about how they twirl.

The same little girl watches you tube song in Spanish!

I know a little girl,

Who’s hair has never held a curl,

With big hazel eyes and a knock out smile

She loves to twirl and all the while

She makes Grandma feel sick!

I know a little girl,

Who loves to spin and twirls

It makes her tummy “Fizzy”

(She really means dizzy)

I know a little girl

Who’s sent all our lives in a twirl

And we wouldn’t swap her

for all the gold in the world

#poetember #kickinthecreatives

#sketchathon #Septemberblogfest

September 10- Protect

Protect.

Protection its in my DNA,

to love and protect them every day.

Anything I have to do, I would do.

Be a shield, or take a stand

Keep them safe, hold their hands.

Protect the little ones from harm,

Build a safe room in the barn!

Whatever it takes, you see- I’ll do,

To preserve their lives, protect and defend whatever I do,

I’ll protect them with a Lioness Fierceness-

Maybe thats a Grandma weirdness?

These little ones, I love with all my heart,

Protect and defend them, I have from the start!

#poetember #kickinthecreatives

#sketchathon #Septemberblogfest

September 6th- Bike

Bike!

Would you rather walk or hike?

Or would you rather ride a bike?

Would you rather jog or run?

Riding a horse might be fun!

Different ways to get from here to there

Cars, trams, trains, busses who cares?

As long as you get where you need to be

Although you’d need a boat to cross the sea!

Electric, Peddle or Motor bike

Up hills and down hills, take a hike!

It doesn’t matter how you get there,

if you ride a bike you’ll need a spare

tyre in case you get a puncture!

Would you rather walk or hike?

Would you rather ride a bike?

There isn’t really any question,

A good long walk aids digestion!

Each night after dinner,

a nice long walk I’m a winner!

Tonight we even saw a hawk!

Would you rather walk or hike?

Would you rather ride a bike?

I’ll choose walking please-

Its something I can do with ease.

#poetember

#sketchathon

And that my friends is today’s #septemberblogfest I am off to work on those missing #29facesonjunk

September 3- Waiting….

Waiting.

All my life I waiting- for,

what it is I am not sure.

Every day I feel as though

there’s something more, what- I do not know.

Waiting for Winter to end,

so then comes spring and again

waiting for summer and warm sunshine

while waiting on autumn for colourful times.

Waiting for something to be finished cooking,

spending my time for recipes looking.

Waiting for the washing cycle to end,

so I can hang out a load and start again.

Waiting for inspiration for some art,

waiting on knowing where to start.

what supplies to use today?

Just let loose and have a play!

Seems to me I spend my life,

waiting for something, Oh! I’m a wife!

I guess thats what my job description is-

Maybe I should have stayed a Ms!

#poetember

#sketchaton I’ve always wanted to have a try at painting on one these four season paintings. Clearly I needed more practise lol

And then we have #29facesonjunk todays Coffee Bloke! Is on a recycled coffee box. I am amazed at him! I rarely do men, they’re hard! Not telling you women anything new there! But sometimes I just hold the pencil and go along for the ride, and look what fell out of my pencil today!

I was like “Whaaat?!”

He’s good for me! Clearly he’s not technically perfect but it’s not about perfection for me, its about setting a goal and smashing that goal outta the park! And as one art teacher told us “If you want perfection, take a photo!”

I am SO happy with this guy, no idea who he is I found him on Pinterest!

September 2nd- Violet!

Violet.-

An old fashioned name, and also a colour.

Violet as in the flower with the heady scent.

When she was much younger, she spent

6 months living in a tent-

Travelling around the Australian outback

With only the clothes that would fit her in pack!

Violet was one of ten children.

Her Father in the army, her Mother a civilian.

She knew she was different- did our gal Violet

She has always wanted to be a pilot!

Her head was always in the clouds,

She preferred solitude, not crowds!

She whistled at birds, and talked to the dog

She carried around critters and had a pet frog!

Some say she was crazy, and it might be so-

But everyone smiled as she passed to and fro.

A lovelier lady you never did meet.

She lived on the corner of my street.

Violet, an old fashioned name and also a colour.

One of a kind, there will never be another

#poetember #kickinthecreatives

#sketchathon #kickinthecreatives #blogfest

2 of #29Faces

Day two of all my September challenges is complete!

Two pieces today!

I forgot to tell you in yesterdays post about the newest challenge I am doing. I find when I schedule myself to do something I tend to get them done. So each day in my journal is a check list of things I want to get done at the moment it looks like this….

1. Bible study 15 minutes (with a little box that I can tick off as its done)
2. Drawing- 15 minutes
3. Water- 3 x 800mls= 2.4 litres
4. 10,000 steps
5. Shedding the weight Meditation
6. Read at least one chapter of current book.

So it seems silly to some people but for me if I don’t hold myself accountable I will put these things aside, and so what if I don’t read a chapter of my book? Well, I won’t finish it and then I wont hit my end of the year reading goal “Read 40 Books”

Its been said that if you do a thing for 21 days it forms a new habit, so by scheduling these things and ticking them off I am helping myself create new habits. I am so bad at drinking water, so that is an important one. I also track this on my Fitbit app! Shedding the weight meditation I am doing with Oprah and Deepak Chopra, its to help us change our thinking and to shed the weight by shedding thoughts and feelings that are negative and I am enjoying it, but by the time I have time to sit down and do the meditations, sometimes I am sleepy and cant be bothered, but then I don’t want to look at this list before bed and see that I haven’t checked it off! So I force myself to do it, it ends Sunday and I’ve only missed one day which I did the next day anyways! And the drawing reminder, well, research shows that if you do something for as little as 15 minutes a day you improve at that thing, and who doesn’t want to improve their drawing skills? Bible study is pretty self explanatory as well. I do an in home bible study afternoon each Wednesday but if I don’t do any for the other six days its a bit pointless.

So this week I found a new challenge, my Bloke says “She loves a good challenge” its called the “100 days project” and the goal is to chose anything at all, to do for 💯 days and take a photo and post it on Instagram with the hash tag #100daysproject I figured that while I am doing this art course and posting that online I might as well make it a little bit more exciting by making it a challenge!

Speaking of art… today I finished two pieces, both of which I don’t actually love, but I didn’t avoid them, or put them off, or worse still skip them! I did them and I am moving on!

Lesson 13- Teacher- Toni Burt, Subject- Berthe Morisot. It was a collage piece and I felt like I had gone back to preschool, having said that her face turned out really well and I loved that! I called her “Alice the music teacher” because I used sheet music for her dress and hat and the song was something about April!

Work in progress.. I am super happy with her face which was a limited colour palette in pastels.

I lost momentum with her dress and so just gave up.. isn’t that just what some of the impressionists did?!

Then lesson 14- Teacher- Jun Toyama, Subject- Nicolai Fechin. We used charcoal, I don’t actually mind charcoal its messy but its also nice because you cant be too fussy. We were supposed to use a live model, I didn’t and Im not sharing the photo of who it was supposed to be, it’s disappointing maybe I’ll redo it sometime!

I still need A LOT of practise with my angles! But like everything, practise will help me improve!

So thats me for this Thursday! This also means that I am now officially up to date with “Lets Face it” next lesson gets released on Monday, so that means, Friday, Saturday and Sunday I will work on “Soul brush sessions” and “Better drawing bootcamp” both of which are course run by Carrie on her website Artist Strong 💪 both of these course are run Free, so maybe you want to have a look!

I almost forgot to tell you about another challenge on Facebook, its an art group called “Weekend Challenges” each weekend we are given a photo and we have to recreate it as close as we can, or alternatively anyway we want. I’ll probably give that a go tomorrow, watch this space…..

Art- week 12’s lesson.

You know that “Evil inner critic” you know the one!

That voice that is inside you telling you “You can’t do that or this or the next thing” I know I am not the only one who has one. Well I know mine personally, up close and dangerously. I’ve listened to her through out my life and even now she’s dead I still hear her, there are several key phrases she likes to repeat to me, but just lately, and I think mostly it’s to do with my Bible study and councilling I’ve been having, that “Evil Inner Critic” is starting to loose her power!

Now when “She” starts in and starts telling me “You can’t do that!” I am starting (at 50 years of age!) to reply back, “Well maybe I can’t do that but I won’t know if I don’t try!” And by finally talking back to her and then actually doing what she tells me I can’t! I find I am stepping put of my comfort zone and into a whole new level of ME!

Last week was a classic example… with doing the Mary Cassatt piece, I decided to use the real Mary’s face as my model, I know parts of it were wrong, and sure enough in comes “Evil Inner critic” to rudely point out “That chins not right, paint over it and do it different” and then “There’s something wrong with her eyes” and so finally I put my paint brush down and walked away, nope I didn’t argue with her or get upset like in the olden days, I walked away, for quite a few hours, I told myself “I am waiting for the paint to dry” maybe I was and maybe I was running, whatever it worked, because when I went back, I could see what the problem was and I had an idea of how to correct it. In the mean time, I had shared a photo of the piece in Carrie’s group “Artist Strong” on Facebook, and complained how I had ruined her. Carrie replied ” it’s closer than you think” which gave me courage to have another look and see where I could improve it. The best bit about that day was when my cousin who hadn’t known I was using Mary’s face as the model, saw the painting of the Girl in the blue hat which Mary had painted and we were to recreate and the photo of Mary, my cousin asked “Did you take these two photos and morph them into one!” Why yes I did! Which means that my painting must actually have resembled Mary somewhat! I was so excited! It means that someone else had seen what I had set out to do.

So now fast forward to this week, Lesson 12 B was with teacher Tanya Cole another Aussie lady, and her subject was Monet and so in her lesson she wanted us to try and recreate a flower loosely like Monet did his flowers and then to add a portrait of Monet. I felt the prickles of apprehension run down my spine and then I recalled my cousin mentioning the “Morphing” of the two photos in the other lesson, so I wondered if I could do it again. I think, by George, I’ve done it!

Tanya used a hibiscus flower and a portrait of young Monet in a black beret. I like hibiscus 🌺 they remind me of tropical islands, but when I read “Monet” immediately I put him with water lilies. My husband took me and my Mother-in-law on a “Date Day” and we went to see the Monet exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria a few years back, and it was beautifully set up, but I remember that I was so so so disappointed at seeing these famous paintings up close. They were terrible up close, some art is much better from a far, his edges were unfinished and some of the brush strokes were lumpy and messy, I left there disappointed. Then speaking to people and learning about his failing eye sight and the whole “Impressionist” movement I eased up on him a bit. Doing this course has helped me ease up on him a bit more.

Anyways, So I decided to deviate from Tanya’s painting and do my own, Kara tells us to put a bit of ourselves into each piece of work we do. So I did! I painted water lilies and an older I think more handsome Claude Monet, not my painting is more handsome but that Claude was the older he got! So here is my version of week 12 with Tanya Cole and Claude Monet!

He turned out better than I had hoped! The water lilies leave a lot,to be desired BUT its impressionist after all!

Sorry it’s been a while

Here’s a quick update on my art! It’s going amazing! I am so happy with how well it’s going.

Lesson 8 was”Lady of Shallot”Teacher was Deanna Strachan- Wilson. Subject- John Williams Waterhouse loved it!!

I love how sad the Lady of Shallot looks my favourite poem, song and painting.

Next lesson number 9- Teacher Juna, Subject- Rembrandt and we used Charcoal.

I was a little disappointed with how she turned out until l looked at her again the next day. That chin! Beautiful!

Lesson 10- Teacher was Sharon Harkness-Dobler. Subject- Henry Ossawa Tanner, and l copied Henry’s original painting and l had a ball! I love this one!

Henry’s original painting on my computer screen, Sharon’s on the wall in yellow and mine next to it! First time doing a still life!

Lesson 11- Impressionists are here!

Teacher- Kara Bullock, Subject- Mary Cassatt, loves this lesson too and lm going to frame her!

Mary Cassatt l used her face to recreate her painting, happy with how she turned out. I almost gave up!

And then there was lesson 12- Teacher- Lucy Chen, Subject- Matisse we had to do a Fauvism style painting a selfie! Not my favourite!!

I don’t love this but l did it. I’m finding when l push past “I don’t like it” l feel prouder of myself for having done it!

So that brings us up to date on my “Let’s Face it” course!

I am currently away camping in Brim Victoria, we are doing the Art Silo Tour, it’s over a 200 kilometres stretch and the unused unloved wheat silos are being transformed as giant canvases! Here is the Brim one!

I’ll come back tomorrow and post some more of them.

Happy Easter everyone and spare a thought for the reason behind the season. Jesus died for our sins.

I bit the bullet

And I went back and completed week two, which I have been avoiding because even after watching the video lesson three times, it scared me. But I didn’t want to move too much more forward and leave lesson two sitting there and so I bit the bullet and did it. BUT and its a very big BUT, I cheated. Its ok, Ive already confessed on Facebook and tagged the teacher and let everyone know, I cheated, I traced the outline with carbon paper! So, I really suck at angles, and this piece was scaring me, so I traced it to get the hands at least right. Then we were “supposed” to use a lead pencil and shade it, in the style of Caravaggio, so darkest darks etc, and use black ink for the really dark darks, well, I went and brought the ink, the shop only had brown and I brought it and “thought” I could make it work, until I watched Carrie’s video piece and knew brown just wasn’t going to work, so I painted it with black acrylic paint, over the top of the pastel, it ended up a bit of a hotchpotch of a piece, but in the end its done! Maybe at the end of the year when my skills have improved I’ll try it the “right” way! In the meantime, having confessed my cheating ways, I am moving on!

Class handout and my piece!

And here he is up on my wall, he doesn’t actually look too gruesome. Well he looks better from afar thats for certain! Onwards and upwards, lesson seven is also by Carrie Brummer and this lesson she wants us to do a self portrait eeeek 😱 wish me luck with this one! Carrie Brummer is really pushing me out of my comfort zone!