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…..

Life drawing- week two… new attitude

So this week was week two of “life drawing class” and after having had a week to think about it I decided that I had to go again for a few reasons, mainly to get out of the  house and do some art and also to get past the shock and horror I felt the first week.. pushing myself out of my comfort zone.

I’m going to let you in on a little secret.. I have anxiety issues. I rarely go out of the house on my own, I know when this started I know why it started and I’ve had counselling to help with it, but unless I am very firm with myself I can stay in the house for weeks and never leave. So I felt like I needed to push myself to go to draw naked people again.. PLUS as a side bonus I was emailing the class teacher and he gave me some great tips and hints and I felt like I wasn’t totally hopeless at figurative drawing..

So this week I went with a better attitude or maybe I was just more prepared…

We did the usual one minute sketches which were ordinary, then the five-minute ones our teacher Sean shuffled things up a bit..

One we had to draw without looking at the page… hard!

One we had to draw without looking OR lifting our tool (charcoal for me)

One we had to draw with our non dominant hand which I “thought” was going to be impossible and which was actually more fun than I imagined, and it happened to be the best piece of the night I did. That was a 10 minute piece.

Next we had a 15 minute sitting so I started off with my left hand and then swapped to my right and I still think the side with my left hand is better.. I think I am going to explore that option more.

We had a female model this week Bronwyn. Some how drawing her felt less intimidating than the male.. it’s just all in my head I’m sure.. or am I turning into a prude in my “old age” LOL

This is the piece I did with my left hand I felt that her torso was more in proportion than previous pieces which made me really happy. I still have to work on proportions A L O T! But Sean tells me that somewhere along the way about week 3 or so it should “click into place” in the meantime I can practice at home if I want to. It’s more like if I have time to!

 

So I started this one-off with my left hand and then switched to my right hand, this is my pin-up piece of the week, I know she’s still not in proportion but there’s something about her that I love! Her legs are not long enough and her heads too big, but she’s a bit like me cute and quirky!!

Sean tells us he has some more fun learning techniques coming up and so for now I will keep going to life class on Mondays

Almost as soon as I stand at the easel I can feel my shoulders start to relax and my mind goes blank and I am in a little bubble of seeing and drawing and getting filthy with charcoal and I realize I am in BLISS… there’s really no other word for it but BLISS… It’s like a shock when our teacher Sean tells us “that’s it ladies and gentlemen, see you next week” it’s a let down with a thump!

bliss (blĭs) n.

1. Extreme happiness; ecstasy.

2. The ecstasy of salvation; spiritual joy.

Phrasal Verb: bliss out Slang.. To go into a state of ecstasy.

YES!! See I did choose the right word.. its my spiritual joy to do this art class…it’s my freedom from the house, it’s my freedom from children and I am MISSING it so much. Having so much hands on contact with my grand babies is great but I really miss Me time which equals Art time!

NaBloPoMo.. February “make” Days 17 and 18…

I’ve been stupidly busy this month.. really, and yet some days I feel like I’ve got nothing done and some days I didn’t even my blog.. to anyone who reads regularly I apologize, but you know sometimes life happens and I am actually out of the house long enough that nothing inside the house gets done… I used to be organised!!

Tuesday, February 17, 2015
What do you think of the idea “if life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” Do you think it’s always possible to make something bad into something good?

I never used to prescribe to this way of thinking and I was walking around going “Woe is me” and then I realized what a “victim” I was becoming.. a very wise Councillor told me that if you look at everything that happens to you as a “lesson” you can usually pick out what you’ve learnt from the “mistake” or “bad thing” that happened to you. How right she was… I went as far back at 1999 and re-evaluated steps I’d made which lead to my divorce and how I had grown by making those steps, be they hard, uncomfortable or just ugly. I always learnt something either about others or myself. Which meant that the “rose colored glasses” I swanned through life wearing, were ripped off cruelly, Which meant that I grew into what I am now. I read a quote the other day saying something like “Don’t be too harsh on me, God’s not finished with me yet” and I feel like that’s my lesson, stop beating myself up I am still alive, I am healthy and I am still growing, I am not making the same mistakes over and over so I MUST be learning.. sometimes you have to rip off the band-aid to let the fresh air in and help you heal, yeah, it hurts for a while but you move onward and upwards, so yes, When I get lemons I make lemonade maybe with a little extra added sugar!!

 

Wednesday, February 18, 2015
What do you do to try to make other people happy? What do you do to try to make yourself happy?

The short answer to this is “too much” and in regards to making myself happy “not enough”

I am a people pleaser… it’s not always a good trait, because sometimes it can be translated as “Doormat” and you get walked all over. There’s a line, and sometimes you have to give yourself permission to say “NO” not in a mean way but in a firm way say “Sorry no!” Great advice, I’ve read it in a million “self help” books  rarely do it.

Especially when it comes to my children, but then I had Grandchildren and realized that I have to stop being a “people pleaser” and be real.. I baby sit for the girls one night a month, they get a “Night off” they are young, 24 and 22 and still in the partying mode when they can. But even as I write this I think to myself “that is nice, but when is MY night off?” I never get a night off. Most times it doesn’t worry me, because I escape to my room and work in my journal or my bible studies, but every so often I long for a night away from “Children” whether they are the 13 yr old, the grown up children or the grand children, a night off to speak about grown up things with grown up people which doesn’t involve being interrupted by someone who thinks they NEED you right now!

So I took matters into my own hands and on Mondays I go out of the house and I go to a “Life art Class” I’ve been two weeks now, and it’s amazing how fast that two hours slips by, and it’s amazing how quiet, peaceful and relaxed the atmosphere is. Almost as soon as I stand at the easel I can feel my shoulders start to relax and my mind goes blank and I am in a little bubble of seeing and drawing and getting filthy with charcoal and I realize I am in BLISS… there’s really no other word for it but BLISS… It’s like a shock when our teacher Sean tells us “that’s it ladies and gentlemen, see you next week” it’s a let down with a thump!

bliss (blĭs) n.

1. Extreme happiness; ecstasy.

2. The ecstasy of salvation; spiritual joy.

Phrasal Verb: bliss out Slang.. To go into a state of ecstasy.

YES!! See I did choose the right word.. its my spiritual joy to do this art class…it’s my freedom from the house, it’s my freedom from children and I am MISSING it so much having so much hands on contact with my grandbabies is great but I really miss Me time which equals Art time!

 

More art!

I didn’t really realize how MUCH I’ve missed my art.

Yesterday my cousin and I had an art class, it was on “drawing faces” we both didn’t know what to expect so we went in with an open mind.

It was very loosely drawn and I’ve realized I am a bit more regimented… so I struggled to follow in the artists style.. but anyways here they are ….

This one was where we had to take three different faces and do one eye of each face.. I had “thought” I was OK at eyes and then I realized I really am NOT... or am I just that out of practice I need to work harder. I spoke to the artist at our lunch break and she said “keep an art journal with you at all times and when the babies are quiet for a few minutes draw something, anything, just draw” My number 1 daughter gave me a nice “type” of art journal for Christmas so I will take that with me.

Next practice was, we had to do three different faces.. just pick any of the ones on the sheets she gave us and draw, be quick! she says that when we take a long time we “over think” the process and then our brains start telling us “Oh that’s terrible it doesn’t look like an eye!” yes! I am guilty of that!

Next we had to do this “Grandma” and we had to draw it and then paint over it with Solvent which takes off the shine and blends the lead around and basically smooths things out a bit.. she is the one I am most happy with. The main purpose of this piece was to show us that there are very darks and medium darks and light darks and then lights… and I loved this one.

More darks and shadows, she wanted us to do this “surfer dude” and then add only two little bits of colour but not “Colour it in” we had to choose a warm and a cool colour.

This was done in Charcoal and chalk pastels I discovered I don’t much like Charcoal. This was a big piece and we sprayed it with fixative to stop it smudging, and had to lay them on the floor to dry… well, some one went home with mine.. so he is now gone forever.. as much as I didn’t like him, I didn’t want to NOT have him. I suppose on one hand it’s a good excuse to do him or something similar again, better than he was..

Our final piece was a small child, taken from a larger painting, she was an adorable little girl and we used pencil charcoal and pastels with solvent, I hated it and her!!

Here she is and above her is the teachers piece

 

here is my sad version!

By the time we got to paint her, we were tired and it had been a long day.  I will definitely attempt these excersizes again in my own time and place.

Next art class.. well I am excited to announce my cousin and I have joined a Monday night art class, so each Monday night from 7.00 pm- 9.00 pm, we will be doing “Life model drawing” I’ve never done anything like that and it’s $15.00 per class and everything is supplied, so I a excited to get started with that.

I’ll be back to report on that! These three faces equal number 3,4 and 5 of the 29 faces for February.

 

Yay! I did some art!

I had forgotten all about my art, okay, well, not really I put it out of my mind because I am so busy I feel guilty for not doing it.. so I pretend it doesn’t exist, stupid really.

I even went as far as to delete my Facebook art page because it was making me feel bad and sad and lazy… who needs that stress? Then on Facebook I realized it was that time of the year again “29 faces” (February only has 28 days most years so being the shortest month its a good month to start a habit, last year I did the whole month) the idea is to draw, paint, sketch whatever you do.. a face a day.. it’s a little thing but it’s great for me to get back into the habit.. so I got out my pencil and I started. I didn’t realize how bad I was.. how not using it I was loosing it!

So I decided that since I am starting “afresh” why not experiment with different supplies and styles..

This one.. I did with Oil Pastels and pencil.. and gold glitter..it’s a copy of Klimt’s “Golden tears“

Then I decided to go back to the Acrylic paints.. and come up with this Klimt “Adele” but in his painting Adele has her hair up..

Neither of these are my “usual” style if I even have one, but these pushed me out of my comfort zone and so I liked that!

I havent started day 3 or 4 yet I started late, by accident I saw another arty friend had started and realized “oops I missed the start” only by a day but now I am running on American time a day behind. ‘ll get those two done today after my Doctors appointment.

NaBloPoMo – December is Joy..filled…

Wednesday, December 10, 2014
Do you think you maintain a good balance of making yourself happy while making other people happy?

What a great question, if you are a Mum out there I can almost hear you screaming “NOOOO!!!” that was my immediate first thought but then I remembered, there was a time not too long ago, that I had a nice balance.

From 7.00 am till 8.30 am I was ALL Wife and Mum, getting the Star Son off to school, knowing he’d had a breakfast, cut lunch, hair combed, homework packed and was clean and tidy. that was “mum time”

From 8;30 am- 3;30 pm was “Me time” in Me time, I would race around like a crazy lady and get the house work done, do some laundry, write some letters, sweep the floors, maybe wash them as well, quite often not on the same day (my poor back! all the floors are wooden in my house) plan what was on the menu for dinner and then if I still had time I would escape down to the studio. In the Studio is where the real “Me time” starts. That is where my Joy starts, my Studio is my joy filled place! Let me tell you about my studio… in my studio (the spare bedroom- it was damaged by flooding water one year so we had to rip up the smelly old carpet and there is bare concrete, and the walls were yuck so we painted them!) in the Studio “there are no colour rules” what ever colours want to come plan in my studio they are all welcome. So one wall is purple, one wall is yellow and one wall is spring green, the windowsill is yellow and the book shelves are hot pink.. all colours are welcome. The back wall is all wardrobe, which is storage and we took off the doors and never replace those who needs doors?! So we have lovely long flowy lace curtains, it reminds me of a wedding dress exploded.

In my Studio I have sections for different things, there is a bookshelf for patchwork and pattern books, another bookshelf for serious art books, a stand with all my paint brushes and so on and so forth, basically I have little stations for separate needs. You know how it goes. I also have a yellow bookshelf which has all my Native American Spiritual stuff held safely, my hand-made drum, made from deer skin and my hand carved (was a gift) Native American flute and my rattles and all kinds of things. And my walls are covered with Art I did, my favourite pieces dating back to 2008 when I started being serious and studied with a pastels teacher.

When I need to recharge my batteries there is my Art Studio, my joy filled art space, all mine.

From 3;30 pm- 7;00 pm then I switched back into the “Mummy Mode” unless “Star Son” has a friend over, I am it, we will talk about his day while I make the food and while he eats it and then discuss his homework and then he might go out to hang with friends. So from 4.30 pm I’ll have an extra hour of “Me time” thrown in, I might get some back ground painted, or clean up from something arty I’d already done.

5;30 pm- 7;00 pm– I’m in “Mummy Mode” preparing dinner, ordering “Star Son’ to feed the animals, setting the table and welcoming home the Lord of the Manor, AKA The Bloke. All the while creating something totally yummy for dinner, which most nights, someone has something to complain about. Then it’s dishes and kitchen cleaning time, worrying about tomorrow’s school lunches if we have no already pre-made them. By 7;00 pm showers are usually done and The Bloke takes over for homework duties, which means I am free…

7;00 pm- 10;00 pm I am free.. depending on what I do I might race to the studio or sit in front of the TV and write some pen pal letters.. sounds great doesn’t it? After 10;00 pm it’s shower and bedtime, biblical reading and journal catch up and sleep by 11.00 pm… That USED to be my life.. and then.. something amazing, something so JoyFILLED happened that everything as we previously knew it flew out the window… so NO MORE ME TIME!!

I became a Grand Ma in November 2013 and then again in December 2013, just two weeks later! Two incredibly special little people joined our family. I suddenly found less time to go to the studio, because somehow I could not take my eyes of these amazing little people. The eldest little girl “SweetPea” lived with us for the first 6 months of her life, and I had her full-time for about 10 weeks while her Mum went to work. That was when I started doing “Snail mail art” because I felt like surely I could manage to decorate en envelope while she slept beside me? but even that got too hard and so I took to just staring at this amazing perfect child. Then the second one, the boy child “Squishy” would come to visit and I’d be like watching a ping-pong game, my eyes constantly flickering back and forth watching these amazing babies. When at 6 months old Sweet pea and her Mum moved out, I thought “Yay! Art studio here I come!” but I fell into a silent house, it was so empty it echoed, and it was spooky, no baby sounds, no background TV, no nursery rhymes, I did not cope very well, so I started cleaning. I spent a full 4 weeks scrubbing everything until the Bloke said “Enough!! go to the studio!”

But my heart wasn’t in it the same way. then daughter number one moved in with “Squishy” and the noise was back, the chaos was back and she went back to work full-time and I was full-time Grandma, and he was mobile and wanting attention and so now there is definitely NO TIME FOR ME.

In the recent weeks my Bloke has said “go out and do something” so my cousin and I have been to a few day art classes on Zentangling which I have been loving, I miss my studio, I miss the time down there.. but when I go down there now, it feels empty and I don’t know how to get back that loving feeling. I am hoping that in January when “Squishy” and his Mum move into their place and I am watching him only while Mum is at work, I will have time to return to my Studio. I miss my art, I miss that getting lost in my creations that I look up and suddenly realise that it’s 3;00pm and I forgot to eat lunch, but hey! Look what I painted!!

My Studio is definitely my Joy FILLED place!!

So to answer the original question… (sorry I got a bit lost!)

Do you think you maintain a good balance of making yourself happy while making other people happy?

Today the answer is a resounding NOOOOO!!! I put everyone else first, and whatever time is left, I write this blog and then work in my garden and then I might have “me time” but not a good balance.. this might change in January, check back with me then!

Squishy and Simon the Scarecrow, In Grandma’s Studio

NaBloPoMo 2014- Day 15- Heavenly Art!

Today Lee and I had an art class at the Abbotsford Convent, remember I wrote about Abbotsford Convent last week here: https://kimlhine.wordpress.com/2014/11/09/nablopomo-2014-day-9-abbortsford-convent-and-salads/

Today was our Zentangle Class. Of course we have been doing Zentangle for a while out of books and also from you tube clips. But when Lee found this class with Beverley Exell, that was being held at the Convent she suggested we go, and so off we went. How exciting. I was nervous because I like it best when Lee learns all the tricky moves and then breaks it down into easy to follow steps. Well, I was most surprised when Beverley did the exact same thing. We left super early because last week for the open day it took us an hour to get there and we didn’t want to be late, well as it turns out Saturday morning traffic was much kinder and we were there in less than an hour so we had time for a wander we first found the room we were going to be in and then went off to explore. I’m not going to go into all the lovely old blue stone buildings etc etc again, suffice to say I would live there if they’d let me, it’s like a huge oasis in the middle of suburbia and once within those brick walls all the outside walls cease to exist. I wonder if the Sisters in the Convent back in the day felt the same way.

In the end we went to class early.. OK, So we are nerds and we wanted good seats! I also helped set up chairs and things to compensate our earliness. Luckily everyone else was on time and we started promptly. I have to tell you Beverley has the most hypnotic voice I have ever heard  and for a while there I could picture dressed in the sisters habit with her quiet voice and her gentle ways. She has been a teacher and has studied Meditation in India makes her pretty close I think!

I cannot believe how fast the class went, but mostly what I cannot believe is that I completed a zentangle and it looked how it was supposed to and not only that when all of our pieces were put together mine fit in perfectly. Beverley had the tables set up with a little calico bag and a Lindt balls chocolate yum! She knows the way to her students hearts! We got to look through Beverley’s photo album and learn about her training, she took all her life savings and went to Rhode Island in America for a four-day course to become a qualified Zentangle teacher. And right away Lee and I are adding up how long it would take us to save up the money and go away and spend four days becoming qualified Zentangle teachers! Maybe I’d best finish my Moore Art Instructor course first!

inside our little “welcome kits”

Tile Number one- I was a rebel and did circles when there ought to have been only straight lines OOPS!

Tile Number two- reminds me of Christmas decorations, I think I am going to make Christmas cards!

The whole classes tiles together to form a mosiac

All excatly the same techniques and no two even remotely alike

I could not resist and Early Christmas present, I brought the kit!!

I have always enjoyed playing with Zentangle and have created a few bits and pieces with Zentangle, but now I officially LOVE IT!!

We are eagerly awaiting Beverley’s next classes, one is the next level of tangles, another s tangling on black card in white pen and another is Renaissance Zentangles, so brownish card stock with black and red inks. I am so excited. You can find out more about Beverley’s Work on her website at: http://www.atangleintime.com/

The Daniel Plan day Five and Salad Challenge Day 14..

Did Anyone notice I didn’t do a salad challenge yesterday? No? Oh good.. phew! Yesterday was a bad eating day, not totally bad just not as excellent as I have been.

Breakfast– Quinoa Bake with maple syrup.. yum!

Lunch– Cesar salad from “Healthy Habits” and it was bloody good too… all that shopping made me work up an appetite!

Afternoon snack– Drumstick of chicken.

Dinner– Mixed salad with a beef sausage.

See not too bad! My water target is within reach and I just walked to the post office box to post an art challenge and so I hit my 10,00 steps target and I am only 300 meters from hitting my yearly target “Walk 400 kilometers” its done with the “Run Keeper App” so once that’s complete I will set myself a new challenge using my “fitbit”!! it will be so much easier to keep track of too.

 Lunch from Healthy Habits  Breakfast- Quinoa Bake.

Day 3 Of Carol’s Monthly Challenge “Colours of Carol” I’m calling it……

So today the colours were Gold Black and White, I didn’t have any gold, so I subsitituted this yellow colour, I’m not going to get all upset about not having exactly the right colours.
Todays prompt was “Life is….” I messed up a line it turned into a spiral which morphed into a running line and suddenly I have a page full of twists and turns which made me think that “Life is full of twists and turns“, because even though you might “think” you’re headed in a direction, all it takes is a small mistep and suddenly you’re somewhere else…… 2012 was a lot like that for me. So here is today’s offering….

September’s Faces day 9 and 10

So the 9th nd 10th of September couldn’t get much worse than the children I didn’t think so anyways…..

Day 9- Thor

 I named him such because of the title of the newspaper article. I decided to leave him grey lead he suited it.

Thor

Day 10- Buddy

I don’t know why I was inspired to do Buddy, I just felt that I’d been unfair to the “Children” in the previous post so I’d give them another go…..

NOW I know why I was unfair to the CHILDREN.. they suck… never doing a KID AGAIN!

Real BuddyMy version of Buddy