The Other Side of Happiness

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face 27

 

 

February has been a rather difficult month for me, with 2 friends passing away before their time and news of another with cancer.  I have found that doing the 29 faces challenge a great help in coming to terms with the loss. When I came across the quote in the journal page below by Kahlil Gibran, it was like a light going on.

Face 28

Happiness and sadness are mirror images of each other.  You cannot be happy all the time and you cannot be sad all the time.  Loving and having delight lays you open to sadness or hurt.  We should embrace it as it proves we are really living life fully.  Being sad is honouring what we love because it shows we have loved.  Wallowing in sadness is not good, but if we think of it as an necessary process we can get joy back.  I hope this makes sense, I am simply saying that you can’t have grief without joy.

One thing I do know I have produced some of my best art when I am hurting, for that alone I embrace my grief with joy.

I used watercolour, acrylics and Inktense pencils for these two lovelies.

Linking to 

Creative Every Day

29 Faces

Paint Party Friday Girl

My girl this week was painted in acrylic.  I felt the need for strong colour, and that is something acrylics do very well.  I still not comfortable with them, but I am getting there, I miss the buttery feel of oils.  I used oils 2 days last week and my Psoriasis flared up big time.  So no oil painting till it settles down again.  (I know gloves!  But in this hot weather I ask you!)  Ah, I suppose we can’t have everything in life.  A friend suggested that if I do a lot of the under painting in acrylic, and then the top layers in oil might be a compromise.  I was going to do that with this painting but had so far and decided she was finished. 

Looking at her I think she is ready for the party and her date’s not turned up or she is disappointed with it?  Anyway I think she looks a bit sad.  I know, she has just realized that she can’t have everything she desires.

Have a happy PPF everyone and a very creative week, I know I will.

Linking with Paint Party Friday

Welcome Home

I am crazy about my cats. This week I was beside myself when my Lucy disappeared for a couple of days. If it had been one of my other cats, Bro or Xana, I would not have been so upset. You see Lucy is a real home body, you literally have to throw her outside, she loves to sit in the window and gaze out at the world. What made it worse was the fact that it was the first anniversary of her sister Jandal's death. Jandal disappeared for a week and when I found her she so was so ill, I had to make the terrible decision to put her to sleep.

So you can imagine it, I was thinking “here we go again!” I was paralyzed. I prayed and had to force myself sit at the computer on Tuesday and do some work. When I had finished typing my blog post, I heard the most welcome sound ever, her plaintive meow demanding food! Joy of joys, she was healthy as, and slightly confused at my emotion, but, being a cat, she lapped it up! Thank you God. So to give thanks, I painted this acrylic of her at my window. Welcome home Lucy. (I wonder if she was having her own celebration of Jandal's life, she pined for ages when Jandal died.)

To Jandal who didn't make it home safely. She was called Jandal as on one foot she had a black toe on white feet. Looked like she was wearing Jandals, (other countries call them Thongs, I think). Here she is with her mother Xana (right) and her sister Lucy (left).

Linking with Artists in Blogland - Show and Tell Saturday

Focus

At The Artist's Play Room, Jen has asked us what our resolutions for 2013 are. I rather choose a word than a resolution, because I am a contrary girl by nature. I know I will break a resolution, probably within a few hours!

My word for 2013 is Focus. One of the things I am going to focus on this year is art journaling everyday. I discovered art journaling a short time ago and I am hooked. While I may not do a journal page everyday I am setting myself a goal of completing one every week.

As part of my plan I have to get into my chest and rediscover all the papers materials etc that I have stored away. At present it has a very heavy TV sitting on top, which I can't move by myself. So my first job is to buy a TV cabinet for my TV which will enable me to delve into my storehouse of treasures. The sales are on so here I come. I have not been able to get into my chest for at least two years, perhaps more, I know I have gorgeous handmade papers, materials, art stuff from my polytechnic days, and so on. I cant wait to get into it, it will be like all my birthdays have come at once!

The other thing I want to really focus is doing more sketching, I love drawing but have been a bit lazy recently – think I will make up individual sketchbooks out of some of that paper hidden away.

Another area where I have to focus is on finishing paintings. I have heaps of unfinished works. I have a terrible habit of when things get difficult or wrong putting the painting aside with the intention of thinking about it, and I never get back to it! The picture above is a case in point. The foreground was bothering me. I had an idea yesterday of photographing it and playing around in Photoshop to see what I could do to fix it up. The answer was simple. I had sharpened it in filters and hey presto it was okay. So I need to create some texture (It was flat). This is the computer version, I haven't got around to working on the painting yet, that is my task for today. As the painting has the lock from my chest that is under the TV, it seemed to be just the thing for my word this year. So I added the letters in Photoshop. Now I am off to the shops to buy a TV cabinet.

Check out some of the other resolutions by amazing artists at the Artist'sPlay Room at Just Add Water Silly.

A New Start - PPF an FFF

PPF – birds

Well my holiday is over and so now I am refreshed and geared up to make 2013 a wonderful year for creative endeavours!

I think my word for this year is FOCUS. I feel the need to focus, as looking over my blog I can see clearly that I am all over the place – many styles, media and unfinished works. I don't want to loose that freedom of styles, but I want to have work that feels like me. At the end of last year I got excited about some paintings I did of flowers that were photographic, and while I felt very clever, there was a part of me that nagged 'that is not you.' So I decided that style can go into my illustration bucket. (Maybe design a set of cards or a calendar?) I need/want to have a more painterly feel to my work. Besides the FFF challenge (see below) I have only done one small painting (6in x 6in) over the last three weeks.

Over the holidays I was reunited with my brother (there was an estrangement for many years). Besides the family photos he has been flooding me with, there have been many photos of birds. He lives in Canberra Australia and has many exotic birds visiting his veranda. It took me back to when we were 13 and 14 when one holiday at our Grands, we went to the Museum in Wellington everyday and he took notes on the stuffed birds on display while I drew them and we made a big book on native NZ birds. So this painting is for you Bro, while it is not as colourful as the birds that visit you, it does me. Birds in Aussie are beautiful, but larger than life. On one visit to my other brother in Perth, I got attacked by a pair of giant magpies when I was going to the local deli. I have never been so terrified, so now I only like sweet little birds.

Fall, Fearless and Fly

The prompt for Challenge 7 is:

Fall Fearless and Fly with Joanne Sharpe! (Check her out at FFF)

Headline Prompt:  Future Imperfect: What is different about your life now than what you once expected it to be?  How is the way it turned out perfect or imperfect.  If your future turns out differently than you imagined in the first prompt, could it still be perfect?
Color Prompt: Yellow
Quote Prompt: "Existence really is an imperfect tense that never becomes a present."  Friedrich Nietsche

With the two works I have done I am using all three prompts.

The first is where I am at the moment. I am at peace with my world, even though it is not “perfect”. I did not think my future would be what it is. If you had asked me in my twenties how would I like the life I am leading now I would have shuddered! But life changes you and you learn to go with the flow and see the good things it gives you.

I really believe that life has two sides to everything. Evil and Good, joy and sadness, good health and illness, and so on. We need both equally, because if we didn't life would be boring. How would we know what is good if we didn't have sin? How would we know joy if we didn't have sadness? The imperfections of life give us our depth of character. I know that when something bad happens, there is going to be a silver lining. We may not see it at the time but it is there. So I embrace the imperfections of my life, they make my life perfect.

In the second picture I tried to portray the times when the glitzes in life hit. They bring colour to our lives.

Linking with

Paint Party Friday

FallFearless and Fly

Paint Party Friday

This week I have been getting to grips with acrylics, one of the goals I had set for this year. I want to change from oils to acrylics as I have problems with oil paints (allergies), my hands swell up and I get a rash on my knuckles – not pleasant. I know I should wear gloves but I like to get my hands in amongst the paint!

A perfect opportunity came up when a friend asked for a painting of some of the flowers in her garden. As I want to give the painting as a gift for Christmas, it had to be acrylics, so I bit the bullet, and in more ways than one, she likes the classical style of painting, 'none of this modern stuff please!' A hard ask for me, but as she is a lovely lady and has been so kind to me, I wanted to give her something she would love.

I have to say I really enjoyed myself, do you know the feeling when you are painting and you can't believe it is going so well, it is almost like someone is guiding your hand. Then when you have finished it you look at it and think did I do that?

And today I went to a second hand store and found a perfect frame the right size and all. I just need to rub some gilding on the frame and give it a wax and it is ready to go. Maybe I have found a new path?

Have a Happy PPF everybody, and may your build up to Christmas be smooth and joyful.

Linking to Paint Party Friday

A Girly Moment

Before I start I will apologize to all blonds as this week I had a blond episode.

I haven't done much in the way of art over the last fortnight. I woke up one morning and looked at my house and garden and thought, 'wow, the place is filthy!' Cobwebs were starting to engulf me, and as for the garden, people cant get to my front door because of triffid like geraniums and creeping carpet roses that attack passerby legs. (I use the back door where a daisy bush showers me with petals as I pass.) So I set to and started the mammoth task of tidying up. Its spring right, there must be something inside of us that makes us notice the filth when spring arrives. I got everything sorted inside and then started on the outside. I was living in a jungle. But I licked it. Now I have a heap of stuff ready for composting and burning.

Feeling pleased with myself, I rubbed my hands and thought back to my art with a clear conscience. Ha! I got girly all of a sudden, and wanted to pretty everything up! I went to the market and bought lots of flowers for the garden and pretty china for the house. I also bought new bed linen and throws for the lounge, I am ashamed to say that there was a lot of pink!

That is not all, I went to the hardware store and brought a mini greenhouse so I could grow pretty delicate flowers. You had to assemble it. So spurning offers from my friend's husband to help, I started. Three hours later I was tearing my hair out, it was like those skits you see of people trying to put tents up. I went inside and sulked.

I idly picked up the packaging and a sheet of paper fell out – the instructions. I made a longed for cup of tea and read them. It looked so simple, so had another cuppa and heaved a great sigh and went out again with the instructions firmly in my hand. Well! I had it up in no time. The moral of the story don't be a blond, read the instructions! (Although, I got to say I know a lot of men who also don't read instructions and then get into a fit of temper when it doesn't work, so once again apologies to blonds)

Needless to say I am now back at my computer desk and paint table playing with glee and a clear conscience.

Oh and I have asked my friends to give me a severe slap if I start to wear flowery dresses and skirts etc - especially pink!

Linking to Paint Party Friday

PS. Was Telling my sister about my antics with the Greenhouse and she kindly reminded me that I was a blond up to the age of 8!

Grab a Star

I have been a bit slow of the mark this week. I did this journal page for the challenge at Artist's Playroom and then forgot to post and link to it before the linky closed. So I am posting it for at Art Journal Everyday and Sunday Sketches. The prompt was 'celestial and stargazing'. I decided to scan the work in stages so you can see how it evolved.

First of all I started with this drawing.

Then I got my acrylics and painted.

 Next I used a variety of methods to make marks, one of my favourite methods at the moment is get cotton and glue it to the paper and then run a roller over it. Also I am in love with my white gel pen , which I like to use for writing. I brush some very diluted watercolour over the writing and it changes the tint. So here's the finished piece. I got to say hat I actually like the unadorned piece as much as the finished one. Maybe the final piece is too busy?

It has been said that for every person born there is a star! That star holds all our dreams. Shows us what we can be. We can stand out and be special. If we gaze up into the heavens we just might see our special star twinkling at us, saying reach out, grab hold of me. We all can be stars!

Have a wonderful creative week every body.

Linking to Art Journal Every Day
Sunday Sketches