Within or Without?

Here is a question - Is the landscape within us the landscape outside of us?

Linking to

 Art - Journal Journey

And

Art Journal Every Day

A New Beginning

I have had to face up to some facts this week.  My shoulder has got so bad that I am unable to lift my arm much, and painting large canvases is not helping, in fact causing much of the discomfort.  So I am going to do what the physio suggests and lay off painting large.  I may get back to it, I don’t know, we will see.

So this week I have been doing small watercolours and journal pages.  With small scale I can rest my arm on the desk, so all’s good.  I got brave yesterday and decided to redo my picture of Caro on A3 card with a layer gesso.  It worked! No pain as I was able to do it flat on the table, got a bit covered in paint, but loved that.  I used acrylics, gouache and watercolours.  I added the text in Photoshop as the top corner looked empty, will think about it before adding it to original.

I was on a roll, and decided to do a portrait of my sister’s granddaughter Kendal for her birthday.  It was about A4 size on rough watercolour paper.  I did the background first and then drew Kendal and then painted over the drawing with gesso, and then used watercolour to paint her in, the pencil lines of the drawing showed through a little bit, so I found it helpful when it came to painting her.  I know it is not proper water colour techniques, but what the heck, it works!

I am not sure that it is finished yet, so will brood on it for a couple of days before posting it to my sister.

As I am talking about family the other thing I am working on is an art piece for my brother’s wedding anniversary latter this year.  It is digital and I have used photos that he has sent me since he has come back into the family fold.  Although I did use an image from freubels-freebies, you can see it in the background slightly.  The lady on the bike is a reference to the fact that Dave and Liz were bikies and spent their honey moon on Harleys touring Aussie.  This is extra special to me as Liz had breast cancer and it has just returned, so sad.  I want to add text but need to find a quote that suits.

So overall a successful week, a new beginning doing smaller works, sometimes we have to let go.

Just a reminder to anyone who journals about their faith, I have a new weekly linkup - Journal inFaith - on my Stand on Faith blog.  You are welcome to take part.

Have a happy Paint Party Friday 

Linked to Paint Party Friday

Splashing Paint

Today I got out my paints and splashed away to my heart’s content.  I find that when I do that with no particular goal in mind my soul feels joyous and I feel as if I have grown.

I kept on splashing, this time over an abandoned watercolour pencil drawing I did last year right at the beginning of my blogging journey for the fff challenge. As most of you are experiencing spring I decided to splash on the colours of spring.

Today, I could not see anything wrong with it; it was just me being a perfectionist!  I see in my journal lots of pages I have abandoned and redid because I thought they were “wrong”!  Blogging has changed me.  I am not so critical of myself now.  So my goal now is go back to these pages and redo them, perhaps one a week. The quote is a lesson learned.

Linking to Show and Tell Saturday at Artists in Blogland