Face 2

I froze this morning, I stared at the paper and the acrylics and thought I can't do it, I hadn't a single idea in my head – for me that is unusual. So I sat down with my art journal and proceeded to draw 4 heads in 5 minutes! I was afraid of the acrylics. So taking my courage in my hands I picked a drawing, and found myself thinking of a haiku I had read yesterday at Art muse Dog and Carol's blog www.acreativeharbor.com. It was about the blue moon. So there you have it, Blue Moon Girl. Thank you Carol.

Please click on link in sidebar to view other participants in the September Challenge  at  Ayala's.

Flowers, People and Cats

This week I took up my watercolours for the first time in years. By my back door I have pot and pots of polyanthus It is time they were planted out in the garden as they are starting to look scrappy. I find that their colours inspire me in winter where there is just green and more green. I am quite pleased with the leaves, but the actual flowers themselves I am not so impressed. However, I really enjoyed painting them as they had given me much pleasure over the winter. Flowers are so inspiring.

I started to think about what inspires me the most and trawled through my files and came up with these images. It is interesting to look at your old work. Well nearly old they have been executed over the last year or so.

Things that give me inspiration

 

 butter wouldn't melt in their mouth boys and cute little girls

naughty children and harassed teachers

in your face teenage girls and sulky teenage boys

 beautiful young girls and elegant ladies

 tired husbands and exhausted wives

  eccentric old ladies and grumpy old men

fat cats and naughty cats

YES

I am inspired by all of these as we are all so different from each other:

Each of us is an original

Galatians 5:26 Msg

and

We must thank God at all times for you,

friends, you whom the Lord loves.

2Th 2:13 GNB

Have a wonderful week and happy creating.

Linked to Sunday Sketches

29 Faces in September

I cant resist it. 29 faces in September? I thought about it, and thought another commitment, right! But then I said to myself, Ha! You want to get to grips with acrylics, well here is your opportunity.

So folks I am undertaking the challenge at Ayala. Go her blog and check it out, it looks fun and you will meet lots of new people with new ideas and ways of creating.

Back to Alice

First of all, I want to thank all of you who left those wonderful comforting comments on my last PPF post. I would have like to have answered every one but I just choked up, so I thank you now. It was a healing process for me as now I can remember Mum as she was and not how she is now.

Proverbs 31:15 can easily be summed up as the “early bird catches the worm!” I know Alice throughout her life was up before dawn getting things ready for the day. She grew up on a dairy farm and I know she helped with the milking as a child as her brothers were away at war(1^st World War). Then, she married a farmer so rising before dawn was firmly entrenched. When my Grandparents sold the farm and moved into town, they had a dairy (corner store) which necessitated early starts as it opened at 6am! When they retired from that she couldn't bear the idleness. As the children were all grown and gone, she took in boarders, usually youngsters from remote country areas starting their first job. These boarders became part of the family as she became a second Mum to many of them.

I remember whenever we stayed with her she was up before dawn and cooking the meals for the day, especially a big breakfast for the men. Making lunches for the boarders and picnics for us as she loved to take us on excursions to various local beaches and parks. I think perhaps cooking was one of her greatest loves. I still remember her baking. I wonder what she would make of all the cheffy TV programmes nowadays?

The early rising and getting a good start on the day I know she instilled in my aunties, cousins, sister and in myself, as we are all early risers. So Nana, you fulfilled the Proverbs 31:15 criteria here with distinction.

To create this work, I used two paintings and merged them in Photoshop. With only a few tweaks.

 I would have liked to done it as one piece but time constraints were against me, because I would have had to use layers and each layer needs to dry. This brings me to the conclusion that I need two weeks for each work as I am starting to feel I am on a conveyor belt. So now, I will only do my tribute to Proverbs 31 ladies once a fortnight. Which is is some ways good, as I have started on another work which is big, so I can post on that, starting next week. To wet your taste buds it is a triptych called “Up the Creek”, well the first painting is, as you all know when you get into the creating, things can change. Have a happy PPF.

Linked to Paint PartyFriday and Spiritual Sundays.

Wonder

I've decided to enter the Artists in Blogland August challenge  You are to create a piece of work with the word Wonder as a theme:

What big teeth you have, Grandmama!

Ladies, girls and flowers

A real mix this week for Sunday Sketches, a very productive week if somewhat emotional if you read my last post, you will know what I mean. One thing that lightened my mood was a conversation I overheard on the bus. Two elderly ladies talking about a gentleman friend, one of them finished the conversation on the subject with the quote opposite, it made me smile and still does. Our desire for love never leaves! In this picture I did a drawing in ink and then scanned and simply painted the colours in photoshop.

 

 I think this girl is asleep or floating on her back in the swimming pool,anyway she looks miles away from where she is.

This is really a doodle on one layer using a rubber tool over a layer that I marbled from a lot of scribbles in a KTP plug in. I used natural brushes and dry brushes to get the textured lines.

I absolutely love flowers. I think because they can produce some of the most amazing colours – I think that you will guess by now I am crazy about colour. Again this was in Photoshop here I used water paint brushes and squiggles to make the painting sing. I just wish I could produce oil paintings like this. I think I will make that my goal for the coming year.  I just looked at the three together, PINK! I must be in a girly mood.  Well the next painting gets away from pink.  Well, nearly!

This is the scripture I am taking into the coming week, the painting I did a little while ago using palette knife, lovely thick gooey paint yum!

Since I started my art blog a month ago, I have seen some amazing work, keep it up everybody it is inspiring. Have a lovely week creating.

Linked to Sunday Sketches

Proverbs 31 Josephine not Alice

This week, I am going to change tack, and make this a tribute to my Mother. I started the week with continuing the tribute to Proverbs 31 wives with Alice, my grandmother, but, to be honest I don't know much about how she provided I know she did, and did it well, more about that next week.

It been a difficult task this week as my Mother has severe Alzheimer's, and doesn't really know me anymore. I am full of grief for her and the situation and I can not do anything, as well, I am thousands of miles away. The reason I am making this a tribute to her is because of the telephone call from my sister, who nurses at the hospital where my mother is residing, to update me on her condition. Whenever she goes on duty she pops in and has a chat. She always finds shopping lists scattered around her room, of things she has to get when she gets home to Lower Hutt back here in NZ. ( she has not lived in NZ for 25 years). It was like God was saying to me “Look Sharon, honour your Mother, she was a wonderful provider!” And she was!

When we we small, our parents were hard up. But she always made sure that there were special treats for Xmas, birthdays and holidays. She would regularly put special items in a cupboard high up in the kitchen, us kids would sometimes sneak peeks, when she was not around. We would get a chair climb up onto the bench, and rifle through the cupboard trying to guess when they would appear on the table. As things improved financially, she was always searching for the best producer of this and that. When she visited us in later years, she was always loaded up with special treats and enough food to full the freezer. Yes, she was a good provider in the Proverbs 31 tradition.

 

It was hard painting my Mum. First of all I wanted to paint her in her prime, in the photo above she was 28. I remember the day well as it was my 7th birthday, and I was not very pleased as I had wanted a bike and I couldn't understand why my Grandmother Phyllis (left) had given my sister a doll too! But as the painting went on it got too hard, so I had to stop so I decided to do an impressionistic one, actually I think it is more of a self portrait, as it looks very sad. The vine bits are from a glass bowl with silver vines inlaid that she gave me on one of my birthdays. I will finish the other portrait and use it later.

So in all, a tough week painting but in some ways healing. Mum I honour you!

Linked to Paint Party Fridays and Spiritual Sundays

Rahab

I want to thank you all for your kind comments last week. My arthritis is heaps better this week. However, I have not been able to paint this week as I have had to catch up on my illustration work. Ive managed to do my Alice series. albeit in pencil, and the Women of the Bible series which was in pencil anyway. So it has been a drawing week. I was so pleased with my loosening up that for Sunday Sketches I decide to do an exercise we did at Polytech in life classes.

 

The exercise involves drawing with the left side of the brain. Do do this you don't look at your drawing, but at the subject and you draw with the opposite hand that you normally use. For me that is my left hand. Since I didn't have a live model, I decided to draw with my eyes shut while imagining a character. (Alright, I admit to having a peek from time to time!) The character I chose to think about was Rahab, a woman prostitute who lived in Jericho. She sheltered two Israelite spies from the King of Jericho. She asked them to save her family when the Israelites attacked. Because she had hidden them she and her family were saved. One of the lessons from this story is that God looks kindly on all who help his followers and has faith, it is what in your heart that matters more than what you are.

 

 

Next, I photographed the drawing which was on A2 paper and done in conte chalk. Then in Photoshop I used Levels and the white ink dropper to whiten the background. The next step was to use the magic wand to select various parts and then I coloured them with the brush tool. It pays to save the selection, in case you want to change anything. Then I went to curves and and adjusted colours slightly.

 

I thought the picture showed the 'lady of the night' side of her now I wanted to show the soft side of her.

Back to the original.  Again I used the magic wand and selected all the brown and then used softer and lighter colours. It looked a bit wishy washy so I painted in the background with a chalk brush.

In this picture , I got rid of the man and used brushes to paint Rahab. I wanted her to be the party girl. Hence the bright colours.

In this picture I wanted to show the gentle warm hearted girl that she must have been. 

There you have it. We all have two sides to our nature, often what we see on the outside is not what is on the inside.

Here is the scripture I am taking with me into the coming week. Thanks for visiting and have a great week creating. 

Linked to Sunday Sketches

 

 

Alice - Busy Hands

She seeks wool and flax,and works willingly with her hands. Proverbs 31:13

Busy hands is the theme of this week's tribute to Proverbs 31 women. Alice, my grandmother certainly had busy hands, even though she suffered crippling arthritis in her hands. I remember her knitting all grandchildren, a jersey for Birthdays, and I know at one stage she spun. She also sewed and embroidered and made lace. As she got older and the arthritis set in, it was just knitting and machine sewing with a bit of crochet thrown in. And even older still – I talking about her 80s and nineties she did a lot of scrapbooking. Her hands were always busy.

She was heavily involved with WI (Women's Institute), and at one time the president for the whole of New Zealand. She really believed that all women and girls should know homemaking skills. She taught my mother how to sew and knit, as her own mother had not taught her (she was a career woman and everything was brought ready made.) When I was eight and my sister was six she had us for the holidays and taught us to knit and embroider. I find it sad that the generation of today are losing these skills, the computer and TV have a lot to answer for. Mind you, the price of wool and materials, make it an expensive option for clothing.

I used coloured pencils this week, and found it a struggle to do the hands. I tend to hide hands if at all possible when painting and drawing! I used pencil, as by the time I worked out the hands, I didn't have time to do a painting.

Linked to Paint Party Friday and Spiritual Sundays

Waiting on God's Promise

I like Sarah. She followed her man all over the place. Many wives would have had concerns at starting a nomadic existence at 65, with the promise of children thrown in as well. I have portrayed her as a beautiful woman rather than aged. She must have been ravishing as twice Abraham asked her act as his sister when they went into foreign territory, and both times the rulers took her to be their wife. And this when she was in her 70's and 80's!

I can understand her behavior regarding Hagar, she longs for a child and wanting to carry on Abraham's line she gives Hagar to him. It is too much for her when Hagar treats her with scorn for not being able to conceive. Being unable to conceive is a terrible thing for any woman to come to terms with, (I only know too well as that is my story). When she finally bears Issac, she is like any protective Mother, perhaps more so, as she had to wait so long to be a Mother. The mocking behavior of Hagar's son is the final straw. She has to get rid of them.

This story is really about God's Promise, and waiting for it. Sometimes, as here, we have to wait years, and the trick is to not go and try and contrive an outcome before its time. This is why, even when it seems improbable , such as Sarah conceiving at 90 years of age, we have to wait on God's Promise. If our Father says something is going to happen, it surely will.