ms. le reux's angel

ms. le reux's angel, 2/26/09 ~ 4" x 6"

huh! first i met ms. le reux's gardener, and now her angel shows up!!

XO

what the bird said

'what the bird said', 2/21/09

'find yourself', 2/22/09


on saturday i walked past this gate until i'd had enough of walking through soft, melting snow; then i got off the road and headed up the south facing slope to my left, where the ground was mostly bare.


i hung out with the rocks and juniper trees for the first time since early november. it was nice! this stretch must have been a giant lava flow at one time, and now these peaky, pinnacle-y rocks are just downright magical.


every few steps you see a juniper that's been there for hundreds of years. being with them is like visiting all of the old, wise people you ever knew. you feel like you're about to burst with goodness after a few hours with them...

XO

all stitched up...

(music to view guerilla knitting by... thank you, Iz!)




















blowing kisses to you, grrl, for inspiring us!

(and thank you for these stickers)

XOXOXO

red angel

red angel, 2/18/09

in case it's not obvious, these faces are from my journal... since i've gotten caught up on pieces for the graffiti wall collaboration, i've been able to work in my journal again. which makes me extremely happy!

a couple of people have asked about left handed drawing... most of the drawings that i've done lately (these faces and the birds before them) were drawn primarily with my left/nondominant hand. i don't have any rules about this -- if i don't like an eye or the the lips after i've drawn them with my left hand, i draw them with my right. and also, i erase until i like what i have. so i don't just draw quickly with my left hand and that's that. in this painting her beak was drawn with my right hand -- there's no way i could draw lines that straight left handed! but her head, wings, eyes, and neck were mostly drawn left handed. i say mostly because if i don't like a particular part of an eye, i erase just that part and redo it with my right hand -- or left. whatever feels right. i've been drawing left handed since i started journaling in 2006 -- it's amazing how much better you get with practice!

if you haven't watched this interview of rosalie gascoigne on jo horswill's blog, mystory, i highly recommend it. this is what rosalie says about art/her work: "It’s not about how it looks, it’s about how you feel about it." yes! thank you, jo, for sharing this video!

XO

loose ends

tying them up...

i love black and white tagged me to show the 6th photo in the 6th folder... it's a bead photo in a folder of bead photos i'd forgotten about! for pure visual delight check out this post of covers for manholes and miscellaneous underground things on i love black and white's blog...


and i want to thank robyn at art propelled for awarding me with the proximidade blog award. thank you, robyn... it's an honor...


after much pondering i've decided to post shorter posts more often, and talk less... please know that if you feel like waving as you pass by instead of commenting, i'll see you. sometimes i find myself wishing that bloggers would slow down with posting because i can't keep up with commenting! so, yeah, feel free to wave!

XO

any choice

any choice, 2/16/09

XO

nowHere (nowhere)

nowHere (nowhere), 2/14/09

the words say (for fellow ponderers : )

the search for enlightenment that has remained ever elusive leads you to the same destination, for there is nowhere for you to be beyond where you are right now. so long as you perceive yourself to be short of the mark, you will experience discontentment, regardless of how far you have journeyed.

from 'oneness', by rasha

XO

LuminArte 40% off sale

LuminArte, the company that makes the twinkling H2Os that i paint with, is going out of business. all of their products have been marked down 40%, even though it doesn't say this on their website. they sent an e-mail to their customers on friday with this information... the sale isn't limited to recipients of the e-mail -- anyone can take advantage of these savings. i love these paints because they're highly pigmented and most colors have no 'chalkiness' (i don't know what the proper term is here), so you can blend to your heart's content and not get muddy colors.

below are my color sheets (i did not make these; i was not that smart. my friend leigh did and i am forever grateful to her!) -- it gives you a bit of an idea of what some of the colors look like.

click to enlarge

if you want to order but feel hesitant because the 40% off price isn't reflected on their website, you can always call...

edited to add:
if you order online the 40% off price isn't reflected on the invoice that you receive via e-mail, so i'll post the response that i got from customer service when i asked about that.

Dear Lynne~ Yes, we will take the discount off when we get the orders off of the
website... Best, Courtney

XO

XO

happy valentine's day!

XO

holy fallout

What is that luminous rain I see
All around you in the future

Sweeping in from the east plain?

It looks like, O it looks like
Holy fallout

Filling your mouth and palms With Joy!

from 'There Could Be Holy Fallout'
Hafiz

. . .

approx. 8" x 8"

this is what the piece of canvas i showed you last week looks like now, thanks to seth and julie...

approx 16" x 20"

seth says it so well (here)...

"Turns out, once you start... tearing
art apart is not so hard after all!"


still pondering...

: )

XO

pondering

life and blogging...

XO

w i p

the center of my canvas for our graffiti wall collaboration... no gluing yet.

below are bits of the papers that i've received from seth and julie... i've just started to rip and glue, which i must say is an awful lot of fun.




these are from julie,




and these are from seth.


me for round two...


as of two days ago i'm sticking with neutral pieces. (okay, i'm gonna try)

the things i've used most...


raw umber, sepia, black, yellow brown, and brown pink sennelier oil pastels. ohhhh, brown pink! i like to just say 'brown pink' -- only right brain can grok brown pink!!


my trusty portfolio oil pastels... rust has seen a lot of use.


my water bottle. thanks jeane.


pan pastels -- black and umber. a friend gave me these and i love them. much more subtle than oil pastels -- great for old-i-fying and shading.


what would i do without these? i also used ranger alcohol inks (in the little bottles) a lot. intense, permanent color, and it goes nuts spreading around. i like to drop it on and see what it'll do.


which is what i did here on the right page. these two journal pages have been a work in progress for weeks now... i said 'enough!' this week and finished them. since i wasn't crazy about either page, i paper clipped something else onto each one. the left page is covered up with the vellum page protector that i use to keep paint off the page before and after the one i'm working on. i love the way they get all multicolored and beat up...


and last but not least, my fortune from last week's teriyaki tofu... this i wanted to share because it's the most cryptic fortune i've ever gotten, and it makes me laugh every time i read it. for a while i was getting ones like 'a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush', or, 'a rolling stone gathers no moss'. what??? those aren't fortunes! i was beginning to have my doubts about the fortune cookie industry... well, i guess i still am...

XO

fragile

last saturday on my way home from our art group gathering, my car spun around on the snowy road, slid into the ditch and up onto the bank before going back onto the road again. fortunately i wasn't far from home, and i made it almost all the way before the right front tire came off of the wheel and my car would not go another inch. i walked the rest of the way home. within the course of a few minutes my world had changed dramatically...

life can change in the blink of an eye, and when it does it stops you in your tracks. you look at everything closely to see how important it really is. how true am i being to myself and how authentic am i in my relationships with others? this is what i'm thinking...


i haven't done a lot of art, but i did package up the first batch of papers for a collaborative project that i'm doing with seth and julie. we're sending each other collaged and painted papers, which each person will then use to create a 'graffiti wall'. my 'wall' is a 2' x 3' piece of canvas floorcloth. julie made a very cool video of the first pieces she sent out - you can see it here. i'm now working on batch #2, which will leave here in a couple of weeks.


i got an amazing package from karin bartimole last week -- there were many things in it that blew my mind, but i'm just going to show you the most mindblowing-est! these two wooden tiles were in a drawstring bag with other wooden tiles... i've put my ring near them for scale. i took the tiles to my art table and experimented with using them as stamps before these two tied-together tiles really caught my eye. hmmmm.... what is this?

i untied it and....


it's a very tiny book.

a poor POOR picture of it open... this little book touched me deeply in a way that's hard to explain. i marveled over it for a long, long time. and it still sits here beside me.

karin and i are going to do a collaborative book exchange... this is the miracle of the internet; artists from all over the world can find each other and take off working together...


sweet jacky at art4moi has tagged me to show the fourth picture in the fourth folder on my computer, and then tag four others... well, this is the fourth picture in the fourth folder, which amazingly enough is one of my favorites. taken in the fall of '07 on our weekly trip to alturas for groceries. i now tag

mansuetude at tumbleword

yeah, just you mansuetude! i'm using this as an excuse to see another of your delectable photos!!


finally, another delight from karin's package. a piece of fabric from 'the gates' in central park. these pieces were handed out to the visitors by docents... not long ago i was given a rock from lake titicaca, and now this.

incredible...

XO