Christmas wish list for my art journey…

We all have our wish lists for Christmas including me. My one true wish is to receive a million dollars but we all know the chances of that happening, so here is a more realistic wish list in order of importance:

 

1. Life Book 2018 Basic package,

2. Paint Your Heart and Soul 2018,

3. Let’s Face It 2018

 

All of these have early bird pricing, a couple only until December 1st, and 4th and the other until the 31st. I wish I could get all of them at their discounted prices but alas my current financial situation won’t permit it. Hopefully, I’ll be able to save over the next few months and buy them as my finances allow, at some point, in 2018 before they are no longer available. I have been learning so much from Life Book 2017 this year and Book of Days 2017. I would have loved to have continued Book of Days 2018 but I had to cut costs somewhere.

 

I’m grateful for the job I have which allows me to pay my bills, unfortunately it doesn’t allow for much else so my art journey as far as buying art courses goes has come to a screeching halt. It doesn’t mean I’ll stop creating. It means I’ll have to find free sources to bring art education to my life.

I have been lucky to be part of the art courses I have this year, actually winning a seat in Ever After 2017 was wonderful. I am just sad to learn these and other courses I cherish which continue next year may not be part of my art education resources.

On to more exciting things. I continued watching the Project Pack #1 videos and practicing some of the tangles and techniques in shading. Here are my results. I love the star pattern on November 14th! This one just came out gorgeous.

I learned a lot on the next pattern on how to create a 3D effect and how a simple black line can make such a huge difference was a wonderful surprise.

I have drawn paradox quite a few times. This was my first time on black paper with white pen so I played around with two designs, shading them in different ways. I am thrilled with them both and hope to use the shading technique on other projects.

I have included this one again because I made some additions to it.

Adding the little sprigs that look like evergreen just set this pattern off. Adding an element so different from the other elements makes them stand out more. At this time I think I’m done with this page. I’ve moved on to working on another page to see if I can change this up a bit. It may make an appearance in my next blog post but I won’t promise anything. I have other pressing matters I need to attend to which I hope I have planned sufficiently to get them underway.

 

Art classes and more faces…

As part of the blog hop for Let’s Face It 2018 where one is introduced to the various artists who will be teaching in the course next year and being able to enter to win a seat, Toni Burt asked a question, you can see her blog post here. She wants those entering the giveaway to leave a comment telling her why you love creating faces. Here is my response:

Why I love creating faces? I never asked myself why I wanted to create faces. All I knew was faces were very difficult, sometimes impossible for me to pick up a pencil and begin. The thought of doing so created all this negative talk in my head that caused me to undermine what I am capable of doing. I have never liked it when someone told me I couldn’t do something. When someone would say that, it was like being given a key to do it anyway and prove them wrong, that I could do it. But somehow when the voices in my head told me I couldn’t do it, the words would leave me feeling defenseless, weak, and believing I couldn’t. The words and voice didn’t come with a key or drive to prove the voices wrong. Drawing faces is about taking back my power, about showing myself there isn’t anything to fear. It is about finding that window into my soul through the eyes of the portrait I’ve created. When I look at her/him, I see a part of me looking back, the part of me I can be proud of. This is why I love creating faces. Thanks for asking the question and making me think about the why.

What I don’t say, is this, I have felt a deep drive lately to draw faces. It started once I took one of Tamara Laporte’s courses. It was most likely the free course I took called “Art, Heart and Healing”. She made it so easy to draw a whimsical face, I felt for sure if I could do that lesson then I could learn how to draw more realistic faces. I never considered the “why” of it.

Since high school art class I wanted to become better at drawing people. I had the same art teacher since eighth grade, Thomas McFarland. I don’t know how he did it. How he was able to find this ability within me when no one throughout my years of school was able to do it. I still remember some of my very first classes with him and the projects he inspired the students to do. Each time I found myself amazed at what I created. The first one was to draw an animal, find a picture of an animal we wanted to draw. I have a love of horses and so I chose a young colt to draw that was resting on the ground. Another was to pair off with other students and draw their face but to use black construction paper and white chalk. I was paired with a girl who had wild curly hair, octagon shaped glasses because no one else wanted to pair with her and thought she would be difficult to draw. Then another in a later grade was to create something that would then be used as a template to carve into a tile made of a soft material which could then be used to make prints from. I chose bicycle parts. He loved it so much he asked if he could keep it. I of course said yes. I was thrilled beyond belief that he would want something I created! I wonder to this day what he did with the art he kept. The last project I remember was to do a self-portrait. I drew myself sitting on my bed drawing, which was a drawing of me drawing myself looking into the mirror as I did my self-portrait. I had on an old pair of jeans and I remember the challenge in drawing my face, my hand (which appeared larger because it was closer to the mirror) and the seam detail of the leg of my jeans in the fold by the knee.

These memories are over forty years old and yet I remember them in fine detail. My memories of my more recent pieces are not so clearly remembered. I’m not sure why. Maybe because I still have them to look at. I have none of my drawings from high school. I let someone convince me that letting go of my past was what I needed to do which included getting rid of all the precious things that went along with those memories. It is the biggest regret of my life.

I haven’t spoken to my teacher since graduating high school. I think if I were ever to do so I would tell him thank you for helping me discover my inner artist. Even though I spent almost 30 years rarely picking up a pencil to draw, I remember him and what I learned from his classes. He is a part of every drawing, painting, art journal page, or doodle I create. He has been the one nudging me throughout my life telling me I CAN DO IT. It is his face I see, his voice I hear drowning out all my negative thoughts. It is his smile I see when I complete a project knowing I’ve done my best and feel the joy in what I created.

These memories and what I am discovering about myself now, is why I pursue learning as much as I can from other artists. It is why I watch recorded videos and live streams even when they are not instructional. Observing is just another way for our minds to learn. It is why I seek out instructional videos and courses I can afford to buy or do everything possible to try and win a seat in those courses I want but may not be able to afford.

For 2018, it is my hope I can include Life Book 2018, Let’s Face It 2018 and Paint Your Heart and Soul 2018 to my art journey. Each of these courses are or have had blog hop giveaways. They are also giving an early bird discount which I hope to take advantage of over the next couple months if I have the funds to purchase them if I don’t win a spot. I have had to make some hard choices in what courses I wanted for next year. I had hoped I could include many other courses but unfortunately my budget requires me to be very selective. This is even more true this year since my daughter is now enrolled in a school program where she does all her schooling from home and I will need to purchase resources for her as well.

In regards to my art and what I have worked on since my last post, this is a picture of Exercise 2 from Let’s Face It 2016 – Kara Only course. It is a drawing of a face without using a reference photo. In other words, it is completely from my imagination and was done WITHOUT following any videos. I love how she turned out. It is meant to be another benchmark drawing so we can gauge our progress.

This next picture is a work in progress and is from the Fabulous Faces course, week 2 where color is added to the graphite sketch. Tam introduced a tilt in the head which I chose to do as well.

I used Neocolor II crayons, Staedtler Watercolor pencils and graphite drawing pencil. I have some more detail to add to her hair and I may add some deeper shading to her face.

I am going to try to do all my lessons for Fabulous Faces and Let’s Face It in the same art journal which is 5.5″ x 8″. However, my first lesson in Fabulous Faces was done in a different journal, all the rest though will be created in this one. I wasn’t sure how the paper would respond to wet medium. With this lesson I discovered it can pill if I’m not careful. It responds similarly to watercolor paper even though it states “draw” on the label and nothing about watercolor. It is 160lb paper. It is good to know going forward. I am glad it works well with wet medium. It didn’t buckle very much which is a good thing. The journal is from the Bee Paper Company and is part of the “bee creative.” art journal series. I’m not an affiliate. I mention it in case anyone is interested in what paper or journal I’m using. Here is a picture of the label from the journal:

Just a note about the price, I’m in Canada which is where I purchased it, the price will be different in the US. The front side of the paper has more texture than the back side which is nice. If I want a smoother paper for drawing, I can use the back of the page. The textured side is good for painting.

I am enjoying my return to focusing on faces. I had started trying to focus on faces the end of 2016, and into 2017 with some starts and stops along the way. The other courses I was involved with distracted me, and they may again when I return to those lessons as well. For now, it is nice to just focus on faces. In a way, it makes sense I would move from mandalas to faces, from one round subject to another slightly different and somewhat round subject. Can a face be considered a mandala? Maybe not in the traditional sense of a mandala but in an abstract form of a mandala I would say yes. After all they both have their proportions and quadrants so to speak.

Time to close this post for now. Barb Owen will soon begin her live stream and I have missed too many of late due to my new job. I catch her when I can. I’m glad today is one of those days I can.

~Patti

Selling art….

My journey as an artist had begun with just wanting to awaken my inner artist. This journey started by simply learning to doodle by following some simple step out instructions on tanglepatterns.com . This was simple enough and soon expanded into learning how to draw mandalas.

I couldn’t stop there and soon developed into a full fledged adventure into all different mediums in the art world. I learned about mixed media art which appealed to my inner artist because, and to be quite frank, I’m just not a one medium girl. Even though I had some preconceived ideas that some mediums wouldn’t get along with me very well, I was soon to discover those ideas had no foundation to stand upon.

I ventured into all sorts of mediums and found some I am falling in love with. Acrylics and watercolors are probably my top two favorites right now. I’m also learning I love abstract painting as well as portrait painting. Who knew the two would get along? I sure didn’t when I first started this adventure of mine.

There are other things I am discovering along the way. As the saying goes, when one door closes another one opens and that couldn’t be more true in my case.

When I lost my job of 33 years, I was devastated. I worked in a field where the youngest in our field were all of retirement age. I thought this gave me job security since I was one of the youngest. I soon learned this wasn’t the case. Finding a job in the same field meant moving, uprooting, and still facing the same job insecurity.

I wondered if I could earn any money from my artwork. I was doubtful. I wasn’t a fool to believe my art was anything close to being a master piece or even desirable to be mounted on someone’s wall. That didn’t stop me from continuing to do my own thing and create art the way I wanted to. I had to have faith that something would work out for me.

The harder I worked at finding a job in mainstream typical employment world, the more I found rejection and disappointment which fueled my desperate mind. Even the government services couldn’t help me in my present situation. It has to get much worse before they will step in to help. So, I began looking at alternatives.

Once I agreed to make an important step into devoting the rest of my life to my creativity and artwork, things started happening. I wanted, really wanted to be able to sign up for Ever After 2016, an art course put together by Tamara Laporte. She is a phenomenal artist. Her style is whimsical. When I first came across her, though I loved her work, I was sure it wasn’t my style. But, I decided to take one of her free courses. Mostly because she also believes in using artwork to help heal emotional trauma. I had blocks from way back in my childhood I had trouble getting past and I thought, why not, it couldn’t hurt. So I took her Art, Heart and Healing course. You can find a list of her classes here, including her free courses.

I was blown away by the class. The amount of content she offered for this free class was amazing, so I signed up for some more classes. While I was still able, I signed up for Life Book 2017, thinking it would be the last class I could ever pay for until I had some steady income coming in. I also thought it would give me something to focus on for 2017, something good and uplifting, if things didn’t go well in the job search.

Then I heard about Ever After 2017. I had heard a bit about Ever After 2016, bits and pieces which at first had not appealed to me, until I had actually completed the Art, Heart and Healing class. Then while doing the lessons in Life Book 2017, I became hooked. The more I learned about Ever After 2017, the more I wished I could purchase the course. What I love about Tam is once you purchase her courses they are available forever. You can download all the videos and files and have access to them forever. Plus they will be available online in your account for as long as the site is kept up and running. The point is, I can download them and have them even if she chooses to close up shop.

I wanted Ever After 2017. I didn’t see how I could afford it. Tam is a generous entrepreneur. She gathers a lot of different artists to participate in Ever After and each instructor was given the opportunity to give away a free seat in the class. They did a blog hop to promote the course and to give away the seats. I decided to follow the blog hop and for each instructor, I followed the instructions required to enter the give-away.

When one door closes, another door opens, AND IT DID! I WON A SEAT in the course.

Then as I continued to work on my art and research ways to promote my art, I discovered something else. I discovered from some posts in a Facebook group I am a part of, a discussion about a few websites that allow you to post your art and sell it on their range of products. I looked into a couple of the sites but focused on Society6.

You may have noticed the picture on my sidebar of a t-shirt with Society6 across the picture. The t-shirt is covered in my artwork. This is my actual handmade abstract artwork that can now be purchased on various products on Society6 . I have other artwork available there as well. It isn’t just clothing. They sell, phone covers, art prints on canvas, framed or not framed, pillows, comforters, shower curtains, on and on. Go check it out. I am blown away by how well my artwork looks on the t-shirt and leggings, as well as blankets and pillows and so much more. I would love to buy my own but that will have to wait until I am earning an income.

If you love my artwork, please share this post, and my Society6 store with anyone you know and tell them to share it too if they like it. Here are two pictures of t-shirts with two other designs.

   

~Patti