Watercolor and Shadow & Light

Have I ever mentioned how much I love working in watercolor? Just a bit of warning, this post is going to be all about watercolor and I may repeat myself several times, exclaiming just how much I love watercolor.

Since my last post I went on a journey. That journey began by viewing Week 31 of Life Book 2017 titled  Shine Your Light & Embrace Your Shadow with Andrea Gomoll. I cannot say enough about this class, however, I’ll have to resist saying too much as I don’t want to overstep. I didn’t have the supplies Andrea used so I made a selection out of what I do have. I selected Prang watercolors. I have their set of sixteen.

I need to talk about Prang watercolors for a minute. I heard about them from one of Barb Owen’s live streams. She used them in one of the projects she was showing and spoke about how vibrant the colors are.  I decided to buy a set and since they are inexpensive I chose to go with the largest set I could find which was a set of sixteen. They are considered a child’s watercolor set. Because I wasn’t sure if I would enjoy working with watercolors I decided to go with this cheap set. I had a different brand of watercolors around the house that my daughter had used for school but they were very poor. I think any other brand could not have been worse.

From my very first brush stroke I have been in awe of Prang. The vibrancy of the colors are amazing. After trying to use the crappy sets I had around the house of my daughter’s and having to coat my brush liberally with the colors, for some reason I keep expecting that from Prang and end up with way too much pigment on my brush. Trying to get a soft or pastel appearance from any of the colors is difficult for me. I get too color happy and just pile it on. LOL

I’m still on my first pans of the Prang set although the yellow is almost gone. I am finding I love yellow. I bought a new set of sixteen Prang watercolors which I hope will last longer and I hope I won’t start using until I learn to be less heavy handed. I have fallen in love with Prang so much I’m afraid it might be difficult to use any other watercolors, even the more expensive sets.

Since playing with Prang I decided to try a different brand. I chose a set of Daler Rowney Simply watercolors which come in a tube. Using them out of the tube was nice but I was afraid I was using too much and throwing way too much since I didn’t have a palette I could devote to just the Daler Rowney set. I heard you could squeeze the tubes into pans and let them dry and use them that way so I bought an inexpensive palette to give it a try. Since letting them dry, I have only tried using them once and wasn’t impressed. I gave up too quickly and switched back to Prang. I’ll have to try playing around with them again in the near future.

Because of the vibrancy of color in the Week 31 class I mentioned earlier, I decided to work with Prang. I had worked with it enough to know I could possibly recreate what the instructor was teaching and indeed they did. I love, love, love this class! Andrea is a great teacher. She took the time to demonstrate and discuss every step of her process in creating her page or art piece.  She made it easy to reproduce her results even though I wasn’t using the same products she was using. She even gave suggestions as to what you could use if you didn’t have exactly what she was using. This is what I created.

My only disappointment with what I created was my lettering. I ran out of room for the word YOUR in “LET YOUR LIGHT SHINE”. There is an R at the end but when I cropped the picture I took, it removed part of it but that is okay. After all, this is about learning. In the future I could stamp the letters in reverse or use smaller letters. But definitely need to be more careful in my planning instead of just putting down the letters and hoping they will fit.

I loved this lesson so much, I had to create my own page. I pulled out my handmade art journal which I had made using watercolor paper. I decided to do a full two page spread but wasn’t sure exactly what I would do. I had an image in my mind of two faces (female) and heard in my head to create something that would represent my sun sign Gemini. Gemini being The Twins, I have always felt an affinity towards shadow and light, duality, and opposites or mirror images of everything. I am almost always in a conflicting state of mind because I can see both if not several sides of a situation, idea, belief and so on. I needed to reflect this in my spread.

I started out by drawing two faces on opposite pages. I wanted them to look as closely alike as I could while being mirror images of each other. One representing shadow and the other representing light. Their hair and background would merge to hopefully show there is no defining line between the two. Here is a photo of my complete spread:

I will say again, both of my paintings were done with Prang watercolors. I can’t say enough about them, although recently I looked up their light fastness. From the tests I have seen others do with Prang, I wouldn’t want to create a painting for hanging on my wall because they will fade significantly. Using them for my art journal however should be fine. This means I need to start buying a small set of the more expensive watercolors to give them a try to see which ones I would enjoy using.

Did I say I really really LOVE working with watercolor?

This is a conundrum for me. In my day to day life, at work, at home, doing whatever I do, I want to have control or know exactly what will happen and how. This is exactly the opposite of what happens with watercolor. If you try and control watercolor you will either under work it or overwork it. To use watercolor you need to let go of the need to control and wait, watch and see what happens. Maybe the reason I love watercolor so much is because it finally lets me just let go and stop worrying about how perfect everything has to be. It frees me. It allows me to just be without expectations.

This is one of my first real attempts at using watercolor to do something other than just an abstract collection of colors that bled and merged together. This is what made me fall head over heels in love with watercolor. This was from a lesson in 21 Secrets, Tools & Techniques. The class is called Flowing Facial Features and taught by Jodi Ohl another magnificent teacher.

I still find myself hesitating when I think about doing something in watercolor. It can be so intimidating because of the need to just let go. Like I said earlier, my natural tendency is to try and control everything in my life so working with watercolor, even though I love it, comes with a challenge to step outside of my comfort zone. What I need to remember is I’m rarely disappointed in what I can create using watercolor.

These are two more pieces using watercolor. I absolutely enjoyed this class, another Life Book 2017 class. This one titled, Letting Your Story Surface, taught by a wonderful teacher, Mandy van Goeije.

It amazes me how many different ways there are to create art, even with just one medium, like watercolor. So far I haven’t found a technique or way of working with watercolor that I haven’t enjoyed.

Did I say how much I LOVE, love, LOVE watercolor? (I warned you… hahaha)

 

Art Journal spread completed

I’ve been working on my art journal spread which I spoke about in my previous post.  This is the progress of my page at the end of that post, you can read about it here.

My next step was to consider background and hair. I wanted to use watercolor paints and my attempts were less than satisfactory. It ended up too bright in a dark sort of way which meant the white or black pen I wanted to use to draw in her hair didn’t work. It became rather invisible.

To try and fix the situation, I decided to use white acrylic paint with a fairly wet brush. This meant the watercolor would then mix with the white paint creating a soft pastel background. Once dry, my black Sakura gelly roll pen then showed up nicely.  I often had issues with the pen skipping which at first I worked hard to try and avoid. Eventually gave up when I realized I liked the effect it had with the pattern in the hair.

Once I completed the hair with the black pen, I realized I wanted more color in the hair so I went back to my watercolor paints. I applied a small amount of the dark purple to the areas I felt would be shaded or darker, then using a wet brush I blended the color out to give a gradient appearance.  I added more color, some pinkish purple, and a bluish color (sorry don’t know the names, they are colors in the Prang watercolor set of 16 colors) around the darker purple leaving some areas white for highlights. I really loved how this turned out.

I learned about Prang watercolors from Barb Owen. Since I have a very tight budget I decided to give them a try. I didn’t originally use the Prang set when I started the background with watercolors. I decided to try a Daler Rowney watercolor set I had gotten a while back that were in tubes of 24. I bought a palette so I could squeeze some of the paint out to dry and then see how well they worked. I have to say I was disappointed in the Daler Rowney. In  fact, so disappoint, I switched to using the Prang set when my first attempt at using watercolor (Daler Rowney) failed.

It may be I just need to practice with the Daler Rowney set to get the hang of them but Prang is so vibrant it was difficult to switch to using Daler Rowney. The rest of the page when I say I use watercolor, I am using Prang watercolor.

For the opposite page, I first wanted flowers and tried more watercolors but it was an immediate fail. I am sure the fail was because of trying to use watercolor over acrylic paint without applying a watercolor ground first, so I went over it again with white acrylic paint. Before the acrylic paint was completely dry I added another layer with a wash of watercolor which mixed with the white acrylic paint. I dabbed at it occasionally with a paper towel. Below is the result.

You might wonder why I added the watercolor paint to the acrylic paint. First, the addition of more white acrylic paint meant what color had been in the background had disappeared even more and I wanted more color. Second, I wanted to see what would happen. My Prang set is almost used up so I wasn’t worried if some acrylic paint ended up in the watercolor paint. I became rather sloppy in my application but it was FUN!

I really liked the result and was trying to decide what else I wanted to do. I was still thinking about flowers when I saw a blog about an interesting technique. You can see the blog post here.

I tried a few things differently since I was working on top of acrylic paint. I eventually found what worked.  The biggest obstacle was in trying to figure out what pens or paint pens to use. I used Sakura gelly roll black pen for the initial drawing of the circles and lines. I tried using Faber-Castell markers, alcohol markers, and Permapaque markers but didn’t like any of them. Plus I was afraid of drying up the tips of the pens. Eventually, I decided to use a small paint brush and white acrylic paint to color the straight lines, to make them stand out more from the background. Then I used a Sharpe oil based paint pen for filling in the circles with black.

Once it was dry, I tried using charcoal to try and create the translucent effect but because the acrylic paint didn’t have enough tooth, it wiped right back off. My hands were covered in the charcoal more than the page. I wiped off the charcoal by just lightly wiping my hand across the page. What was left on the page, I left alone. I resorted to using graphite by rubbing the graphite onto the tip of a blending stump and then rubbing it on the page. I only covered the areas outside of the circles with the graphite.

My last step was to use darker shading of graphite around the circles and where the lines overlapped other lines to try and give it a 3D effect. To fix the graphite I sprayed the spread with workable fixative. I used workable fixative in case I wanted to add anything else to the page.

I may actually journal on the page by using either a white pen in the black circles or a black pen in the white lines. It would make an interesting journal page.

So far she is my favorite. She posed interesting challenges for me and I found I could do what people have been saying  which is if you don’t like it you can always paint over it.

I lost track of time while doing this art journal spread. I worked on it over several days. I know I started her before October ended but exactly what day, I’m not sure. I generally don’t spread something out this long, however with work, and #inktober going on when I started her I wanted to see if I could work on her in small doses. Instead of drying her with my heat gun between layers, I put her aside and let her dry naturally, usually over night. I only worked on her in October after I did my inktober drawing and if I had some time to spare.

When #Inktober was over, she became my main focus and is all I worked on until she was finished. I finished her yesterday other than the writing I may add later. I think her hair is my favorite part of her, that is, if I had to choose a particular technique from this art journal page. Otherwise, I love her in her completeness for what she represents of my art journey.

Note to self: I had to be careful of not drying out the tip of the markers I used. I am hoping I didn’t ruin any of them. They all still functioned after I used them and in some cases not as well as when I had started with them.

I need to learn ways of layering and using products that will help lock in a layer and give me a better surface for using other products on, hopefully reducing the chance of ruining a product. I considered using clear gesso, or matte medium but in the end didn’t use either. In some areas when I went back to go over the black gel pen lines on the lines due to the white acrylic paint covering some of them up, my pen would cause some of the paint to come up. I think the clear gesso or matte medium would have prevented this but I wasn’t sure how well my pen would work over top of either product. I do have an Art Techniques and Test journal (my Effy Grimoire version) which showed either of the products would have been a good choice, but I didn’t refer to it when working on this spread. I just went with my gut instinct.

One of the reasons I didn’t refer to my Art Techniques and Test journal is because I didn’t test what would happen if I applied clear gesso or matte medium over top of gel pen or some of the other pens I had applied to the page. I was afraid of, in particular, the gel pen smearing. Effy Wild addresses some of this in a couple of her lessons which I need to go back and make some notes about but I also need to add to my grimoire by testing what happens when particular products are applied over top of different pens.

Another reason I didn’t refer to my Art Techniques and Test journal is because I wanted to just experiment on the page. I wanted to find out if I could fix my own mistakes or work from just pure instinct. I think I was successful on both accounts.

The other things I learned:

• when in doubt check my Art Techniques and Test journal
• when it isn’t in my Art Techniques and Test journal, then add it
• let myself experiment on my art journal page
• let myself fail

I am not at all disappointed in this art journal spread. In fact, I love it. When I compare it to my previous art journal page in this book which was created from one of Effy Wild’s BOD2017 lessons, I can see so much improvement.

The difference between this art journal page and the one I just created is, this one was done by following a lesson. The one at the start of this article was done completely from my own imagination. The Effy lesson one was done around June 2017, so there is only about 4 months separating the two.

There are so many factors that separate these two pages. I think I’m more invested in pages I design and create on my own than I am when I’m doing one from a lesson. I don’t really consider something I have done from an art lesson as my own work. Therefore, I think I work harder on trying to do a good job on my own designs. Inktober, dare I say Inktober has been a powerful influence for me this year and I think it shows in this spread.

There is something here I cannot ignore. Following a lesson is wonderful for helping me to gain confidence in my ability to do something someone else is demonstrating. What it doesn’t do is give me confidence in my ability to create something completely on my own. Inktober is a demonstration of that this year.

In the page from Effy’s lesson I can’t even begin to tell you how I did it, but in the page I created all on my own, I can visualize almost every single step I took and the issues I ran into. I can’t help but wonder if one of the reasons I haven’t been doing any more of the classes is because of this.

Don’t get me wrong. I love doing the lessons and yes they have helped me immensely in taking that next step in my art journey. It just feels as though my journey needs to move forward more on my own than in following someone’s instruction. What these lessons have given me is the courage to step out on my own, without them I probably would have given up.

This is something I will need to think on for a while to decide if buying more of the art course offerings is something I want to do, or do I want to spend the next year just playing around on my own to see what develops.

What I keep hearing from that inner voice that tells me what to do is this. Do buy what I can afford in the art course offerings but do so only if it provides what I need for furthering my art journey in the direction I visualize myself going while challenging me to try something new and different. In other words, don’t keep buying the same thing and expecting my skill to grow if the courses don’t offer anything more.

This is paraphrased, of course. My inner dialogue is quite different and difficult to put in writing. It is comprised of a mixture of images, words and feelings/emotions. The wonderful thing about this is only I need to understand it.

This inner dialogue is also based on a lot of what I have learned over the past year from my purchasing experience. After having purchased a couple of courses which could not be saved and had a limited period to access them, it became quite clear to me this doesn’t work well for me. Logically, if I purchase a digital class, I feel it should be accessible to me for as long as I want and as often as I would like to view it. I know some art teachers don’t feel this way about their courses and feel they should be offered like courses are in college or live in a classroom setting. I think they miss out on a lot of students because of this.

I totally love the idea of buying a course and having permanent access to it. I have considered monthly or yearly memberships but this doesn’t work for me because of losing the access to the classes if I need to end the membership. I totally get the membership option that appeals to art/craft instructors, unfortunately, this doesn’t work for me and my budget. The other reason it doesn’t work is in the cases of the sites I’ve had an opportunity to look at, the membership doesn’t provide a good enough value for those courses that interest me. Basically, buying the individual courses would be better for my budget than buying a membership.

As stated, I will need to think about what art course offerings I will want to invest in for this coming year. I may find that list to be quite short, especially if I feel a need to pursue my art on my own to see what develops. The good thing is, most of the courses that appeal to me can be purchased over the next ten months or so because they are year long courses. Granted I might not get a discount but I can spread them out so it isn’t a huge hit on my budget at one time and I get more bang for my buck with these types of offerings. On top of that, I can take my time to decide if it is something I want after I experiment with playing around on my own for a while.

So much to think about and time will probably fly so fast I’ll wonder where the year went. That is how I feel about this year. Where did it go? It feels like it had been spring only a couple months ago not six or seven months ago.

By the way, since I started my job, my art supplies have suddenly stopped dwindling. Where I once thought I would never be able to keep up with my art supplies to have on hand for the art I was creating, I now find myself worried my supplies might get old before I have a chance to use them. Such an about face in such a short period of time. It is challenging for my mind and emotions to keep up with. I’m glad though. It means I have plenty to work with over the next several months and I’m still enjoying my job.

 

Madness, I say, Madness and a cute little guy…

I’ve been working on two projects this week, or should I say two classes. One from Mandala Madness and the other from Ever After 2017.

I’ll start with Mandala Madness:

These mandalas were grown from planting a seed and are from classes 7 and 8. This isn’t the first time I drew mandalas from a seed, and probably not the first time I used colored ink to do so. It is, however, the first time I was able to have them come out looking like I used a grid and not just freehand. No grid was involved with the making of these mandalas.

Just for clarification, the bright pink along one side is the washi tape I used to hide the seam where they are connected to the hinge. They have already been mounted into a signature. I now have two complete signatures and can’t wait for the rest to be done so I can bind them into a book. Not sure I like the bright pink, but I can change that later if I want.

These pages are also pocket pages so I can slip in any loose mandalas I create that are small enough to slip inside. I love how these pages feel. They have substance to them. They are not flimsy pages by any means which means the end resulting journal will have some weight to it. I will most likely use heavy cardstock but more likely chipboard for the book cover so it will have the appearance of a hard cover book. If you haven’t guessed it already, I will most likely create a mandala on the front cover, maybe even the back cover.

I usually don’t talk about personal things here. I’m going to make an exception to that for a moment. First, I’m so grateful to Barb Owen for building these classes not just for all the things I’m learning in them but also because mandalas have been an integral part of my stress relief and anxiety release process. This class has helped me to remain sane through a difficult period which is riddled with so many challenges I can’t go into right now. I will mention one.

I experience daily pain in the wrist of my dominant hand. This pain increases with the use of pens or pencils or similar objects to create/write with. We have done ultrasound and x-rays which all indicate I have a very healthy bones, so the prognosis is possibly tendonitis. I see a physiotherapist today and hopefully they will give me some helpful information and suggestions. I mention this because making mandalas may come to a screeching halt. I may be required to give it a rest, which will mean no drawing, at least with my dominant hand. I’ve been practicing with my non-dominant hand but the results are less than satisfactory and mentally an unbelievable challenge to create just a straight line. I haven’t been able to bring myself to attempt a mandala with my non-dominant hand. It is too frightening to think about what it could come out looking like.

With that said, I have found certain mediums not so painful, watercolors for one, or water soluble products which require only a light touch with a wet brush to activate. Working on other projects/classes are not so pain ridden, though they can be if I’m not careful.

One of these is Ever After 2017 which I must say is challenging in many ways. The option I have contains style development classes too so it doesn’t just challenge me in regards to my artistic abilities. It challenges me to dig deep inside to discover the reasons why I create and what I like and don’t like about something I’m working on. I’m pushed to do things as close as possible to the instructor’s lessons even if I don’t like part of the lesson. That, however, was not the case with this little bonus lesson on creating a cute bear. I so love Tam’s style. She makes it easy to create “cute” and have fun doing it.

Normally this isn’t something I would come up with on my own but she makes me wish I did with extreme frequency. I tend toward realism even when I try to be whimsical or characteristic in my creations. What I’m realizing is, I am very good at copying, or rather following an instructor’s lesson almost exactly even when it is something I don’t enjoy.

Don’t get me wrong, I did enjoy creating this adorable little guy. I’m glad there was no collage involved. I would leave collage out of any lesson if I thought it would still come out looking great but some lessons are based on the collage. It isn’t the doing of the collage which I don’t like. It is just that I don’t have an abundance of pretty papers to use and I’m not great at selecting different patterns that will look good together. I lean more towards using old text pages from books because there is no risk of offending the eyes because of poor color and pattern choices. (Okay, yes, I love, I mean absolutely LOVE the look of text behind my artwork.) Yes, I know, working with colorful pattern paper in collage is something I need to work on which is why, for now, I do the collage when instructed to do so in a lesson.

Speaking of not having an abundance of pretty papers for collage. The one thing I’m learning from Barb (from her live streams) is how to create such pretty papers instead of buying them. Or altering those not so pretty pattern papers to make them gorgeous. She has often mentioned how she likes to make all the things she uses in her projects, including the pretty papers. Before I ever knew Barb existed and I had started on my art journey, I knew I wanted to create my artwork from only those things I created, excluding paints, mediums and the tools, such as paint brushes, and palette knives and so forth. What I mean is, pretty papers, stamps, stencils, stickers and so forth, I want to be all my own creations. I don’t want to have to worry about copyright infringement if someone would ever want to buy something I created, or if I wanted to market it in a print of some sort. Besides, there is something special about being able to say, “I made that completely with my own hands and every pattern is of my own making.”

So… if I’m given the directive later today to rest my dominant hand, meaning stop using it to the point of excruciating pain, then I may focus on creating pretty paper using my non-dominant hand which could make for interesting abstract designs seeing as how I can’t draw a straight line for my life with my left hand.

Mandala Madness

It has been a crazy couple of weeks. I won’t go into the details other than to say my focus on my artwork has suffered because of it. I, however, am thankful for signing up for the Mandala Madness course provided by Barb Owen of How To Get Creative. The course started just a couple weeks ago and has helped keep me centered. Over the past year or so drawing mandalas is what has kept me sane. It is my go-to therapy when things start stressing me out or causing me anxiety.

If you haven’t heard of Barb Owen and How To Get Creative, I suggest you check out her YouTube live streams on Friday’s at 2pm Eastern.  You can find them from her YouTube channel here.

I am up to class 5 and 6 of Mandala Madness and here are the mandalas I created this past week:

Class 5: Mandala Magic

Class 6: Mandala Masks

I cannot take credit for the design. These came straight from Barb’s class. Though no two mandalas are alike, the idea behind each of the mandalas came directly from her class. I don’t think I would have thought of doing anything like these two if it wasn’t for her class.

I have been drawing mandalas for over a year now and I can get quite intricate with mine although I rarely add color. I enjoy the stark black and white designs, so adding color to mandalas is fairly new to me and I am thoroughly enjoying the different ways Barb is teaching us how she adds colors to her mandalas.

I decided I wanted to create a journal from the mandalas I am creating from the class and came up with an idea of how to do that. Since I am creating them on loose sheets of paper, I combined some of my knowledge of creating scrapbooks to come up with a way to do it.

It might be hard to tell from the photos below so I’ll try to describe my idea. When I have 4 completed mandalas from the class I will create a hinge from cardstock to adhere the pages to creating a signature which can then be sewn into a journal cover.

I took a folded piece of cardstock so one side was the same length as the page and the width was wide enough to adhere about 3/4″ of the edge of the page to one side of the fold while leaving about 1/4″ or more next to the crease.  I attached page 1 and page 2 back to back onto  one side of the folded piece of cardstock and adhered 2 of the sides leaving the top edge open so the page forms a pocket that opens at the top. I did that in case I wanted to create smaller mandalas, then I could just slide them into the pocket to store them. I did the same thing with page 3 and 4 on the other side of the folded piece of cardstock. This forms one signature.

The 2nd picture in the series below shows page 2 and 3 spread open so the fold of the folded piece of cardstock they are adhered to is in the center. I used washi tape to hide the seam where the pages are attached. The first photo is the front of the signature, page 1, and the 3rd photo is the back of the signature, page 4. Once I complete Mandala Madness I should have a few signatures to sew together and attach to a journal cover I create. I adhered the pages to the folded piece of cardstock using double-sided tape.

first page

second and third page

fourth page

I can’t wait to see what else she has in store for us to learn in her Mandala Madness class. I am already surprised by what all I am learning even though drawing mandalas isn’t new to me. If you want to find out how to make any of these mandalas, you’ll need to check out her class at howtogetcreative.com.

~Patti

 

Finding My True Artist?

I’ve been practicing, learning, trying to find my own sense of style in my artwork. It isn’t as easy as it sounds. I can definitely see influences of the teachers I’ve been learning from. Not that it is a bad thing.  I just feel as though I’m channeling them and not me. Here is an example of my art journal page I did lately without following a lesson or a prompt or while watching a video. The inspiration was my own, but the artwork well, I’ll explain after I show you the picture.

I created this journal spread over the past couple of days. If anyone knows Tamara Laporte you will immediately see her influence in this piece. The background with the moon and stars was influenced by Dede Willingham. There is a more subtle influence which comes from Christy Sobolewski.

The artists I mention are not all the artists I’ve studied and learned from. They are the main influences for this particular spread. I follow many others, Barb Owen is just one other I study consistently and many, many others I grab bits and pieces from.

This however is my own sketch, using skills I learned from Christy Sobolewski and Tamara Laporte, as well as, skills I remember from high school. The sketch looked much better in person. I say looked because I painted over it. It was part of a Life Book 2017 lesson. However, what it did was prove to myself, if I practice, I can become rather good at sketching portraits.

Portraits have been something which I haven’t done since high school art class. They frustrated me. I found them intimidating. For a long time, my idea of art was if my reference is a photo of real life or real life itself, then my art had to look like real life. I never understood the concept of abstract or whimsical or other types of art. Even though I loved some of them, I couldn’t wrap my artist’s brain around how to create them. Letting go has never been something I do well, if, at all.

This is changing. I am finding whimsical fun, however, I have yet to find my own style in whimsical which is why you see Tam’s influence.

I created an abstract painting in my journal, which I found fun and challenging. As I said, letting go isn’t something I do easily, and for abstract, you have to let go.

Then occasionally, I have to satisfy the orderly, logical, and mathematical side of my artistic nature. This is where mandalas come in.

I love these. I could sit down and draw these for hours and hours. Not to say I can’t do the same with my other drawings or paintings, in fact I do. It is just, the mandala seems to satisfy a part of me, the other drawings don’t. Maybe if I had gone into architectural design, it would do the same thing. I’m extremely logical, so the geometric designs, the detailed symmetrical work appeals to that part of me. Maybe it is why I also enjoy creating border designs for stationary.

This is probably one of my favorites. Orderly, neatness, perfection appeals to me though you couldn’t tell that by looking at me or my surroundings. Maybe secretly I love messiness too.

I guess the point is, I’m working through all of this. Trying to find my true artist.

~Patti