Tangled Tropical Garden Card

I should be better at writing these blogs.  I have been doing it long enough now to know that it's not that hard for me to find something to write about.  I have been creative these past weeks, in a whole lot of ways actually. 

I have a great little space set up in the cabin with all my favorite art supplies within easy reach and my pens and some paper by my favorite chair just in case there isn't anything interesting on TV in the evenings.  I have been drawing, doing a little painting and even taking some pictures of my work.  It seems that the only thing Im not doing is writing about it. 

I think I get distracted by all the wonderful flora and fauna around me.  It's so beautiful here at our little piece of paradise.   And there is that other little thing that gets in the way, building a house!

 

Since I have been taking pictures and don't have much time to write, how about if I just show you the last big project I finished.

 It is a card I made for my mom for Mothers Day.  I got the idea from the e-book Tropical Tangled Garden by Cheryl Moote.  I took 1 sheet of 12 by 18 watercolor paper and cut it in half the long way giving me 2 sheets 6 x 18.  I stitched those pieces together again the long way, 6 x 36 inches and accordion folded that into a cover sheet to make the card.  Then I got busy and drew lots of plants, flowers and leaves on both sides.  In total that makes 6 feet of drawing.  When I was happy with all the plants I painted the whole thing. 

I used Koi water colors, Peerless watercolors, Intense pencils, Blick watercolors and my Tombow brush pens. 

So here are a whole bunch of pictures of the card. 

Enjoy!

 

Wow, You made it all the way to the bottom!  Thanks for looking and I hope these pictures inspire you to make a few Tangled Tropical Gardens of your own. 

 

Leave a comment if you want, I love to get feed back, good and bad, but mostly good I hope! 

 

Lori

Creative Juices

I have really settled into my lovely crafting and painting space and finally have something I think is worthy of showing you.

 I try to do some painting every morning and right now that morning time is stretching into afternoon and evening as well. 

Hey, when the mood hits I need to go with it cause it won't last for ever and I want to allow that creative juice to flow through my body and out of my paint brush just as long as it wants to. 

 I started out with a graphite sketch of some mushrooms and some lines that later became the grasses and ferns.  Then I added a wash of watercolor and in this case used my Dick Blick liquid water colors and a water brush.

 
 
 Next came come pen lines.  I gave the ferns and leaves some substance and myself some kind of idea where things were going to go.  I used Copic Multiliner SP because it is water proof so won't care if I paint over it.

If you look close you can see I put down a little masking fluid.  I am not careful enough to leave the highlights on my watercolors so it comes in handy.

 Now I have started to add some color to the mushrooms.  I used Tombow watercolor markers and a water brush to set down the basic color then went  over them again and again adding layers of color with all kinds of other mediums.  I used more liquid watercolor, some Inktense pencils, Dylusions sprays, an old set of Prang, even some Sakura pens, basically pulled out my stash and had at it.

 

The final step was to add all the tangle patterns, doodles and swirls, lots of dots too. 

I worked on four paintings at the same time.  That allows me to let one dry enough before going over it again and not drag my arm through the paint, smearing it and making a mess.  It also gives me a series of paintings that are all similar in color and style.



                                       So here is a little show of the paintings I just finished.

It's the End of 2012

It's the last day of 2012 and I have a few minutes to reflect on the past 365 days before I get ready to celebrate the beginning of what is going to be one incredibly busy and eventful year.

It seems like the past year was about endings.  After lots of planning and waiting for the right time My Farmer has ended being a farmer. 

That doesn't just mean the end of a life time of work but for us also the end of the stress and the worry of trying to seed, grow and harvest in some very questionable weather. 

It means the end of living in southern Saskatchewan.  It means the end of living on our little acreage.

 It is the end of walks along a country road and getting pelleted by gravel and dust when the drivers refuse to slow down when they go past.  No more do I have to drive to the next little town to pick up my mail.  It's the end of being 45 minutes away from the convenience of doctors, dentists, grocery stores and shopping malls.

 It's the end of strapping the patio table down to the deck with lag bolts to keep it from blowing away in the wind. 

It's the end of my pretty little gardens and the yellow finches that entertained me while eating at my feeders.

It's the end of long prairie sunsets out of my living room window, some of them would take your breath away they were so amazingly beautiful.

It's the end of some of the loneliest days of my life but don't be to sad for me because those lonely hours gave me so much time to make Art. 








 Hooray for 2013 and a Year of New Beginnings.

Last Day of Ever?

The calendar my son gave me to bring south is telling me that it's the 20th of December, 2012 and according to the Mayan calendar there will be no tomorrow.  I thought that was a pretty good reason to write a blog post and if this is the last one I ever do, well, thanks for reading and I hope that what ever is in store for us all, once the world ends, at least we had some great times.

We had an amazingly full year in 2012.  One daughter graduated from university, one got married, a tornado tried to blow our farm away, we put in and took off our last crops without a hitch and then auctioned away all the farm equipment. 

My former farmer and I moved all our worldly possessions into our little piece of Northern paradise near Nipawin, Saskatchewan.  We got to spend 2 very cold and snowy weeks at our cabin  in November before we left for the warmth of Winter in Brownsville.  When we get back in the spring we plan to start building our retirement home but until then we are enjoying our family and friends here. 




 


It doesn't always look this tidy!

Sorry that the lighting is so bad.

I have the greatest little creating space, My winter Stu-Dee-O.  For some reason I just feel so creative here.  Maybe it's the sunshine, maybe it's the fact that I'm not as busy as at home or maybe it's because I have all my favorite creating things all around me where I can see them, reach them and be inspired by them. 

Meet the Queen!

I have made at least 10, maybe 12, of my cute 9 x 12 quotes.I have signed up for Letter Love 201 starting in February and I just know that all kinds of interesting and creative things are going to happen during that class.  Joanne Sharpe has a so many great ideas and is an excellent instructor. 

I have great Artist Plans for 2013.



Where ever you are this supposedly Last Day Of the World I hope that you are making the most of it.  

I'm going to go do some doodling while listening to the TV, that is my favorite thing to do in the evenings. 

I am going to go out on a limb and say that December 21, 2012 will come and go with nothing crazy happening and that we will have all the time we want to keeping making Art in 2013 and for years to come. 

Merry Christmas and may your New Year be filled with many great pens and paint brushes!

Lori

Almost there!

We left the snowy north in Saskatchewan and are on our way to our home in southern Texas.  To me it's like driving backwards through the seasons.

We left inches of snow and - 20 Celsius temperatures, defiantly winter.

Driving through South Dakota I noticed that the snow was gone, everything seemed brown and dull.  The trees were bare of leaves and the harvested corn fields of Nebraska full of grazing cattle enjoying the leftovers.  Fall.

Yesterday I started to notice some green grass in Kansas and then in Oklahoma the trees had leaves, mostly brown but some were still green.  We stopped for the night in Denton, Texas and roses were blooming in front of the hotel.

I got an email from my wonderful neighbor, Sherry, and she says that my bougainvillea bush has grown right over my house.  I will get to see it for myself today when we finally arrive to summer.

What a busy month October was.
 
It took weeks and weeks, months really, to get ready for the farm auction sale.  My farmer came home exhausted every evening not to mention dirty and sore. Decades of "save that, we may need it one day" were stacked and sorted and laid out in the pole shed on pallets.  There were 148 pallets full of good junk and a whole yard full of farm equipment, some really new and some pulled out of the tree row where it has sat since Pearson was Prime Minister.

While he was busy doing all that work I was preparing the food for the canteen.  I turned 300 pounds of ground beef into hamburger patties, made dozens and dozens of oatmeal raisin cookies and shopped for coffee, cups, creamer and all the other things that were needed to keep the shoppers fed and watered.   Then, with some great helpers, we turned the workshop into a lunch counter. Near as I can tell we fed over 600 people in 7 hours.

Oh, and because all that wasn't enough work I decided this would be a wonderful time to set out all my old paintings and mosaics and have a silent auction.  I hauled my artwork to the workshop and laid it all out nice and neat with a bid sheet beside it.  Because Cancer has been such a prominent part of my families lives, I picked the Canadian Cancer Society as the benefactor of any proceeds and when all was over I sent them $360.00.  Then sold a few more paintings the next day for $75.00  making the total $435.00.  It's a drop in the bucket but every bit helps, right.

Today, the 31st while the rest of you are preparing for trick or treaters or picking up the pieces that Hurricane Sandy left you I will be putting the final boxes into the moving trailers, wiping down the baseboards and turning off the power and water. We have finally reached the end of this chapter of our lives and are excited to start the next one.

First thing we are going to do is haul our stuff up to our old cabin and try to find somewhere to put it all.  I hear there is over 6 inches of snow up there already so there will be no running water in the old shack.  Kettles on the wood stove for washing up and an outhouse will be a just fine for a little while.  We will try to get some rest but there are lots of things to do up there too.  When the weather gets too cold and we are ready we will start our migration south.  This Snowbird is going to spend the winter in Brownsville, Texas.

I am booked into an Art show and sale on South Padre Island at the Art Space on November 24th so guess we will be in Texas by then.
http://spiartspace.com/

How to get rid of 200 paintings FAST

At the end of October, my farmer and I are going to start our Next Chapter.  He is retiring from farming and we are moving to a piece of paradise we bought a couple of years ago and now finally get to make our home.

This means one massive farm auction sale, emptying the house, barn, old school house, shop and of course my Stu Dee O.  That is a ton of packing, sorting and deciding what to take and what to leave.  

A lot of our stuff will have to be stored while we build our new house and we will be living in our old cabin while we build.  It is really little so there is no room for extras.

I have so many paintings, over 200 actually,  mostly acrylic on canvas but also some mosaics and watercolors.  

They take up so much room and I don't want to have store them while we build.  The risk of them being damaged is just too great so I would rather give them away....almost!

I have decided to have a silent auction during the farm auction and donate the proceeds to the Canadian Cancer Society in honor of my family and friends that are fighting cancer or have lost their lives to this disease.     

I hope to get new homes for a lot of paintings, make room for new work and make a nice donation all at the same time.