Is there balance?

February was a very busy, stressful month and I think that it drained a lot out of me.  I may be just recovering now but honestly I'm still not 100% to being back to myself.  B and I have been talking about heading back to Canada and spending some time at our cabin in the woods near Nipawin.  It is our place to recharge and remember what is important in our lives.  It's a simple place with next to nothing as far as luxuries go but we get to breath the fresh air and do some physical work up there and we could both use that.

I was immersed in learning this past month and that was so exciting.  I have mentioned that I was in Joanne Sharpe's Letter Love on-line class. http://joannezsharpe.blogspot.com/  I have admired her art with it's bold colour and fun doodles so when the chance to learn from her came up I took it.  Joanne's class was a new lesson every day for 29 days, that is a lot, and for me a huge time commitment. For the most part I did each lesson every day and now that it is over drawing and lettering has become a daily habit.

I wanted to find a way to mix "Zentangle" with my drawing and the fun and funny quotes that are all the rage on Facebook and Pinterest right now.  I needed to find a way to take all those elements and turn it into something new for Me.  I also want to come up with something sell-able.  If all goes well I will be at Bizaart, the outdoor art show put on by the Mackenzie Art Gallery in Regina   http://www.mackenzieartgallery.ca/engage  again this June and I want to have something new and bright and fun to sell.  The jury process is over on March 30th so I have a few days yet until I even know if I'm going to be in the show.

Is there a way to balance all the balls that we have to keep in the air and at the same time find room to grow?

Happy Valentines Day

I thought it was going to be a great day today.  I woke up beside the man I love, went to my computer and saw today's Letter Love lesson and it was all about hearts, pink, red and finding as many ways to letter the word Love as I could.  I'm loving these lessons.

Then I had to go to a meeting and there was not much love in that room.  After it was over I felt like I had been run over by a truck, or at least a golf cart.  I guess I am just not cut out for the "politics" nor do I ever intend to love it like some people do.  I think there are many that thrive on it but that will never be me.  

I felt kinda crappy for a while, then I came here to my "creative space"  did some drawing, painted a little and had a great time looking at all the beautiful art that my fellow students are doing. And you know what?  I feel great again!  

I hope that you have a place or a thing that makes you as happy as my art makes me. 

lesson seven

It's day 7 of 28 days of learning lettering with Joanne Sharpe and her on-line course called Letter Love 101.

 

I signed up for the class because I wanted to be able to put all the wonderful quotes that I read on facebook and Pinterest and incorporate them  into my art work some how.  The class has been great and if you have time and 35 bucks it's worth every penny.  The class is cheap enough.... but I think I'm going to have a couple hundred dollars worth of great new art supplies when I'm all done.  Is there any such thing as too many supplies?  Nope!

Joanne has a great way of presenting the lessons and a fun and friendly attitude about the class.  She also made sure that her students can get feedback from her and each other.  Maybe there are tons of on-line classes and many are good but this is the first one that I have ever taken and it's a great one.  

Ready to Love Letter Love

I have signed up for the month long lettering class called Letter Love 101 by Joanne Sharpe and today's assignment was to prepare a book for the class.  I bought 2 Composition books from Office Depot for a couple bucks and decorated them with some card stock, fabric and zebra print duct tape.  Then we were asked to go through the book and glue 2 pages together until the book was full.  I messed up a couple of times and ended up with three pages glued together so I guess I can save those pages for really intense creations.  There is still lots of room on the book covers for more doodling but I want to keep working on them during the month.  It will be interesting to compare the pictures then and now!

I'm pretty pumped about this class.  My hand writing has never been my strong suit so I have always shied away from anything that required me to do any lettering, well, unless I had lots and lots of time, a ruler, pencil and 3 or 4 erasers.  So this class will really be pushing me out of my comfort zone but I think, well hope, that all the line weaving and tangle patterns that I have been doing the past 6 months will help me with control over the pens, pencils, Copics, Sharpies, Tombows, white out pens, watercolor paint,.  The supply list is pretty long.  Lucky I have lots of Art supplies!!

I will try to keep posts of my work up on this blog and on Lori Bradford's Art on facebook.

Perfectly Imperfect

I woke up this morning to the sound of rain, perfect!
I slept well past my normal time, perfect!
This past weekend the Palm Resaca Players put on the musical "Oliver" and they were perfectly Imperfect!
I was lead to the poem, The Pond by Mary Oliver  http://www.panhala.net/Archive/The_Ponds.html   about being satisfied with imperfections.  It was perfect.
I did this little drawing in my mini journal, far from perfect, but perfect anyway.
And I tried to write out the poem in my drawing but ran out of space.
Sorry, I'm not perfect.

Learning to felt

There is a great little shop on South Padre Island, Texas called the Art Space.  https://www.facebook.com/SPIArtSpace  It's an Artist ran shop with room for members to do their work and sell their wares but the part that I really like is that they bring in all kinds of instructors and teach a huge variety of different art related classes.    Yesterday I took a class from Nancy Algrim, owner of the Black Iris in Mission, Texas and a fiber artist extraordinaire.  Here is a link to her web site. http://iristex.com/.

Nancy was incredibly generous with her time and supplies and we made three different felting projects.  First was felt beads, then we made a Nuno scarf and finally shaped the wool into a felt flower and embellished it with some beading.

Here is a link to  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuno_felting if you want to learn more about it.  I found it very interesting learning how to make the felt fabric and have it turn out so thin and drapy when traditionally felt is thick and stiff.  There is a real technique to the laying on of the fibers and the agitation to get the felt to turn out just right. I'm not sure I have mastered it but I brought a few ounces of wool roving home so I can try it again.

I loved handling the wool, it brought back so many memories for me.  Back in the 90's I had a couple spinning wheels and was making scarves on a big loom with my hand spun wool.  I loved working with mohair and angora so got my self about 50 Angora rabbits and one big, mean Angora goat.  That was all a life time ago but the fiber covering the table yesterday made me think fond memories about that time.

I love learning new crafts and the artists that teach them are so generous with their time and usually don't mind sharing their skills.  I get to dabble in so many different mediums that way and benefit from all the years of practice and often expensive education that the instructors had to endure to learn to master the craft.

What's New?

It's a new year, I'm learning a new way to draw and I have a new journal to fill. That is a great start. How about adding a new attitude and a few new responsibilities? Nothing wrong with all that, unless you still have your old forgetful mind. I think I need a new day minder. Maybe my new Ipad has an App for that. Then all I have to do is try to remember to fill it.....

Lets get back to the new journal. I bought a cute little one this time. It's only 3.5 x 5.5 inches, has an elastic strap to keep it closed and a pretty red ribbon to mark my page. It's going to be fun filling it. I can toss it in my purse and take it any where. Drop a few pens in with it and I have all the art supplies I need to fill a few minutes while waiting for an appointment or while himself shops at Harbor Tools and I wait in the truck.

Following the prompt from Cindy Angiel's drawing web page http://rainbowelephant.com/ and the line weaving community site http://lineweaving.com, I'm will be thinking of the word Inspire while filling this little book.

Inspiring others to do something creative is part of who I am and I love showing others that there is creativity in all of us. Back in another life, I taught flower arranging, wheat weaving, even bow making. Now I have a great time teaching a weekly arts and craft class in the retirement park I live in during the winter. I look forward to that class every week because I get such a kick out of showing them something new and watching the students get excited about how well things turn out. This winter I have been teaching some tangle or repeat line drawing patterns and those classes have been outstanding. It's so nice to see that I'm not the only one getting inspired to try something new.

The line weaving community, and they are all over the world, are a great inspiration to me as well. As far as I can tell this phenomena started to really catch on in the past year or two so it's really in it's growing stage. Painters like me are moving towards repeat line drawings, scrap bookers are also finding it fun. Quilters are doing tangles with their sewing machines and embroiders are designing new repeat patterns for their stitching.

It's really amazing what some little lines with a pen in a little journal can do.... inspire a whole new movement of creativity!

What inspires you to create?