Rambling and Black Penny

First of all, thank you for your input on my last blog post. I decided I will start with professionally made prints first then see where it goes. I have also found a company that sell mats wholesale but I will have to see if I can get them.

(original mixed media painting available on Etsy)

Now, blogging is tuff. You never know how much you want or need to share with the rest of the blogging community. Blogging reaches out to people you don't know. You meet people you like or don't like and with some you might form some kind of virtual friendship with.

If you only post pictures on your blog without your thoughts to accompany them, what does that say about you? Are people interested in just your pictures or do they want more? On the other hand if you post your opinion about everything in life it might bring some hatters your way. Do you want that extra drama in your life? I mean if you're really passionate about something sure go ahead and blog about it but be prepared to stand your ground because there are people out there that don't agree just as passionately.

I think we all like to peek into other people's lives to see how they're doing and how they are managing. It brings us closer to the blogger, it makes her/him more real. But there is a fine line between being real and saying too much.

So where is the line? How do you figure out how much of your real self you're going to put out there?

I’m in a rambling mood today. :) Do you want to know how my day goes? Well, kind of like this:

* I get up at 6:05. When my alarm clock rings, I'm up in a second. I don't understand people like my husband, who set their alarm clocks two hours in advance and then hit the snooze button every 15 minutes. That would be torture for me.

* I drink a glass of water, brush my teeth, feed the cats and take out my dogs.

* If it's Monday, Wednesday or Friday, we jog. If not, we just take a walk.

* I come back at 6:45. I drink another glass of water, take a shower, wash my hair and put on makeup.

* Around 7:25 I feed my dogs and get dressed.

* I leave house around 7:30 for work.

* Can I just say that I'm sunshine in the morning? :) I really am. I'm happy and content. Again, I don't understand people like my husband, that wake up grumpy and you can't talk or even look at them until they had their morning coffee and a cigarette. I guess they start low so they can improve along the day. :)

* I work from 8AM-4PM

* I eat bananas for breakfast every morning. Not one, not two but three, every morning.

* I eat lunch from 11-12AM.

* After work I rush home, feed the cats and take out the dogs. At this point I don't want to do anything else. It's hot and I'm sweaty. No, we don't have air-conditioning.

* I look at my unfinished paintings on the kitchen table and have a mini war in my head whether to paint or wait for the air to cool down a bit. Because if I'm hot I get annoyed really quickly.

* I'm lazy too. More than I would like to admit. But I do have my moments of energy and If I have to do something I will do it. Just not of my free will. :) I need deadlines. I always admired people that find something to do all the time. I'm happy just looking at the skies with music playing in the background.

* I look at the floor and have another mini war in my head whether to sweep the floor or not. I don't like housework. We have dog and cat hair everywhere. I rather throw out all the carpets then vacuum every day. I don't like vacuuming. I make my hubby do it. :)

* So, out of frustration I go on the Internet to surf around a bit. Nothing new. Well if it's Monday, then I watch True Blood on free on-line TV.

* By this time I'm bored and I'm still waiting for my hubby to come home from work. I go and sweep the floor.

* Then I wash the dishes.

* I'm still looking at my unfinished paintings.

* I go read a book. If I'm not reading anything specific I then read my favorite, Pride and Prejudice.

* My hubby comes home at around 6:30 -7.

* I feed the dogs.

* Now it's cold enough to paint. I go and paint.

* Painting for me is never a thing I do for hours without a break. I mean, if I get into it I could, but the way I do my paintings I'm always waiting for layers to dry. I try to work on several paintings at a time but I can only do backgrounds that way. Faces never. I have to finish one face to start another.

* Another thing is I paint standing up. I cannot sit and paint. That's why I couldn't paint long hours even if it was possible without the drying time, because my back and neck start to hurt.

* I take out my dogs around 10PM. Unless I fall asleep waiting for layers to dry. Then I usually wake up at around 11 and then take out the dogs.

* It's sort of perfect because I come back and it's usually a new lesson posted on Flying Lessons course. :)

* I devour the lesson, usually leave a comment and then go to bed.

I know, my life is boring. Well during weekdays anyway. I try to have fun on weekends. And probably many of you are envious of my free time. Don't worry that will change soon. :) But that's the way I am. I never put myself under too much stress. I'm always aware of that. If life seems hectic for a second I calm myself down and think whether it's worth it.

I guess it would be a whole other game if my income depended on my artwork alone. That's why I love Kelly Rae's Flying Lessons because it keeps pushing me to venture out. To try new things. To expand.

Black Penny is the painting that started out like this. Upper photo shows one of the "seizure like" stages of the painting. It turned out a bit different in the end. :)

Rambling and Black Penny

Portrait of a Penny

(available on Etsy)

Isn't it funny how we always condition our lives? If only I had this I could do that. When this and this happens I then will do that. Why do we always wait for perfect conditions in our lives to do what we want?

The sad thing is that perfect never comes and we miss out on a lot of thing in our lives. We should all take a leap of faith right now this moment. One thing that you always wanted to do but delayed it for whatever reason, go do it now! Right now! Even if the timing is bad and conditions are not perfect, if you don't do it right now you'll probably never do it. The reason why we're always looking for the right moment is that we are scared to make a change and are afraid to fail.

If you do not try, you will never know. The magic is in the doing. Just start the ball rolling and you’ll figure things out as you go along. There will be mistakes made but life in general is about trial and error.

That one thing I will do right now is start offering prints of my art work. I know it's nothing big to many of you and most are already doing it. But it's a big deal for me cause I don't have a scanner, I don't have a printer, I don't know how to package them so they will come unharmed to the buyer, I have no idea where in my country to get mats, clear bags or packaging. Sure you can find tons on the internet but when you add shipping to the price and/or custom fees for overseas it gets a little expensive. So my homework for next week is to research all of the above and find the most affordable option for me. I'm taking the leap.

If you have any tips on this topic please do share with me. And I would love to know your take on this:

*scaner vs. photo

*home printer vs. photo shop made prints

*matted vs. not matted

I just found out that this painting was featured in Etsy treasury. :)

Portrait of a Penny

Penny with pigtails

I was very creative this weekend. It was raining and it was cold so I had nothing else to do but paint. :) So I finished the blue canvas and totally changed the color of the first "seizure like" canvas and started 3 new.

Her hair is a bit different then usual. I used 4 different watercolor pencils and watered down brown acrylic paint. I think it gives them a bit more texture and I like it like this. :) Don't you just love her pigtails? :)

(available on Etsy)

Wanna see my creative chaos? :) This is how my kitchen looks like most of the time. We don't eat here. :) Those boxes on chairs store my painting materials. I need help I know. :) But don't worry. I have a studio planned at my new place. I can't wait to finally move. It will take some time though but hopefully this year.

Penny with pigtails

Work in progress

Just popping in to give you some sneak peeks of my work in progress.



The first one has changed colors many times and I still don't like it. I'm afraid to show it to you because you might get a seizure. :)



This one turned out blue but the color on the below photo turned out a bit off, cause I took it at night.



And I started twitting again. :) Maybe you have already noticed the little gadget on the right sidebar. You can follow me by clicking on the birdie.



If you would like to be my fan on my Facebook page than click the badge bellow or that little gadget on the left sidebar. :)




Have a great weekend everyone!

Work in progress

Thank you's and Blog hopping

Thank you everyone for your lovely comments on my new website and my headers. After counting the votes, the winning header is number two. :) I'll make the change later today.

Lately I've been lucky with winning giveaways. I must tell you that usually I'm not that lucky. It runs in the family. :) My dad has been playing Lotto for over 40 years and hasn't won yet. He came close one time but that was it. So I need to thank these awesome ladies that picked my name out of a hat. And please check out their blogs cause they make some amazing art.

Julie-ann made a custom Goodyou doll for me. Isn't she gorgeous?! I think she looks just like me. I love it! Thank you Julie!



Than I won a set of cards from Katherine. These are gorgeous! And she surprised me with some beautiful magnets of her art and brooches or badges. I don't know how they are called. Still awesome! Thank you Katherine!



And I must share this story with you. One other thing Katherine sent me were these magnets that have phrases written on them. One of them was "kumara". :) In my language this means cucumber. So when I saw a phrase "Suck on my kumara." I had to ask Katherine what that meant in her country (New Zealand). She said it basically meant "Get lost!" Well, if you take a meaning of kumara in my language and you have a dirty mind like me, then you get a whole other meaning of that phrase. :)))) I love it! I still laugh when I think of it. :))

Three's a charm, they say. :) I won this beautiful original painting from Micki. Thank you Micki! It's amazing how universe throws little surprises your way. The painting is called home and I'm in process of moving to my new home right now. I can't wait to get all these beauties displayed around my place.



And now for blog hopping! :)

This is a fun way to get to know other bloggers and share your art. When you find the time, go visit each blog and leave them some love. :)

Edit: The list of links was going crazy long. :) 750 entries were lagging my blog upload so I had to remove it. Click HERE to go to the original link list.

Thank you's and Blog hopping

My about and my new website

I just realized I never seem to thank you guys for your comments. I do appreciate every word. And thank you everyone for your thoughts on my previous post. It makes me feel so much better knowing I'm not the only one. :) You gave me some alternative perspectives to look at and I'm not bothered about why anymore.

So here it is.

I’m a self taught mixed media artist and I make whimsical pretty faces on layered backgrounds using acrylic paints, colour pencils and tissue paper to name a few. Every painting of mine conveys a certain emotion and has its own message even though I don’t usually write any inspirational words on it. I like to leave that interpretation open for the audience because I believe we look at art not just with our eyes but with our soul and heart as well. We seem to make up our own stories and ascribe our own feelings regarding the subject. I feel like I’m leaving blank spaces for you to fill in. This way the painting is just as much yours as it is mine. Enjoy!

Anyway, how was your weekend? I was creating my new website. :)

It wasn't easy though, let me tell you that. I really wish there was a step by step tutorial from start to finish for clueless people like me. Seriously! I bought a domain, logged into my panel and wanted to install wordpress. For this I followed the famous 5-minute-installation guide however it turned out to be a 5-hour-with-a-help-of-my-webhost-support-team-person-named-Stuart-installation.

I even had some video tutorial to help me, but people! I'm not a techie! I have no clue what MySQL is or a root directory! Ok? Speak plainly to me. Tell me where to go to find it and some print screens would be lovely. This would make everything so much easier for me.

I found out eventually, don't get me wrong, I'm good at following directions and figuring things out. But I had to read like a million of how to's to figure out what the hell you're talking about in your famous 5 minute installation. And to top it off, it didn't work. I don't know why. It’s all nice and lovely when you follow the steps and stuff that is supposed to happen actually happens. But my life is never that simple. It's past 5 minutes and I still don't have wordpress installed.

I now had to search for troubleshooting tutorials. And in process of doing that guess what I found? A tutorial for automatically installing wordpress with Fantastico. Wait! What? Why is wordpress making me do all this complicated stuff manually that doesn't work in the end, when I could just click on the Fantastico button in my c/panel? You are mean people. You know I just wasted 5 hours of my life on this.

Well lets click on Fantastico then, shall we? All is well until the second step. Why is it not working? Oh yeah, because I've done all this stuff manually already and now I have to delete it. After several tries and after I deleted everything I could find I had to admit my defeat and contact my webhost support team. I said I messed up and I need help. Lovely Stuart e-mailed me within 30-40 minutes saying, we fixed it for you, go try again. And guess what? It worked!! :)

Now all you lovely people go and check out my new website. :) Go, go, go! But do come back. I have more to tell you. I'll just wait right here for you.

So what do you think? It's still in the process of making. Cause let me tell you I have blogger figured out but this stuff doesn't work like that. I want to make a link and it won't happen. I upload a picture and there are two showing. I delete a photo but there is still one up there. Where is it? How do I delete it? This is not user friendly I tell you.

And I, a clueless non techie person, have no idea how to search for "I want to click on the image on my homepage that redirects me to another page or outside source like Etsy and I want several of those images side by side instead of one below another". Yeah, see, why have simple links when you can complicate your life? :)But in the end, after hours of searching for how to's and not knowing what word to put in the search engine I finally figured it out and I felt like a queen. Yes I did. :) I made my husband call me The Queen all day long. :)

So, how do you like my headers? Click on them for a bigger picture. I know they are nothing special but I'm learning Photoshop now to come up with something more dazzling. :) Which header is your favorite? Just tell me the number from the top.

My about and my new website

Looking for a WHY

Look! Google has a new dress! :))) I opened google today and this brought a smile to my face. :)

Anyways. I've been lazy. And I have a question I wish I had an answer to.

I've been looking around some blogs and it apears to me that all those artists out there in blog land have found some spiritual reason to make art. It’s so frustrating that I don't seem to know WHY I create art. They hear whispers if not screams. I hear nothing.

Kelly Rae Roberts posted a link to Simon Sinek’s video where he talks about selling the WHY and not the WHAT. I have a really hard time figuring out the why. I don’t find the words that would describe my WHY.

I create because I like pretty faces. I create because I want to try new techniques. Sometimes I even create because I’m bored or when I have a fall out with my hubby. But I don’t feel any divine calling in it. Nobody came to me in a dream and told me to make pretty faces on mixed media backgrounds. There was no earth shattering moment or incident in my life that made me turn to art to express my pain or joy. Art did not save my soul, cause my soul was not in need of saving.

I have no reason to create.

But I still do.

So how do I figure out my WHY?

I keep reading the "about" section of artist's blogs and sites. They have such insightful stories to tell about how they came to be what/where/who they are at this moment. Their words are so inspirational telling us how they dreamed, how they feared and how they finally took a leap.

Me? Have you noticed I don't have an "about" section on top there?

I need some tips how to go about this. Any suggestions?

Labels by Just something I made.

Looking for a WHY

Doodles

What fuels you? What makes you create? What makes you get up and run (not walk!) to your art stash and make art?

For me, mostly other artist and their work or a new technique that I want to try out. I found Traci Bautista some time ago, I have her bookmarked. :) But it wasn’t until yesterday while I was watching some of her videos that I just had to pick up a piece of paper and a pen and start doodling.

But that wasn’t enough. Five minutes into doodling I had to get up from my chair and go get some paint. Red and yellow were the first paint tubes I got my hands on and this is what came out of it. :) I didn’t even look for appropriate paper, I just tore some sheets of an old calendar of mine. See, there is a photo of my beloved Kana.

Birdies were on my mind.


Fish?

I used punchanella and blue paint.



Monoprinting hearts. I cut out a heart shape from a plastic sheet to make a stencile.



I hear peacock feathers are all the hipe right now. :)

I have no idea what I'm gonna do with it but it felt good just doodling without a goal in mind. Sorry about the red overload. :)
What about you? What made you jump lately?

Doodles