What's Your Bliss?

My friend lovely friend Claire did a post on this idea of bliss and this was my comment.

What's My Bliss

Walking in nature,
Making art
Seeing birds at my feeder
Seeing raptors in flight
Seeing birds anywhere else, especially ravens
Walking my dog
Reading posts of online friends and traveling back to when I met them
Reading a good book
Knitting in my living room watching the snow come down, with a warm fire in the stove
Spending time weaving, just watching the cloth being created before me
Writing my new ideas down and seeing them develop into something
Walking in the fall stepping on dead leaves and hearing that crunching sound
Taking wool and creating yarn with it
Conversations with friends
Looking at the moon
Warm sunshine coming through the window hitting my back
Spending time with pen, paper and my own thoughts

Walking on the beach

Smelling the ocean air

Finding shells, feathers, rocks

Spending time in an old book store 

I  could keep going but will stop for now.  Now its your turn. What is your Bliss? 

Monet Was A Genius

Each time I try painting Lily pads it become more and more apparent what a genius Monet was. These suckers are hard to paint, even simple ones like I have been trying to do.

I started with this lovely photo of some lily pads.

I moved it to photoshop and changed the color.

This is my painting of it, still a work in progress. I need to find a way to make the top lilypad flatter. Plus add more highlights. Its a constant learning process for me. The only way to get better is to keep practicing.

Looking For Inspiring Quotes

I've been doing Flora Bowley's Bloom Bootcamp.  Its a free 30 day program.  You can find it here. Today's prompt was about studios and spiffing up your studio if you have one.  To let the sacred into your workspace no matter how big or small.  So I cleaned up a little and decided to print out some inspiring quotes to hang in my room, So off to Pinterest I went.  Here are just a few of those I found. You can access my Pinterest Board here for more quotes.

Using Liquitex Ink's

This exercise we were supposed to have an experience in nature, sketch it and then draw again adding oil pastel and then paint it. Well the weather had been rainy last week and I wasn't inspired by anything locally so I used a picture of red trees that I took in Oregon a couple of years ago.

   

This is the initial drawing of the trees, just a simple sketch in charcoal on watercolor paper.

This is my painting with the oil pastel added. I should have made the trees in different sizes, I'll try to do that when I get to the acrylic painting. I loved using all these fiery colors.

This morning I woke at 5 a.m. dreaming about liquitex inks.  I bought a set of these a couple years ago and haven't used them much. Really forgot why I bought them.  So I went searching on Youtube and found this video.  They are really going to fun to use.

More From My Landscape Class

My original picture of Mt. Moran in Teton National Park.

First attempt had lots of issues.  Sky too small, mountain in the center of the painting.

Re worked the whole piece by moving everything down, now the mountain is moved over a little bit to the right.  A better composition now. I like this version better. I could fuss with it a bit more but I am ready to move on.

I started with this photo. I stood inside a willow tree as I took the photo.

I used a stabilo pencil and  a Lyra water soluble graphite pencil. Then I added gel medium to blend the pencil. Oil pastel, gave the color. I am using Mungyo oil pastels. They are an inexpensive artist quality brand of oil pastel. I blend them with olive oil and a baby wipe. They are quite fun but messy too.

The Winner Is

The winner of my giveaway for 21 Secrets Fall is:   Netty.  Netty I have emailed the information that you will need when the class starts.

For everyone else don't lament because I will be giving away another spot in the class later in September, so stay tuned to this spot for further announcements. Classes start October 1st.

Gate Leaf Cards

I saw these cards on Julie Fei Fan Balzer's blog.  They are made with a Scan and Cut machine which I own but have not used very much.  So I purchased the file she was selling to make these cards.  This one I made has a mistake in it. Some the green paper tore off on one of the leaves.  The idea is pretty simple and now I think I can go make my own designs.  You could really make stencils out of all the rejects. In fact its very easy to make stencils with this machine. I need to plan some time to do that very thing. That is why I wanted the machine in the first place. To make my own stencils, that are different from what you can buy. Sometimes I look at other blogs and I can identify the stencils that someone used.

I finished with all the preparations for my 21 Secrets class.  So happy that is done.  I think its going to be an amazing group of classes.  Don't forget to sign up here.  Today is last day to enter my giveaway, which is on a post here.  I'll be picking the winner today, so you have until this evening to enter. See my next post to see who the winner is.

I've seen some tea bag art lately on some sites I frequent. I usually drink tea that has round tea bags so I thought there might not be enough surface to draw anything.  Last night this bag was on my desk and decided to play with it. My pens and pencils were in my bag upstairs so I used the closest thing available. This turned out to be pitt artist brush markers, and I drew a simple woman and added her to an old book page.  I also used some distress stain to color around her. This was interesting to do.  I have some full size tea bags drying to try out next.  The surface is interesting and stained so it looks old right away. My friend Palma Rae from Rome has a whole used book full of drawings on tea bags. I think its a fun idea.

Check out the other folks at Paint party Friday.

Angels Among Us

If you haven't entered my 21 Secrets giveaway tomorrow is your last chance.    Go see this post for details.


A group of Angels on O'Connell Street in Dublin, Ireland. I spent a lot of time on this street, it was a great central location.

I didn't think I would miss Dublin that much, but I would love to be exploring on O'Connell street once more.