New Eyes and the Glad Game

Late to the game again!  Tsk, tsk!  I am wagging my finger at myself in disgust!  I have been distracted by the day-to-days yet again, and I have no good reason.  Plenty of excuses...but no good reason...

One semi-decent excuse is getting caught up in the free tutorial videos over at the DERWENT WEBSITE.  Thanks to Michelle from INSPIRATION EVERYWHERE for the heads up about those...  As a side note, I just love the name of her blog!

Derwent also has a 'kids' related portion of their site called FLIP! and it has some video tutorials as well.  I really like looking at things geared towards children, because of how well they break the information down.  Sometimes videos directed at adults assume you know things that you actually don't, whereas those that were made "for kids" give you much more basic-but-thorough instruction...plus, they tend to be more concise, probably because kids aren't known for having great attention spans.  I have to say, when I first started out making art, my art maven/older sister told me that was the case and I...disregarded...that information for a while.  Huge error on my part!  I admit my wrongness wholeheartedly!

I'm going to share some of the art I made so far with the Derwent tutorials in a later post, but today, I have my Journal 52 (J52) and Documented Life Project (DLP) art for last week.

For J52, the prompt was "Travel", and you can read more about it HERE.  This is what I made:

"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes."
-Proust

I am pretty excited over that wide-eyed girl...I think she goes so well with the quote...it makes me ridiculously happy...  I really enjoy it when you find just the right words for your project!

FYI, in case it's ever a question on Jeopardy, I didn't start out with the plan of having a black background...there was an incident involving a crumb from a black oil pastel that was stuck to my hand...  And since there was little hope of removing the mark it made on the page, and because I wanted to stick with water-soluble media on this page, I just pulled out my black Neocolor II and went for black.  Luckily, I had a white ink pad that was still surprisingly juicy after several years of never being touched...and it all worked out well in the end!

The other thing I have to share is my DLP spread, which you can find out more info about HERE.  The prompt was to "Write what you are grateful for each day this week." and here's my list:

"Come on Pollyanna...Let's play the glad game."

I started out feeling a little "Meh..." about this spread, but the more I look at it, the more I like it. I don't think it looks very me...I must have been channeling someone else's muse that day or something!  The colors in the background are not my usual fare.  I used a set of cheap tube watercolors that I don't pull out very often.  I think they will be making a much more regular appearance on my studio desk, because I find them to be quite interesting colors...  Of course, the best laid plans of mice and men and all that...so it's possible you will never see them again, so perhaps we should take a moment to enjoy them while we can! :)  

Yesterday, I noticed I've been having an unintentional run of purple in my DLP journal...it even made an appearance in this spread!  Not that there's anything wrong with purple, but it's kind of odd for me to have a marathon of it without planning to, right?

See that little heart at the top of the left page?  My husband, the lovely stink that he is, found that in the parking lot of his job and brought it home to me!  Now some women would be thoroughly disturbed at the fact that their husband brought home 'trash' from a parking lot...but as artists, I think we all know what a sweet gesture that was!  Add to that the fact that my husband is mildly afraid of germs, and you see what a grand gesture it actually was.  I'll have to add that to my list for the Glad Game!  A Glad Game bonus, if you will...

What about you?  Do you have something glad to share?  I'd love to hear about it!