Freaking Magic

Let me just warn you now, there may be some ridiculous self-back patting in this post...if you're looking for humility, run...RUN...run far in the opposite direction of this post...because you will not find any of that nonsense here today!

I thoroughly blame Chelle over at JOURNAL 52, because this week's "Magic" prompt led me to create something I would probably never have done if it weren't part of my self-imposed goal to complete two year long projects (J52 and DLP)!  Here she is in all her glory:

"The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper." -W.B.Yeats

*Angels singing, birds dressing me in the morning, sunshine rays from heaven, etc.*

My husband that my husband keeps calling her Tinkerbell.  My fairy is NOT a Tinkerbell kind of girl.  She looks nothing like Tinkerbell!  Tinkerbell has nothing on my fairy!  Tinkerbell (and, by extension, my ridiculous husband) can bite me!  Tinkerbell!  TINKERBELL!!!  I never...

I suppose I can't be too mad, because Tinkerbell is probably the most famous fairy...I mean, come on, name another one...  But the fact that my awesome fairy got thrown in with the Disney lot was just too much for me to handle.

I mean, Tinkerbell's image is so white bread.  My fairy clearly...CLEARLY is anything but that.  I mean, she  completely rebels against fairy world standards by listening to punk rock and and restoring classic cars and having more than half a brain cell, giving her the ability to fully form human words, not just running around making twinkle noises and shaking her butt dust on children so that they can 'fly'...which, in my opinion, is just a metaphor for getting high...you know, you start out on fairy dust and then move on to hard drugs and before you know it, Wendy, John and poor little Michael are living in a cardboard box in an ally stealing car radios to support their habits!  And while my fairy listens to punk rock and supes up hot rods in her spare time, she's got morals and she would never be a butt dust dealer, despite the fact that she could be making bank and finally buy all those carburetors and vintage shifter knobs that she needs!  My fairy may have dirty fingernails and be able to quote Sex Pistols lyrics at the drop of a hat, but she would never sell smack to your kids.  And isn't that what we're all looking for in a good fairy?

Can you tell I'm a little excited by this page...what with the maniacally defensive rant due to my husband's besmirching?  

I can't help it...I love her so much.  I think she fully deserves to be maniacally defended...

Like I said before the rant, there's no way I would ever have drawn a fairy if it weren't for the J52 prompt, but now that she's drawn, I kind of what to put fairies on every single thing I ever do from now on...well, not just any fairy, but this fairy specifically.  *Sigh.*  She's just great...  And she's green...fantastically green...  And bright other colors...  *double sigh*  I really do enjoy her thoroughly.

Forgetting my (fabulous) fairy (for now), in my eyes, this time of year is the real magic in my world.  

I love fall, what with the leaves turning color and the crispness of it...and the way the light changes and makes everything seem a little better...  Maybe I've just accidentally breathed in some of that fairy butt dust...who knows...

All I know is that it's starting to get colder here and today as I drove around town, I suddenly wanted a gas station coffee, which should ONLY be drunk when it's cold outside.  I do love it when it's cold enough for gas station coffee...  It makes me happy and nostalgic...thinking of all the happy falls I've had thus far in life, and hoping that there will be many more extremely pleasant gas station coffee seasons to come...

What about you?  At the risk of sounding all hippy dippy, throw caution to the wind and tell me: what's magic in your world today?  

Fun with Sweets and Jane

I worked the dreaded Saturday this week.  Overtime is always a mixed bag for me, because I'm never sure which I would rather have, more money or more time.  Usually time wins, but this week the choice was made for me and I ended up working...I got off easy though, because I didn't have to work today like a lot of the other people I work with.  I missed out on getting paid double time, but, as I always say, money does me no good when I am in the mental institution from having a nervous breakdown.  I need to be away from work and work people so that I can be pleasant and sane during normal working hours.  If I don't have that break, I very quickly descend into madness and could very easily end up stabbing a co-worker in the neck with a pencil or throwing a stapler at someone's face...and that's just not very nice at all, now is it?

 

I have been doing my Morning Pages still!  Every single day, although I confess not always in the morning...but every single day of 2014 so far!  That's right, five whole days!  (ha ha) It might not seem like much, but I have stuck with it to this point and hooray for that!  Lisa Sonora Beam's Root challenge (which you can read about HERE and see if you'd like to participate...it's free to do) has been giving me some prompts that are helping me along.  Despite the fact that I've looked at some of them first thing in the morning and thought they were too woo-woo hippy dippy for me, I find that I keep coming back to them and having something to write about concerning them when I do my pages.  I've said it before and I'll say it again:  I'm becoming very good at hippy dippy as it applies to me! :) 

 

I think I might have mentioned that I am taking Jane Davenport's  (JD for short) Supplies Me workshop...if not...  Guess what?!? 

 

 

You can find all of JD's workshops HERE

 

I am having so much fun.  Faces are my favorite thing to draw.  Not too much time goes by without one creeping into my work...probably not even a single day...  From the very beginning of my artistic endeavors, I've just loved them.  And JD has such great faces and ways of teaching that it isn't hard to spend all of my free time practicing.  ...even things that I've resisted (I'm looking at you ball-on-a-board shading practice...which is coming up in one of the lessons as homework...ugh...), I find myself willing to do for JD's classes.

 

I'm on Week 2 of the Supplies Me class (although I have been scandalously watching videos ahead...I'm such a rebel!), and it deals with colored pencils.

 

After I watched JD's Whimsical Faces video from Cloth Paper Scissors, I have given myself over to drawing with colored pencils instead of graphite ones...it has been one of the best things I've done to improve my drawings, I swear it!  I've just been using my Crayola set, and they work just fine for the beginnings of  drawings...BUT...today I was practicing blending with my Prismacolors and let me just say...I need to get more colors of the Prismacolors...possibly all the Prismacolors in the world.  I got the basic set a long time ago (I think 10 or 12 colors) and a few flesh tones along the way, but haven't really used them much because I wasn't a fan of shading with colored pencil...until now!  These things are like magic wands of awesomeness encased in wood.  I don't have the piece I was working on today ready to show you just yet (probably tomorrow or the next day), but I do have my other homework type drawings, which are face practice (and done in Prismacolors):

 

 

The Oval Face

The Circle Face (Left braid, you turned out so well...I don't know what happened with you, poor right braid...)

The Squared Face

I am eventually going to put my shading skills that I am learning to good use and color these girls in, but for now they are just basic outlines in waiting.

 

I did do another face, using the Crayola colored pencils and, to a lesser extent, Inktense pencils, Distress Markers, and Sharpie Paint Pens:

 

 

I used a Painters (that's the brand) paint marker to try to 'white' out the face's guidelines, and it worked really well but in the photo it sticks out like a sore thumb.  In person, you can't see those lines at all (or hardly at all)...and from across the room, this girl just GLOWS...I tell you it's almost eerie! 

Possibly my favorite bit of face practice is this page:

 

Squeal of Delight!  Squeal of Delight!

 I loved doing this!  I stole the idea right from JD (not really stole, she suggested it as practice), and I had FUN with a capital F-U-N finding out what kind of girl was living in each circle of paint!  The only thing I did differently than JD was I used a black pen ( a Micron on some and a regular old ball point pen on others) to make the facial features instead of using colored pencils.  The reason I did this is that I used Martha Stewart Pearl paints on some of the circles and that paint is glossy and colored pencil won't stick to it.  That happened to be the first spot of paint I tried to draw on...so then I forgot to switch over to colored pencil and all my girls ended up being done in black pen.  It was a HAPPY accident though, because I LOVE how the page looks!  Part of me wants to take a dot stencil and fill in some of the white space with tiny non-face dots of paint...and part of me wants to leave it as white space...what do you think would be better?

 

My two favorite faces ended up being right next to each other.  The one at the top left in the periwinkle-ish color (incidentally the first girl I did...can you tell it's glossy paint?) who's got the turned face and the bun is my favorite, and the girl below her in the light blue is a very, very close second.  They're such different styles of face, but I LOVE them both... HUZZAH!

  I've got another page of paint circles opposite this page, but I had to stop drawing these little faces as my hand was cramping...now I'm not sure if I want to draw more faces on those blank circles or if I want to turn them into journaling space...hmm...decisions, decisions...

 

Oh, I did manage to make one face in colored pencil, the girl at the bottom left in this picture...she's all pencil and I love her fantastic lips.
 

I'm in the process of finishing up this week's challenge for the Documented Life project, and that's what I'm using my Prismacolor shading page on...ooh, I'm so exited for you to see it!  So, if I want to get done and ready to show you tomorrow, I better go finish it up right now! 

 

 

By the way, what have you been working on over the weekend?  Are you keeping up with your new year challenges? 



Dive In

I am luxuriating in the throws of a wonderful four day weekend.  Oh dear goodness, how completely intoxicating and fabulous it has been.  Revel in the glory with me, my darlings...

With very few interruptions, I have been arting like a maniac/addict, staying up till the wee hours of the morning and getting my fix.  So yay for that, right!?!  This morning I woke up and realized it was Saturday, with only one more day left till I have to go back to work, and immediately screamed a mental "NOOOOOOOOOO!!!" and then a less mental/hushed whisper version (due to sleeping dog and husband...because you should let both sleeping dogs and sleeping husbands lie...it's the only way to get ANY peace...).  

I'm going to enjoy today and tomorrow, and then first thing Monday morning start my countdown to Christmas...because I have an entire week off work, thanks to strategic planning/day off using.  I had actually worked out two weeks of vacation using only a few days of vacation time, but the unplanned hospital stay earlier this year blew those plans out of the water.  Boo.Hiss.Hiss.  However, I am COMPLETELY thrilled to have (including the weekends) 9 days off of work while still getting paid!  I've only ever had one other job where I got paid vacation (when I was 19 and that was 11 years ago!) before this one, so I totally dance a jig every time I turn in for time off.  It's true...seriously...my boss had to get used to that...I don't think she quite knew what to do the first time I asked for vacation...honestly she looked a little scared...because of my jig dancing...

I have been having a great time making art while watching "The Vicar of Dibley" on Netflix.  It's a pretty good show...I finished it in two days.  I love comedy + English people...hilarious.  If you like stuff like that, you should also watch "Black Books" (also a series that you can find on Netflix)...SO FUNNY!  Now that I've finished both of those shows, I've got to find a replacement show to watch while arting...I started watching "Kingdom", which is a series with my darling Stephen Fry (who I love beyond words...he's fantastic), but they lost me in the later season...without giving it away to blatantly: he should have stayed gone...  I might have to revisit it and see if it was just a slow spot, because I do enjoy Stephen Fry very much...I will give him a second chance.  But if that doesn't work out, I'll be on the lookout for a new funny show that features people with English accents...I will also take Irish, Scottish, Australian, and several other accents in lieu of English ones...as long as the show is funny...

So right, the art stuff...I have these two spiral bound journals...the first journals I ever bought for art...before I knew what I was doing.  Paper-wise, I mean...I still don't know what I'm doing in a lot of other things...  They've been with me for quite some time, and I've made it my goal to finish them completely.  I work in an obscene amount of journals and various other surfaces too...I think I talked about that before.  Anyway, despite the fact that I art it up everyday, I haven't finished a journal yet...not one single journal!  Instead, I keep starting out in new ones if I want to work in a journal and don't have a current one that's not busy drying...we will not talk about the number of journals/paper that I have sitting there waiting on me.  Let's just say I like to be prepared...and that if they ever stop making paper, I'll have enough for me, you and three other people...for the rest of our lives...and possibly the lives of any children you may have...CRAZY!

Anyway, I don't like the paper in these original art journals of mine, but I don't want to waste them, so I've made it my goal to use them up as quickly as I can while still maintaining my personal standards.  ...which means covering over some of the pages (where I was practicing calligraphy...very badly...) with paper or gesso or whatever and making some kind of art on them that I can be content with.  And since I'm running low on store bought gesso, it's also the perfect opportunity to try various homemade gesso recipes.  I'm multi-tasking big time!

So I give you one of the pages I've been working on during the artfest that has been the past few days:

"Our lives are defined by opportunities, even the ones we miss." - F Scott Fitzgerald
So dive on in.
Can you see the calligraphy practice peaking through at the bottom?  

And, non-related to the art journal page...or related as an afterthought I guess I should say...here's an awesome song to listen to (Dive In - Quarashi  ...no swear words in this song, so ignore the parental advisory...be a rebel...) :

F. Scott certainly gave me something to think about when I found that quote of his:  "Our lives are defined by opportunities, even the ones we miss."  Ugh...shut up with your accuracy...

All my life, I've played it safe and I've done the 'right' thing.  It hasn't worked out so well for me...aside from avoiding STDs and heroin...that's worked out well pretty well actually...  But apart from that, there's been so many opportunities I've missed...and they've turned into gigantic regrets.  And while I can't change the past, I can learn from it.

I've been thinking recently about how the technically 'right' thing...might not be the right thing for me.  And how, if you always play it safe, there are very slim chances that something amazing will happen.  You have to take a risk sometimes.

I'm a cautious person...an over-analyzer.  I think I've heard my mom say "Don't do that, you'll get hurt" less than any other child in the history of ever.  Something in me already knew not to do potentially dangerous things, so I never even attempted them.  I've done the 'right' thing even when it was the absolute last thing I wanted to do.  But (aside from the STD/heroin thing), there hasn't been a great deal of reward coming my way.  I've played at happy for a long time without actually being happy.

I thought I was being content.  Being content is not a bad thing...because you'll never have perfect anything in this life...or not for long...  But I haven't been content.  I've been settling.  And that's somehow become very sad to me.  I have had a lot of 'worse' in my life.  You know, when you say "It could be worse"...well, I've had that 'worse'.  So when I say I settle with my current life, it's because I know it really could be much worse.  I've always thought about it that way.

But the truth is, it could be better.  I don't mean I could win the lottery and buy all the things I've ever wanted and live happily ever after and blah, blah, blah. (Although that would be nice...just saying...)  What I mean is that I could be happy.  Truly happy.  I could wake up in the morning, jump out of bed and be SO READY to start the day with a genuine smile on my face.

I don't want my life to be defined by missed opportunities ever again.

I feel a little like I am standing on the edge of a pool.  I've been watching other people swimming and splashing and having fun.  I've been dipping my toe in for a while...testing the water...being a little afraid that I might drown.  But I know how to swim...I know how to keep my head above water.  I'm tired of testing.  I'm ready to dive in.

Regrets

When I was a little girl, I used to get told quite often...especially by kids in school...that I looked like Wednesday Addams.

Basically me as a child...besides the movie money...

Looking back, it was probably true.  I had a big forehead, and a similarly turned up nose, and large dark eyes...and unrelated to Wednesday, I wore my hair in pigtails pretty often...I had LONG hair...I was always sitting on it otherwise.  If I could find a picture of me as a kid, you'd see what I mean.  Not identical, but close enough for others to notice the similarity.

Possibly because of this, I developed a (not so) secret (anymore) love of Christina Ricci, the actress who played Wednesday in the Addams family movies.  I like that I have embraced something that was kind of scarring as a child.  

Sadly, I no longer look like Christina Ricci.  Although if she'd gain like a hundred pounds, maybe I would...come on, Christina, help a sister out!

Even though Christina and I have gone our separate ways looks-wise, my mild obsession with her hasn't changed.  

The picture above was the face inspiration for the spread I have to show you today:

Ta-da!  I considered leaving it like this, but it was just not right...it bothered me.

"One of my main regrets in life is giving considerable thought to inconsiderate people." - Jarod Kintz
I really liked the quote (and feel like it related to how I've been feeling recently) and I thought it fit the expression on the girl's face, but it was so plain looking...

And I think the same was true of the face...it was ok, but just needed a little more...oomph...

So here's what I did to the quote side. At first, I just tried to color in the spaces of the letters with my Inktense pencils, but that wasn't enough.  Then I doodled over that with a black fine tip marker...the black stuck out too much... So, I went over the letter part with a lime poster paint Sharpie, which was better, but it didn't show up that well, so I went over that in black Sharpie...and that was good enough to make me stop working on the lettering part.  I also added some doodles in the corners in Inktense pencil and red poster paint Sharpie...and went squiggly around the edges with that same red Sharpie.

I didn't do much to the girl, but the changes I did make made a big difference in my eyes. I used white paint pen to give her eyes some highlights...that's a little thing that makes a HUGE impact...I am willing myself to never forget eyeball highlights again...  I also used the same red poster paint Sharpie from the quote side and added it to her lips, which made her look much less pale and much more dimensional (I think so anyway...).  And I used the red sharpie in her hair and on the outline of her shirt sleeves...  Just those few little changes made me much happier with the end result.  

Oh, and on a side note, I totally swiped a broken date stamp from the trash at work...you can see it in the bottom left corner of the girl's shoulder.  It actually said "Received" with the date underneath, but Regrets girl will probably be the only piece that gets the "Received" stamped on her, because it was too hard to hold it together...the date part is held together within the stamp, but the "received" kept falling off.  So sadly, it is sitting there all alone on my desk...waiting for me to accidentally knock it to the floor and lose it forever...  Ooh...unless I go right now and find something to glue it to...oh, yay!  Hooray for you brain, you figured it out!  OK...I'm off to rummage...  (maniacal laugh, MANIACAL LAUGH!!!)

Repetition

There's so much repetition happening in my life right now.  Some good, some...less than good.  I am a repeat offender in regards to art, good music, obscene levels of milk drinking, being generally hilarious...purposefully or not, and collecting weird stuff that I don't really have room for but that's too cool to pass up.  That's all generally good stuff.  But I'm also a repeat offender for stinky stuff...cigarettes, junk food, staying up too late at night when I have to get up the next day (ending in the zombification of me during daylight hours) and of caring too much about people who will never care about me.

I've talked about that last one before...like I said, I am a repeat offender and I know it.  I haven't been able to help it so far...once you get into a habit, it's easy to stay in it.  Maybe it's something everybody does at some point...loving someone who will never love you in return.  You know their feelings will never change, but it's like an addiction...you feel powerless to resist the pull they have on you, despite the fact that the entire thing is one-sided...even when you finally see that it's one-sided, you still try to make them love you.  Relationships shouldn't work that way.  Real relationships don't work that way.  

Unfortunately for me, I am an expert at finding these one-sided love situations.  I've always been that way.  I find the person who will take and take and take because I'm willing to give.  I don't think that it's a bad thing to be willing to give, or to take a leap and hope that this time will be different from all the other times you've been let down.  Hope can be a terrible and dangerous thing sometimes.  But I want to love and be loved in return, and the only way to do that is to put your love out there.

Since I've been art journaling, which has pushed me to get in touch with how I really feel about things in my life, I've come to see that I don't have to keep letting people steal my love.  That's not a requirement of love at all.  Love is too valuable to be wasted on people who don't appreciate it.  The feeling that my love is too valuable to be wasted is new to me.  I mean, I've understood the concept, just not as it applied to me.  Now I think I'm beginning to understand.  You, me, whoever...we're all worth so much more than our desperate need for affection.  We have to love ourselves first, before we can expect anyone else to love us.  We have to have enough self-respect not to jump into things with both feet and not try to get back to shore when we realize we're swimming in leach infested waters.

So I've got that part down...the part where I know that I need to make a break.  The next step, I'm not so sure about.  Now that I've unleashed my emotions, I have a tendency to feel very...passionately...  Passionate love is what I've got...but the downfall is that I have the opposite problem too...  And the opposite of passionate love is passionate hate...actually, that's not true.  I really think that the opposite of passionate love is apathy...in my eyes, having someone hate you is much better than having someone be indifferent toward you.  But I haven't learned how to be apathetic yet...I really don't know that I'm cruel enough to ever be apathetic toward a person...so what I have to work with is passionate hate.  That's my solution for now.  

I know, I know...that's not a solution.  But it's what I have to let (or make) myself feel for now.  It's the only way to break the cycle of too much unhealthy love.  Therefore, if I happen to see a certain person and set my jaw, roll my eyes, or comment to a friend that I hate said-person's stupid face, it's only because at one point I loved too much.  I have to replace the love I felt and the pain of rejection with the feeling of general disgust toward the person I formerly cared for.  And if I fake it often enough, eventually it will become how I really feel.  And maybe at some point in the future, I will be wise enough to let that disgust fade into not caring at all.  

And that's the thought I had in mind when I made this journal page:

"Repetition creates a habit.  Repetition breaks a habit too."  -Melissa Ferrick

Here's a live version of the song that the words on the page are from:

If somebody has a better idea of how I can skip the feelings of hate and disgust and go right to not caring, I would love to hear it...I don't want to hate people, but I don't know any other way to make myself stop caring too much.  I've thought about trying to pity the aforementioned non-returners of love...you know, because I am pretty awesome and they are missing out big time...but that's not worked out so well.  I really kind of want to hate them for now.  And that is a feeling...even if it's not a very nice one...and it is one of my goals to accept what I am feeling...  Can you tell I'm trying to justify my longing to hate?  ...really, I'd feel much better if I just got to throat punch the non-requiters...and then say, 'Now you know how I felt'...but I don't think violence is the answer...or, really, I just can't afford the lawsuits...  So, for now, until some better choice comes along, I'll be repeatedly telling myself that I am above punching people...but not above hating their stupid faces...and maybe eventually I'll break the habit of caring about people who don't care about me.

Noteworthy...Or Not

All the way back in May, whilst buying comic books with my husband, I bought a little 4 x 6 notebook from Books-A-Million...because what I needed was one more new art journal... *averts eyes due to lie*  The reason I remember it was all the way back in May is because I did a bunch of sketches in it the day I got it...and ACTUALLY DATED THEM!  One of my goals is to be more diligent about dating my work...for purposes of noting improvement...plus I just think it looks cool...

Anyway, this little notebook has come to be my travel journal...because I carry it around in my purse and pull it out when I'm away from the house and bored.  So I thought I'd share what's going on in the book:

This is a very quick sketch of Andy, my husband.  He is a lot better looking in real life...however, I have captured the essence of the look he was giving me at the time.  He makes this face a lot...I call it his "disapproving father" look...we don't have kids, so I get to be the sole recipient of this face...all the time...

The first five pictures were all done on the same day...

...where we went on an impromptu road trip...

...on accident, just like always.  I blindly get into the car, expecting to go to Books-a-Million for comic books and end up driving to South Carolina and back home by way of Knoxville...

...proving that 'every day IS a winding road',  the days I end up in the car with Andy are at least.  

I also use this book for remembering important things, like the phone number for Bluff City Diner, which makes the most delicious from-scratch desserts.  I call them almost every weekend to see if they've made Buckeye Brownie Cake...I will make a special trip for Buckeye Brownie Cake...it's heaven in chocolate and peanut butter form.

There's also some lettering practice going on in the book...especially if I think of a really good phrase (like above) or if I hear some kind of awesome song lyrics that I want to remember.

Sometimes I draw people I work with when I'm on my lunch break.  This guy is a hipster cutie I work with...I accidentally made him have a weird look on his face, and I think he totally looks like he's thinking "Well, that's interesting..."

I also sketch ideas I have for at home art, like this picture.  I thought it would be really neat to have a picture where the wind was blowing leaves and one was really close to you, blocking things in the background...I really like the idea, I just need to figure out how to make it happen!

Having this book in my purse is a nice distraction from my day job...when I'm in a stinky mood, I can hit my car when I'm on my lunch or breaks and do a quick sketch to get me in a better state of mind...it really works most of the time!  ...but maybe not on this particular day...I still wanted to go home...

Can you tell I did this girl after watching Jane Davenport's Whimsical Faces video?  See those eyes?  Those are Jane eyes for sure...  

I like this girl and the song lyrics that she has beside her...I'm going to make a sit down fancy piece based on those lyrics someday...

I like this girl too...her face makes me super happy...and I like that phrase.  I saw it on Pinterest.  For the record, capricious means 'impulsive, unpredictable, changing suddenly for no reason'....I had to pull out the dictionary when I first saw the word...

I'd love to get good at  realistic fast sketches of people and things.  I'm practicing...nothing noteworthy yet.  Mostly the ones of people end up like the sketch of my husband in the first picture...a little menacing...   And the ones of things end up being skewed...  But I know I'll get better if I keep practicing...and I know I'll keep practicing because I'm obsessed.   

I'm also currently loving the thought of keeping an illustrated diary-type journal...one where I do (or attempt to do) realistic daily life drawings (with pen and ink and watercolor) and add diary style journaling to accompany it.  My art journals tend to be more 'whimsical' (egads, I hate that word...I don't know why...) and more broad spectrum emotion-y stuff and are mixed media.  So an illustrated journal would be a nice divergence from my normal journals...  Hmm...yeah, that's gonna happen...really soon...

I Can't Say It...

I'm feeling so productive today!  I've been working like a busy little bee on art every day this week...I feel like (fingers crossed) I've got my mojo back!  Hooray for mojo!!!  

I went through some of my paper scraps and said good-bye to the minuscule pieces I've hoarded...keeping small paper scraps is ok, but if you need a microscope to see them, it's probably ok to just toss them...

I also cleaned my studio desk...again...and did some reorganizing so that maybe it won't be such a terrible mess so quickly.    I have to fess up to being a bit of a person who piles.  There's not a HUGE amount of space in my studio...so I pile things.  This works because I do know where things are when they're in piles.  This doesn't work because the thing I need next is always at the bottom of a pile.  So I made a yard sale score a couple of weeks ago and got some little wire shelves to sit on my desk.  They are not fancy, but I think they'll work...it's the same principle as piling except I don't have to move the stuff on top to get to the stuff underneath!  I finally put them to use (after procrastinating about cleaning for so long), so we'll see how it goes...

Here's my most recent work...I hate to say it, but I think that my mojo came back for the clean desk:

"I can't say it..."
 I'm sad that I can't get my phone to pick up the extreme awesomeness of the colors on this page!  In reality, the background is a beautiful teal, her hair is a nice grassy green, and her eyes are a deep sea blue...apparently I need to use some kind of app to make the red tones chill out...  But, just let me promise you, on my honor, that the true colors of this page thrill me to the core!

Have you ever felt that way?  Like you really want to say something, but you know you just can't?  Maybe you know it's not the right time, or maybe you question the other person's receptivity to what you want to say, or maybe you feel like it won't make any difference...but for whatever reason, your instincts tell you that you shouldn't go there...

Today, while sitting among my co-workers during lunch...an interesting conversation occurred.  Whatever started the conversation, I do not know...but at some point during the conversation, I got told that I was blunt...which kind of made me laugh.  I've never thought of myself that way!  In my head, being blunt is a negative thing...like a person who shoves it in your face without giving a hoot about civility.  But the exact statement was "I wish my girlfriend was more like you...you know, blunt..."  (First time anyone's ever wished for a girlfriend to be like me, I can assure you...haha) A discussion on my 'blunt' ways followed...apparently a lot of the guys I work with were waiting for the opportunity to talk about me to me...  It's weird to be involved in a conversation that you're the topic of...at least it was for me...

I was informed that my bluntness is very much appreciated by the masses...at least the masses of my manly co-workers.  I guess I can understand how blunt could be a good thing, I just never looked at it that way.  I looked at it as 'blunt = rude'.  But apparently the group of co-workers look at it like 'blunt = honest'.  I'm pretty happy to be known as honest.  Part of the discussion about all things Sweets was that, while I'm honest, I'm also nice about it.  I guess that's true...I don't generally just smash the truth in people's faces if it's something I know they don't want to hear...I try not to anyway...

And then there was a point where the conversation turned to the age-old question: "Why can't women just tell you what they want?"  ...which makes me laugh...I don't know how I got to be the spokesperson for women everywhere...especially since I apparently (at least in the eyes of the dudes I work with) don't act like a 'normal woman'...  Which I pointed out.  But, being pressed into the position of womanly knowledge administrator, I did at least try to answer the question...with a multiple choice answer:  D) all of the above.

The answer to this question is so vast and different for each woman that it's hard to answer it in the confines of part of a half-hour lunch...

I think a lot of women (like me), learn at an early age that what they want 'doesn't matter'.  I grew up with an extremely domineering father...it was his way and there was no other way.  After my dad was gone, I had to do a lot of things for the good of my family...again, it didn't matter what I wanted because there wasn't a choice.  And that's what you get used to...everyone else is more important than you, what you want doesn't matter, so why even mention it?  Somewhere along the way, I realized that what I want is important too...and I very gradually changed.  I got to the point where I would have rather been completely alone than to have to stay on the back burner for the rest of my life...  Not every woman comes to that realization...or they're not there yet.  That's not to say it's all ME! ME!ME! in my life now.  In a lot of things, I still don't say what I want...which leads to the second point.

Sometimes we don't say what we want because we really don't care either way.  This one is especially hard for my husband to understand.  Just because it's a big deal to him, it doesn't mean it's a big deal to me...  For instance choosing between cable and satellite...I don't give two flips about it.  But for him, it was this huge life altering decision.  It took me forever to get him to understand that I just didn't care!  I honestly thought it was idiotic for him to care so much...in our almost 10 year marriage, we've had both...they're pretty much the same to me...a million channels and there's still nothing good on!  ...but I digress.  

I think another big reason we don't say what we want is that we want our significant other to pay attention.  We want to know they really listen to us...so instead of saying what we want, we give them subtle clues that even Sherlock Holmes couldn't follow...just so we feel like they listen/pay attention/care.  But dudes have tiny caveman brains...er...I mean...brains that work differently than ours...they don't know what clues are!

Personally, I am annoyed by those girls...the extreme subtle hinters...because I hate to be subtly hinted to myself.  Just tell me already!  The subtle hinters are also the kind of girls who say things like "I hate it when I tell my boyfriend about a problem I'm having and all he does is try to fix it...I just want him to listen!"  Stupid girl, I smack your ignorant face!  If you want somebody to listen, tell your lady friends...most men are just programmed to want to fix things!  The difference is love vs. respect.  Women want to be loved...so when you tell a woman your problems, she thinks "I hear her problem, and I want her to know I understand how she feels so that she will know I care."  Men want to be respected...when you tell a man a problem, he thinks "I hear her problem and I will fix this for her...that will show her I care...and she will respect me for my manly problem solving abilities."  For the most part, women want to be heard/understood, men want solutions.  Of course, there are exceptions to the rules...I totally lean towards being a solutions kind of gal.  Don't get me wrong, empathy is nice, but I'd rather just know how to fix the problem.

This goes back to the original point of "why can't women just say what they want?"...women want you to do things because you love them, which is emotional; men want you to do things because you respect them, which is more mental.  As a woman who now acknowledges her emotions, I've realized that I've started to put more of the 'why' of things into my choices...what will doing/not doing this make me feel...I'm learning to be more intuitive...there are a lot of grey areas with intuition.  As a woman who was resistant to emotions for most of her life, I also realize that many of my prior decisions were very analytical...here are the facts, black and white, this is the answer.  I think that's the difference between men and women in this regard...we women want to explain ourselves...and sometimes we just don't manage to get back around to the point...and the point is all men are interested in.  If you don't believe that, think about foreplay and how men and women differ there...yeah, see told ya so... (Again, I acknowledge exceptions to the rule...hehehe)

Anyway, that was my interesting lunch time conversation.  Clearly men are desperate for advice...I mean, they're coming to me for it...CLEARLY DESPERATE!  In the end, all I could really tell them was to listen and pay attention...because that's what I would want...someone who cares enough to listen to what I say.  And so to be fair, my advice for ladies: be more direct.  If you really want something, just say it.  Don't be an enigma...be an adult.  Those are my words of wisdom for today.

Ink Blot...Face 23 of 29

Here's face #23:

Swinging away...

For this girl, I was inspired by Michelle at Inspiration Everywhere (you can see Michelle's adorable ink blot girl HERE).  Michelle sprayed a spot of ink spray on her page and found a face in the ink.  I thought that was a really cool idea, so I tried the same thing using a Dylusions background I had already made.  

I saw this girl swinging away...don't know what that means in the world of Ink Blot tests and psychology, but there you have it...

Until tomorrow, my artistic accomplices...

Experimentation The Second...Face 10 of 29

Face 10 of 29...this is my second attempt with the fake linocut technique that was inspired by Coreopsis:

TA DA!

Experiment Face The Second has made me recall that I lack patience...  I was going to try to indent all the parts that I wanted to be white...but that was too time consuming.  Instead what I did was take some scissors and cut out the bigger pieces of the face I wanted to be white...I only left a few thin strips to connect everything together as you can see below. 

Faux linocut girl on the bottom right and some more prints surrounding her.  I think the bottom left print looks like a sugar skull...and look at the top left...that's what happened when I did a print from the back of the foam (the side that I didn't 'carve')

This lazy approach worked ok until the brayering paint part needed to happen...then her little bits wanted to slide around too much.  So I thought about it and realized I could probably spray her with my Dylusions inks instead of trying to roll paint on her.  It actually worked out pretty well!  I think I could probably mount her on some cardboard to stabilize the bits as well, but I haven't done it yet...  

Now I'm wondering where I put my Xacto knife (and this is why you should never clean your studio...I knew just where it was when the studio was a mess...now that it's clean...not a clue!) to see if I could scrape away foam and still have enough left underneath to keep everything all together...this foam is pretty thin so I'm not entirely sure...or maybe I could glue a couple pieces of foam together and then cut away the top foam and still have everything be secure and not floppy...it definitely sounds like some more experimentation is going to happen...  I'm really excited by the possibilities being discovered during 29 Faces...it's made me try things I've never thought to try, or things I've put off trying for a long time.  And that really is something to get excited about!  

Something else to get excited about is the giveaway that's happening right here on the 29th!  Just follow me and come back on the 29th to see what the surprise prize is and to leave a comment (again, on the 29th) letting me know that you'd like to be entered in the drawing.  Then, on the 30th, the winner will be announced!  Easy peasy and exciting too!  Woo hoo!