“Purpose” – 6X6” canvas collage
I hope your Sunday has beautiful moments of grace in it.
Big Love, Beautiful Ones.
A Rock Offering to Ganesha
Orange Elephant God,
Help me lay the foundation.
Obstacles be gone.
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This beautiful little statue of the Hindu God, Lord Ganesha: the lord of beginnings and wisdom, sits on the windowsill at Elizabeth’s lake house. One evening, we were rock wrapping by the windows as the rain poured down outside. This rock with its orange wax linen thread and the tiny orange bead felt like it belonged in front of Ganesha. I left it there, on its bed of eucalyptus dyed silk.
Ganesha is thought to be the remover of obstacles. Perhaps my simple offering of orange, rock and love is the reason that my creative path seems to have opened up so wide right now ?
I don’t know for sure but I will take that gift very willingly !
***********************
Yesterday morning, I set up a spray play time outside on the back deck.
Stencils, spray inks, papers of many different kinds,
and a clothesline to hang the results.
An hour and a half passed so quickly
and
left me with another cool stash of papers to play with in my collages.
The walnut spray ink was the earthy darkness that I was most pleased with.
I have ordered my bees wax and found an electric skillet at the Goodwill store
but until my order arrives,
good old gel medium will work to adhere my goodies.
This 6X6'” canvas piece includes a color copy of the green angel that originated in my journal a year ago.
New larger wings and a glorious earthy background
using bits of my recently sprayed papers
formed
this new angel creation that I am loving a lot !
So much so that the palette inspired three little rock wrappings to go with it.
I am thinking of listing them all together as a package deal in the Etsy shop
so that someone else can enjoy them up close too.
That is if I can part with them !
May the obstacles in your path today be few
and easy to circumvent, Beautiful Ones !
Happy Friday !
For more Haiku Love, visit the Beautiful Rebecca at recuerda mi corazon.
Yesterday, I had a lesson that planted a beautiful seed within me.
When it was happening, I felt like I was wrong.
Like I was weak.
Like I was overly-sensitive, over-emotional, a cry-baby.
(Germinate – 6X6 canvas collage/paint – July 2011)
But you know what ?
As I came, through I realized that I am not weak, over-sensitive or over-emotional.
I have realized that I am compassionate, intensely loving, highly sensitive to the suffering of others, and empathetic.
I am a Sensitive.
Sensitives feel, see and know what others do not. This is your power and your gift to the world.
As a Sensitive you represent the future.
You will teach those who have closed down their hearts and who fight for power over others that there is another way to thrive.
You will teach collaboration as an alternative to competition.
You will demonstrate transparency and authenticity over concealment and deception.
You will embody compassion as an antidote to conflict.
You are the heroes, the teachers, the way-showers.
Your journey starts with self-acceptance, loving yourself exactly as you are and seeing your sensitivity for what it really is; a gift and tool of healing and transformation.
You are a teacher.
Your time is NOW.
You are the potential creator of what this planet is in desperate need of……..LOVE IN ACTION.
(Kimberly Jones – Energy Whisperer)
I am done seeing sensitivity as a weakness, in others or in my Self !
I know the power of Love and Compassion.
I am going to let it Shine, no matter where I am.
If that makes you feel a little uncomfortable, then maybe you need to look inward and examine your Loving Core to find out why.
I am pledging to myself and my world, that I will fiercely put Love into Action
wherever I can in this One Precious Life.
This seed is firmly planted.
Now just watch it grow !
Big, big Love to you, Beautiful Ones !
The next series of videos Teesha shares will be about lettering. I will then work on completing this page with some journaling. I love, love, love Teesha's lettering style! It is very distinctive. I would love to really develop a lettering style of my own. I think that experimenting with someone else's style and taking little bits I like from here and there may just bring me where I want to go !
I added a Rock My World rock in these shots of the page. It was the one that jumped out of the bowl for me this morning.
Kind of fitting, don't you think ?
I love it when those little messages keep coming !
I hope you find some time to play and open your mind to some new possibilities this week, Beautiful Ones !
Happy Monday !
Magnificent Fall days in the mid 60's. Perfect weather to be outside.
And I did do a little of that. But while these perfect Fall days are happening, I have also been absorbing and being inspired by the great on-line Spill It Class that Carmen Torbus is teaching.
If you remember awhile back, I said I won the tuition to participate in this class and I am so very grateful for that. I have learned a lot from Carmen and her great videos. I learned a lot from her painting techniques and I so enjoyed how her style helped me loosen up with paint. I learned too that I adore Golden Fluid acrylics even more than I did before the class after learning how Carmen uses them. I learned that I like to paint with my fingers but that I do prefer brushes and paper towels.
Most of all I learned that I can create beautiful things on canvas. This may sound like a small thing but it was big for me. In the past, I was very intimidated by canvas. They cost a lot more than one sheet of paper, even than a sheet of watercolor and I just felt like I wasn't a good enough artist to work on canvas for some dumb reason. But now, I am in love with the texture and the depth you can achieve on canvas. That was a great thing to come away from the class with as is the wonderful support and inspiration you get from all the other participants and from Carmen herself. I highly recommend this class !
So let me share a little of what I did.
Here's one piece I did, starting with a 9X12" canvas gessoed black.
I dripped and smeared and spilled and stamped and rubbed the surface with many different colors of Golden Fluid acrylics. I ended up with kind of a mess and wasn't sure at all where I was going with it.
Carmen also had us color photocopy images to use for collaging on our canvases. She suggested using your own sketches or journal pages. I made copies of my paint puddle people that I had made in my journal way back in June.
("Fruition" - canvas, collage and acrylic paint)
Add a nicely rubbed in coat of Pthalo Blue, a touch of white and Pthalo Green on top of the whole canvas, my paint puddle angel, some more collage pieces (orange pieces and tree) from my own stash of painted papers, a bit of gold metallic paint, some ink lines done with the dip brush and some black ink around the edges, and here you have the completed canvas above, "Fruition".
Another piece I did was on this rectangular canvas I had bought at the Christmas Tree Shop. Three ugly painted canvases with nice thick gallery edges for $4.00. I covered the ugly with a couple of coats of white gesso and then went to town the Carmen way. I spilled, and smeared, finger painted and stamped and made this gorgeous blue background. You can see some of the details in the texture more when you click to enlarge it but it is hard to capture it in a photo and it it too big for my scanner.
Again, I used a colored copy of a page in my journal. This page was called "She dreams of dark beauty. " I used an image transfer technique that Carmen shared for this piece. The hardest part was waiting for the gel medium to dry over night.
My transfer worked well except for the details of the girl's face. I ended up cutting out the girl from a second copy and gluing it on top of the transfer with gel medium in order to have more details to the figure.
Then I added painted collage papers and some stenciled sequin waste dots. I also added black paint with a sponge and some yellow oxide transparent paint in some drips here and there. Finally I took out the India ink and the dip pen. I tried to write the word "Nocturne" on the left had top of the canvas but hated how it turned out. Luckily I was able to wipe most of it off when it was still wet. I added some other scribbles here and there to finish the piece.
(Nocturne - canvas collage and acrylic paint)
(click to enlarge.)
I am liking this ! Two pieces of my own art, on canvas, that I would happily hang on my walls in my house. That is a cool feeling ! In fact, "Fruition" is already hanging up in front of my desk in the studio. I am really happy with both of them, and with all the great things I have learned about myself and the creative process. Big thanks to Carmen again for her great class and for letting me be a part of it !
Happy Monday, beautiful Ones ! Hope you have some chances to get messy this week !
This is a collage I made for her last year - shows her as the queen she is !
Rumi Bird :
Black Bird :
Two Little Dickie Birds :
I find little birds very inspirational, like so many mixed media artists right now. Something about their delicate strength, their ability to sing their song loud and to fly whenever the whim takes them I think.
