watching paint dry this week...

 

My creativity this week was challenged by physical pain... sometimes creative time takes me out, but sometimes nothing can take pain away. Know what I mean? 

the painting above was done in small format of index card, as it's fairly fast. I watched a tutorial by Creative Cove. I started with what was left of a mailing label for the post office, printed on sticky backed label paper. Rather than toss it, I pulled off enough to cover the index card and began painting with watercolors and a bamboo brush. 

you can see the printed words peeking through

I layered many other mark making tools, caran d'arche neocolor, black ink, white gel pen, staedtler watercolor pencils, and some posca acrylic pens. Last some gold paint to remind me of laurel Birch graphics. 

The printed label was from mailing a pet portrait to my friend Monika (her lovely blogo) this week... She adopted Norman from a neglectful situation, and he was a loving boy, did hospital visits with her to comfort others, 

 

she said he loved his little stuffie moose and often walked around with it. It was more difficult than I thought to capture the loving look in his soft eyes... and the hair, I did my best with watercolor and inks

and at the end, a heart of gold.... the sorry fact is our kind hearted loving dogs don't live long enough and no amount of time would be long enough... 

 

I pulled prompts from ICAD at random when I could focus, and this day it was 

"imagination" 

4" X 6" cheap index card and paint

I play with portraits... how many lines will imply a face, a gesture, an attitude? How do colors affect it? 

How does it interpret the word imagination to me? I wrote this little poem on the back

Imagination:  My nose is a bit bent, my eyes aren't symmetrical, my lips turn down a bit, my hair is an entity of it's own...

and I still create. 

I am beautiful in my uniqueness and my spirit is beautiful

I have a big imagination making my world better

The prompt was "trivia" and I thought of my full brain, all the facts in there all badly filed and sometimes misfiled and hard to find... but I love trivia games, especially partnering with my husband who knows so much. Neither of us knows a thing about sports however.

the little cards don't take long to make, but take a bit of thought as to how to interpret the prompt
 

The astrology one, I chose Taurus my sign and put down the character traits, and silver ink stars

for "float" I chose a beloved pink flamingo float I used to love as a kid.... arms over the circle, safe in the water bobbing up and down gently, turning in circles by kicking little feet, the feeling when it broke and deflated.
"Playground" prompt

I used to love the swings best.... pumping my legs, going higher and higher, that feeling where the swingset legs come out of the ground a little, letting go and flying through the air to the ground, whee!

"charcoal" and "evergreen" my photo colors on the tree are not true, it's darker greens and blues. My goal was to interpret a majestic tree with as few strokes as possible. 

the lily... drawn with stabilo crayon very water reactive and runs instantly reminding me of charcoal. A bit of opera pink paint, a stencil bird, and some threads sewn on for texture stamens

when I couldn't do much else this week, I put away embroidery supplies and straightened my kitchen desk a bit, and can see the surface now

that's it, only a tiny bit of hand sewing on hexies... I hope the coming week brings relief or an answer that the ER didn't give...

linking to

face off 

design wall Mondays at smallquiltsanddollquilts

https://kathysquilts.blogspot.com/