Mothers Day Sketchbook Tea Party!!

Oh what a fun class we had today!! Gurutej brought her vintage tea cups and saucers and we had a tea party! The homework was to sketch something that reminded us of our moms and several women brought their sketches and we talked about the memories.

Karens cookies! Yum

I set up the table outside close to the roses in the shade and served cookies from Karen, cake, sandwiches and tea. The weather was nice in the morning but continued to heat up as the day progressed.

One of Gurutej's tea cups

We discussed the challenges of drawing ovals and circles and how your perspective will affect the oval when you are drawing tea cups or jars or anything round like this. It was fun, challenging but everyone did a great job. Penny and Gurutej didn't get theirs finished so I hope to add them later.

What a wonderful time we had, enjoying the day, the food and the company together in the garden. Wish you were here!

Our sketches for the day! 

Lauretta's page!

Karen's page!

my page

I hope to see you next month!

A fun Fabric Giveaway

Hi everyone, I hope your April is going good and you are being creative in any sense of the word. I am having a Marvelous May Market Giveaway on my blog!! You can have a chance to win by commenting on my blog or on Facebook, I hope you will support me in this, I need to try and increase my social media presence and so I would love it if you could spread the word and get your friends to post and follow my blog and or Facebook page. It is my goal to increase my followers and have a better social media presence which is such a struggle for me! Thanks for your help!!!

I have some art quilts being featured in this book available for preorder at Amazon now, check out my blog for more information

These shoes were made for walking!

Hi everyone, so sorry this is late, I have had a crazy week. Our class last Saturday was amazing! We had a fun, uncomfortable time diving into our inner selves to see how to best use our time to do the things we love and to move into the direction of where we want to be in the future. We talked about the passions and dreams that some of the women have, about different options and classes to help move you toward your dreams. Our sketchbooks are places where we can write down those dreams. You can record them there, in that safe place, and as you work towards them you can visually see your progress. Not everyone wants to have a business, some just want to do more traveling, etc. Whatever your dream, your passion is what "action" are you taking this month to move you closer to fulfilling that dream. Try setting yourself a goal and doing one thing to move towards it.

We also drew our shoes, everyone brought a favorite shoe and we passed them around the table. The object was to think about your composition, how would you fit all the shoes onto the page. It was to turn and paint each shoe in a different direction for interest. It was a little bit about address a problem called foreshortening, when somethings comes at you directly and it is foreshortened. It is a bit of an optical illusion and your brain often struggles with it. I love the shoe idea and we ran out of time since I wanted to have everyone pass their books for one more step but next time! I wrote down everyones name next to their shoe. Marianne brought some cool red pumps, Penny brought her Tennis shoes, Lauretta brought a favorite costume shoe, Gurutej brought her black tap shoes(some of us colored them), I had my crazy stitched flats and Karen brought a beautiful pair of dyed leather shoes. Each shoe was so different and these are the people walking with me in my life. These precious shoes carrying us in this journey of art together! I love it since its a little bit of all of you in my sketchbook. I am sorry the others missed out on our day!  For some reason I don't have two of the sketches, I hope Penny will post her sketches and I don't know who else I am missing?? Karens?

My Shoe page, it says My Journey with Friends, inspiring each other. I noticed I forgot the "h" on with so I had to fix it! I didn't say I could spell, just draw!  LOL

Gurutej's page, she made her tap shoes purple! I love it, can't wait to see it finished

Lauretta's Page, I like how she has lots of angles and her shadow under her shoe helps ground it. By drawing from different angles Lauretta has done a study in shoes, which is cool. Verses some of the others look like we drew a group of shoes. Another way to approach the same subject matter and make it interesting and different. 

Mariannes page, I love the red pump she brought, I love the way she drew it, a bit tilted and stylized!  Great Job!! See how my shoe is smaller and higher,  it looks like my shoe (blue) is farther away than the others? Do you know why? As things move away from us they get smaller and they move up on our page, they also get cooler. The warm colors on the color wheel bring forward, the cool colors help send it back. If you scroll back up and look at the other pages you will notice how the shoes look farther away the higher on the page they are. Just a little painting info for you! 

This month I would like you to find something that reminds you of your mom. It can be an object, a flower, anything that means mom to you. Now take your object and paint it in different positions, angles, colors, zoom in etc. You decide how many times you paint it, sketch it, do you put it in boxes on your page etc. Then next month we will talk about them.  We will also be back out in the garden next month celebrating Mother's Day, I will have a bit of a Tea party theme with Tea and sandwiches for all of us, should be fun!  Everything is blooming and we need to catch it so bring a hat and sunscreen. We will be meeting on May 11, the day before Mother's Day! Bring your "This makes me think of my Mom" paintings and we will share.

Check out my blog for a give-away!!

I am working on sewing projects for Spring Market, if anyone wants to sew give me a call!
Have a great month!

Your Negative Inner Voice! NIV

Well I know from what I have heard from everyone that this has been a hard challenge. I think it makes us have to think and really take a hard look at some of our issues.  I also believe that good things happen when we grow and stretch ourselves both personally and creatively. I want us to really seize our moments, we only have so many. These pages are a beginning, a place to write down some realization about your creative growth. The lists aren't meant to be filled up before class. The pages are designed to be revisited, to be in your journal where you will see them often and be able to reflect on and grow from.  Our journals are a documented journey one step or page at a time, a place to play, explore, grow,document, learn and discover.

   The first was "Free to be Me", a place to record your dreams whatever they may be, travel, personal, physical etc. Second was your "Passions", what are you passionate about, what excites you, gets you moving? Third was "Listening", listen to those around you, what do people say to you?

I started with a box and a wash of yellow

   Now we are moving into you, your inner voice. We all have an inner voice, many times this inner voice is very negative! It is undermining what we want to do and feel led to do. It tries to defeat us before we get out of the gate by planting seeds of doubt, fear and usually stops us before we get started. It will use tricky things like rationalization (I am too busy, I am to tired, I do so much already, I shouldn't take time from this person etc). It often can mask itself in drama.  Drama happens in everyones life, we need to not let it derail us from our creative lives and our goals. Even during these down times you can take time for smaller projects. These negative inner voices and dramas will try and hold you back from moving forward. We will always have to deal with drama, but lets not wallow in it and let it become our La Brea Tar pits (did you know that it only took a few inches of tar to capture and hold down huge Mastodons until they finally died from starvation and became the bones they are digging up today!  Lets not let that be our personal, creative lives. You know what your own individual voice says right, so I don't need to go on, do I? For some of us we may need more pages for this topic sp make as many as you need.

I then outlines my box and started drawing drawing a vine of flowers. Do you notice that my flowers are lips! LOL That is my NIV's lips, with red lipstick! I also made them a vine, representing them crawling into every space of our lives. added some more paint.

Once you recognize this inner voice and write it down, you need to combat it with positive retorts! You are allowed to argue, talk back, and capture this inner negative voice! I find myself talking out loud to myself as I work on things. It is my way of dealing with my inner voice. My husband laughs as he thinks I am always praising myself, little does he know I am at war! I tell myself that looks great,  oh you are doing such a good job, etc. You need to find the way that works best for you so that your NIV (negative inner voice) doesn't stop you from moving forward.  As I make my pages I am thinking about the question so that when the page is done I have some things I can add to it. I hope you will take this next step and we will discuss on Saturday!! Have a creative week!!

I went over areas with pencils and paint and markers etc. Just playing and having fun. I added barbs to my box to represent these negative things are now captive! Make your own page and add my "NIV" text somewhere. 

I have been working on my "Free to be Me" page and also "Passions"...The hardest part is filling in the the blank square. I am really having a hard time figuring out just what makes me free and what my true passions really are!! So for now, I will keep thinking about it.  Two very hard questions....at least for me.     
   



Listening- Week 3 of our Challenge

IMPORTANT- Next sketch class has been changed to April 6th!!!! Mark your calendars!!!

Hi everyone, well did you get your passions written down?? Was it hard or did they just flow once you started writing? The thing about stopping for a minute in our busy schedule to take a look at some of these things is that it will help us better plan where we want to go and what we want to do. If you're like me you have come to realize that there are only so many hours in the day and you can't possibly do it all. By realizing your passions and what you would like to be free to do you will help you make better decisions on how and what you want to say "Yes" and "No" too in your life.  This week will be harder as I am going to ask you to do something that might seem very uncomfortable. I wouldn't ask you to do it if I didn't think it was important, so I hope you will do it.

As we go about our day we hear things about ourselves, compliments, comments, acknowledgments, affirmations. For example: you look nice today, you are such a good cook, you are so patient, so kind, etc. Immediately what happens when we hear these positive comments is that our negative inner voice begins to work overtime. Attacking the words as they come in, causing us to not believe them, causing us discomfort. Why is it that we feel uncomfortable with people paying us a compliment, because we don't believe it! Our negative inner voice is very loud, and strong and it wouldn't want us to get full of ourselves. It will also take some training to start to hear and believe and learn from what you hear. This week I want you to really listen to what you hear around you. I want you write only the good things you hear since our negative voice is so loud in our heads that we don't need to record anything negative. Really start to listen and write it down! When you hear the comment make sure you thank the person and don't play it down, receive it graciously and happily! Sometimes its nice to repay the compliment with a compliment, "You are so sweet to say so" or something like that. Now start your lists and as you do I want you to hear what your negative inner voice is saying and stop it right away. By recognizing that negative part of ourself we can better know how to combat it. Talk back to it, argue with it, but don't believe it! I think we are far too hard on ourselves and sometimes we can fall into a place where it is easier to say negative things to ourselves than to believe anything positive. If for some reason no one says anything positive to you then we know what the problem is! (You will need to write down the positive things you feel about yourself). For most of us, we will really have to listen, sometimes they come quickly and under the breathe of a passer by. Like, dinner was great, thanks or You make the best desserts. If we want to get compliments we need to give them too. My husband is always saying he loves me, and I have gotten into this really bad habit of responding with, Really, Me? No way! Oh that is so bad, and its almost habit now, that negative voice trying to rip me off. My husband started to call me on it, threatening to not tell me anymore and thats when I started to really see what I was doing. Sometimes its just habit to think we aren't worth loving and it comes to the surface without any thought at all anymore. Just jokingly shaking it off before we can really absorb it.  OK so we are going to stop that! This will be an ongoing list, keep writing as you hear them, carry your journal with you everywhere so you can capture them when they happen. You only hold a thought for 3 minutes, don't let these go.

In your sketchbooks make a page for compliments and start to write them down. I put people on mine but your page can be anything you like. You can call it "My Accolades" "Who I Am" or anything else you like. I can't wait to see what you have come up with!! 

I will be posting a new challenge a bit earlier next week since we are meeting earlier this next month. Go grab your goodies, your accolades, your kudos and write them down. It will be uncomfortable but who cares, get past it and seize the moments!

Passions- Week 2 of our Challenge

Well how was it? Did you find that the Free to be Me page was hard to fill out? Did you have to really stop and look inside to see what you wanted to do with your life?  Well I know you have done your "Free to be Me" page right?, I know you all did it . Now we are moving on to our passions. Although our dreams can also be our passions in some cases they are not the same. So now we are going to list the things that we are passionate about. What excites you, gets you up in the morning, makes you anxious to see what tomorrow brings. What is the thing you heart longs to do, energizes you, the things that you never tire talking about. Write down those things. It could be exercise, eating well, gardening, quilting, painting, cooking, entertaining, friends or  creating. Are you passionate about sharing a message? For years Jenn and I have gone to high schools to share our story and the message of "Don't drink and drive" so that we might spare a family from going through what we went through, that is something I am passionate about as an example.  It isn't necessarily on my Free to be me list of things but might fit better here.  You all know I am passionate about motivating and getting people excited about art! I am passionate about my health. etc  Think about what you are passionate about and write it down as they come to you during the week. I would love to see you create your own passion page but you are free to download mine and use it or email me and I will send it too you and you can print it and put it in your sketchbook. Have a passion filled week!