Water, Autumn and Miscellaneous Doodling

What a busy week! Filled with projects, I also kept up with my daily CED2010 entries. I tried to keep the theme of water on my mind and was successful a few days but Fall kept creeping in. I completed my first big painting, gave it to friends as a gift and they have it at the frame shop now!

I worked on the Sketchbook Project, did a Full Moon Dreamboard and started on an art journal page. I didn't get too much down though. Maybe this week. 

Most importantly for CED2010, I finished my third book of daily creations!! And started my fourth book! I'd hope to find another nice blank book with a cool arty cover but no luck, so I bought another copy of the one I just finished.

It's kind of neat to hand someone a book (3 books) when they ask "What have you been up to lately"!

Monday:

 

 Tuesday:

Wednesday:

Thursday:

Friday:

Saturday: I've been thinking about buying or making a fall wreath. Which do you do?

Sunday:

I hope you had a great week and have a wonderfully creative week ahead! I look forward to seeing your check-in on CED2010. I am really thankful to Leah for those weekly check-ins as they have been wonderful motivation to actually get things done and posted! Thanks Leah!

SBP - I'm sorry I forgot you were outside!

Sunday sketching and working on my Sketchbook Project are starting to meld together it seems. No doubt that's very good as it encourages me to work on the SBP! Thanks Sophia! (Was that your plan?) Here is my contribution for this week Sunday Sketching at Blue Chair Diary:

As always double-clicking improves the image!

Now to think, what else am I sorry that I've forgotten!?

Looking forward to seeing your sketches!

Full Harvest Moon Dreaming

A beautiful full moon to dream by tonight! And time to participate in Jamie Ridler's Full Moon Dreamboards.

I started by printing off photos of the painting I just did and then added images. I still need better magazines I think but I found a few images that talked to me...

Upper Half (scanned)

Lower Half  (scanned)

I know I want to paint and write more, get fitter and de-clutter. Maybe relish the last fews days of a hoped for Indian Summer?

Hope this Harvest Moon makes your dreams come true!

Scaling Up!

When I started CED2010, I made the decision to start small and use a blank book for my daily creations. That way it would be easy to track my creations every day. I am 265/265 with 100 days left in the year and 3 books filled. I cheated a bit, especially when travelling and a few creations were done a day or so later and another few earlier but in every week of posting, all posted were done in that 7 day period. And this has been good for me. The weekly check-ins have provided superb accountability and since I always wanted to have some thing to share, I stuck to the "plan".

But I started to get cravings for something bigger, something that couldn't be created in just one day. I felt I wanted to paint. Why? I have no clue but there it was .... the urge to create. I ignored it. And ignored it. Then two things happened. One day I came across a post by Nolwenn on "101 in 1001". I guess I've seen these around the blogosphere before but never paid much attention. So I decided to do a list (which I will share soon) and painting was on it. The other factor was that close friends recently renovated their bathroom and were lamenting that they had no artwork for the room. To my surprise, I heard myself offer to paint a picture for them! Yikes!

Do you ever have those moments when you commit yourself and then wonder how you'll accomplish what you said you'd do? A recurring theme for me! So after fretting and carefully looking at some of your artwork for ideas, inspiration and methodology*, I decided to try to keep it simple and do an abstract landscape using all the colours in the new bathroom (plus some).

Here is my finished painting:

Close-up of the upper half:

Close-up of the lower half:

Leaning on my living room mantle:

I am very happy to say that they love it! It looks great, the colours are perfect and they are taking it to the framers tomorrow!!! It is 20x24 - much larger than the pages of my books! I think I might experiment on a smaller canvas next time! 

I think I will finish the year off in my books, (starting the 4th book in 2 days!) and keep up the creativitiy next year on bigger projects.

* Thanks to many CED participants for their inspiration including Shayla for ideas on trees and using texture and Marie for her skies and step-by-step process (though my sky looks nothing like hers!)

Butterflies, Grapes and lots more!

This week I  created a mixture of things. I did a few favourites - the people with funny hats, zen doodles, sketching faces from magazines and I went back to working with pastels. For some reason I had an odd desire to do butterflies and, like last week, I wanted some colour! So I tried butterflies using pens and my Caran D'Arche watercolour crayons - without the water. I am really loving those crayons!

Monday:

Tuesday:

Wednesday:

Thursday:

Friday:

Saturday: The theme on Inspiration Avenue's Weekly Challenge was Metamorphosis. I didn't get my act together to put in a submission but I was thinking about my grape vines and how they have matured from the small green of early summer to the full purple of today, and then to....

Sunday: ....jars of grape jelly! 45 cups of grapes (+ 1/2 cup water per 4 cups grapes) boils down and strains to = 22 cups of juice boils down to = 11 jars of jelly. Just add sugar and hours of effort and lovely grape jelly is created! I added @1 cup of sugar for every 2 cups of juice as I don't like things too sweet. Most recipes call for a cup of sugar for every cup of juice. This year there were lots of grapes!! 45 cups - wow! And a healthy addition of stems and the remnants from boiling - pit, skins etc to my compost bin! I was so tired after all that work!

This was a creative week in other ways. I started The Sketchbook Project and I finished my first painting! More on that later. Last week's update was my 100th post! (How did THAT happen?) And I am almost finished my 3rd book for CED2010! Finding new ones I like is so hard though. Maybe there will be something new in the stores?

That was me. How about you? How was your week? Are you doing The Sketchbook Project? If so, what is your theme? 

Hope you have a great week ahead!

Sunday Sketching - Starting the Sketchbook Project

With a little friendly arm twisting from Lisa of Priti Studios, I signed up to do The Sketchbook Project. I chose the "random" theme, or in other words, I let them choose. My theme is "I'm sorry I forgot you". I'm also interpreting it as "I'm sorry, I forgot you ....". And finishing the sentence off. And that is how I started. (Not on the first page as I wanted to work up to something brilliant - ha! Well, we'll see if that happens but sure enough I screwed up this first drawing. And the only part in ink so it wasn't easy to correct. I forgot the first word of my theme! Talk about needing to warm up!! Okay enough babbling, on to the sketch!)

As always with my scanner, it is a little faint to see. Double clicking does make it clearer! 

Have all you Sunday Sketchers joined the SBP (my very obvious acronym/abbreviation)? Are you loving or hating your themes? What is your theme? A full journal on one subject may be a challenge indeed! 

Looking forward to seeing your efforts!

  

Caught up on CED2010 posting!

Back from vacation and finally caught up on my CED2010 posting! Both last week and this week are about 10 days worth of efforts instead of the normal "weekly" check-in. While I was away I used only pen and pencil but once back I've added colour. (I missed colour! Note to Self:  Bring my watercolour crayons when I travel!)

Thursday:

Friday: More face sketching from magazines. Can you guess who he and the the next one are?

Saturday:

Sunday: Flying home...

Monday: The leaves have started to turn already!  Seems like everything is early this year.

Tuesday: Thinking about the CED2010 September theme of WATER and inspired by all of you mermaid lovers! My first mermaid! A mini mermaid with a starfish - or - is it a giant starfish with a mermaid?

Wednesday: My talented friend Lisa at Priti Studios posted a photo of herself and I decided to try to draw her!

Thursday: Back to zen doodling.... I'm liking this one very much!

Friday: Was going to zen doodle but I wanted (needed) colour so I decided to colour in sections with my Carte D'Ache watercolour crayons. Fun!

Saturday: Continuing with my idea from yesterday but with the CED2010 theme of WATER and Inspiration Avenue's weekly challenge of SIMPLICITY in mind.

Sunday: A sketch still with the WATER theme and Blue Chair Diary's Sunday Sketches in mind. 

Looking forward to seeing your efforts for this week! Hope you have a great one ahead!

Sunday Sketching 21Sept2010 The Sea Awaits

Here is my little effort for Sunday Sketching with Sophia at Blue Chair Diary.

As always, my scanner in't great with pencil and I don't press hard enough but double clicking on the image makes it a bit clearer!

I just got my Sketchbook for the Sketchbook Project this week. Are all you Sunday Sketchers participating?

Inspiration Avenue - Simplicity

Usually when I make a circle it is the start of a zen doodle.... and I started with a circle. Such a simple pure form, a circle. After the circle forms, complexity usually enters but I told myself - NO. Do something for the "simplicity" theme challenge at Inspiration Avenue. So instead of a lot of pen work, only a few more lines emerged and then I played with my crayons. Those fun Caran d'Ache ones! So here is my simple image!

Earlier this week, I also did a simple sketch of our friend Lisa at Priti Studios. Let me know if you think it looks like her! 

Wow! I won something!!!

I'm so thrilled! It is not often I am lucky and win something. (Though I do often find 4 leaf clovers!) Yesterday I was lucky and I am one of the grateful winners of Lisa at Priti Studio's pumpkin print!!

Isn't it adorable!! Isn't Lisa ever so talented!

As I was reading her post and writing her a little comment, I had my CED2010 book open to that "blank page", wondering what to create today? Since I have been trying to draw faces lately and her photo in that post was smiling away at me, I decided to draw priti/pretty Lisa!  Sorry Lisa that it is so amateurish!

Thank you again for your beautiful creation! I hope everyone will check out Lisa's blog and see her amazing creativity!

(Now to face that blank page and figure out what to do tonight! )

Back to Reality or CED When Travelling is Hard! Part 1

Just back from a trip to B.C. where we spent the past 10 days visiting friends and family before dropping my daughter off at University of Victoria where she is starting school. It was so wonderful! Well the visiting was! So great to see our fabulous relatives and friends. We live so far away from everyone that we rarely see them. When we do, it is a joy and immense pleasure! The dropping off and saying good-bye was much harder. But I told myself I would think about how excited I am for her rather than how much I will miss her and so all was good! (Well maybe not "good" but....)

Creating in my little CED2010 book however was a MAJOR challenge! Some of these were done on "their day" but others were done before or after. I think trying to create every day is "do-able" for me when I am at home but when travelling, it is sporadic at best! Sometimes - plane, ferry - there is time to draw etc but other times are far too packed with activity. I only brought a few pens and a pencil so there is not much diversity here. Mostly drawing or zen doodles. Here are a bit over half for now. I will post the rest later when I am caught up with "life". (Can one ever be caught up?)

The first few are a continuation of my pencil face sketching from magazines. This time male actors. Any guesses? Again sorry for the scanning quality, my scanner seems to dislike pencil. If you double click the images, they improve a bit.

Monday:

Tuesday:

I also managed to (finally) do another Full Moon Dream Board for Jamie Ridler's monthly Full Moon Dreaming.

Wednesday:

Thursday:

Friday:

Saturday:

Sunday:

Monday:

Tuesday:

Wednesday:

I may post the rest this week or next week when I update. My scanner is stalling again so I guess that's it for today!

I missed seeing everyone's updates! I will try to go through last week's and this week's check-ins to see what you were all up to. I am always in awe! Meanwhile, have a great, creative week!