Creative Tuesday - It was the angel's bedtime...

and she fell fast asleep on her irresistibly soft pillow-top cloud. Immediately she started dreaming of....

poker playing sheep?

Who knew!!??

(Initial pencil sketch)

Was I dreaming when this popped out of my head as I thought about Mr. Toast's Creative Tuesday theme of Bedtime? Who knows!? (It sure surprised me!)

I hope all of you, my wonderful art friends, have a great almost two weeks. It is extremely likely that I will  be out of touch as I am leaving soon on vacation and then have guests arriving immediately upon my return!  See you at Sunday Sketches on March 13th. 

And stay tuned - the big debut of what Kristin and I have been plotting is March 18th! Save the date! We hope you will come play with us!!

BREATHE!

BREATHE  is the theme for this week's Inspiration Avenue challenge. I've had ideas brewing since I first read the announcement post! This is what I came up with. (I had a bit of a problem with the words and tried using a letter stencil at first. Mistake. So free hand with a paint brush it was. Anyone have suggestions on techniques to handle wording better?)

(I know see that the gold wording isn't as clear in the scan as it is in reality. It says "Breathe Life into your CREATIONS".)

Great theme for this week's challenge! I'm looking forward to seeing what everyone does with it!

Breathe also made me think of this wonderful song!

Enjoy!!

Opposites

The theme for this month's Sketchbook Challenge is OPPOSITES. This started me thinking about colour theory and colour wheels. Purple and yellow are opposite each other on the colour wheel. The yin/yang symbol  represents opposites (though I know there is much more to it than that). And I wanted to further represent opposites within each colour so I zen doodled this painted version with hard lines in purple and softer, more flowing lines in yellow/gold.

I wish the scan beds of these printers were just a bit larger or maybe I just need a bit smaller sketchbook to prevent the shading and buckling here! 

Are you participating in the Sketchbook Challenge? 

Playing in my Art Journal

One of the things I want to do more of in 2011** is art journaling. I'm not sure what I'm doing really and it's taking me a while to get the hang of it. I am hoping my journals will be a thinking space as well as a playing with art place. Blank pages here seem even harder to start on than were the CED2010 books I did last year!

I started the page below when life was threatening to overwhelm me this month and all my little to-dos were falling through the cracks. The branches are (some of) my to-dos and where I have made progress I planned to add green leaves.

I wasn't sure how many to-dos I had when I started with this idea. (So I have a second tree ready to go on the following page (below)!)  As you can see by the green leaves above I have made some progress. And I have more leaves to paint on tonight!

(No to-dos yet but maybe soon!)

Below is another work in progress (WIP). Something I read said it was easier to start if you had a background smeared on and ready to go. I'm not convinced of that for myself (as I look as ten plus pages of smeared paint...), so on this WIP I started doodling. The writing is really just whining about this not working for me (Hey, what are journals for if not to get the whining out of your head so you can move on?) I'm actually starting to like the doodling on top of the paint so I will probably zen doodle the rest of it.

What about you? Do you art journal? Do you just do art or use it as a journal to work through your thoughts? Do you prepare backgrounds in advance or wait until an idea strikes and work it out then? Or do you start with a crisp blank page? Want to link to a few of your favourite pages so we can visit?

Thanks!

xo

EVA (Art Journalling Newbee)

** Kristin and I have a plan for the "other". And it is something we have heard many of you express the same thoughts about! Stay tuned! It will be fun for us all! (Launch date is March 18th.)

Sunday Sketching - Dreaming of Fishies

One of my favourite activities is snorkeling. Not something I can do much of in the cold white North. It doesn't take much to make me happy, just fishies - even a few Sergeant Majors will do it - however the more the merrier! It has been a while since I have been South and I have been yearning to go again. Finally I've scheduled a week in March on the Mayan Riviera where it sounds like there is good snorkeling off the beach at the resort.  Meanwhile, I dream of....

(Initial Pencil Sketch)

I wasn't around the past few weeks of Sunday Sketching with Sophia at Blue Chair Diary and I have seriously missed all of you and the sketching! I'm looking forward to today's visit! Hope this finds you all well!

LUCKY

To me, and to many others, four-leaf clovers have always symbolized luck. And I am lucky. Almost every time I am near a meadow of clover, I will look down and find at least one clover with four leaves. I have even found one with five, and six! (Does that make me even luckier?) If I find them when I am with someone, I give it to them and if I'm alone I stick them under my desk blotter or in a book. Sometimes I find them again (in books) and I feel like I get a second bit of luck! They also symbolize love to me*. So today, I have done a zen-doodled version for Mr. Toast's Creative Tuesday challenge on the LUCKY theme:

*So why do four leaf clover symbolize love to me? First of course are the heart shaped leaves. They always make me smile. But mostly it is because of a story a friend told me about his father who was always lucky in finding four-leafed clovers. When he (the father) was older and in seriously declining health, he wasn't outdoors much (and probably wasn't feeling very lucky). So on his wife's birthday, he had his sons take him outside to sit on the grass. He sat there and found enough four-leaf clovers to present his wife with a lovely birthday bouquet! A bouquet!! I have always thought that to be the most loving and romantic gesture I have ever heard about! And one that only the lucky could have given!

This zen-doodle is also inspired by a lucky little boy, Artoo, the son of I am the Diva. Her Weekly Zentangle Challenge (#9) asks us the incorporate her new tangle "Artoo" into the design. While not strictly a zentangle, this little sketch and pen piece of mine plays with that. I'm so happy Artoo is recovering well!!

To Kat and any of my other blog friends who have noticed my absence/missed me - I'm baaaaaackkkkk! But busy, busy and I haven't had much of a chance to visit anyone yet or do anything creative (other than business presentations) until now. I hope to get back to normal and visit you all soon!

In the meanwhile, I wish you LUCK!  

xoxo

EVA

A Valentine for Creative Tuesday

It started as a sketch and morphed into a zen doodle once the pens came out. Inspired by Mr. Toast's Creative Tuesday theme of "Valentine" (as was my Sunday Sketch this week), this is my little submission for this week's challenge. .

It may also be a wedding card for a wedding I am attending this weekend in Whistler B.C. 

I'll be out of touch likely all this weekend so hope everyone has a great rest of the week!