Painting again!

It's been a while since I have posted here... 5 years! Eek! And while I have painted, I haven't shown anything except on instagram... With Paint Party Friday ending at the end of Year 11, I wanted to post at least once more.

One of my friends collects Santas and I really wanted to paint one for her, and I always love adding to my nutcracker collection...

Santa for Yolanda

Nutcracker 1

Santa Nutcracker

Three Kings Nutcrackers and their portrait

I have a few other works in progress which hopefully I will finish before I need my dining room table but...

Thanks to all of you who continue to participate in Paint Party Friday! I'm not very good at visiting these days but I do look at much of your lovely art when preparing the posts with Kristin each week.

Paint Party Friday - Week 3: Kitchen/Coffee Paintings

Two paintings finished!!! I even managed to sign them (something I find to be a major challenge). These are 6x6 and were done with a kitchen in mind.

Coffee

(Mark to right of cup is on my scanner, I discovered. Fixed but not rescanned.)

Coffee Beans

I am thrilled that the Paint Party Friday check-ins have helped me make such progress in my painting goals! I did work a bit on my poppy painting, trying green for the stamen but again they got lost in the already dark center. Hopefully by next week I will have figured it out. Maybe yellow...

This is a page for my art journal. After I finished painting it (watercolours), I thought it looked rather nice and worth sharing. A classic old school. Now to write all over it!

Looking forward to seeing you at the party!

Zen and Fruit, Fruit and Zen

This week's creations were much like last week, I continued to try pastelled fruit and did more zen doodles. Different fruit, though. I smiled when I saw Leah's theme for April "5 Senses" as I felt my fruit explorations fit the description nicely: Sight - looking at the fruit closely to try to make my version somewhat like the original; Sound - especially when biting into some of them after their portrait was complete; Taste - yummy!; Smell - the riper the fruit, the richer the smell; Touch - holding them to eat, to figure out texture, to peel. Working with pastels on these fruits has been interesting. I've learned you always need an extra piece of paper around to rub off the excess colour the crayons pickup when blending. What I haven't yet learned is how to create a sharp edge for outlines and details.

So here are my activities for the week:

Monday:

Tuesday:

Wednesday: I liked these but couldn't get the colour quite right. None of my red pastels was the red of the strawberries. Out of a 50 pastel pack, I'd thought I'd have better luck. 

Thursday:

Friday:

Saturday:

Sunday:

So what else did I create this week? I tried a couple of new recipes with changes so that kind of qualifies as creating. I continued my exercise program and exercised 5 times this week - my work on creating a fit body continues... (will it ever end???). I participated in the Sunday Sketching challenge again that Sophia at Blue Chair Diary hosts. And I finished a second acrylic that I started last week. I have a wonderful hydrangea tree at my front door that blooms in the fall - and tried to capture one of its flowers here.

Enough of me. What about you? Did you have a good creative week? What was the most fun for you? I look forward to checking out your work on Leah's Mr. Linky! Thanks again to all of you who have commented. Have a great week ahead!

A Fruity kinda Week!

Still going strong! Well, perhaps that is an exaggeration. Some days, I have more fun and more ideas than others. What about you? But I am keeping at it. This week I had a bit of a theme. While shopping, I thought that I really should eat more healthy food and bought a bunch of fruit. On Monday, I decided to draw some of it, so the major focus this week has been pastelled fruits with a couple of Zen Doodles thrown in for fun! Lovely fruit to look at and all very delicious to eat afterwards!!

Mango Monday:

Tasty Gala Apple Tuesday:

Happy St. Patrick's Day!! (aka Wednesday):

Thirst Quenching Kiwi Thursday:

Fabulous Nectarine Friday:

Saturday:

Sweet Raspberry Sunday:

Along with CED2010, I have been working on a few other projects this year. Fitness is one: - and I exercised 5 times again this week (Yay!!). Cleaning and De-cluttering my House is another: - mostly this has been a room by room superclean. This month was my basement family room and I decided to clear off the desk that used to be stacked with old computer equipment (ugh). Then we discovered the secure computer recycling depot and now it is all gone (Yay!). So I cleaned the rest of the clutter off of it and decided to use it to try out some painting. Starting small, I bought some little 4x6 canvas boards and acrylics at the dollar store (I do own more expensive paints but I thought I'd first try these) and thought I'd experiment with a flower. So here it is:

There are two others started but not complete. Maybe next week. And I tried participating in Blue Chair Diary's Sunday Sketches.

So that was my creative week. What about yours? I'm looking forward to reading all about them!