A Fond Farewell to Paint Party Friday!

11 Years ago Kristin and I started Paint Party Friday (PPF) as a weekly venue to encourage ourselves to paint more and share what we have done during the week with others doing the same. And while we haven't participated much due to increasing frantic lifestyles, we have kept working behind the scenes to have PPF available to those who wanted to paint, create art and party with art friends. But this is the last week of PPF. Our 11th Anniversary. So I went through my blog and was amazed at all the paints, doodles and drawings I created - both before and for PPF.

So here is the collage of some of my Favourites. Please feel free to wonder through as there may be others you prefer. Now I am again inspired to create more! When I do, I will most likely post to my Instagram instead of here.

a few of my Favourite... creations!

Thanks to all of you who have visited over the years. I have seen amazing work from you and others and have thoroughly enjoyed our interactions!

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.

Daily Art Agenda

It's been awhile... I have quietly been creating this year, posting a bit to instagram, working with Kristin at PPF, though rarely do I seem to get to my little blog here...

For 2017, I decided to fill a daily (office type) agenda with art - sometimes little paintings, or drawings, or doodles - either doing daily creations or a two day spread. My goal is that this book will be fat and full by the end of the year.

Here are a "few" pages so far...

Inspired by a little statue I bought...

Chinese/Lunar New Year

Valentine's Day

Tree

An experiment with bunnies...

Landscape

Inspired by a quote by Hafiz:

Inspired by an instagram photo:

The view from my window - squirrels playing (with some bleed-through from the doodle on the next page... oops!)

This is some of what I have been working on. Have you had a creative year so far in 2017?

Creating again...

Hi!

It's been a while since I posted anything and life has been incredibly busy and chaotic especially lately with renovations. I did find a little time to create though (and of course work behind the scenes with Kristin at PPF - creation of a different sort). I am hoping I will have enough time to visit you this weekend, so here are some of my paintings since my last post...

Balloons in the Setting Sun

Flowers

Spring Branch

Birds on a Wire

Paintings finished on my deck (I so enjoy painting outside... that is over for this year...)

I did a bit of work in my art journal....

How I Spent my Summer

Rainbow Unicorn

Our Moon with Mark Twain quote

Until I went away on vacation, I also participated in Tammy Garcia/Daisy Yellow's ICAD challenge. The first two are a Mondrian look at the colours of my garden...  (Others are posted on my instagram account along with a few photo challenges.)

Garden a la Mondrian #1

Garden a la Mondrian #2

Another theme of mine was Birds:

Blue Herons

Owl

False coloured....(I forget what...)

Colours of my Garden - Abstract

And a few Zen Doodles....

Elephant

Yuri on the Railing

And those are some of the highlights of my creativity this summer. Hopefully it won' be as long until next post! ;)

Happy PPF! Happy Thanksgiving to my fellow Canadians and I look forward to visiting you!

Scenes from my Travel Sketchbook

If I am going away on a relaxing vacation, I often bring a sketchbook and a small selection of water colour paints. Sometimes I get a few pages done, other times none and once (Mexico) I finished the whole sketchbook!

Earlier this month I was in Costa Rica for a week and managed to paint two pages. There were these gorgeous bluebirds, almost like a blue jay but much fancier... they would hang around the pool and as soon as you left your pina colada unattended they would steal the pineapple garnish!

Costa Rican White-Throated Magpie Jay

And of course there were iguanas! My friends suggested I paint this one the colours of the Costa Rican flag....

Costa Rican Iguana

Happy PPF everyone!

Oh - Are you on instagram? I am finally on instagram where I first posted these, and a very few of the photos I took for inspiration. It's kind of fun for sharing a quick photo or for doing a photo challenge.

You can find me at@eva.tbd   

What is the link to your feed?

xoxo

EVA

Gerry the Christmas Giraffe....

Hi again! It has been awhile...

I've been silently hovering in the background at PPF though life has been so busy lately I have rarely had time to paint, or post...

During the summer I started a painting for a friend. It was supposed to be the "smear and circle" style I have been playing around with. She likes giraffes so that was the subject. It looked terrible. I hated it (didn't even take photos of it before...) I put it away but kept thinking how could I fix it and make it fun? Then I had the idea that maybe the giraffe could be a Christmas giraffe and I could paint his spots red and green... and it all started to come together.

His expression is kind of funny. One friend thinks he is planning to take over the world. I think he is eyeing the mistletoe and planning to eat it thus stealing all the Christmas kisses. Mischievous giraffe!

Gerry, the Christmas Giraffe 1

Gerry, the Christmas Giraffe 2

Gerry, the mischievous Christmas Giraffe

I am happy to say that my friend liked him, and I greatly appreciated the incentive to get painting again.

If I am not back posting again before Christmas (very likely), I hope all my PPF friends have a fabulous holiday season and all the best for a happy, healthy and creative 2016!

xoxo

EVA

Happy 4th Birthday PPF!

So hard to believe that is now 4 years since Kristin and I leapt with our idea of creating a weekly painting check-in, Paint Party Friday. It has been such a pleasure to see such astounding art and meet such wonderful artists as you. Thanks so much for partying with us! 

I did get some painting done this week in my journal, including a self portrait to show you "me"! Not sure it was needed as Kristin did such a fun one of both of us with our party hats on! (I was intending to do one of her for this week but as too often happens lately, my week got out of control...) Sorry Kristin. Thank you so much for being such an awesome partner as we get PPF ready to go live each week!

I am so looking forward to seeing what self-portraits and other art everyone did for the party - especially to see what you look like if you did choose to do a selfie! I'd created a few others over the year and was excited to try again. This time I wanted to try this "smear and circle style" I've been experimenting with lately - mostly with birds. (I guess I've only shown one before but I've done more.) This is the first time I've tried it for a person. Almost looks like I have a neck brace on instead of being the shadows ... oh well!

EVA by EVA - smear and circle style

Other journal pages pages done since last post - most of which I plan to write on later with a quote or thoughts are:

Valentine Tree

Birches

Winter

WHO?

This weekend promises to be way too busy again but I plan to visit as many of you as possible. Happy Birthday PPF!