Exciting news!

OMG.  Ok.  Last time I talked about exciting news that I couldn't actually talk about.. NOW, though, I can!

I am ecstatically excited to announce that I'm going to be on the Artistcellar design team for the next six months!!  Every Wednesday I'll share a new project on the Artistcellar blog using stencils and other awesome goodies.  The first stencil release during my time is SACRED HEARTS, which is extra awesome.  They're doing a blog hop right now, so you should totally check that out.

• Saturday, March 29th – Artistcellar Kickoff
  
• Sunday, March 30th – Jill K Berry
• Monday, March 31st – Chris Cozen
• Tuesday, April 1st – Effy Wild
• Wednesday, April 2nd – Tamara Laporte
• Thursday, April 3rd – Guadalupe Brizuela Cabal

SO MUCH AWESOME already!

Here is the information about the team - they're all awesome, and I can't wait to see what they come up with!

Team:
Gabrielle Javier-Cerulli is an artist, art journaler, and archetype consultant (are you the goddess? the rebel? or the storyteller?) She’s the author of No Ordinary Woman: Tips for Conscious, Creative, and Healthy Living. She is also the creator of the iPad/iPhone app Archetypes4U. Her favorite colors these days are fuchsia and vermillion orange. Her new best friends are ink sprays, however, her long time companions are acrylics.  It’s all about texture, color, and abstract flow in her mixed media work.  She also holds a M.A. in expressive arts therapy.
Websites:
www.GabrielleJavierCerulli.com
www.KnowYourArchetypes.com
My name is Jackie P. Neal from Upstate, N.Y. Since I retired last year, I have renewed my love and passion with Art. There are so many new and cool things in this wonderful artsy world, that I am attempting to try each and every technique and product! What I have discovered, is that my favorites at this point are stenciling, doodling, BRIGHT colors, and collaging with papers and elements. I like to get up around 5 am grab my tankard of coffee and head for the studio- usually not reappearing until 2 or 3:00pm-earlier if a tasty snack is announced! I look forward to creating with you and hopefully inspiring your muse to dance with your creativeness! and remember- Art Is Not Optional.
Website:
www.creatingwithoutcrayons-jackiepneal.com
Renee Zarate: I am a mixed media artist living in New England.  I have been married to my very supportive husband, Joe, for the past 20 years.   My favorite art medium changes often but right now I am working a lot with spray inks and acrylic paints using stencils to achieve unusual backgrounds for card making, art journals and other projects.  I love a challenge so I have been submitting my art work to different magazines for many years now and have been published in 5 different Stampington publications.  I also teach classes sharing different techniques.
Website:
http://renee-boltonhouse.blogspot.com
Sarah Trumpp is a mixed media artist known as ‘that weird girl with the tattoos’ in a teenytiny town in rural New York where she lives with her husband, three kids, six fish, and a tiny goofy Chihuahua.  She has an almost frightening stencil addiction and enough art supplies to open her own store, but she is especially drawn to water-soluble media, spray paint, and acrylics.  She loves circus sideshows, zombies, old mythology, toasters, and glitter nail polish.  She blogs regularly with her BFF at wonderstrange.com and less regularly at wonderstrumpet.blogspot.com.  She thinks you’re awesome.
Website:
Wonderstrange Arts
Theresa Plas is a long time resident of south Florida who works in a variety of media.  Her art is inspired by the brilliant hues and textures of nature. Theresa’s artwork ranges from representational to abstract.  She has developed several series related to the human form.  Recently, printmaking has been added to her body of work.  Theresa’s exhibits include the Arts Arena Gallery in Delray Beach as well as the Boca Museum of Art School in Boca Raton.  She has been selected to be published in the May/June 2014 issue of Cloth, Paper, Scissors.
Website:
http://studio48tango.blogspot.com 

Stuff.

MAN.  Life is crazy.  I have exciting news to share, but I can't share it yet.  Suffice to say, IT IS EXCITING!  SO EXCITING!  OMG!

While waiting for the time when I can talk about this exciting news, I have been making journals with some of my 50 Canvases pieces:

I have two more in the works and about four more on the back burner.  They have all sorts of different pages, including pages from comic books, music sheets, nursery rhymes, Shakespeare, etc.  They are bound with coptic stitch, so they open flat and have little half pages like the one I use for my Chronicles project.  I reallllly love binding books.  Even when yanking the super long string around makes me dump my tea on my laptop.  Whoops!  It survived, though, so yay. 

I found this picture on Facebook with no information about the creator or design, and I love the pattern but can't actually find it anywhere, so if anyone has ANY information about it, I'm all ears.  I can probably figure out how to do it, but I'm lazy.

It looks like a Chevron afghan with spike stitches every two rows.. until that top row where it looks like there are more than two rows.. so confusing.  I love it though.  

Thanks for stopping by!

WOYWW: Stars

I have been doing 29 Faces this month, and I have been tying in Greek Mythology as much as possible with it.  I drew these girls on stars to represent the Pleiades a couple of weeks ago, but I finally got around to finishing them last night and today - each one takes forever to color since it's colored pencil.  They're finished off with acrylics on birch plywood 5" stars.

So this is what my workdesk looked like when I woke up this morning:

I sealed them with fixative, piled them up and then immediately started working on a canvas for my 50 Canvases video.  I was sitting here typing this and checking for shiny on the canvas (to see if the gel medium was dry yet), and I thought this was a cool view, so this is what's on my workdesk right now:

The two most important things in this video:  Tea and lipbalm.

So yeah!  That's what I'm up to today.  Now off to see what everyone else is doing.

Learn more about WOYWW here!

WOYWW: A mess!

I was looking at this mess and trying to figure out how I could finish this moleskine spread I am working on without having to clean it up when I remembered it's Wednesday and time for WOYWW.

I am trying to get this moleskine out the door since it was due at the beginning of the month and I am having serious problems with it.  I am also waiting for ink to thaw, which is awesome.. haha!  AND I need to upgrade my computer from 32 bit to 64 bit windows, so that's why those discs are there.  IT NEVER STOPS being overwhelming around here. ;)

Chronicles, Lifebook, and 29 Faces

I am usually weird about letting things do double duty.  I don't know why!  I probably would have finished the 30 in the 30 with paintings to spare if I would have used everything I painted, but I didn't.  Cause I'm dumb.  I really don't want to bomb another challenge, so I'm going to double duty as much as I need to this time and not even feel bad about it.  Okay maybe a little bad. 

If you've been following along with wonderstrange,  you know I've been doing what I call "anti-journaling."  If you aren't following along, you can check out this week's total spread by going clicky-clicky. 

But, face-wise, here's my main spread:

Three faces! BOOM.

The popups were part of Jane Davenport's Lifebook lesson this week - I never do the Lifebook lesson.  I watch the videos, absorb the techniques, and move on.  But... POPUPS.  Plus one of the prompts for Chronicles this week was to actually do a lesson.  It's like I wrote that JUST FOR ME (I totally did).  The popups were supposed to represent three positive qualities that you appreciate in other people (and therefore in yourself), so I did that.  Sort of.  As much as I ever do anything that means anything.. hahaha

the Buddha represents being 'zen', in my definition, not little piddly crap bother you

the mime represents creativity, or thinking out of the box.

even though this isn't a face, the castle in the clouds represents dreaming big

and here's a closeup of the weird dude on the other page:

He doesn't have anything to do with Lifebook - I was just experimenting with colored pencils on pastel ground.

I am working on more Greek mythological women on wood bits, but yay I'm up to 6!  I'm only five days behind :D  That's like a Christmas miracle. 

29 Faces 1, 2 and 3

Since this is the first time I'm doing 29 faces, I figure, screw it, I may as well do the MOST TIME CONSUMING THING EVER.  Yeah.  My colored pencils have been whining at me, though, so I guess it's time.  I have a billion of these wood shapes, so I'm happy to be using them!

My first three faces, Heart of Stone, Heart of the Hunt, and Heart of Death (Medusa, Artemis, and Persephone):

They don't look like much right now, but hopefully they'll be more interesting by the time I drag my ass off to bed.

EDIT:  I guess they're more interesting?  I still need to stripe the edges of Medusa and Artemis, but I love Artemis' crazy complicated hair:

WOYWW - the maiden voyage!

I love snooping on people's workspaces - when someone shows their space in mid-creation it makes me all super giddy.  How is it that I have never heard of WOYWW (what's on your workdesk Wednesday) until today?  They are already 243 weeks in!  Thank goodness for Carmen or I'd still be living in the dark like a mushroom.

I am still working on trying to catch up on the 30 in 30, but today I have to do a video, so I am going to get even more behind.  Maybe I can cut myself some slack and give myself until the February 10th since I didn't start until January 10th?  Maybe not.  I'm still stuck on this drippy watercolor technique and painting as fast as I can - I only have three watercolor blocks at the moment (wait.. do I have more?  I might have some huge ones.. I could do multiples on one sheet!  OMG!).

I think maybe being happy and not bored with what I'm doing counts.  Quality over Quantity.  Anyway - enough of my blathering - here is my workdesk, amazingly clean today!

Now I am going to force myself to do yoga even though my triceps feel like they've been blasted with acid.  I guess technically they have!