I created this page during a live show {technical difficulties and all} yesterday.

After getting Pixie’s permission to use her fun saying I created this little illustrated or whimsical painting of “Chill Your Melon”. I’m very pleased with the final outcome.

I had to rush towards the end as the technical problems had eaten up over an hour of the show which means I skimped on the finishing touches to the face. But to tell you the truth I like it that way. I like that there are plenty of rough brush strokes and not every detail has been seen to.

I especially love those watermelon seeds. So cute!

What started out as a great day. Off to get the last pieces to get my video equipment set up properly for my upcoming bi-monthly live art show. I was excited.

Then I get that dreaded phone call. My daughter was driving my car and it over heated on her and then just stalled in the middle of traffic.

A look at it the next day and something has broken inside of it.

So now it is off to the dealership to be checked for repairs and to determine if it is warranty or not. I am really hoping it is warranty. It is why I bought a car with a fantastic warranty.

So what started out as “oh happy day” ended up as pure “craptastic”.

But look, my lettering is improving!

Hope your weekend is going better than mine!

I really enjoyed playing with adding in my writing which is something I never thought I would enjoy. Or like to look at. But I am embracing my handwriting and Traci has really helped me to see that it can be done!

I do think I got a little crazy with the layers of stencils. I might have gone a bit off the path with my new dots stencil

But I plan to create my quick backgrounds for next weeks class just as Traci demonstrated so that I can have them for week 4.

Are you taking Traci’s class? If so what have you made? I would love to see everyone’s doodled pages!

I know, toilet rolls. But they are just so cute {don’t they remind you of tin cookie cutters?}. I could see using these or a variation of this in several little artsy projects.

I sprayed mine with inks, painted them with gesso and acrylics, and plan to edge them with gold and black eventually. I just have to wait because I need one more.

Nothing like asking everyone in the house if they need a new roll each time they come out of one of the bathrooms

My having been a mixed-media artist for a while now my family doesn’t think twice of this type of behavior anymore.

PS: I almost forgot I will have another live art show this Sunday. Look for the link on my Facebook page {or profile if we are friends there} Saturday night. I will be creating another mixed-media portrait, this time with a theme. And this whole art show business? Well it will become a regular thing every other Sunday! So you might want to like my fan page for link posts to the shows.

This journey into art has been one great discovery after another. Sometimes it is the discoveries that have kept me going when I struggled and almost gave up.

A couple of days ago I had one of those discoveries. A personal discovery. A milestone really. One I had pretty much given up hope of ever achieving.

You see this entire page was created with just paint. No drawing {ok, I outlined the flowers and stems after they were painted}.

What I am really talking about here is the face. I started with just shading in the features and slowly building them up into this cute and rather moody girl.

I never touched her with pen or pencil or anything other than a paint brush. Sigh.

I am quite pleased with myself and I have proven to my stubborn internal critic that practice really does work.

In keeping with the theme of just using paint to create I added a lot of water to my brush and made a quick field of flowers.

And like I said I did use pen to outline them and draw the stems. I do have a fine liner brush, but I was satisfied with my triumph of the face and didn’t feel the need to prove anything more to myself.

If you think you can’t do something, just keep at it. This took me what? Three years or so to accomplish, but the joy and satisfaction was worth every moment!