A Visit to the Deer Park (Nara, Japan)

One of the delightful places we visited in Japan was Nara, home of a temple and a large park where the deer are considered sacred. They wander among the tourists (including large groups of Japanese school children).

They are very tame, and they have even been trained to bow if you offer them a deer cracker.

One of the things I did on my vacation was to keep a travel journal, where I wrote about the day's activities and added simple water color drawings and sketches. Here's the page I did about Nara.

I really enjoyed the process of sketching during the trip, and I"ll be sharing more pages, along with photos of some of my favorite places in Japan.

Memorandum Monday: A Return to Creativity

Welcome to Memorandum Monday! A chance to share your weekend adventures and reflect on new experiences, hosted by Sian of From High in the Sky. 
Last week I went to a crop and put all my Christmas card photos from 2015 into the proper album. It was great to complete a project and got me in the mood for scrapbooking. So, I organized my photos from 2013 (the only year I have printed and undone) and then sat down to order photos from 2015 and 2016 (somewhere along the line, I had already completed 2014). I discovered that most of my 2015 photos were on my iphone and decided to just print them at shutterfly. Well, this weekend was the first time I used the shutterfly app to download pictures off my iphone, and it worked like a dream! 
After downloading them, I got on my computer and made the first photobook ever for Henry (of their soccer national championship tournament) and ordered all my photos for 2015 and 2016. I was so pleased with myself!
I'm very excited to return scrapbooking and have a few dates planned with friends over the next month. Next step, organizing a few page kits so it will be easy to complete them.
What else was I up to this weekend? Gardening - I've been trying to spend about half hour every few days outside pulling weeds and cleaning up. Getting ready for spring! 
I also did a little doodling of hearts that might make their way into my art journals. For these, I totally owe my inspiration to Laurie over at Lone Black Bird. She has printable heart coloring pages that I copy and use as a jumping off point. Here's a page I made last week:

They're in my sketchbook. I plan to use them as a reference for art journal pages.
What were you up to this weekend? Anything new to share?
Have a great week, and thank you all so much for your comments on my brave post from Friday. Your support means more than you know. I love having a safe place to share.

Do you mandala?

My friend Deb of Paper Turtle has been drawing mandalas; lots and lots of mandalas. Her love of mandalas and the joy they bring her shines through on her blog, and she created this tutorial to bring that joy to others. On a recent business trip, I took along a sketch pad and decided to make a few mandalas.

 

These were the first two I made. They were pretty clean and basic. The only art supplies I brought along were a small container of water color crayons, a few pens (black and white) and a water brush. The top one I drew free-hand, but for the others, I used a plastic cup to help draw circles. And then something happened. . . . 

My mandalas turned in to art journal pages, with lots of writing. .  . . 

And my own mandala style started to emerge. My favorite one of these five is the one up top because of the blended colors and the journaling. I really enjoy making mandalas. It's very calming and it's a perfect thing to do while on the plane or sitting in an airport. I only wish that my sketch pad was square and that I had a selection of circle templates. But I will definitely continue to make mandalas, especially when I'm on the road.
And I'm not the only one making mandalas. Over at Deb's World, Deb (English Deb, not Arizona Deb) made some pink/pink/orange mandalas and this blue/blue/green mandala.  She's making mandalas for Summer of Color. And clearly enjoying herself. What about the rest of you? Do you mandala?

Thoughts on Sketching, Scrapbooking and Balancing Creative Endeavors

As part of my one little word for this year ("selfhood"), I'm exploring my various creative endeavors by setting a different creative intention each month and exploring where that bit of creativity fits in my life. In January, I focused on sketching and began to develop a style I liked. Here are my last two January sketches:

In February,I've been keeping up with the sketching, but in a faster and more relaxed style that fits me. Here are two recent examples of what I mean:

I did these two sketches in about 15 minutes while waiting for my daughter to be ready to leave for an appointment. They fulfilled my need for a quick art fix and are the types of things that I can incorporate into my art journals. I think this is where I need to go with my drawing/find arts. I don't think I have the patience or desire to learn how to draw better, paint, etc. As a result, I think I'm going to officially give up on the Studying Under the Masters class which I bought in 2014 and worked about half-way through. It was a good class, but not something which feeds my creative passions at the moment. 
In February, I've started to focus on scrapbooking. I made two huge photobooks at shutterfly for Clara, using her cross country and track photos from last year. I got these done during the 50% off sale on hard cover books. I need to make one more book but want to wait for the next sale. I also updated my Christmas card photo albums and ordered a bunch of current photos to scrap. I'm trying pernsnickety prints for ones taken with my big camera and ordered some iphone prints from shutterfly. I have found that neither the shutterfly nor the persnickety iphone apps work very well - they tend to crash half way through the ordering process. Very, extremely frustrating!  Look for some actual scrapbook pages coming soon. I also need to do some organizing to figure out what other photos I have to be scrapped (either printed already or on my computer hard drive).

I'm also very much enjoying the still life photo class I've been taking. 

Which brings me to the question of balance. I'm trying to figure out to make time for all my various creative pursuits. How do I fit in scrap booking and sketching and photography? Let alone art journaling, card making and the other intentions I have lined up to examine this year? Are you able to balance a variety of creative endeavors? If so, how? Do you do a "fly by the seat of your pants approach?" Or something more structured?

Setting an Intention for February: Scrapbooking

In January, I spent time on sketching to figure out where it fit in my artistic life. I found that I enjoy it and plan to continue with it. But, quietly, in the background. I also spent a lot of time with photography (especially still life photography) and found that I definitely plan to continue with this in a fairly major way.
In February, I want to focus on scrapbooking: where I am, where I want to be, and how I want to proceed in the future. Scrapbooking (after photography) was my first foray into the world of art and craft. It's faded from my life in the last few years, and I want to figure out where it fits. And this is the month to do that.
Any advice welcome.

Sketchy Thoughts for Monday

I'm continuing my sketching practice this month, using a list of prompts from Athena. 

For the black and white prompt, I decided to try sketching Luna again, giving myself permission to do something that is more like an illustration that a realistic rendition.

I'm finding that what I really enjoy is working with my water colors, adding them to my basic sketches. I also find it important to start with a reference photograph but then let go and create an image that feels right to me.

For yesterday's prompt, I used the Frank Lloyd Wright quote which I feature on my blog and illustrated it with a Wright-inspired design.
There's about one week left in January, and I will keep sketching for the rest of the month and then probably look for another prompt list because I do find this a nice artistic outlet that I can do while watching television or listening to the radio. 

Sketching: Hitting my Stride

I'm making it a priority this month to make time to sketch, in hopes of deciding whether sketching is an art form I want to continue with or give up on. I'm working with 31 prompts posted by Athena (you can see them in the left side bar on my blog).  I managed four more sketches this week (see my sketches from last week here).
The sketch up top is my favorite. After sketching lightly in pencil, I added black and brown stabilo-all pencil before water coloring. I really like the finished effect. 
I was also pretty happy with these two sketches:

For all of these, I let go of the idea of trying to create an exact replica and instead focused on creating art which looks more like an illustration. That made me happy. For the caydanlik, I added my own color and pattern to a tea pot with the requisite shape.
My least favorite sketch for this week was based on the prompt for a recently received gift:

I love the watch Henry gave me for Christmas, just not my rendition of it. I'm glad I'm undertaking this sketch challenge. I feel like I am developing my sketching style. I also like the way I photographed my sketches this week. So glad to be using my big camera more regularly this year.

Reconsidering my Art Work: Sketching

Day 6 Prompt: A Seed or Pod

One of my goals for 2015 is to reconsider my art work to decide what I want to do more of and what I want to let go. I've been dabbling in sketching for the last few years and still haven't decided if I love it or not. I found a list of 31 prompts for sketches in January at Athena's Creative Journey, and I decided to use the list to practice sketching. I'm not planning to sketch every day, but do want to give sketching an honest try. You can see the full list in the left hand column of my blog.  During the first week, I managed three sketches. I think my most successful sketch is for day #6 (above). It's based on one of my photos that I'm using for the postcard swap.

Day 1 Prompt: Something you can't bare to throw away but probably should

At first, I wasn't sure what to do for prompt #1, but I do have this really ratty pair of purple socks that I sleep in. They need a good throwing away, but they are really comfy! Here's the picture I used as the basis for my sketch.

I'm not wild about this last sketch - our puppy Luna is much cuter than this. LOL!

Day 4 Prompt: An animal

I think what I learned this first week is that I don't like sketching something that needs to be too realistic. I'm looking forward to continuing to sketch this month and will let you know how it turns out.

September Art Plans: LSNE, 29 Faces and Facing the Facts Class

It's September, and I'm starting a new art project, which brings together several different online classes and memes. I'm making an art journal featuring faces and journaling about things I am learning each day in September.  The journal is for the Shimelle class "Learn Something New Everyday." I'm learning how to draw and paint a certain style of face from the Dina Wakley class "Facing the Facts." As an extra bit of serendipity, Ayala Art is hosting 29 Faces in September, so I'll be linking up there as well!
Although I'm making this art journal for LSNE, I'm also snapping pictures on instagram as I go through the day of things that might be the basis for the lesson I incorporate in my journal.  For September 1, I took this picture off my deck the first thing in the morning:

The lesson I jotted down was "A breath of fresh air is a great way to start the day." Although there were other possible contenders, I really liked the feel of this lesson to start September. If you want to follow my LSNE posts on instagram, my user name is rinda1961, and I'm using #lsned to flag the posts. Although I'm "private," on instagram, just ask and I'll approve our follow request.  I'll probably also feature my instagram photos here on my blog as well, when appropriate.
Are you doing Learn Something New Everyday? If so, what format are you using? Anyone else doing 29 faces? If so, let me know in the comments, and I'll follow you. Also, let me know if you're posting in instagram, and I'll add you to my feed.
Happy September everyone!

PPF: A Peek Inside my Sketchbook and Art Journal

It's been a long time since I've pulled out my sketchbook and art journal, but there's something about spring which pushed my muse in that direction. So, I'm linking up with Paint Party Friday to share this water color painting in my art journal.

And a few sketches in my sketchbook, featuring "Things I See on a Run."  The second deer is kindof goofy, but I like the first deer pretty well. And I enjoyed trying to figure out how best to paint those awesome flowers ("Pride of Madeira") that are everywhere on the coast side these days.  Where is your spring time muse pushing you?
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Thanks to Kristin and Eva for hosting Paint Party Friday.  To see more painterly goodness, click on this link.

PPF: A Crowning Achievement

Finally - a painted art journal page for Paint Party Friday!  The last few weeks I've been posting paintlesss art journal pages from an online class I've been taking. The process of creating those paintless pages has been really helpful in setting my muse free to create in a larger format that incorporates collage of paper, images that are photographs which I took, my drawing and paint.   I created this page for the January "crown" challenge over at the Art Journal Journey Challenge Blog.  The journaling reads "She misplaced her crown in a foreign country, and her world went sideways."    I feel like I am moving into a new phase in my style.
This page is in my road atlas art journal.  I thought I'd share a couple of pages in progress, so that you could get a sense of the backgrounds I'm creating on.

What do you think?  Do you see a progression in my style in these pages?
You can see more painted pages by visiting Paint Party Friday at this link.

Playing with Paper 53 (Digital Creating)

I've been spending some time playing with the Paper 53 app on my ipad, and my favorite thing to do, so far, is to make watercolor blob faces (a technique I learned - using real water colors - in the 101 Faces class offered by Carla Sonheim). It's fairly easy, and I'm happy with the results.
My attempts at digital art journaling with the Paper app, on the other hand, was not as successful:

I'm keeping it small because I don't really like it - LOL! But I learned a lot while doing it, and I'm posting it so that, a year or so from now, I can see how far I've come! 

It's been fun to experiment and bring the skills I've learned in IRL drawing, painting and art journaling to the digital sketching world.  The eraser and rewind functions are particularly amazing, and I wish they existed in real life.

Have you tried anything new lately?

This and That . . . (sketches, freebies and a winner)

I finally had a chance to do two things I've been wanting to do for a while: have a artist's date devoted to sketching and start on Alisa Burke's Sketchbook Delight, Part 2 class, which I purchased quite a while ago. So far, the class is focusing on everyday objects and trying to capture them in a somewhat realistic manner.

It's fairly difficult, but I'm enjoying it! 
I also just received two styluses to use with the Paper 53 app for the ipad and purchased the enhanced creativity pack.  This has given me the opportunity to create digital water color pictures.   I'm facing a pretty steep learning curve with the app, but I'm willing to share my first attempt - a picture of our cat, J.J.

I admit it's pretty goofy, but I'm posting it so that later I can see how far I've come.   If you want to see some fantastic Paper 53 drawings, check out this post on Alisa Burke's blog. It's definitely something to aspire to.  These projects are part of my 2013 intention to finish some existing classes and projects.  Anyone else knocking some things off your to do list?
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There's a couple of other interesting FREE things I wanted to bring to everyone's attention:
Strathmore Paper just announced their line up of free 2013 Classes.  I took a few in 2012, with mixed results, but they're free!  You can sign up at this link.
If you've been enjoying my "dry" art journal pages, check out Kelly Kilmer's blog (here).  She shares a lot of information about doing this type of collage. 
If you're looking for some art journal inspiration, check out this free workshop (21 prompts on the topic of "get lost") offered by Artsyville.
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Finally, I've been remiss in announcing the winner from my 2013 Blog Plan and Give-Away post.  The winner is Carolyn of the Mess, Muddle and Fun blog. I am looking forward to creating a custom package to send her.  Thanks to everyone who commented and gave me feedback on my blog. It seems like eclectic diversity is what you all want; so that's what you'll keep seeing! 

Playing with "Paper"

I recently purchased the "Paper"app by 53 for the ipad. It is a sketching application that has limited options, which, paradoxically, makes it so easy to use that your creativity is allowed to flow. Since you cannot spend a lot of time making complex choices, you simply choose a drawing tool and color and begin. If you don't like a drawing, you simply put it in the trashcan. The basic app comes with one virtual drawing tool (a fountain pen), an eraser and seven colors.  I took my ipad with me to the hair salon today, and I used the basic set up to make the Gaudi-inspired heart above and this face:

It's kindof inexact and sketchy, but i like it.  I made both of these drawings using my finger, but I just ordered two styluses today (a drawing stylus and a brush stylus), which should give me more flexibility and control.  I am also going to purchase the paper creative bundle which will give me four more virtual sketching tools (a pencil, a bold marker, an ink pen and a brush), plus the ability to blend the colors to create a custom color palette.
I'm not that much of a digital artist, but I'm excited by the possibilities of "paper." It's a quick way to sketch when all I have is my ipad. 
I was inspired by Journal Girl who is doing 365 days of digital journaling, but there are lots of other videos (this is a good one) and blogs out there about "paper"  (for example, check out these 53 outstanding works of art made with  paper). Have any of you given it a try? What do you think?

PPF: Gifts of the Season (A Peek Inside My Sketchbook)

Not much time for art these days, but I did collect some eucalyptus leaves and seed pods on a recent walk with the dogs in the nearby hills. I thought they fit the Sketchbook Challenge theme for this month: gifts.  These bits of nature really are gifts to me.  I find it interesting how each season the Earth offers up different gifts for me to find on my nature walks.
I've also been thinking about the Virgin Mary, at least in part because of the Twelve Days of Mary hosted by Recuerda mi Corazon blog. So, I did a few sketches thinking about what makes an image of Mary iconic:

My mind lighted on four different things: a golden halo; a blue head scarf; a sacred heart and the Baby Jesus (who, one could argue, is the ultimate gift of the season!).  These are only sketches, and I might try my hand at a larger painting that incorporates the halo, head scarf and heart.
I'm linking these to the Sketchbook Challenge and to Paint Party Friday, since these were all painted with my watercolors (to see other painterly goodness, click on this link).  And I'm wondering, what do you think are the gifts of this season? How would you express them in art?

My October Sketchbook (and more)

I've got a lot of artistic impulses rumbling around inside my brain this October, including doing some sketches on the "Cabinet of Curiosities" theme over at The Sketchbook Challenge.  And artwork for Dias de los Muertos.

This calaca named "Butterfly" was inspired by the Fall Fearless and Fly challenge at Artists in Blogland.  The first challenge called for warm colors and inventing the future.  I love the way that Dias de los Muertos connects our pasts with our future, so I'm posting to that challenge.  
I've got a couple of other October projects on the way, focusing on Halloween and The Art of Remembering.   Here are some prayer cards and paper from Echo Park's  Chillingsworth collection which I will be using for those:

What's on your creative agenda this month? And please don't say Christmas stuff! LOL!
See you tomorrow for Storytelling Sunday  . . .