Dream World

I am loving a new book of poems I picked up called The Nine Senses, by Melissa Kwasny. These lines from her poem "The Book of Spells" inspired this digital piece. I've combined some of my own photography and bits of various digital backgrounds I've picked up along the way.

"Here, quiet as stone. A solid that blocks the ears. In our little camp,

sparkling with mica. In the water, which is the color of stones...

... Mouth of

water chewing the world to soft, spitting the hard pebbles of shale

and slate and shadow... Even here,

inland, we hear it sifting."

(from the poem, " The Book of Spells" by Melissa Kwasny)

It has been nice playing with digital art again. It gives me something to do while the paint is drying! ;) Thank you for your comments! I appreciate those of you who have stuck with me. Hugs to all of you!

The Road Not Taken

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I

took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference."

--Robert Frost

It's been a while since I posted. ;) Lots of things going on right now behind the scenes. I'm hoping to have a website up soon where I'll be able to integrate an online shop and my blogs. I haven't forgotten about this blog, though it seems like it. I want to keep this for my digital art which I've sadly neglected. I even had to Google how to do basic things today! *sigh* That's what happens when you don't use something for a while...

Anyway, I wanted to update the blog and start some things rolling.

Answers

It's been a while since I've posted here. I'm taking a class by Katie Kendrick called Layered Impressions. Love it! This journal page shows a face that is the first painting from the class. Obviously they are not supposed to be realistic faces. I love the process she teaches. We are to do a whole series of these. This I can do! :)

I hope to post more regularly from here on out. I'm wanting to get back into my digital art and post more of that here, too.

Edges of Time

The Edges of Time

--Kay Ryan

It is at the edges

that time thins.

Time which had been

dense and viscous

as amber suspending

intentions like bees

unseizes them. A

humming begins,

apparently coming

from stacks of

put-off things or

just in back. A

racket of claims now,

as time flattens. A

glittering fan of things

competing to happen,

brilliant and urgent

as fish when seas

retreat.

Free Spirit

I'm taking the Graffiti of my Life Art Journal Class taught by Dina Wakley. You can read more about it here. I LOVE it! This is one of my pages inspired by the class. The idea is to use poetry, song lyrics or anything that moves you to add to your page once you've got your background finished.

I love poetry and song lyrics so I'm sure I won't have any trouble finding inspiration! :)

Balance

Once again it's been quite a while since I've updated my blog. :( Seems I need to learn a little more about how to balance things in my life better. Things are a little hectic right now but nothing that can't be managed. A few health issues have come up. I'm going to need surgery in December, right before Christmas! Nothing life threatening, just something that has to be tended to.

I'm taking a wonderful painting class that has me very excited. It's called Paint Free (referring to the way you should approach your painting...free of any preconceived notions) and it's taught by the awesome artist Wyanne. Learn more about her and her wonderful art and classes here. I absolutely love this class. It has really been a great experience and I highly recommend it.

Other things going on: I'm stocked up on encaustic supplies and plan to really dig in this Winter and do some serious work with those. So, lots of things in the works.

The piece at the top of this post is a digital one I put together using various elements from Scrapbook Graphics. Tangie Baxter, I believe, supplied most of these elements in one of her art journal kits. This is exactly how I feel lately: trying to balance all of the different things going on lately. Hopefully I'll do a better job of it in the coming weeks!

Love Song

This is a digital piece I did in response to a challenge at Digital Whisper. We were to take an image of smoke and add something to it. I thought this image of smoke looked like a spirit. So I had him meeting this lady in a secluded spot in a pond...

After I made this I realized the challenge was to add the smoke to an existing photo. Oops, I need to read those challenges more carefully. So I thought I would just post it here to my blog. I'm trying to learn some techniques for photomanipulation. I love some of the results you get with that technique.

Here is a journal page I did for my online journaling group:

This is in response to the prompt for a favorite musical instrument. I don't play any instruments but I have always loved the saxophone. And I love jazz music. So, I sketched this little guy playing the sax.

October 13 my hubby and I celebrated our 20 year wedding anniversary! Yay! So I dedicated this page to that event. We were both kind of in shock that it had been that long. A lot has happened over the years. We've lost some family members and have held together strong through many tough times.

I had many good memories making this page. Here's to many, many more to come!

Crumble

This is another digital art journal page. I was going through my digital files and had forgotten about these silhouette shapes. I love them. Their mysteriousness draws me to them. They remind me of ghosts; ghosts of our past selves, maybe.

The text is from a wonderful poem by Frank Bidart called The Old Man at the Wheel. The first part of the poem starts out like this: "Measured against the immeasurable/universe, no word you have spoken/brought light. Brought/light to what, as a child, you thought/too dark to be survived./By exorcism/you survived. By submission, then making./...

Then later in the poem are the two lines I use in this piece: "As you grip the things that were young when/you were young, they crumble in your hands./" The more I read the entire poem, the more I love it.

I receive the journal POETRY every month and it has been a great inspiration in my art lately. Not to mention a big boost to my poetry collection. There is a little paragraph about each poet in the back of the journal that lists their publishing credits. I have been adding some awesome books to my collection through this resource. Yay! ;)

I go back and forth between digital and physical journaling. I am feeling the pull to get back into the studio now. I've finished a page recently where I painted the page only with my fingers; it felt great! I like the freedom of smearing the paint over the page with my hand.

Today the studio calls again. It is supposed to be much cooler this weekend so I can open the windows and set up the exhaust fan. That means I am going to play with my encaustics for the first time in a long while. We shall see what that produces. I have had a few ideas in my head for a while now and I'm not sure how they will translate with the wax. The best way to find out is to experiment!

Everyone Is A Moon

I love the two digital kits called Stark and Void that I found at Deviant Scrap. They are full of inspiration! I used these elements from both kits to create this digital journal page. I loved this quote! It just knocked my Muse off her chair when she saw that! We are so in tune right now with the dark side and all things along those lines. ;)

Another thing I've been thinking about: Jamie Ridler has a wonderful feature at her website called Wishcasting Wednesday. You can sign up to receive an email from her every Wednesday which asks you a question that really gets you thinking. I love those and look forward to every Wednesday's question. You can read more about how it works on her site. It's a great idea! Every week I look at the questions and think about them and always say yeah, I should write about that one.

The question last week was What do you wish for less of? I think she meant maybe in a material sense, but maybe not. She leaves the questions pretty open. This question has been staying with me all week. I wish I could have less FEAR. I wish I could just create what I really feel and put out there without having to worry about what people would think and all of the baggage that goes along with that.

Usually I go ahead and do what I want but not always. Lately, I have really hesitated before starting some projects, afraid what people would think, and that has resulted in my not starting any of them. I hate where that is taking me. So that leads me back to Jamie's question and seeing the great timing for that!

And that brings me to this journal page. "Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anyone." Okay. But I'm not afraid to show just a little of mine now. ;)

Altered Heart

Yes, it's been WAY too long since I've updated my blog. I've been taking some down time and doing a lot of reading: lots of poetry and some fiction. The poetry has really been calling to me, helping to feed my starving Muse.

I've discovered many new (to me) poets that have really spoken to me. Among my favorites right now are Matthew Zapruder, Alice Fulton and Andrew Hudgins. I've bought their latest books and have been poring over their words just breathing in the inspiration through their imagery. It's been wonderful! So,that's where I've been.

I put together this digital piece this morning while listening to some music. I love the idea of using ink blots as images. Tangie Baxter at Scrapbook Graphics had a really cool new digital kit out that did just that and I had to grab it up and play with it. I also had this verse of a poem by Lawrence Ferlinghetti in my head called, "The World is a Beautiful Place" and thought I'd put it with this piece. Here's the complete verse:

"The world is a beautiful place

to be born into

if you don't mind happiness

not always being

so very much fun

if you don't mind a touch of hell

now and then

just when everything is fine

because even in heaven

they don't sing

all the time..."

And now that Fall is finally coming and the oppressive heat and humidity is starting to go away maybe I'll be a bit more motivated to make some more art! I do know that words and images are bombarding me and I'm excited about where the direction they are taking me. And hopefully I will be checking in here a little more regularly!