A LITTLE ROOM FOR ART.....AND OTHER STUFF!: March 2008

LIKE AN UNTITLED PAINTING, AN UNTITLED POST...

Instead of any "traditional" Easter dinner, we had stone crab claws. It doesn't get much better than that! Sorry, I didn't save you one...

Yesterday was my last life drawing class; there will probably not be another until fall. I totally enjoyed every class and I'm sorry to see it end. It was such a pleasure to draw with others in a quiet setting, just some soft music in the background. Below I have posted just two of the quick sketches we did. Obviously I need lots and lots of practice yet, but I'll get there one day. Hands are still very hard for me. Well, and toes, and arms, and faces, and ears, and...and...well, you know.

And....now I must say goodbye for awhile. The Little Room for Art will be closed until after April 5. Life just gets in the way, or is it blogging that gets in the way of life? Either way, there are things I must do so be sweet and I'll see you all soon. I'll still be visiting though, and my email is always open.

.........Be like a mountain in the wind

Do you notice how it moves? There are sweet illusions

that arrive to lure you away.........Jelaluddin Rumi

SOMETHING NEW, AND SOMETHING FINAL

TUESDAY: Notes about the new banner......I had this done a few years ago by a Korean artist, Moonsan Hong. In this art, the letters have meaning. For example, in the practice of oriental symbolism,

flying birds represent prosperity;

sitting birds represent happiness;

the sun indicates fame;

bamboo means honesty;

sailboats represent hope;

butterflies indicate love;

fish means good luck;

shrimps indicate talent;

flowers mean beauty;

flowers on a rainbow indicate family unit,

etc.

It seems my name in oriental symbols means a lot of things. Whatever they are, the art is beautiful!

The card below is my final art for the HEALING CARD in Mother Henna's Inspiration and Healing Deck. The previous post of the girl dancing with her muse is the final drawing for the Inspiration card.

A Wisdom From Coleman Barks: This is the material plane

and every outward thing we do is inner work......

GIRLS JUST GOTTA HAVE..........SHOES!

A girl has to go shoe shopping once in awhile. For me, it's like bra shopping...can't make up my mind about which fits best, which looks best, which is best priced. I don't like shoe shopping. BUT...today in the paper I saw these ads, and right away I knew where to find the shoes I wanted, whether they fit or not! This first one is a Bruno Magli, and sells for only $375. ONE pair!

This pair below, to me is the creme de la creme. A must have! They are Emilio Pucci at only $450.

And these little ditties, with the pleated fabric and cabochons across the top, are also Emilio Pucci, and you can pick them up for $570. Cute, huh?

Last but not least, comes the.....ho hum....boring pink wedgie. These are a mere $665! What? For a wedgie? I thought these were last year's styles, but that's what I get for thinking! I don't care for wedgies anyway. Wedgies is something you get when your underwear is too tight.

The thing that gets me is that some of us artists have been painting shoes for a year or more, and now comes these high class designers who think they have a whole new bright idea. If I had known I could sell my painted shoes for three to six hundred bucks a pair, I would have at least pitched my design to these Magli and Pucci guys last year, and would have been satisfied with a tiny ten percent! Or less!

SIGH............

And then I read, in my Sunday morning with coffee paper, that these shoes are only available inTampa, Sarasota, Jacksonville, Ft. Lauderdale, New Orleans and Baton Rouge. I don't live in any of those places...and at $3.25 a gallon for gas, I'm not likely to drive there! Now, I REALLY feel slighted!

INSPIRATION CARD FOR THE DECK, AND FEELING THE PULL OF THE VORTEX

Yeah, ok, the red rock canyons are calling ........................

Here is a little information you might be interested in: Congressional Bill S548 on Artist Deductions, would give an artist the right to deduct the fair market value of their work when donating to a charity. Right now, you can only deduct material costs. http://capwiz.com/artsusa/issues/alert/?alertid=952195/ Help pass this bill by filling in the on-line form.

Below is my second contribution to the Healing and Inspiration Deck that Mother Henna is facilitating. This one is the "Inspiration" card. I am inspired by my muse, so what else could I have done except include it here? My muse is the cause of my art...she makes me think something over and over, meditate about it, become absorbed in thought of the subject matter, then whamo! Suddenly the object of my art appears in my mind's eye. Granted, it doesn't always end the way it started out, but without my ever-present muse, it would never even get started. Hats off to my muse. Like the Energizer Bunny, she keeps me going, and going, and going....boing...boing....boing...

For the past year I have been creating illustration style art. It was new to me and I wanted to experiment with it, as well as collages and ATCs and the like. Truthfully, I am a little bit over it, and want to put my black line drawings back to pen and ink work, so I think I won't be doing much illustration type art any more. I'm even going to delete them all from Flickr. Although I dislike doing things twice, I needed to convince myself that I really don't want to do illos, so I did a second Healing card like the one I posted a couple of days ago. This one I did with colored pencil, no black outlines. Not sure about working with this medium..can't seem to get past the waxy shine. Interesting to see the difference...scroll down to the last post and compare.

Which do you prefer?

I am still playing with this card. It is not really final yet.

THE WAY TO DO IS TO BE ...Tao-te Ching

...and here, in keeping with the blog heading, I am just being ME! This is my first contribution to Mother Henna's Deck of Healing and Inspiration cards. This one is for healing. I feel one must heal one's self before advice or help to another can be offered. Sometimes I may sound like I'm giving out advice, but it's really just an opinion, for I cannot pretend to heal others emotional wounds until my own are all healed, and that is a lifelong project. Perhaps someday someone will pick up this card and apply it to their own soul and find inner peace, as I do over and over again.

I'm not actually done with this card yet. I will probably add a bird somewhere.
My next card will deal with Inspiration. I suspect it will focus on my muse.

GEESH, I WISH I WERE GOING TO SEDONA!!!

IT'S BABY BIRD SEASON

Only a mother and a bird lover would think these are beautiful creatures. And I'm both. Of course, I think vultures are beautiful creatures too! :)

BABY SWANS, Appx 6" x 8"

Conte on Cansons Mi-Teintes paper

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

One of the biggest honors you can give a person as an artist is to buy their work. Terri Leonard

THE MOLESKINE CODE...and a little art

SUNDAY: Everywhere I go I read about the moleskine project. At first it went in one ear and out the other, but then they turned up more and more so I just had to check it out. Is this something I HAVE to have----can't live without? Is it really the skin of hundreds of little moles - surely not! PETA would already be involved! But just in case, I started my own untrained, unskilled detective work and went on a quest to save these little moles. :)
It is said that moleskine sketch books and notebooks were used by Van Gogh,Matisse, and Hemingway just to name a few, although this is probably just romantic hype made up by marketers to get us to purchase a moleskine. It seems a moleskine is a threadbound notebook with acid free pages, with an interior, expandable pocket to carry our "stuff". It's apparently very durable and comes with watercolor paper or sketching paper, as well as ruled or unruled. Some of them have decorative laser-etched covers. One can even purchase personal replacement paper to make your own moleskine.
If you carry one and use it in public, you are suddenly part of a "culture" with your own personal identity of being a moleskine user. You are immediately tagged by those unfortunates outside the moleskine culture as an artist or a thinker. Someone named Armand Frasco even has a blog called Moleskinery, dedicated to this product. I haven' t found that yet.
I am going to have to get one of these mokeskines...with an "e" , so people will recognize me as an artist AND a thinker! . Oh yeah -- the mole part? It's heavy duty cardboard. Now, where did I put those Michael's coupons!?

AND..... SOME ART