Cruise Vacation starting in the Big Easy

We are in New Orleans! What a cool place... well, in the figurative sense anyway. It is so hot & muggy here, the humidity is just crazy. We have spent a couple of day early in the vacation visiting my dear friend, Maria from high school. It is so..... good to see her & spend time with her again. She is my cup of tea & I love her. She is an interesting person, creative, fun to hang with & a truly great friend. It's been so fun reconnecting & getting to hang out with her a bit. Next, we went on our cruise to Belize, Isla Roatan in Honduras, & Cozumel, Mexico. We spend one week on the cruise ship, relaxing, soaking up the sun, eating great food, & making friends with some of the greatest families! We were so fortunate to have a dinner table with 2 wonderful families that we will be friends with forever! I'll post some more pictures of them here once I have the photos downloaded to my computer. For now, these will have to do.....

ArtFest 2010

ArtFest was amazing this year. I had such a great time in all my classes.... starting with http://www.teeshaslandofodd.com/artfest/ginaarmfield/spp/class.html. Gina Rossi Armfield was such a cool teacher & she brought a spiritual connection to the painting process that I loved & appreciated so much. The art technique that she taught combined photography with painting, in somewhat of a layering process. Gina gave excellent feedback on our pieces, which I learned a lot from & which was incredibly valuable, but the really great part for me, was how she had each of us focus on an intention for the piece. It created a depth to my work, & it brought my focus back to the heart & soul of my piece, over & over again. Wow. I loved the class. The second day of ArtFest I took this class from Bee Shay: http://www.teeshaslandofodd.com/artfest/beeshay/sip/class.html. This class renewed my interest in drawing & it was so much fun. The technique was actually somewhat similar to Gina's, but we were drawing over photographs that had been painted over with thinned gesso, so that we had a template to draw from.....we shaded in the dark areas first, then shaded in the medium areas while leaving the light areas white. These are my pieces from the class: Bee also gave each of us a sketchbook and some black & white photographs to practice drawing from in our new sketchbooks. I'm looking forward to doing more drawings, it's something I spend a lot of time doing as a kid, but have moved away from it over the years. It's like seeing an old friend again, & it felt so comfortable to be drawing again. Then in the afternoon, we painted from a photograph, using the same technique, but this time in color. I painted this painting of a lotus flower: Bee was very sweet & generous, she has a warm soul. The last day of ArtFest was spent in Karen Michel's class: http://www.teeshaslandofodd.com/artfest/karenmichel/hsh/class.html. Karen is one of my favorite people on the planet. I could hang out with her all day.... she's from my tribe, so to speak. The class was awesome, so much fun to create this delightful little houses made of wood, paper, paint, collage elements & ephemera. Karen is into using non-toxic products, & she generously shared all of her glues, paints, etc. with us so that we could try them too. I love that she is moving towards a completely "green" process!

Art Resolution

I have a resolution for the new year, 2010, to do a piece of artwork each day & to post about it on this blog. I was inspired by the recent movie, Julie & Julia, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjvJHsJD8ic which I loved. I was struck by Julie's devotion to her self-imposed assignment, and realized that I have never made a daily commitment to anything really. I have begun many diets & exercise programs... I have resolved to meditate daily, or cut sweets out of my life, or give up dairy.... yada, yada, yada. In the past, I have not succeeded & basically it's because I didn't hold myself accountable. I hope that keeping a blog about my daily art plan will help to keep me motivated & accountable.... I will say that I have become aware that I am already coming up with excuses regarding why I should skip the 1st day.... but, because the blog is posted daily, I really can't cheat without it being blazingly obvious. But, I have to wonder, "Why do I do that? Why do I start creating excuses for myself before I even started the process? Where does the resistance come from?
" Already I am having some interesting insights & realizations. I am clear that I need to set time aside for doing art, I need to find a way to weave it into my everyday life. It may be easier to do in the morning, before the busy-ness of the day begins to take all my time and attention.... I'll play around with it & write about what I discover. I'm excited by what the year holds.,

The parameters for my yearlong Daily Art Resolution are as follows:
1. Do some piece of art everyday. It doesn't have to be a completed piece, but I do have to work on something daily.
2. Blog about the art.
So.... that's pretty simple, right? I don't have to paint a grand masterpiece, I just have to do art daily & write about it.

1/1/2010 Post: Since I am utterly exhausted from last night's New Year's Eve party (at our house), I decided to do something simple for today's post, namely, draw my art supplies... specifically my pens & pencils. I have not drawn anything in quite a while, actually, & it felt really good to do it again! When I was a girl, it was my primary form of artwork, so it was nice to get back to it again. It is always a great way to reconnect with one of the most basic forms of visual expression & I love the feel of a pencil in my hand as it moves across the paper attempting to draw out the interesting lines, textures, shapes, & essence of the subject. I am excited to see what the next year brings for me! I'm excited by my New Year's resolution!