The summer is mine!

My son's party was yesterday and the summer is mine now! Well mostly anyway. We have a TON of food leftover so I'm happy to say I will not be cooking this week! It's good food too, if I do say so myself.

Today I will probably be taking the day off from life in general. I am absolutely exhausted. The latter part of last week was extremely busy and hectic as well as emotionally draining for one reason or another. I woke up fairly early today and I feel like I've been run over and then dragged by a truck... no joke! Fibromyalgia, stress/tension, party planning, and lots of heavy lifting are not a good combination. So as much rest and relaxation as I can get are on the agenda for today. If any art can be done from my comfy recliner, then maybe a little of that too. After a day or two of recuperating, life can get back to some kind of normal here and I can try and get caught up on my art workshops.

And here's a 'just because'... Some of my goofy kids and their 'duckface' pose. I hate this stupid pose you see so many on facebook doing in their pictures!! They made me take it!

An artsy kinda weekend

I have managed to do a couple more spreads in my altered art journal this weekend. Yesterday I played with a sort of 'doodle page' using spray inks and stencils and lots of doodling. This was totally inspired by Christy's Eclectic Art Journal class. It's great to have some pages prepared ahead of time and then sit and mindlessly doodle while watching tv in the evenings. I did this one while I was in the middle of a True Blood-athon this weekend.

I had a hard time falling asleep last night so I worked on another drawing of a girl from a magazine. I think there's enough likeness there that you could tell I used it for inspiration. But at the same time it's definitely not a realistic portrait by any means. She turned out kind of somber looking so I made up for that with lots of happy colors and cute flowers made from book pages. What can I say... I like the irony.

I plan on getting back to Rhomany's Portraits 123 class just as soon as I get my son's grad party off the ground next weekend. Until then, I will just continue doing pages like this just for me when I have time this week (which won't be much). I like to be able to sit down and really concentrate on class stuff when I work on it.

I drew something today!!

I know, I can hardly believe it myself. It's been so hectic around here I either haven't had the time or when I have I couldn't muster up the motivation to. I'm taking this weekend off of anything graduation related though and come Monday I'm back at it until after next weekend's party. Then other than babysitting one of the grandpunkins a couple days a week, the summer is mine to play with my art supplies all I want.

Anyway... here is my drawing. I put it in my first altered book journal. It's an old human development text book from the 70's I believe. The first page happened to be totally blank so I didn't do anything to it before I started sketching. Now I'm half afraid to screw it up by trying to paint or color her because I am actually quite pleased with this drawing. I've been going thru old magazines and picking out pictures I like that I might try drawing and this one really caught my eye.

This drawing was JUST for me. Not for any of my many classes and workshops I'm taking and not for any other reason than I just wanted to. I've been kind of stressing myself by allowing myself to feel behind in everything. There are no deadlines for any of these classes and they are all open for whenever I want to work on them. But for some stupid reason I sometimes let myself get all caught up in feeling behind or like I'm letting someone down. Who? You got me! LOL  But no more of that. I'll finish all my classes at some point. Art is to be enjoyed and I'm not going to stress about any of it anymore.


I also did a random page in one of my Eclectic Altered Journals from Christy's class. It's an old catalog. It's mostly collage and doodles and I really enjoyed playing on this one. The images make absolutely no sense together but I liked them all because they were bright and eye-catching.

UPDATE: I decided to play around with a monochromatic background for the girl I drew today. I used doilies for a stencil and and my ink sprays over acrylic. It's in my nature to really goop this up with a lot of stuff but I really think I like this very simple background with her and I like the idea of leaving it just as it is. I'm sure I'll change my mind a dozen more times or so because that is also in my nature! But for now I like this and it just needs some journaling.