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!

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. 

Time for Art today

The past couple days have been really hectic here so I unfortunately fell a little deeper into my rut but it was beyond my control. I don't even recall Wednesday anymore... but I know it was busy. Yesterday I had my youngest grandson all morning and minutes after he left early afternoon, my oldest daughter came for a visit with the other two monkeys. And let me tell ya... they were wound up! It was nonstop crazy play until evening. One discovery I've had in this is that I am SO glad I had my kids when they were young because Holy Jeebus!! I couldn't do this every day anymore!By evening I was just plain worn out!

The plan for today was that I was supposed to take my mother-in-law to the airport an hour away for a trip she's taking for the summer. I am SO happy to say that I am off the hook for that now. I was gladly going to take her but since she knows I am not all that comfortable driving in the bigger cities when someone offered to take her that used to live up there she took them up on it. So instead of being gone all day like I first thought, the day is mine! Comfy pants, lots of coffee and some art time here I come! I'll have something to share by the end of today even if it kills me!

Quiet Mother's Day

I like my Mother's Day nice and quiet. I like to reflect on my own mom's life I guess and since she's been gone for almost 19 years now (has it really been that long??), I don't like a big fuss. It took my family a while to really get that but I think they do now and that's just fine. I'm a mom EVERY day. I don't need one special day a year to fuss over it.

I was too lazy today to even sketch much. I did get a couple more faces sketched though. They are unfinished but dammit I"m counting them for my 29 Faces! I'm hoping this week gets me back on track working a little more on my projects than I was able to this week. I also have one more from yesterday... a practice sketch for my Portraits 123 class.

I see some issues that I need to work out a little better in both of these sketches and I will work on that tomorrow. I would like to turn what I can into finished projects or include them in my art journal when I fix them. But anyway... here's numbers 11, 12, and 13.

A little further...

I've taken my Drew Barrymore sketch a little further. I fixed the right side of her face that looked a little wonky and I fixed the right side of her head that looked like she had a big ol' tumor growing there. We haven't gone that far in the class yet but I went ahead and did some shading on the face according to the photograph. I don't know that my girl really looks much like Drew Barrymore but I'm not hating it as a drawing. Her hair leaves a lot to be desired. I am looking forward to that part of the class so I can get something that looks better. I know I still have a lot of work to do to get better but I don't feel it's too shabby for never having drawn anything until January of this year. I did a little bit in junior high school but I hadn't since then... and never people.

Unfortunately I am not going to have a lot of time to play around with my drawings this weekend. Well not until Sunday anyway. My youngest son's senior prom is Saturday. We just picked up his tux. The boy has a sense of humor, that's for sure. The tux he is wearing did not come from a tuxedo shop. It came from a costume shop. It is the powder blue tux with tails and ruffles from the movie Dumb and Dumber. He's wearing his high top Converse sneakers with it and carrying a cane. It's actually the tux he wore a couple years ago in the high school's production of Grease. He was Eugene (the nerd) and he wore it in the big dance scene.So yeah... tomorrow will be interesting to say the least!

So much for being ahead!

I haven't drawn a face since the weekend! I was two or three faces ahead in the beginning and now I'm two behind if I don't get any done today. But I WILL get them done. If not today then definitely tomorrow.

It's been a crazy busy last few days. My youngest is graduating in a few weeks and had his very last "May Fiesta" choir concert this weekend. It's a big deal in our town and they always hold a special little ceremony for the senior choir members. Yes, I cried. He's my baby!

Then Monday I had my sick grandson while his mommy and daddy worked. He was really clingy so he pretty much set up camp on my lap the whole afternoon. Needless to say this did not create much time for drawing/painting.Today I had to grocery shop and then my youngest daughter came to spend the afternoon with me... a kind of last minute thing. She is a summer RA in her college dorm so isn't coming home for the summer. It's just a couple blocks away though. But she has so many jobs and duties there that I hardly ever get to see her and she had a day off and wanted to use my craft supplies for a project. LOL  And now that same grandbaby is here for the evening while his parents are at a baseball game. So definitely not much time for art. I'm thinking tomorrow I am putting on comfy clothes and not leaving the house all day so I can play at my art desk.

One thing I did do while my daughter was here was work on a hand-bound journal that I'm making for her. Just regular paper, coptic bound for her to write in. I got all the signatures sewn together. I just need to put a hard cover on it for her and she wants me to decorate it somehow. Have I mentioned how much I LOVE to bind my own journals??