This is most definitely a work in progress, and my first piece of raven art. I have an affinity with and a love of ravens, as well as the rest of the corvids.
My time with art has been very limited simply because being back at teaching is exhausting me. I do my best to find time to do art, but I often just fall asleep in the evenings because my brain is so tired from focusing and monitoring all day. The weekends seem to be vanishing in long periods of sleep too.
Finally! I manage to stay awake long enough on a weekend to colour this one in! School has been wiping me out. I have been drawing outlines for a short while in the evenings, but I certainly don’t have the time I used to. As I am more alert than I have been for a while, I hope to get more art done today.
I really needed to do some art too. It relaxes and calms me. Four weeks back at work after a prolonged absence last year has seen me increasingly tired. I have lessons to learn about pacing myself and not pushing myself so hard or being so hard on myself. There are many more lessons that I need to learn too.
I am so glad, however, I have found my creative ‘mojo’ once again. May it long continue!
It’s also only a few days until Color Me Calm and Color Me Happy are available for purchase. It’s really exciting for me!
It has been a while since I last made a post to my blog.
I have been struggling with vagueness and lack of focus with the medication I’m taking, and this one I’m on now doesn’t suit either. As well as the vagueness, I’m constantly on edge and fidgety, and the medication is supposed to treat that not cause it. Have to give it a couple more weeks before it’ll be changed though. I’m still away from work as a result.
In spite of all of this I’ve still been busy with art, though the focus for the projects I’m involved in has been lacking at times, but just ‘doodling’ with no constraints or requirements does help me settle a little and also is something I can do that doesn’t need that focus.
In the summer I signed contracts to do the artwork for two books linked to art therapy. In the last week I was approached by another company to do one book for them in the first instance, and if it goes well then there could be a whole series of them. My hope is that I’ll have enough contracts and work lined up that I can go kind of part time at work. That won’t be for a while and I need to get myself better first, but the part time may be a way of helping me remain ‘better’ in the future. Time will tell.
Yup, it’s the eighth one in the series this month. I really have become hooked on mandalas this past week or two. The repetition that’s necessary to complete them (well it is the way I do them) is calming and meditative; that’s not just for drawing the outline, or for the colouring, but for all the texturing as well.
This one uses a rather unusual, for me any way, colour palette. The background has been left white as I really don’t know what colour (or texture) to do it in. Do I do earthy greys and black, rich earthy greens, blues the hues of autumnal day, twilight and night skies, or some other colour(s) that I’ve not considered yet?
It will come to me, and any suggestions are always welcome!
And here it is with a background. I’m ambivalent about the background; part of me likes it, part of methinks the colours are too similar to the mandala design, part of me wonders if I should have played around with colours more, and part of me thinks that the texture on the background should have been done in a copper metallic ink with dark inner shadows.
I was contacted by Darya’s mum asking if I’d ‘do a blessing in the style of your cards’.
This is what I did. It’s approx A4 in size.
I’ve been a little busy with some monograms. They’re either 7.5cm x 12cm or 10cm x 10cm in size. The rectangular ones are on watercolour paper, the square on bristol board.
Approx 16cm square. Unipin pens, Zig Art and graphic pens and water wash, Gold Stickles and silver and gold UniBall metallic gel pens.
As always, this work belongs to me and no copying, distributing, altering or use in any way without written permission from myself.
This design started with the kind of infinity loop towards the top left. The loops coming from it eventually were seen as a letter ‘B’ and the word believe seemed to be the right one to put on this. Everything else grew, quite literally in some cases, from this point.
There are golden stars to wish upon and golden seeds and flowers and growth and sun and rain … and hope.
Approx. 6″ x 8″. The black lines were worked using Uni-Ball UniPin pens. Colour was applied using watercolours and gold watercolour paint. The paper is heavyweight cartridge.
As always, I am the owner of this creation and it may not be used, shared, distributed or altered in any kind of way without permission from me. Thank you.
Approx. A4 in size. The main outlines were worked using a black Letraset Promarker with an ultrafine nib. The infills were completed using a Uni-Ball Unipin pen. Colours added using Derwent Graphitint pencils and a water wash. Other shading done using a B pencil.
As always, I am the owner of this work and it may not be copied, distributed, altered in any way or used in any other way without my written permission.
Art is the Adventure 