Odd Chick paints a rare bird.

Okay. I did a little painting that I can say I'm proud of - finally. It seems most of my time with my art is spent in practice and then one day, I put some new skills together and make myself do an actual painting. It's so easy to never risk anything and just play in my art journal.

It makes me realize that special things in my life actually happened a long time ago. First, in my imagination. Second, in my preparation. And finally, last of all, something happens extra-ordinary. We spend most of time thinking and wishing about the latter. But really most of our time is spent in the first two steps.

It's much like farming. You plant the seed but you don't get the crop until months later.

We have pumpkins but we had to plant them in JUNE. Who thinks of pumpkins in June?? They are no fun in JUNE. But everyone is getting excited NOW about our pumpkin patch.

I took the photograph to Picnik and added the text.
I printed the painting on fabric (use muslin with no sizing taped to a stiff sheet of paper and send it through your ink jet printer. Enhance the colors or go for a more watercolor effect as it fades a tad on white muslin) and made a pillow of it and gave it to a special girl-friend. I could see it printed on an apron or magnet or coffee cup. Zazzle is a fun site for all that.

Then, I made some cards for my girlfriends and special females that have the saying:

You Are One Fine Chick

 Just for a little encouragement. Or when other artist send me their art cards, I have something to exchange. Qoop makes beautiful cards- they're a little pricey but still cheaper than a good card and they use professional quality paper and printing.

For me, it's another way to share and exchange my art. It's not showing off. It's adding a little more beauty and encouragement to the world. And that's the best seed I can plant right now for a future crop of blessings to come back to me.

Falling for FALL

I'm so falling for FALL this year. For some reason, this season is bringing an extra amount of joy to my spirit. I find myself smiling deep inside at the smallest things.

I wonder if it is my up-coming trip to Italy. The knowledge I have gained from my research and dreaming anticipation have added so much to my life.

It could be my new photography class. It's forcing me to use my eyes like a fine lens to scan and scourer my normal surroundings for the perfect photograph- not a snap shot. I want to take PHOTOGRAPHS in Italy.

My teacher came out to the farm and made us find something boring and make it interesting.

Sweet Farmer being loved on by the bar ditch dogs of  Krantz Farms!

of course, this was not boring and very interesting.

It could be that I feel better because I've dropped about 10 pounds of annoying weight that I've been carrying around for a ridiculous amount of time.

Or my new tan fingernail polish. ( i'm not usually a girl who gets into nail polish)

Or seriously. My faith is getting richer and deeper and the Spirit of Christ that promises to feed my soul like a spring is something I greatly rely on and it always makes me FEEL ... better.

I just WANT to feel.
I want to feel deeply about the goodness and the sadness in my world.
I know some people must take pills to feel MORE or feel LESS.
It's not always easy to FEEL. It's not something we should take for granted.
This FALL , I want to feel everything as if it were my last FALL.

I'm only a little scared of dying, getting sick and old or terrorist attacks. What I'm really afraid of?? Losing my ability to feel deeply in love with my life in every season of my life.

I choose to FALL in love with FALL and let it take my heart and turn it into a thousand different autumn hues.

This season of my life will

                                   NOT

                                               GO

                                                            Unnoticed or Un-celebrated. I will decorate my spirit, not just my home, and carry the crispness of a new Fall morning in my heart. Will you carry it with me?

Gettin over it and around it.

Have I mentioned how much I love Joint Compound?? I took my plain ole moleskin and a stencil and joint compound and added some yummy texture. It even feels like carved leather.

I've missed my blog.
I realized I was trying to do great things before I presented them to you and somehow they never looked great enough all the sudden. (Well, you are really special after all....)


GEEEZ.  You'd think a girl would get over it.
And I am now. For now. Until that big mouth inner critic creeps up again.       SHUT UP ALREADY.
 "Life is like photography; you use the negatives to develop"
It's just me, odd chick, playing with her paints, her journals and sometimes coming up with amazing, but mostly just trials and errors. I can't let comparison steal my joy of learning to paint. And maybe, somebody out there feels just the same on this journey.

I went back to an old journal where I had made a pencil drawing and dressed it up with some paint, ink, etc.

I'm still into sparkles and magic and texture. I think I will call her: "Passion Seeker" until I find a better name. She looks like a MUSE of some kind. Any ideas? She could be fun Halloween art.


I took her to Picnik and I think I like her black and white too, cropped, with the deep red. I love taking my sketch art to Picnik and use their fun tools to take it further and further- I learn so much from playing with it and changing colors, intensities, applying different art styles. Try it. There is nothing to lose by tweeking your art a little. And you might find something that really ramps it up and you won't be so scared to try it.  I love finding ways around that scaredy-cat artist in me.

click to make larger cuz it's cooler that way

Check out this amazing blog: I heart shabby chic  and get you some fun, fabulous, ideas for fall decorations. 

Finaly, finally got to get my mess out and paint. I started my 10th art journal. (My first one began on the first day I blogged).

WHAT a journey an art journal addiction becomes!!

AND I am having me some IPAD fun, yes I am!!

It comes with a PHOTObooth app and a built-in camera. I made this pic of my feet on my favorite rug and twisted up the above previous journal painting.

wouldn't this make a pretty valentine?

Playing with Nourish Your Mind

Other apps artist will love: Penultimate. Your IPAD becomes a sketch pad and all you need is your finger.

and you can let little kids draw on it in church. the best etch-a-sketch ever!

For lots and lots of  visual dreaming, with or without and IPAD- try Pinterest. My daughter got me caught up on it and now it is like crack to my inspiration addiction.

If you can share any fun apps with me in your comments, I would love it!

ITALIANISSIMO and IPADS

My daughter says, "Why aren't you blogging anymore? People are asking me why you're not posting much."

What can I say?

I got a new IPAD 2. OMG. For a  research- reading- art browsing- nerd-odd chick,  - it is awesome.

AND I'm obsessing over my trip to ITALY in October!!  I've ordered maps of each place I'm visiting. I'm learning Italian (on my IPAD). I'm reading ITALIAN history (ask me anything about the Medici or Borgias'). I am so beating Sweet Farmer in Jeopardy (on my IPAD) on anything relating to Rome or art!

I am loving perusing Italian art and architecture and looking up artist's bios.
I could bore you to DEATH with ITalianssimo !!

Still drawing in my journal. I guess I was feeling a little spacey on this day?

And girls with studs in the eyebrows. I think I had a wild hair that day.

I love creating girls from my own mood and imagination.

You might think I've been a boring blogger lately but I have not been bored- at least in my head.

That colorful playground of my own mind has been extremely active.  I forget how to share that sometimes and not even sure I should.

But this is an odd chick's blog. I guess you wouldn't come here unless you're curious, odd and slightly nerdy yourself.

Hey, GUESS WHAT? big NEWS.
My Italian inspired painting: Passion/Compassion got juried into the Roswell ART show in August! WOOP WOOP

A little tour of our art museum.

That's me making paper. I spent all last week at a paper-making class. I've mentioned before that Roswell has a world class museum. They also have an education section funded by a trust left from a Ms. Bassett who loved art. I can take a class for 5 days for $65.00 from a professional art instructor! AMAZING!

We made paper from dead iris leaves, okra slime and alfalfa powder! I'm always highly experimental in class as I figure I can do the basic stuff at home without instruction.

But I'll take you on a short tour of our museum that I took after class.

I got to see an exhibition of Peter Roger's. I could just stand in front of these huge canvases all day long.
Right click to see a bigger image.

Ram's Skull With Brown Leaves

 Yes! That is an original Georgia O'Keefe. 

Quincy Tahoma

Bruce Stark Lowney  "Hermitage"

Luis Jimenez

Fresco on Masonite by Agnes Smith

I'm totally into frescoes right now!

If you ever come through Roswell, skip the alien stuff and check out our art museum. 

They Carry The Sky On Their Backs....

acrylic on plaster

I am really loving getting plastered with Judy Wise and Stephanie Lee. This on-line workshop has been well worth the fee as I have never seen so many techniques and videos offered so concisely, with full on-line support and every question answered. They will come out with an e-book soon and I highly recommend it if you love working with interesting textures and need new techniques to shake you up a bit and get the imagination flowing. There are so many things left to be explored in this area and they bust it wide open for you. We get nothing for promoting this class and I say that so that you know that this recommendation is from a really good personal experience with the class.

Apart from that I have been a little discouraged with my own progress which always come along with learning something new. It is like struggling with a big sumo/gremlin for the right to paint your own art - exhausting. He finally lets me paint it but he won't give me the finesse to truly finish well. I muddy my paint, I struggle with design and composition. I paint on. BUT

Sometimes I just want to slap that big ole art bully.

Flying High!

I'm flying high over here and having a great summer!

playing in the irrigated pecan orchard

I've had my grandsons this week and they are getting so big and learning to do so much more around the farm.

of course there is still time to sit around in the grass and just visit

The Three Muses on plaster   (click on image for more detail)

I'm enjoying my plaster class in short breaks. I drew this a little too quickly (stealing short burst of time from the boys). Some of you may remember when I drew it in my journal. This is a piece that I plastered on burlap and then cracked and tried to make a pseudo-fresco look. A little rough today but fun, fun stuff. I love the coolness of the drying plaster, the way you can sand away for different textures and the way plaster soaks of your paint.

The thousand-paintings journey continues.....

passio / cum passio

I had a couple of days to paint and it felt glorious. I would paint a little and walk away- which is not like me. I'm usually so impatient that I won't let the paint dry. I can tell that all the Italian history and renassiance history that I've been listening to on my IPOD as I go to sleep is really affected my painting. Well, at least I hope so. I used Sweet Farmer's eyes for the Jesus portrait- because I wanted them kind, yet penetrating. You can click on the image for greater detail.

It's not finished (i'm going to clean up the lines on the madonna's face) but I'm preparing this madonna style painting for a small show in December so I still have some time. I find it very humbling to do religious art.

I, of course, would love any ideas, critiques, etc. to push the painting further as this seems to be my wall at this time. I'm still on my thousand-paintings journey, but I'm seeing progression and that's all that matters.

The Passion/ The Compassion

passio  /  cum passio

I get  a descent rough sketch done and then I began, what for me is initially, the tortuous desire to paint what is in my mind's eye, my vision. This is when my passion for art makes me feel helpless, dizzy, disoriented. It's what makes my heart wildly beat , the unquenchable desire to achieve something higher than my current skill level. This is when I ask, no I beg, for divine assistance.. FOR Something transcendant, something beyond myself. Something in collaboration with the One who created the first art- and the passion that requires all or nothing of myself.. I am not enough without His touch in my art, in my life.

But, there is no guarantee of a safe landing. The root word for passion (passio) actually means suffering/endurance. The struggle to release, unveil, bring forth that unseen vision, only known to that place beyond the back of my own eye-lids, my heart space. The "ME + HIM'' work, the art that only WE can create, today, somehow, someway. The struggle is exquisite and scary. I give up the fight in trade for the miracle moments, the divine appointment, to share in something brand NEW, created from nothing. The work I want see and enjoy in art, the work He is just waiting to see from me. The passion / the compassion -it's all there.

No one has to like it. You just have to do it. YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN. Right or rough, where you are NOW. We do what we can, and give what we have. In the end it is just between you and Him anyway.

 Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. the rest is the madness of art. - Dana Gioia