Waiting for the Sun to Shine

Rainy days are good artsy-fartsy days, I guess...

I turned one of my backwashes to an art journal page.

I signed up for an online art workshop, and it's the teacher's definition of art journaling.  

It's about the process, not the final product.  And that's something I should remember!  That said, I still want to sketch in my journal and for my sketches to look decent, so I need to continue to practice drawing.  That said, it's good to do little exercises that remind me to have fun and not take things to seriously.

Here's my first little art-museum thing.  One of the workshops I signed up for is Tiny Museum, so here's my first, before I begin the workshop.  

  

I am looking forward to taking the workshops.  Also excited about taking the playing with paper workshop - I get to paint AND sew on paper!!!

And one last artsy-fartsy item for today.  My Enchanting English Garden page.

I think I finished this one is three or four sittings.  

Getting Reaquainted

Wow! My last post was in July!...  then I went to the beach, visited the in-laws, and went back to work... and here we are, 3 months later...

I wish I could say that I've kept up with artsy-fartsy stuffs during all that time, meeting my resolution of a sketch a day, but I absolutely can't.  I have been doing some artsy-fartsy stuff.  In fact, I even crafted a little sketchbook that I keep at school for when we have time, but I haven't been able to keep up with that the past couple of weeks either.  (I still want to post some pics of it, though.)

So, now it's time to get reaquainted... yesterday, I took a walk down Memory Lane and pulled out this picture of a flower from Fiji and gave it a quick sketch.

The shadows are the wrong color, but I think they kinda matched the coloring of the flower, as well as the dreary weather we have here this weekend, so I don't mind it.  I think I will definitely paint this flower a few more times, it is what attracted us to Fiji for the wedding, after all.  

I've also been playing around with washes and prepping backgrounds to draw on.

I was watching Koosje Koene and Cathy Johnson on YouTube when I was playing:

Koosje Koene's Draw Tip Tuesday

Strathmore Paper's Watercolor Sketching Series feature Cathy Johnson

Now I just have to sketch over the washes... hmm...

And here's a sketch I started a while ago, but the cat got up before I could finish sketching his face.  I really should try to finish one day...

Here are a couple of sketches, probably inspired by Koosje's Draw Tip Tuesday again.  

She loves her selfies!

And Koosje's blog.

Oh, and one more play-session, this time with fountain pens and nibs.  

I got the idea from Daisy Yellow's blog, and I definitely need to play with my pens and nibs more often.  I've also been wanting to do her ABCs on an index card activity, but haven't gotten around to it yet.  Expect to see it soon.

So, see?  While I haven't been as artsy and fartsy as I like, I have been doing stuff.  Oh -- another thing I've been doing is creating an electronic idea board / scrapbook if you will...  I've been clipping pictures from the internet of stuff to try, activities to do, and pictures to draw.  I've been keeping them in Evernote so that I'll always have them with me, and hopefully I'll find something that suits my fancy when I feel artsy-fartsy but have no clue what to do.

Speaking of artsy-fartsy, maybe I should change the name of my blog after all?!...