A gift I put together over the weekend for my son’s friends who are twin brothers. My husband says it looks like writing you might find on a 1920s advertisement. What do you think?
Category Archives: Uncategorized
live and learn.
Well, I suppose I should start off with the obligatory New Year’s review of the last twelve months, so here goes:
Started a blog.
Sketching every day, blogging about it.
Big dreams and baby steps.
Small victories.
Surprisingly, no crushing defeats.
Life getting in the way.
Old habits dying hard… or refusing to die.
Seasonal depression.
Brad’s new job.
Quit my “real” job.
Summer. Who actually gets anything done over the summer?
Back to school.
Extracurricular activities.
New business venture.
Weddings and vacations.
Buying a house (that one may not have even gotten a mention here, sorry!)
Learning as I go.
Moving out.
Moving in.
Unpacking.
Thanksgiving.
Repainting and decorating.
More unpacking.
Black Friday through New Years.
Brad’s 65 hour work weeks.
Setting up new studio space.
Trying to keep business afloat.
Cooking.
Cleaning.
Visiting family.
ER visit for one of the boys.
Cooking more.
Cleaning more.
More family.
New Year’s Day.
Kids back to school.
Breathe………….
Life got moving so fast there for a while that months seemed to blur by in the span of days. 2012 was a year of change, growth. It was hectic, crazy, and stressful beyond words. But looking back, despite how hard it got at times, it was all positive and I feel incredibly fortunate for the life I have.
Looking back over the year I will be the first to admit that I had short-comings and at times, outright failures (if I’m being honest with myself). I completely stopped sketching, and then almost completely stopped blogging, I didn’t manage to stay on top of a lot of things in my life. I am a little disappointed, but I am not too hard on myself. That first step is the hardest, and after going back and reading my very first post on here I remember the flood of implications that came rushing though my mind as I thought about what it really meant to take a step toward doing art full time. I still have to give myself credit for even making it through publishing that first post. After that, deciding to quit my regular job to pursue my art was a huge personal risk, as well as some risk to my family’s financial situation as well. That isn’t to say that just by jumping off I didn’t open some doors that wouldn’t have come about otherwise, and that is what I am most excited about (all of that fantastic news will come in my subsequent posts, don’t worry!)
My take away from last year: Live and learn.
I can look back at this last year with a critical eye and see where I stumbled and more importantly, what I tripped over. Most of it doesn’t come as a surprise; as I’ve written, they are personal demons I have been battling since I was old enough to be aware of them. I can push ahead with courage and determination and foresight that I didn’t have last year.
Here’s wishing you all the best in 2013– Cheers!
Octopaisley
I decided to teach myself how to draw paisley last night. This is something that I have noted in the back of my mind as something I’ve wanted to do for quite some time now. As I began to sketch last night, I was thinking of how daunting it had seemed, and how that had always kept me from even sitting down to give it a try, when I realized that (like most things) it wasn’t that hard really. This discovery led me to the realization that I let fear of failure cause me to falter in my confidence in my artistic ability, and that I get in the way of my own success. But such are the demons that wake after an arduous day and an evening of cocktails that slips into the sleepless hours before dawn. So before I forced my brain to quiet and my eyes to close, I took a step toward fighting that demon, and this is what happened:
Fireworks
While out of town over the 4th of July, I was sure to snag my sketch book, Prisma pencils, and my trusty camera. Since my telephoto lens rolled off the counter and will no longer focus, I decided to try my hand at the Macro setting, and messing around with some long exposure shots. I’ll admit I’m no professional, but I’m also pretty dang proud of these shots, especially considering that the only editing I felt was needed was some cropping and minor adjustments to light/color balance. I have spent the last day sifting and sorting through almost 300 frames, so I’ll have to add another post when I get all the way through. For now, here are a few of my favorites from the fireworks show over the lake we camp by and a link to my facebook album where you can see the rest.
Happy Saturday, hope you’re staying cool!
Ta-Da!
After Monday’s teaser, here’s the finished product, signed, sealed, and [almost] delivered! This was a piece done on commission for a really sweet girl-friend of mine who will be using prints (with permission, of course) as her wedding invitations. It is overwhelming, first of all, to even have my artwork and talent enjoyed and desired by another person, but for them to entrust me to create something to send out to friends and family that is representative of their lives and their love coming together is indescribable. Sending well-wishes for the future adventures of a wonderful, free-spirited new family!
For information on commissioning your own one-of-a-kind piece, please e-mail me at e11evenshades@gmail.com
Pride and Prosperity
This is a sketch I did as a preliminary for a painting that I am working on. It is a pretty quick, rough sketch, so please look at it with a forgiving eye.
Tiger Lilies are the symbol of wealth, pride, and prosperity. I had an amazing 24 hours getting to know some musicians/artists that were traveling through town, and it has done nothing but affirm to me the idea that if you carry yourself with pride and do work that you can take pride in, wealth and prosperity will follow. Read that how you may– and as much as I would love to have lots of money– that is not what defines wealth or prosperity to me. I live modestly, but don’t consider myself “poor” or lacking in wealth. I have a meaningful relationship with my Self, and to the people and things I surround myself with. My life is filled with love and happiness, and I certainly don’t suffer for want of basic material necessities. I work hard, proudly, for my simple existence, and in that simplicity, I have found abundance.
(Be sure to click HERE and HERE to meet a couple of my new friends)
8 March, 2012
Tiger Lily, study
Sneak Preview
Good Morning, All! Here is a sneak preview of the ambigram I made that I will be incorporating into a logo of sorts. One direction says Shades, and when flipped 180° it says Grey. I’m pretty excited about it… what do you think?
3-4 March, 2012
shades
180 degree rotation:
grey
Snow Day
18 January, 2012
This is what my kids looked like today.
Wow! Crazy snow! We haven’t even had enough for our ski resort to open, but it decided to start dumping snow at about an inch an hour, just in time for them to NOT cancel school. After shoveling the driveway so my preschooler could spin cookies on his scooter, and playing snowball fetch with the dog in snow up to her belly, I embarked on the hour and a half trek to pick up my kindergartener. I love the snow, and I love this city, but the two are never a good combination, and the roads were miserable and inadequately maintained. Fortunately, we made it home with only one small run-in with a curb. I think it frightened the guy walking down the sidewalk in front of my now traffic-perpendicular car more than it scared me. He was generous enough to come help push my front tires out of the gutter so I could get on my way. Another kind passer-by in an oversized Jeep also stopped to help, but don’t think I didn’t notice the hint of smirk on his face as he guided me and my über-”mom car” back onto the street. Nonetheless, I waved many thanks as I fishtailed my way through the icy slush.
The events of the morning left me thankful. Thankful, firstly, to be home. But thankful overall that generosity and altruism are still alive and well. Later this afternoon I bundled back up and headed out into the now steadily falling drizzle and grabbed my snow shovel. I shoveled the walks and driveways of two of my neighbors, one across the street who uses a wheelchair, whose tracks I had seen back and forth from his rampvan this morning, and then my next door neighbor who, undoubtedly, would have come home from work after dark and shoveled our neighbor’s driveway and then his own. I found myself waiting to hear his truck pull onto the street, peeking around the curtains to see the expression on his face, feeling as giddy as a kid on Christmas. I don’t mind that they will never know it is me, I feel a natural high just thinking of how my next-door neighbor felt being able to come home from work and be able to relax with his family instead of pushing around the ton of saturated snow coating both driveways.
Both emotionally and physically it was as good as, if not better than, staying inside to do that 30 minute yoga-for-abs workout I had been planning on. Who would have guessed that so much unexpected good would have come out of this storm, these crappy roads, and sliding my car into a curb? Not me, but I’m glad it did.
