Slow and learning

Nearly finished...this'll be the last scan, tomorrow, finish and photograph I think...

It's also bugging me...they all do at this stage, never as good as I'd hoped for!

I can see the improvements I'm making but am frustrated to feel I've yet to master the art well enough to advertise for work...not sure if I'm being reasonable about that though.

Considering offering to work for minimum wage to get the practice and some money coming in while I improve...not sure about that either though. It generally takes me about ten hours for a portrait still so they'd work out between fifty and sixty quid.

I did spontaneously daydream this morning that I'd be good enough and have enough work to do a small show by September...and hopefully one piece somewhere in the Brighton Festival this year in May...We'll see.

The Goddess E-course and the TAW and life are ridiculously in tune with each other at the moment...Oooh I'll post my crazy week one pic too.


Big Love

David Mack

Today's post is just an out and out treat! I had the pleasure of discovering David Mack's stunningly beautiful Kabuki series back in the late nineties...I still have my few cherished 'comic' books (I know, graphic novels!! I'm just embracing the enjoyment of my inner child.) in their plastic sleeves on my bookcase. They are one of my few possesions from our life before we sold our house and gave away it's contents to go live in a mobile home back in 2000.

Today I have discovered that I can now create these links from his myspace albums to help share the amazing beauty of his work.

There are a few other artists I watch on myspace and if they have done the same thing to their albums you can look forward to some more introductions

Big Kiss

Today's Progress

Up to around seven hours on this one now...still a way to go too! I've worked a bit on this under electric light this evening...it's an art/daylight bulb but still I may wake up and regret it when I see it in real daylight :/

It's getting very late but I'm off to check out what the goddesses have been up to in the last couple of days...also need to work out Ebay to sell a rare CD I have.

Night Honeys

Work In Slow Progress

The latest update for my friends in Holland

I have discovered the limitations of winter daylight hours! It's hard to draw when you can't see! I'm sure some number of years ago it might have mattered less...and it's not as if things are blurry...I just can't quite focus on them!

Progress is being made slowly though. The new juggling act of home schooling for all three us is not quite perfect yet...but we will get there.

TAW has been an interesting challenge, I think week ten should have begun yesterday but I had surprisingly huge resistance to going back through my morning pages..and when I finally attempted it my handwriting made it nigh impossible. I have learnt to value them again in a way I'd perhaps become a bit complacent about, so the process is as ever working even when I least expect it.

I'm choosing to view The Creative Goddess Course as my Super Size artists dates which is a wonderful luxury that I am soooo pleased I treated myself to. In all honesty at the time I had difficulty treating myself but I was not about to let the universe offer me the chance to support a Long Loved Gorgeous Goddess Friend and then just let it slip away.

These are the ways we get the life we want, by welcoming and encouraging the scrumptious people already making a go of living it. What a world this will be if we keep putting our energies where we truly want them....and of course my life is already richer for taking that step. Even if the amazing delight of watching Leonie giggle and just go for it wasn't enriching enough, my! that Gorgeous Woman can guide a meditation! And I'm really fussy about that (just ask Mark).

P.S. I so wish I could show you my page at the e-circle, I'm quite smitten with it...I think I shall have to up-date my myspace to match.

Crazy Busy Amazingness

First things first, There might just still be time for you to enrol into Leonies Lovely Creative Goddess Course, I think it officially begins tomorrow on the 15th...

Next things next, It's been a over week already since I posted...sometimes this happens because I am paralysed and overwhelmed by my list of 'things to do'...this time however I have not been paralysed, I'm paddling about as fast as I can go at the moment and surrendered to the fact that everything will just have to happen when it happens.

Goddess Leonie was wise and gracious enough to open the Circle space a few days early to invite us to settle in before our creative playing begins...I can't imagine how busy she is at this stage as saying Hi! to everyone, meeting and learning about this amazing circle of women is a big task!

One of my only regrets about being so busy is that I have not spent enough time thanking people for their inspirations, support or sharing that make such a huge difference to my life. The comments and e-mails I receive, the blogs and websites I turn to, the videos that offer tuition and guidance. I had planned a few gratitude post at the end of the last year into the beginning of this one...but they are one of the things I have evidently surrendered to their own time frame.

I am at least working on a portrait...so I'm so far sticking to my one a week...it's early stages but I've posted here all the different variations of the image I'm working with so far in addition to the printouts and original photo on my board...by the end there will be a file full of them...I'm sure there must be easier techniques!

I send out Huge Hugs and Big Love

back to the drawing board

So much seems to have happened in just a few days. I'm already well and truly into my 'take on insane amounts of projects and see which ones I nearly kill myself trying to do' stage. Luckily something in me made me listen to my panicking body this evening though, so I'm taking a deep breath and looking at how I can achieve as much as possible whilst going at a slower pace.

I have a big bag of ideas of things to do in the local community, and they just keep on surfacing...hopefully if I just keep a level head, keep talking and aiming some of them at least will come to fruition. I talked to friends from the toddler group today and a couple are interested in helping in ways that suit them, and already it's good to hear other peoples ideas too.

On top of the home schooling and setting myself the challenge of at least one portrait of some sort each week it may seem that taking on other outside tasks is a bit much, but there's lots that can be achieved and I'm hoping that all my tasks will somehow come together and be supportive of each other rather than vie for attention.

And today I fixed my header in such a way as to appear well on all the different size screens we have here at least...I've no idea why it should behave differently on each but it was doing...and In the last two days I've finally put pencil to paper again and these are my sketches...well they both started off as sketches, the second one demanded that I finish it a least.

I love the first one, as although I finally have an easel (yay!!), I was leaning on a frame on it with a corrugated back and I love the textures that the frotage? created...instant stripey wallpaper! It reminds me of a hotel I stayed in years ago.

Both the images are just copied from a magazine so I can take no credit for composition...but I'm thinking any practice is good practice right now.

It was interesting using a very limited palette for the first time as well.

Oh my Oh my Oh my

Then every now and then they are there... the old patterns. The echos that still have enough sludge weight behind them, that even though I see them coming it's a ridiculously short amount of time before I find myself up to my chest in a stinking bog...Caught between knowing that thrashing will make it worse and not wanting to hang around in it.

So that's the beginning of the year! I was snuggled and happy within a perfect moment of laughter and love...like a sneaky moment that spilled from my dreams straight into reality undiluted...I soaked it in even as I could see the edge of an old pattern approaching.

I wish I were wiser and I wish I were stronger...and I can hear the universe giggling that I will be...that's the point.

The news these last few days, full as ever, of images reminding me that forgiveness is the only way truly, permanently out of conflict, both external and internal...and I feel it deeply every image I see...just as deeply as I feel my tantruming two year old self.

And I find I am a different person again...I am full of the familiar, the patterns and desire to fight, smash and conquer, the overwhelming waves of ridiculous love that I witness clean and mend and repeatedly amaze me...Yet I find my mind and instincts are full of new images too. Perhaps it's an age thing, perhaps it's the changes rapidly occuring in our local High Street and all over the news that have a lot to do with it...but already the passing hours of this new year seem filled with a larger sense of responsibility. There is work to be done for sure...and I'm excited about the possiblities and challenges we are being handed as a community.