It is important to me to do some kind of art everyday. Today, I worked on Gelli Plate printing, a type of mono print. Today’s print I experimented with some maple leaf stencils I made a while back. I am loving playing with the Gelli Plate. So much fun. I worked on a couple of prints and got one I really liked but continued to work with it and it turned out horrible. I will work with it again at a later date. I tend to overwork my prints and don’t really know when to stop.

This is a mono print I did today and stopped just in time. (Done on a Gelli Plate)

I recently joined a couple of mixed media artist groups online and am having a ball learning about mixed media. This is a brand new art form for me, and I am loving it. I create a piece of art and mail it to another artist who then adds her creative marks.

We have “events” in each group and choose whether or not we want to participate. Late last year I joined a “calendar” event where each of us creates a calendar each month and mails it to a previously assigned artist. Each one of us in the group receives a mixed media calendar each month from different artists. It is so much fun. Here is an image of a calendar page I sent out earlier this year.

We also trade ATCs (Artists Trading Cards). Where two or more artists create small trading cards and send them off to the next artist to embellish. This has been a great experience in expanding my scope of what to use in creating art. What a gift these two groups have been to me.

I love doing art. Whether drawing, painting, sketching, being in the act of crafting is a spiritual experience for me. I am taken away to another realm immersed in love and light. It is important that I do something artful every day. Putting color in a coloring book is enough. Doodling on scratch paper is enough. Just moving the pencil, pen or brush across the surface moves me into another realm.

I took a drawing class last winter at Lane Community College. It was an amazing experience to learn about the importance of placement, contrast, and hierarchy. I am still practicing simplicity, remembering that only the focal point is actually in focus. All the rest of the image is out of focus, a little blurred. This is the best image I have ever produced (thanks to my instructor who coached me through the process).

This image of Andrew Wyeth is 18×24 in charcoal on paper. Thank you, Adam, for being such a great instructor!

Painting silk is one thing that takes me away from my physical world. I am in a world that is just silk, dye, brush and my hand moving along those sensuous fibers. I am altered, moving like a dancer over the vast expansion of white. It is all at once physical, sensuous, and spiritual.