How It All Came Out

Funny thing happened in the archetype workshop. I avoided using the "engineer" archetype because it just seemed too easy and obvious. But, the pack of cards I received had two engineer cards in it, so I resigned to it and re-picked and re-sorted. Here is my cast chart of archetypes, including the engineer in my Unconscious House (#12).

Side by Side

 

Stats for January

There are 31 days in January and I came in with 29 posts. I am not counting this one as it is not really art-related.

Goal for February: a full 28!

Accompanying Photos

 

 

First Commission Piece

I have been meaning to post this painting I did last December for my sister-in-law.

I transferred a photo of the Eiffel Tower I took while in Paris in late 2006. Then, I painted around it, including collage elements.

I also gave my SIL the two photos in the above post to go with it for this Christmas.

She was thrilled!

From the Hotel Window

 

Are These My Archetypes?

I'm at the Sacred Contracts workshop in Chicago (taught by the awesome Carolyn Myss). Tomorrow is Day #3 when we will pick our eight archetypes that form our basic wheel (together with the core four: victim, child, prostitute and saboteur).

This has been a really good class. We've been reviewing the structure for the archetypes that form each person's contract about what they are up to in this world. I hope to finish the next two classes (May and September) and go on to become certified to use the archetypes with coaching clients.

So, for now, we are learning about our own wheels in the real-time. The twelve archetypes form this basic wheel of advisors who interact to form the sacred contract. I know, sounds all very woo-woo, but it's amazingly not. We've watched the Wizard of Oz and It's a Wonderful Life, with commentary by one of the workshop teachers to help us see the symbology and archetypes in Dorothy and George as they make their Hero's Journeys. These observations are so rich and helping me to see life on a higer level, as well as how I interact in the world.

These eight are the ones I came up with out of the 70 or so in the deck. If you know me, would you agree?

I love to find processes and solutions (engineer) and cannot survive even a day without creating art (artist). I am nurturing to my children and in general in the world (mother) and always striving to see the long view (visionary). I always want to know how things work and what the underlying story is (detective) and find myself always relating my experience of life thorugh stories (storyteller). I find my way through risky situations - like my whole life! - through intuition (gambler) and I work to make things succeed financially (midas).

I'll let you know how I did after we go through this more formally tomorrow.

Hotel Decor

It's still too cold to go out for any photos in Chicago, plus our class went from 8 am to 10:30 pm. We saw Wizard of Oz which was dissected for us into archetypes and mystical lessons.

A movie that has terrified me since childhood was delightful tonight, seeing examples of the survival archetypes (child, victim, prostitute and saboteur) and it was nicely moderated by one of the workshop instructors.

I'm learning a lot!

Chilleeeee Art

I've just arrived in Chicago and there is a beautiful blanket of snow covering everything that we saw as we landed at O'Hare.

The outside temperature is about 18F, so I'm snuggled into the hotel room. I didn't get too chilled between the airport and here, so I am comfy, but not willing to venture outside for some photos either.

The art here is two photos of art that hangs in my hotel room. It's not bad for hotel art. I've photographed, collaged and captioned it using Picasa, my favorite Google app.

Not Sure About WordPress

It was easy enough to just import a year's worth of blogging over from Blogger.com to WordPress. But now that I'm over there, I'm not sure how I feel about WordPress. I was initially interested because the theme offering at Blogger is so limited. The themes at WordPress are so sleek and stylish, but they are really limited in terms of color and font choices, which is something I really liked about Blogger. Also, while there are added statistics for seeing how many people visit your blog, and new/different widgets that don't mean anything to me, there are no links for You Tube and Picasa Web Albums (duh).

WordPress is not a Google app, so of course, the things that are Google-based, like Picasa, would not be supported. Still, it's a bit of a bitch to use for creating an entry and adding graphics, and the fact that I can't change the color/size/styling of any fonts is a serious drawback.

Oh - I can change these things, but WordPress relies on the use of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and I so know how to create those - not!

Guess I'm coming back to Blogger....

Moving to WordPress

I want a better, sexier look for my blog, so I've moved to WordPress.

FAIL

Today's Art Was Cooking

Today, I made my French Country Apple Tart, and took photos of the process and created the recipe using iWorks Pages from Apple. The software templates make it look like you know what you are doing and are reminiscent of Publisher, but with much richer built in graphics and that lovely drag and drop feature for the photos. I'm still getting used to the "mask" feature that emulates the crop feature on the PC.

Advisor #5 - Fox - Future Financial

 

Advisor #4 - Bunny Rabbit - Career

 

Advisor #3 - Snake & Raccoon - Love

Advisor #2 - Hawk/Eagle/Condor - Health

Advisor #1 - Bear - Current Financials

Need I Say More?

We all wear the hat....

Falling Behind

It will soon be the 20th of January (which is a great day I've been waiting six years for) in a few minutes and I've only posted 13 posts this month, so far. I'm falling behind my commitment to get at least one post per day. However, I am doing the art every day. It's just the posting that I'm not getting to...

Yesterday was spent doing my 2009 vision.

Here's one page from it. There are five in all. I'll post the other four as I get them done.

What's Next . . .

 . . . : : : This speaks for itself : : : . . .

Goofin' Around at the Apple Store

Ceebs and I were waiting for her laptop to be repaired.  We had my laptop with us, replete with it's built in camera. So the funnin' began. The tech (aka "genius") must have thought we were wacky, but it's the Apple Store, so they really can't say anything. 

And I Fall Asleep Commissioned Painting

And I Fall Asleep, Lulled by the Noise of Paris

I did this commissioned painting in June 2008 and it was a happy story. Good experience for me, client was happy. But, I never posted a picture of the complete piece, so here it is. Someone I was talking to asked about seeing it, so now I can direct people to this blog entry.

The completed piece is 30" x 40" and is mixed media: acrylic, found paper, and other found objects d'art.

The writing reads, in French:

This old house
I feel its russet warm
Comes from the senses to the mind.

Enjoy!

More Paint Chip Cards

Here are some more paint chip cards I did using the Go Make Something recipe (see the post on 1/8/09). For these, I used the same punch as the others. I punched from a strip along the edge of the large paint chip (4 colors to a chip), on the side with the labels. Then, I cut back the chip to remove that piece and glued the paint chip and flower punched pieces onto the front of a white cardstock card I bought at Michael's. The cards come in packs of 25 or 50, with envelopes and pre-scored to fold at the right spot for only $2.99 (25) or $4.00 (50).

On the yellow and lime green cards, I used a small square chip and cut 3 flowers from the middle. I didn't care if some of the flowers weren't fully punched. I also punched out a hole with the same punch on the front of the card and pasted flowers on the inside of the card to peek through that hole. I like doing these because I can do a bunch of cutting and punching, then pair up the stuff to be glued on with the cards. I put the items inside the folded card and put them all in a ziplock baggie to keep them clean and so everything doesn't go flying around. Then, I can pull that baggie out with some glue in a small glass jar I keep (I use Elmer's) and a small paint brush and just whip out a bunch o'cards in a pretty quick time. Good to do when I have just a few minutes on the weekend in between chores. I think I might bundle up 6 cards to a pack to use as gifts. I have to remember to print out some labels with my name and website/blog URLs for some free advertising.

I love these cards. There are so many possibilities. I'm going to use the square and very small postage stamp punches I also bought at Michael's to try some different cards next.

Art every day. It's what makes life bearable!

Hot Winter Nights

Not sure if this really qualifies as art, but here is a photo I took in my car last night at 7:28 pm in Half Moon Bay. Note the balmy temperature of 74F. Just a few days ago, it was a good 40F cooler at this time.

Unbelievable, and weird.

Today's art is a photo I took near sunset at the Hayward Burger King parking lot while waiting for my daughter Ceebs.

Paint Chip Cards

Tonight, I finished up four paint chip cards using the tutorial on Go Make Something (link).

I'm not sure how happy I am with them. I can't seem to do anything "straight." I always want to mix it up from the clean, simple lines shown in the instruction example. My watercolor paint borders and fill-ins are delicious to me, but one thing I have a really difficult time judging is how these sloppy presentations land on others. Interesting? Sloppy in a bad way (poor artistic skills)? How's an artist to judge oneself?

Musee Mechanique Project

Here's one of the 35 photos I took at the Musee Mechanique on Ceeb's birthday. I'm finding it very challenging to get any art done during the work week!

Art for Monday 1-5-09

I actually did this art over the past several days while up in Washington, but thought it would be a nice arrangement to post today and take credit for as my Monday art. I took a photo printed by a friend (11x17) on her Canon Pixma printer and cut it up and used the sections as backgrounds for doodling. I did the doodling mostly in watercolor, with some in colored pencil. This is a great way to use up beautiful scraps of paper that are too nice to throw away.



Last night, I arranged all the faces from Musee Mechanique with frames. I should have taken a pic of that, but didn't. Now I have to get the photos in shape to have them done at the Costco Photo department and buy the matting material. Here are stacks of the photos as promos, printed with the proof sheet function from my Canon Pixma printer. The proofs are somewhat striated and printed on regular paper.


The final photos will be much more beautiful. Here's an example of one.



There will be 35 in all. Ready for a show somewhere.

Cute Idea for Cards

I haven't finished them yet, but set up now to make about 12 cards using this great technique I saw on GoMakeSomething.com: start with paint chip cards (I used the large 4x6 size that have four colors to a card, perforated). Then use a nice punch to cut out shapes. Adhere these to a piece of folded cardstock and voila! a new and fun card you can use to send thank you notes for holiday gifts.

I still have to assemble mine and I think I will probably be embellishing around my little floral do-hickies with watercolor and/or fine tipped pens.

Hopefully I will have some results by tomorrow.

Study for More Art - Jan 3 2009

I did this variation on a photo I took of the Columbia Gorge yesterday, but forgot to post it. So this is art for 1-3-09, in keeping with my 2009 resolution to do art every day.

Quick, Before I Depart Portland

Two Hundred Days Without Art

I see that my posts for 2008 in my "daily" art diary totalled 164, leaving 200 days that I didn't post art.

One of my very small handful of resolutions for 2009 is to post something every single day, starting today - 1/1/09.

Here are two photos from today. The first is a tree I spied through Angus' window. I'm up in Washington, on the Columbia Gorge.



The other photo is of a barge that was going down the river, mid-morning.


Enjoy, and Happy New Year's!