I had a long commute to work today as a passenger. I was tired of the radio, and watching other cars, go by. I looked in my handbag to see what I could find, so that I wouldn’t fall asleep! I’m not usually my best with sleep lines on my face from odd head positions while napping with no pillow.

Rummaging through my big tote bag yielded a Christmas catalog, a six-inch ruler, scissors, a couple of pieces of watercolor paper, my KOI pocket field sketch box with water brush, a glue stick, micro-pen, and a graphite pencil.  I knew today was the only time I was going to have a small chunk of time to do an illustration for the prompt for Illustration Friday, the word for this week is “hatch”.

Honestly, with the holidays around the corner, and everywhere you look you see festive houses, streets and stores, the festivity has a way of imprinting itself on your mind! And the IF prompt, for me anyway, only flashed pictures of eggs, hatchback cars and spring.

So here it is, an illustration for “Hatch”!

I hope that everyone’s creativity and ideas hatch into some wonderful real life scenarios for 2010.

Peace to you all.

I am sleeping badly. My mind and body feels tired, but as soon as I lie down, my mind becomes alert, goes into overdrive and over-active. I paced the floor or I read until the early hours of the morning, then I finally fall asleep.

My norm is hyper-sensitive, anxious and quick to become annoyed. My voice trembles, not from anger, but from passion. about what I believe in. When I was younger, people thought, it was nervousness or some type of rage; my inner tensions were so great, I had debilitating migraine headaches. After intense mental, emotional and spiritual therapy, the end result is and was that I need art to be a part of my daily life, no matter what!

It is when I’m actually making art, which includes the doodling, the scribbling, random notes to myself, research, reference-taking photos and finally putting the materials together for some unknown art project, I feel like relief, normal, calm and pleasant to be around. The world then feels right for me.

When I am not making art, (either by trying to avoid it, because I’m not sure what I’m going to do next – or because I have to put that art on hold because I’m trying to care for my family and others, (at the risk of forsaking myself), I return to that state of uneasiness and depression. This state becomes even more intensified, when external things are happening, outside of my control, such as the cancer running rampant in my loved ones.

Maybe my sleeplessness has something to do with trying to stop these things from coming out in my artwork, revealing myself. I am going to have to just let it all out. Otherwise, I’ll only tear myself up inside. Maybe that’s what these revelatory ramblings are about…“entanglement“, now maybe peace and sleep can come, it’s morning.

I’m in the studio finishing up Autumn projects and basking in the glow of Fall’s fabulous, beautiful and rich colors.

Enjoy everyday of this season!!  Peace to you all.

Tango is a very specific word, so for me, that didn’t translate into a lot of different meanings…humph…that was my thinking! Tango, I thought, well, I’ll do a couple, dancing a classic tango move.

Well, I can’t begin to tell you how this simple thought turned into an illustration, that wore me out!

First, I drew a profile  of a woman. I then cut it out using black paper.   Next, I drew a rose on a piece of scrap watercolor paper, painted it with ink and water color. Then I drew and outline of a couple doing a tango move and then collaged it, using this week’s newspaper coupons. All that was so much fun!

Then, the frustration hit the fan! First, I could not scan it, since it was too big for my scanner and I don’t know how to piece two scans together (yeah, I should, but I don’t!).

Next, I tried to photograph it and the gloss from the collaging, caused too many glare spots on the digital shot. This went on for a couple of hours, me repositioning the illustration, realizing my lighting inside was awful; and then going outside to photograph my creation.

That didn’t work either!

I came back inside, determined to tear the creation up and forget about the prompt for this week!

Oh, did I mention, I went outside, without showering, a T-shirt over my nightgown and flipflops on with my hair sticking up all over my head, looking like I’d stuck my hand in an  electrical socket! I stood in the middle of our parking lot complex, to take this digital photo, and folks, I don’t care who saw me! (there goes making a first good impression, I just moved here!)

I re-cut the silhouette and painted it with black gouache, (used a blow dryer to dry it quickly). Then I cut all the figures out again and put them on a white background. I started the digital photo process again!   Finally, after many words, that I can’t print here!

Voila…TANGO!

I finally had a photo I could use!

So here you have it, a simple illustration with a lot of hours putting it all together!  So my vibe for the week is patience!

Persevere, my friends, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Peace.

There is nothing like sitting in a rocking chair, rocking back and forth, it’s gentle creaking, and a breezy spring air flows in your window, gently lifting the curtains in your baby’s room.

The curtains lightly swinging in the breeze, and that sweet smell of a brand new baby filling the room.

Now that’s an easy, breezy beautiful moment.

When my babies were tiny babies, I often wondered, as I stood at their cribs watching them sleep, catching glimpses of adorable smiles, “what are they dreaming…”

To the joy of sweet baby dreams…Peace.

(This was art created with many, many glazes of watercolor, the butterflies were separately drawn, painted and cutout, collage onto the artwork and then sealed with a gloss medium.)

When I was a kid in NYC, there was an individual who used to roam the streets in my neighborhood. To this day, I don’t know if they were a man or a woman, (nor do I care) but we called, this person, “Birdy.”

Birdy walked around in a big overcoat, with his/her arms tucked inside, so Birdy appeared armless! Yet the moment, there was any group of little kids around, the pretend magician, would say, “Abracadabra” and out of that opened cape-like coat would appear two hands…and then… all of a sudden … little birds came flying out of their coat!

It was the most wonderful thing to my nine-year-old eyes!

I often wondered what happened to that beautiful individual pretending to have a home, living on the streets, pretending to be a magician, pretending to be a man or woman, but always giving real joy to all the children in my old neighborhood.

Days, when I think about Birdy, I’d like pretend that Birdy is alive and living a wonderful magical real life, because those memories I have of Birdy are pure magic!

Pretend to be or not to be, but make it magical to the people in your life this week!

Peace to you all.

There’s an expression that says, “a picture is worth a thousand words.“

That’s what my image is trying to convey.

Enough, already!

May you have the peace and strength to do all that you want to do. Happy week!

There are so many things to worry about nowadays.

I miss the days of just worrying about getting my allowance because I didn’t clean my room, worrying about whether Kevin Thomas liked me as much as I liked him or worrying whether my extremely curly hair would frizz up in the humidity! The days of being a teenager.

My worries are much greater today and they seemed to be centered around others. My children, my parents, my extended family, my friends, my environment…who’s going to be the next President of the USA! Yeah, in our days in time we do need to worry about who’s going to be President. The worries of someone opening the door to being fifty years old.

But this morning I looked out on my deck and looked at the beautiful tree that’s been haunting my thoughts over the last week and my worrying over completing her portrait, which I just finished.

I know and adore that tree, it’s a female entity, since she nourishes and shelters most of the wild life in my back yard. She has a giant hole in the middle of her trunk where I imagine her heart is and it’s open, bearing her soul to all.

Today, I worry about the environment and hope that the generations to come take care of her.
Please do something for her today…don’t litter, bask in her glory, recycle, be green always…

Have a happy, glorious and safe green weekend and week!

This post brought about so many thoughts, such as theory of evolution, theory of the big bang, theory of art, or are all theories about math…not…if it’s all about the math, then I’m screwed! lol!

Process: Brainstorming, Research, Application: Paper, pastel, oil pastel, ink, color pencil, collage = THEORY

So I decided to do a combination of big bang, evolution, birth and stages of man. So the end result is my renditon of theory for this Illustration Friday.

There are just some days when we are bombarded with information, circumstances and life. This is my visual commentary on the onslaught of garbage that children are exposed to daily.

All comments welcome!