Day 80

Have you ever decided to learn something new and was overwhelmed with not only learning the ins and outs, but the practice time was also overwhelming.  That's how I feel about learning watercolor painting.  I know how to paint, I've done it all my life, but switch mediums and I feel like a fish out of water.  (Excuse the Pun.)  I originally drew this boney carp in one of my art journals, but decided to use it for a practice piece.  I don't usually do whimsical, but I did have fun with this.  Did I learn anything?  Yes, I did.  I learned that watercolor painting is all about going with the flow-the flow of the water that is.  I learned so much I won't bore anyone by listing the lessons learned.  But, not only did I learn a lot about this medium, I enjoyed it.  I've got several other paintings that I am practicing.  Some I've done 2-3 times already and each time I redo one, I learn something else.  Each one allows me to edit and perfect my control, my patience and my enjoyment. 
Are there really 23,978 bones in a carp?  Probably not.  I added the numbers and word for fun and drama.

Day 54 & 55

Whenever I come across some interesting ideas, patterns or designs, I like to try creating hand-carved stamps with them.  Here are two tags I made with some of the carvings I did awhile ago.  One of my personal symbols is the circle, thus carving a stamp using this pattern was a challenge.  I wanted the circles close together, in their own pattern in a grungy style.  The doodle circles were done after the stamp was printed. 
The blue stamped image below was done on an eraser I picked up at the $ store.  I think there were 4 per package and soft enough to carve a stamp easily enough.  My goal with this carvings was to create some scratch grungy texture and when this printed out I loved it.  Reminds me of the masts of a sailing ship with the waves of the ocean crashing on the shore in the moonlight.  I need to make some everyday greeting cards with these images and of course, carve some more! 

Day 30

I am doing this year long self discovery  art journaling workshop hosted by Milliande  A ning group I've been a member of for several years now.  I don't usually participate but this year I am doing things for self exploration and I am enjoying myself tremendously.  This is from Assignment 4 which uses images from the previous assignments to create shapes from random doodles, these are a few of the shapes I found and practiced drawing this past week.  Something to do while watching TV and learning about my own personal symbols of which there are many.  (Symbols aren't part of the workshop-yet-maybe Milliande will be guiding us towards them at a later time.)

Day 12

Learning something new again today and it has been fun!  Over at CAPI on facebook, Milliande is hosting a workshop to help us discover our artistic style.  Our first assignment was to draw, free-form style, some lines on a page.  Then go back and find general shapes.  Well after doing this on several pages of drawings, I started working on this piece and had so much fun, I decided to make it into a free-form poster.  I think it is more in line with a cartoon instead, but I totally enjoyed working on it.  Had to stop, got lots of things going on, so I will set this aside for now and come back to it later.