Behold. The blank mandala Erin gave us this week. This is a weekly challenge where Erin posts a blank on the Bright Owl, and we fill in the tangles! I thought this was a fairly easy one, but it actually turned out to be the most intricate drawing I've done. I think. And this is what I did with it. I tried some new tangles that I hadn't used before: pokeleaf, pokeroot, fencee, and a variation of purk. On my hand-drawn tile I have a border of snookums in that vast whiteland seen above, BUT I picked up the wrong pitt artist pen and ruined it. Ruined with a capital Ruin! So badly I couldn't figure out how to resurrect it. So, I removed snookums in photoshop. On my real tile I am probably going to remove it with a pair of deckle-edged scissors. Please head over to the Bright Owl and check out this week's zendalas. There is plenty of time to join in the fun and add one of your own :).
The Artists Play Room is hosting a garden party this week. As artists, we are supposed to render a creative 'picture' of our garden. Well, to begin with, I have a black thumb. Nothing I touch - plant wise - grows. We also live in a very dry location - dry sand, hot temps, nothing much grows in our yard - except 2 goats, 1 dog, and 13 assorted cats and kittens. So, let me welcome you to my dream garden. My first love - artistically speaking - is photography. I shot every picture in this post. I am currently taking a break from photography so I can focus on a different type of art in zentangle and art journaling. Each March - April, this flower field blooms a couple miles from my house. The lovely people who live there open there fields up to whomever wants to come. At any given evening you might count as many as thirty cars there at one time - with every sort of photo shoot going on that you can imagine. The one on the right is my daughter. I have actually planted seeds in our yard and tried to get something like this growing. A flower field is definitely something I'd include in my dream garden! Statuary. Is that a word? My garden would have several statues. This one stands outside my mom's assisted living residence. I call her Lady of the Lake - she's my favorite! I would love to have her overseeing my garden! This is my second favorite statue. This little guy is at the botanical gardens in the next major town from us. They were in the process of building a 6' version - I haven't seen it yet, but I think it might be too big for my garden. What a shame. She resides in the same botanical garden. Some cool trellises would be in order. Can you see Kali? She thought this was a stupid picture to take - probably still does, haha! - but I love this picture of her. Dreamy! And it fits my dream garden! How about some lovely wind chimes? Can't you just hear the tinkling sounds? This shot came from Cedar Key, Florida, which this past week took a direct hit from Tropical Storm Debby. Wherever you have flowers - you are going to have a few insects! May they all be so cooperative as this little guy to pose and have their portraits done! This dragonfly was my first ever insect shot. I think he's pretty awesome :). If I plant the right flowers, I can have lovely butterflies in my dream garden. (As you can tell from my photography logo, I like butterflies.) I'd have some beautiful shrubs and greenery. Maybe even some ferns like this one I shot with my very first camera. Beautiful flowers. In abundance. Lots of glorious sunlight - shining on the flowers, in the flowers, through the flowers. We need just three more things in my perfectly dreamy - resting in, and lazing around in - garden spot. A fountain with a magical fairy frog . . . . . . a swimming lake with crystal clear water and golden sunshine all year round, and . . . . . . a dolphin pool! (Taken at SeaWorld, Orlando.)
And that's it! I know this was a long post. If you hung in there till the end - thanks for sharing my dream garden! Oh, how I wish it were true!
Please visit the Artists Play Room and stroll through all our gardens! Perhaps you might want to share yours with us :).
It's week 6 in the Tangle Patterns string fun. Above is the string Linda gave us to work with this week, courtesy of Sandy Hunter, CZT. We take this string and turn it into a work of art. Hopefully :). I had fun with this string. I turned the loops into a wrecking ball and rotate-able gear. A little of this and a little of that and presto! it's steampunk. My favorite for now. Why don't you join us in this fun? You can see the instructions and the get the string here.
A wonderful video put together by my friend Kaylin. She lives in Colorado Springs where the wildfires - the fire storms - are bringing danger and disaster. Yet, through it all God can still be praised. As Kaylin puts it - God is for me. Yes, Kaylin, He is. We continue to pray for you from here in Florida. I love you, sweetie! Praying you through this storm!
These are my new feed-the-horses-in-the-monsoon boots! (Not a good quality picture - sorry - taken with my phone.) We needed to get hay to the horses, so we headed out. What a production! The first thing we noticed is that the road is still a major mess! See the pond where these teens are swimming? That's our road and they are standing up. Thank the good Lord for our tractor! We were able to travel off-road to get a roll of hay in. Mark only lost the roll off the back of the tractor once - in the road :). Thankfully I was no longer standing on the side of the tractor at that point, because the front of the tractor lifted off the ground as the roll of hay splashed into the river! Uh, road! The entrance to the fields is still under water, but it isn't quite as deep as it was yesterday. It is starting to receed. And the front pasture is still under water, although not as deep :). And in some spots it isn't horrible :). This is the "higher ground" we moved the horses to. Normally the donkeys have full reign of this area, now all of the animals are housed in this field. It is always safe to assume that Sawyer is thrilled to see food in any shape, form, or variety! What an awesome picture I got with my phone! I am still afraid to take my nice camera - and good thing when I almost got pitched into the river - uh, road - when we lost the roll of hay! All in all, a very hopeful day! It didn't rain today - yay!!! The sun was shining for part of the day! The horses are fed, we didn't lose the tractor down a mudhole, and my fancy new boots kept my feet dry! Great day!!! Now, if our friends in Colorado could fare as well.
Lifting prayers for the Sieberts, Yuens, Rutkowskis, Greens, Craddocks, Schlichtings, Jeubs, Hagoods, and Steve Warren! Several have been evacuated. We are hearing conflicting stories about the house of one family. Praying for safety and a quick end to the fires!
Many of our speech/debate/communications families live in Colorado Springs - in the area of the fires. They are pictured in this photo. We are concerned that one of the families may have already lost their home, others have been evacuated and are awaiting news. Please lift a prayer for these people we love so much! For their safety, for their homes, for their jobs, for calm and peace. Please pray for the firefighters, for wisdom and equipment and abundant supplies of water. Pray for rain, no wind, stamina, strength, and success. Thank you - we are drying out here in Florida from our floods. Our focus is now on our friends and family in Colorado.
(I made this collage to be my cover photo on Facebook. That would explain the open space towards the left bottom - room for my profile pic.)
If you read yesterday's post you will recall that I was working on a project for Tangles and Stuffusing blue painter's tape, watercolor paints, and tangles. I wanted to do another because it was fun! I actually meant to do the tangles on the colored portions this time, but I got carried away with the shapes caused by the tape and forgot. :( BUT - I like the way this turned out. I went totally out of my comfort zone by drawing animals and crazy stuff I'm not used to. What a hoot! I've got a bowl full of kitties, some singing birds, a snail, a tulip, a monster, some beans, a giraffe, a princess castle, a cat, and some crazy BTL Joos stuff!
We are still floating in water from Tropical Storm Debby. We need to get hay out to the horses and donkeys in the morning and I'm kind of concerned with how that's going to work out. The water in the roadway yesterday was waist-deep in some areas and it has been raining ever since. Literally ever since. Joy! Can't we please send some of this rain out to Colorado??? Please???
The ZIA Journal challenge at Tangles and Stuff is called Tape the String this week. To do that, I took a sheet of watercolor paper and randomly placed blue painter's tape on it. Some pieces wide, and some torn into thinner strips. With the tape in place, I slapped on some watercolor paint. When the paint dried, I dropped drips of paint on to the page and blew them around with a straw. Once all this was dry I removed the blue strips of painter's tape. In those white spaces I added various tangle patterns. I might do this again tomorrow and tangle the painted areas. We'll see. This was a load of fun to do! And I love the bright colors - I am all about the color! If you'd like to join in this week's challenge and play with tape - check it out here at Tangles and Stuff :).
This is a test. I am trying to figure out how to post photos from my iphone onto my blog. I think it's going to work - yay!
So. We had a little storm blow through. Actually, Tropical Storm Debby came through and it sat on Florida for hour after hour after hour. It's been raining for so long now. We headed out to check on our horses this morning. This is the main gate leading into the pasture. Mark is standing in water about 9-10 inches deep. (Instagram picture - hence the frame. Sorry.) Then you move into the fields. What a mess! Back by the barn is a section of ground that is dry. That's where we moved the horses to. They are now in the back pasture with my donkeys. Sadly, this is the road we had to drive down to get to our property. Not even kidding. That's Scott and a buddy riding a 4-wheeler through the water. There's one place where they lost the 4-wheeler underwater. Climbing out of the hole in the road. Seriously, it was waist deep there in the middle. What a mess! I've never seen this much water up around the houses and fields. And it's still raining. It's supposed to rain every day this week. I can't even imagine what it's going to be like come Saturday.
All these pix were taken with my phone. Hopefully the quality is acceptable. I didn't want to risk my nice camera out around all the water. Now, back to the art process!
Erin at The Bright Owlpresented us with the eleventh zendala dare this week. Above is my traditional zentangle approach to the dare: betweed, zedbra, and something I learned on Art With Mr. E's page. Sorry, don't know the name of the pattern. This is the blank mandala Erin gave us to use. I chose to ignore some of the lines and to let my patterns overrun those areas. Then I drew this one up. I'm really enjoying the steampunk angle, and though this design is a simple one - the mandala was perfect for the steampunk idea. The outer ring is called linked. The background is a pattern I've been referring to as barz. I don't know if it's anyone's pattern, but I have been using it a good bit. Filled in the color with what else? Derwent inktense pencils, Pitt artist pens, and slicci pens. This is actually an instagram pix of my tile. You can see all the zendala dare offerings at Erin's page here. You can even join in the fun! Erin posts a new blank every Friday.
I got some new stencils in the mail yesterday - from Dream Weaver. I figured I'd play around with them for awhile. I took a watercolor notebook and slapped around some paint in greens, purples, and blues. They had a bit of metallic in them - cause I like shiny! Then I took four of the stencils and traced them on top of the dry paint. Totally sacrificed a pen doing this. Next, I tangled a few patterns into the stenciled areas. Then I added some seaweed, flowing plants, and amoeba-stuff. So "sea" like :). When I uploaded this above picture onto the computer, I noticed what looks like a shark in the upper left corner. Totally unplanned. The only thing I intentionally added was the small black line to designate a mouth. So much fun! I tried out some new patterns. I always think featherfall looks sloppy, but that's pretty much the way it is detailed out in the drawing steps. I also used: finery, hybrid, heron, fescu, shattuck, tearse, waves, squid, and beadlines.
I may come back to this tomorrow and add some bubbles - something I meant to do. I've been following the national championship speech and debate breaks today - in the NCFCA, a Christian homeschool league that my daughter competed in for several years. I got so tied up with breaks to semi-finals. I worked on this in between checking the computer for the hundredth time!!! and forgot the bubbles. Tomorrow!
