Creative Every Day - Permission to Play

I've decided I'm going to do a journal for my Creative Every Day challenge. A challenge not only very kindly put on by the CreativeEveryDay blog but an important part in my journey to find where I'm going. From here. Also, where I have been to get me to that place, here. What did I actually go through? What next and why am I having a blank spot, brick wall kind of issue? Concepts I hope to work out and through. 

This is my beginning for the Creative Every Day challenge for May which as a helpful prompt for May is Flowers, if needing some place/space to start. Which I do this time around. This is my break out, gotta loosen up and relax challenge. As I said in my earlier post, I've done it. For the first time in some 20 years I've run into a brick wall. Baffling for me, as I have never had a problem with creating. 

Whether it's any of the landscapes that are based on real places, or out of my head to just sitting down and intuitively drawing, designing, creating florals...on to now...the dreaded abstract. 

THAT is my biggest problem. A discovery I have found. What?! The main and most fundamental expression that I pour my soul into and I can't find it?! My beloved abstract, I'm having a hard time creating that very thing that I find essential to who I am as an artist. A serious question, a serious issue and one I mean to tackle. I'm sure I will get through it and be happily on the other side of a new and enlightening lift to my paradigm as an artist. Of that I have no doubt. I'm still just plain baffled. I have my suspicions as to how I got here and why it's difficult that I'll be sharing as I go. 

Today, I just want to share the way I've chosen to jump in. I give myself permission to play. To something different that what I normally do. Step outside my own box, the one I built around myself. It's not about anything else but that. And THAT is quite alright, isn't it? To give myself permission to play? Yes, indeed! So I will also endeavor to stick with doing something different. Playing, and forcing myself to step back out...with clarity, perhaps.

These are the images of my first break out, working on the theme, working on the emotions and working through it. These images are in a sequence of sorts, sort of a time line of the start initially and where I am now. Not complete, but I would have been remiss if I didn't put something up for this challenge I just gave myself. :-) Look for the more completed pieces and a continuing effort on this journey.

Close up of the blocking in of the initial intuitive design concept and color play

The initial intuitive design concept and color play - working it out without thinking too much.

Bringing together more elements in an intuitive way

More detail of where I am with just going for it, adding elements and not thinking too hard about it.

Fiddling around with "what if" questions and just running with it - More to come!

Background play for the next spread in this creative journey

WHAT gives? Creative Every Day is what gives...

A wee bit of what I am doing, working on and whipping out the last couple of weeks. Plus a confession, a personal share.

First of all this is one series I was continuing, "Dancing" --- just thought I'd put up the results thus far.

These are some of the florals I have been thinking about as the feminine side of organic.

But you know what!? I'm getting stuck with not feeling the groove on these. I love them. I want to continue them, but my heart is just not in it. So I'm going to put them away for a little while and do something entirely different. I don't know what it is just yet, but it will be something floral because I've just prompted myself to participate in a Creative Every Day blog (see the image to the right, click and visit and all that fun stuff)

I needed to do it because for some reason I'm running into a wall. A creative wall. I can't believe it because I've been so exited to get back into it. I reorganized huge parts of my studio, blah blah blah. Was TOTALLY exited to find things I had forgotten I had. It's been like Christmas. So...why the mental block? Is it because I have found so many pieces started and then abandoned to be done later? What is it?

I do not know. So I need to start back with a blank paper, even if it's just a journal. And do something totally different. Something I'm not really known for. So I can break whatever chains that are on me. And that is also why I joined the Creative Group because I felt like I needed a prompt or something. TOTALLY not like me.

I'm baffled. I will fight it though, find ways around it and hopefully keep a record going of what the heck my problem is. I've never had this before. Ever. In the almost 20 years of creating and art, I have never experienced this. Guess there is a first time for everything. Now is my turn. Let's see how I get out of it, or through it, or whatever. My first step is joining the Creative Every Day blog challenge and diving in. :-)

Triptych I started in the Dancing Series. Will put it away and come back to it later.

Blessed to have been included in another very lovely collection ""Bold and artful expressions in vibrant colors to inspire and awaken." Fantastic work in this collection, enjoy!

Bold Expressions

Curated By: walkinthewood...

ArtFire.com

Craft Tutorials

One of my pieces has been included in this lovely collection at ArtFire. Well worth the look - beautiful and thoughtful pieces.

"Art can take one any place one would want to go...Where would you like to be?"

Another Place in ...

Curated By: TheBeadedHound

ArtFire.com

Craft Tutorials

This Sunday morning. I am trying to get myself organized and put together to get back into painting. It's been a few days while I get some things reorganized, evaluate inventory, works in progress, paints, brushes etc. All around feeding, milking and caring in general for the critters around here. The goats are yelling to be fed and milked while I type this as a matter of fact :-) 

This last week I have been going through all of my works in progress and trying to just get more organized once again. The cleaning out and rearranging of the studio is coming along pretty well, just a little slow now that the rains have come back. It's just not real fun tromping back and forth from the house to the studio through 4 German Shepherds who are excited to see you, as if they have never seen you, each time you go back and forth. Did I mention the mud? Anyway, not a lot of fun and rather messy so the process has slowed a bit. Not entirely, just not the super rate I was going after at the start of this endeavor.

I have several landscapes that are in the pipeline and thought I'd share the early stages of the pieces, at least so we can see a reference point by the time they are finished up. I have found that this is actually an excellent learning experience and when I can I will be doing this more often. These pieces in progress range in size, medium to small. At some point I will be able to share the larger canvas's I have as work in progress as well. They just happened to be packed away at the moment while I'm getting the studio cleaned out and organized. 30x40" of the Miami House (see the study below) up next!

12x16" on paper

12x16 on paper

5x7" on canvas

9x12" on paper

6x12" on canvas

6x12" on canvas

6x12" on canvas

Completed Study of the Miami House in AZ - Study for a Commissioned piece. Oil Pastel.

The latest installment to my Colorado Landscape Painting. As yet untitled. This image is one that I gathered while traveling to southern Colorado last summer to visit my Mom's final resting place in Alamosa in the San Luis Valley. I was fortunate to be able to spend a good weekend doing some traveling around the area taking pictures so that I could paint to my hearts content when I got back to Washington State.

This piece is from an area around La Veta (not quite that far, further east) east of the Spanish Peaks) more toward the area that has the caldera fields in almost extreme southeast Colorado and extreme northeast New Mexico (north and east of Angel Fire) The mountain in the background is a Caldera, meaning a large, basinlike depression resulting from the explosion or collapse of the center of a volcano. The whole area is covered in them. For one with an amateur interest in geology, this is a fun place to pick around in. A whole ton of little cider cones too. While on I-25, check out a perfect little specimen out just before Walsenburg.

Back to the latest installment of the progress of this piece. I've reintroduced shadows in the bushes at the fore, worked some shadows and highlights in all the rest of the trees and the road, a bit more on the house and toned down the gold in the field to the right. I've also started developing the wildflowers on the other side of the wooden fence. 

Getting close! Will be tackling the caldera and the sky again here directly and adding some scrubby bushes to the mid-line hills as well. 05-10-13

If you would like to see all the images in the progress of this painting you can visit my art page at Face Book, and while you are there I would love a "like" if you are so inclined. :-) Here is the link directly to the art folder: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.354138881330352.80958.197207013690207&type=3

Save 25% off your order! Sale going on at Imagekind where I have many of my paintings available for print. Three different galleries, Florals, Lanscapes and Abstracts to choose from! ------ Use code HAPPYMOM25 - Visit the store for details!

http://www.imagekind.com/High-Mountain-Mission_art?IMID=20849866-1611-4654-b6e6-9d8131aed261

I painted these two paintings in December but this evening decided I needed to play with them a little more. It's interesting how a little time can make you change your mind on some things. I thought they were fine back then, didn't really have any color issues, depth...none of that.

This evening I took them back out again as part of my inventory process and decided, wow, they are rather...boring. I'm a color fanatic so I had to fix this problem. I pounced on them with just the answer, jazzing up as it were and here are the results.

Now, in order to appreciate the difference you actually have to see what they were like when I initially posted them.You can check that out here if you would like: Pears 

In the meantime, here are the jazzed up and revamped Pears Part Deux.

They are both 4.5 x 6.5"
Acrylic Mixed Media Collage on watercolor paper 
Click on the links to see them in my store.

http://www.artfire.com/ext/shop/product_view/6694230

http://www.artfire.com/ext/shop/product_view/6694241

Kiln Dried Alder as Canvas

I have started a new project (for me) because I have come into a large and rather constant, if I ask for it, supply of kiln dried alder from a local flooring mill. 

When they are making the boards ready for production they have to cut off the ends, some are bad, some are very interesting (for incorporating natural abstract design) and some have not one thing wrong with them. I can't bear the thought of these being tossed out, so I'm playing around with them. 

This set is more floral, another set I'll share later is abstract collage (expressionism) and I suspect I will also be painting some landscapes on these as well. The fun!! These boards are all around an inch or so thick. I'm really excited so far with some of the techniques I've been able to employ, including sanding, even with paint on it already. Really fun effects. 

 To start off, I have these floral pieces that I have started. One is actually a little more abstract, but we'll see where it takes me.

I am really tickled this painting is finally starting to come together. I started last summer, right around August or so and I just can't believe it's actually taken me this long to get to the finish line.

Not because it takes me that long to paint mind you but because I am well and swamped with life on the farm type business. Which in itself is wonderful, rewarding and yep, time consuming. A painting like this might be finished up in a few days, maybe a week at most back when I was doing this as a full on, full time living.

So I whipped it back out again this evening because I was at an impasse with some of the other paintings I have going at the moment. You know, design decision, color decisions, DRYING decisions, those sorts of things. I'm fiddling around in my stuff and I run across this sweet painting, just sitting there and quietly pleading with me to pull it out and start finishing it up.

f the lords a willin' and the creek don't rise I will have this piece listed by the end of the week. I sure do hope so, it's been a bit too long and this place is a special one for me.

You can also see some images I took as a work in progress for this piece in a folder dedicated to this piece at my FaceBook art page: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.354138881330352.80958.197207013690207&type=3




Speaking of store, here is my new store, and this is right where this new piece and all other landscapes I have planned will be living. Come on in and check it out!

Visit christine-wasankari's ArtFire Shop

I am very excited and pleased to announce that I have a new store front. It's been a while, but I'm back and here are some of my very newest items. I love the platform and the easy experience it is for both patron and store owner. Check it out and be sure to sign up for updates because I will be showcasing not only my own work, but the work of various other artisans collections.

Visit christine-wasankari's ArtFire Shop