Happy Birthday To Me...Yesterday

"Wing Keeper?" quirky journal sketch in sketchbook/wc pencils (also one my very first and I think those could be little wings in her arms, couldn't they?)

Yesterday was my birthday. I'm very thankful to have lived another year. It was a good day. Mama had an appointment at the eye Dr. to check her cataracts, so we did that first, then shopped a little, ate at Long John Silver's, shopped a little more, stopped at the Sonic for ice cream, and came home, where we then rode down to the pond on the atv to check on the cows. The new little calf is sooooo cute, as they all are, and the trees and foliage are beginning to turn all those wonderful fall colors.

I picked up two green throw rugs for my newly painted bathroom, but they're the wrong shade so I guess they'll go back to Wal-Mart. So much for judging color without a swatch of what I'm trying to match. :) I also picked up another flash drive for my pc, some blank music cds, and hubby some new pajama pants to lounge around the house in when he gets home.

J (hubby) was away working, but he got to call and sing happy birthday to me before we left, plus I had good wishes from my friends in the MojoArt group. J asked what I wanted for my birthday. I told him I had already ordered and gotten in some new art supplies, including the wonderful Moleskine journal mentioned previously. :)

When we returned I found cards from my three best friends in the mailbox. We've been friends since grade school (one of them since diapers), and it's wonderful that we're still as close in our, as one of them put it, "golden years." It was a beautiful fall day, full of blessings, spent with my mama, whom I love very much, even if we don't always see eye to eye. :)

The Good, The Bad, The Ugly, & The Downright Weird

" Rabbit Head"-art journal sketch in sketchbook

(There are two rabbits on her head. Can you see them?)

I am still doing my art journal sketches, but now instead of doing just 2-3 drawings and leaving the painting until later, I'm doing one a day and painting it. I am up to 247 drawings/paintings now, so I have a bunch waiting to be painted and photographed. The one above was among my first, when I was leaving the doodle lines all in. Somewhere along the line I stopped doing that.

I have decided to show you the good (cute & fun), the bad (not so good), the ugly, and the downright weird if you want to see. I never know what image will come forth. So be prepared! :) As soon as I get photographs I plan to mix in photos of other artwork along.

I do know about color, perspective, proportion, shading, etc., and practice them when I'm painting seriously, but I am having way too much fun with these, just drawing and painting with the abandonment of a child. I am much more relaxed about drawing/painting than I was, which is a good thing, because the tenseness showed in my paintings before, which is not a good thing. :)

I finally broke down and bought one of the Moleskine journals that I've been reading about. LOVE IT! and I see why so many people are hooked on them. I got the largest landscape size which is 5 1/2" x 8 1/4", I think. So for the last few days I've been doing the art journal sketches on a two-page landscape spread in this journal. I'm thinking this is not the last one of these I'll buy. :)

Anyway, I hope some of these sketches make you smile. I have to get started cleaning house now, which doesn't necessarily make me smile like my doodle sketches do, but I'm thankful I'm able to do it. :) Y'all have a good week!

Happy Sunday!

"Bunny on a Windy Day" quirky journal sketch

Partial Internet Service

"Stubborn" quirky journal sketch


I got up Tuesday morning with no internet service and didn't have time to see about it 'til that night. I tried everything I knew to fix it that night and the next morning (Wed). I finally called the internet provider, which also happens to be my land phone service provider. The service rep could hear all sorts of growling, dripping, whistling noised in my line and said that could be affecting my dsl modem, so she put in a work order to have it checked out. No internet Wed either since the service man didn't get here.

The very nice service man came yesterday morning (Thurs) and worked all morning checking lines. He even replaced one down the road. Turns out that the clicking noise we've had on the phone for years is caused by an electric fence bleeding over somewhere down the road. Can't stop that. I doubt the neighbor is going to unplug his fences to stop my phone from clicking. He has a lot of cows. He did get the growling stopped. Still no internet service.

The first dsl modem they sent wouldn't program, so they had gotten me another one and turns out it was bad, so they've ordered me a third one, which should be here by Monday. I asked if bad modems were a problem and he said no, that it rarely ever happened. I guess I was just lucky enough to get two in a row.

The service guy was nice enough to leave me a loaner to use, but it's only a tester and doesn't have wireless, so I can't go online on my laptop where I have everything. I'm having to use the desktop, which doesn't have my password saved to get my email, and I can't find the paper that I have it written down on. It's buried on my kitchen/art/writing table somewhere, so if you've written me an email since Tues night, I haven't gotten it yet. But I will as soon as my new modem gets here. At least, I hope the third one works. I could have paid $14.95 to get it here overnight, but I couldn't see being out that expense when it should be here by Monday anyway. The weekend made it take longer.

At least, I can blog and I can pick up my yahoo email and visit my group. So I'm not totally in withdrawal. :) And I may find that paper where I wrote it down yet!

Music and Jesters

Quirky Art Journal Sketch-"Jester"

I discovered two new musical artists this weekend that I thought somebody might enjoy.

One is Dana Fuchs. I watched the movie "Across The Universe" last night and she plays the landlord/rocker in it. The movie is set in the 60's amidst all the turbulance and is a love story/musical featuring Beatles songs, so if you enjoy the Beatles music you might check it out.

If you like the blues, Dana is amazing. Reminds me of Janis Joplin, only better. I found and added several of her songs to my playlist on the right. You may have to scroll down. I also found some videos of her performing on utube. I had never heard of her, but I'm glad I watched the movie. I love the Beatles' songs and enjoyed the movie, but Dana really stood out in it and I became a fan.

Then today on Just Be Connected Melba posted about what she's been watching, reading, and listening to and she had a link to the Foiled album by Blue October. I had heard of Blue October but wasn't familiar with their music. She enjoyed it so much that I followed the link and had a listen for myself. I liked them, so I also added a few of their tracks to my playlist if you want to have a listen, or follow the link to Just Be Connected and read what Melba and others are reading, watching, and listening to. You may discover something new to try. You might even want to add your own list in the comments. Enjoy!

I joined the Be Brave challenge the other day and have faced a few things that scare me and did them anyway this weekend, but I'm too sleepy to write about them right now. Maybe later.
Click on the Be Brave button to the right for an explanation of the challenge. It's inspiring.

Today is the first day I've missed for a few months doing a quirky journal sketch and it feels odd to me. Just didn't get to it today. However, yesterday I colored one and started painting another one, plus I started a painting based on Alex Shur's technique which is featured in the Sept/Oct Cloth, Paper, & Scissors magazine, so I guess it's ok. I do love doing them and I missed my morning doodling though. :)

Hope the little jester makes you smile. She was one of my first. :)

Mojoart Challenge Entry/Quirky Sketches

"Walls"-Pencil, Sharpie, WC Pencils on Drawing Paper

I don't really have time to write much today, but I wanted to post so I'll share the two sketches I have entered in this month's Mojoart group challenge, which is Abstraction Satisfaction. Not sure if these qualify as really being abstract, but I wanted to participate, so there they are amongst some REAL abstract paintings. Plus I had a lot of fun doing them. :) Members work entered will be voted on in a couple of days and the winner's work will be displayed on the homepage until the next challenge is over.

"Snuggle Bunny"-Pencil, Sharpie, WC Pencils on Drawing Paper

Quirky Art Journal Sketches/Technique

I had some interest in how I do the quirky journal sketches, and I finally got time to post it. First, let me say that I learned the technique from Judi Russell, whose link I followed from Megan's post on links that she had discovered on Just Be Connected a few months ago.


Judi had a page teaching her technique on her website. She has recently taken it down, but she has a gallery of her paintings and journal entries (drawings and writings), which is very interesting. Some of her paintings derived from her art journal drawings. Visit here to check out her journal pages.


I don't have permission to write her version here, so I'll show you what I learned and took from her page. I appreciate so much her sharing the technique, because it has been so much fun for me, plus it's really helped me to loosen up and enjoy drawing. You don't have to worry about everything being "correct". Just go with it and have fun if you decide to try it.


Judi does three pages of stream of consciousness writing first to clear her mind and prepare her heart before she starts drawing the shapes, which would really be helpful, but I tend not to do that because of time. It would make it more meditative.


Okay, here goes: (my version)

Step 1:
Close your eyes, try not to think about what you're hand is doing, and with a pencil start drawing shapes, lines, etc. very lightly on your paper (dark enough to see, but not dark enough to be confusing). I've found that smooth paper, like sketchbook or journal paper, works best for me for these sketches. I tried them on watercolor and textured paper and the doodle lines were much harder to see, thus making it harder to pull an image out. All of my quirky sketches start out like the example above, just shapes jumbled together.

Step 2:
When you're finished open your eyes and look at your shapes until you see an image emerge that means something to you. Turn the page around if you need to. Sometimes an image will jump right out at you yelling, "Here I Am!" and sometimes they play hide and seek, taking a little longer to emerge.


When you find the image go over the lines and make them darker with your pencil. You can enhance the image by adding a face, feet, legs, whatever. If a line suggests something that you think it needs, draw it. I tend to leave as many original lines or shapes as I can, just like I find them.

Step 3:
Once you have the drawing like you want it, go over the lines with an ultra fine black sharpie. Write down any words, phrases, titles as they come to you while you work on it. These can be added to the sketch.

Step 4: "Magicians and Levitation" (colors are better in person)
Use watercolor pencils to color it in. Then take a DAMP brush and go over the colors to make them pop. You can use the sketch for ideas and you have a pattern to transfer to wc paper, canvas, etc. to do a finished painting if you want.


Step 5:
Write about what the image means to you or what message you get from it.

This is kind of a condensed version, but these are the steps.


Some of the images are more realistic, some of them are cartoon like, some are magical, fantasy, or whimsical, but they've all been a lot of fun. Kind of like Forest Gump's chocolates. You never know what you're going to find. :)

Sometimes I leave all the lines in so it looks like patchwork or stained glass kind of and sometimes I don't, which is why in the ones I've shared here and in previous posts you can see the pencil lines both in the image and background. Since they are journal sketches, and not finished paintings, I feel free to do that.


It's kind of like solving a puzzle and winding up with your own original coloring book. Plus it's gotten me into the habit of doing at least one drawing daily, thus exercising my imagination and drawing skills, and I'm much more relaxed with wc than I was. The added bonus is a ton of ideas for canvas paintings and short stories. :)


I hope you will try it at least once. If you do, let me know. I'd love to see what you come up with. I warn you though. It's kind of addictive once you get started. :)