fire hair

I'm stuck in red these days. Very unusual for me. I'm usually a blues & greens kinda gal.

Maybe Santa is rubbing off on me? :-)

i did find a way to include the blues... 

not quite done yet, but i wanted to share anyway.

I'm having a lovely time in my neck of the woods, preparing for Christmas. The only thing missing now is snow. I'm one of those people who looks forward to a good snowstorm. It's unusual for us not to have snow at this time of the year, so my fingers are crossed, at least for a bit. :-)

Wishing you all a wonderful Tuesday! 

xoxo

Santa's day off

In the spirit of Christmas, i'm guessing this is what Santa does on his day off. :-)

...a few black lines with the MICRON pen...

...a few extra snowflakes with the white pen, and there you have it.

Santa on skates.

As much as i love painting & posting, sometimes, life gets in the way. 

Christmas preparations, work, appointments, books to read, Christmas specials on tv. :-)

I try to make time for art every day, but i do have days where motivation or inspiration (or time!)

seem faaaaar away from my grasp, and on those days, i don't fret over it. I just do something else.

I know there are more quiet nights on the horizon where i'll have time to myself, good music by my side and paints & paper galore. 

So if ever i disappear from blog land for a few days at a time, please know that i'll be back, and i'll be eagerly visiting your blogs as well... so keep posting too, ok? :-)

xoxo

girl in box

Another few pages for the Sketchbook challenge.

A girl in a box, acrylic on paper.

Not much of a process to show today, since i haven't finished it yet.

I'll have to do something about those curly pages before i send it off.

By the way, i loved reading your comments yesterday about when or how you all became artists. 

It's funny how one thing leads us to another in life, isn't it?

Neither of my parents were artists - my father was a carpenter & my mother a caregiver (this doesn't mean they weren't creative!) - but I remember always having crayons & paper in the house. I also remember my mother saving the egg cartons, which usually turned into colourful little bells, or flowers. Or dad bringing home scrap pieces of wood for me to draw on or carve. When i was 12 or 13, we had a snow sculpture contest at school and my friend and i won first place for our snow sculpture of Snoopy the dog - the Charles Schultz creation - not Snoop Dog :-). All of these little things lead me to continue being creative, one way or another.

In high school, (in Alberta), I was fortunate enough to have a great art teacher who encouraged me to push myself (thanks, Mr. Muzzo). He even told me I was a really good artist - that's all it took. At the end of the school year, we were moving back east, 3000 miles away and as a gift, Mr. Muzzo gave me a brand new set of oil pastels to encourage me to keep drawing. Teachers sometimes don't realize how much of an affect they have on kids and how ONE kind gesture can perhaps change the course of a life. I used those pastels till they were nothing but little bits of colour in the box. 

It's not really important how or when we became artists. I believe we're all naturally creative beings at birth, but that's another story. :-) It's only important to honour the creativity once we recognize it in ourselves, whether it be with cooking or singing or dancing or drawing.

Otherwise, we're not whole, or true to ourselves, are we?

happy Thursday everyone. Thank you again so much for sharing your comments with me.
:-)