My progress

So, I've had 3 weeks so far in my art class - I'm having a blast. I am really enjoying it so far. I have been posting my progress on facebook - so if you're on there, you can see my week to week progress there. If you're not on there, here's my latest and greatest. Well, maybe not greatest - but it is my latest! ;) In any case... Week 1, I did the line drawing, sketching him in and outlining where I was going to paint. Week 2, I painted the shirt and the shorts portion. This week I've started laying in the flesh tones to the painting. This has been the hardest part for me yet. I've never done this kind of painting - it's very time consuming, and slow going - but yet, I really am having fun with it. I am working with oil paints and it's been awhile for me since I've worked seriously with oils. I'm learning some new techniques and whatnot from the teacher and this is just absolutely WONDERFUL, so I'm actually growing as an artist as well - I'm just so excited about it all. Anyway, here we go - Here's my Week 3 progress - what do you think?

A new art class!

I'm so excited! I'm going to start an art class tomorrow night - oil painting portraits. I've done oil painting before, but I've never done portraits - so this will be a real challenge for me. PLUS, it's really been a while since I've worked much with oils as well. So it's starting over again with that. I'm really looking forward to it. It'll be once a week for 3 hours at a time. The first BIG challenge is to decide who to do a portrait of. Do I do a portrait of myself? a relative? someone I know - or a random stranger? That's tough - this is my first attempt - how tied to this do I want to be as I butcher them... hmmm. I've been printing off some pictures trying to get ideas and narrow it down. I'm going to keep it a surprise for right now until I get it started. We shall see. I'll take pictures of my progress and keep you updated. I hope this will really help me get back into my art - it's been far too long. My recent trip up to Nashville has really inspired me. I went up there with 2 of the most awesome people I know (my mother in law Connie and our friend Marti). Marti is an incredible artist and was having an art opening the LeQuire Gallery. It was a great show - what beautiful art we saw! I saw lots of art that inspired me! Anyway - after that - I want to create. We shall see - I'll keep you updated and let you know what's going on with it. Wish me luck! ;)

TGIF!

Thank goodness for Friday's! It's just such a relief to know that you don't have to go back in to work for 2 more days - sigh. I plan on a nice relaxing weekend. Not sure what we'll get - but that's what I'm planning for now anyway! ;) I think that tonight we shall hang out around the house and not do much of anything. I'd like to cook a little dinner and enjoy a glass of wine and just relax tonight. I'm thinking that I'd like to paint tonight - get my paints and canvases out and do a little painting. Maybe I can get Fuddy to paint something too!? He's quite creative too. We shall see. We're planning on going out boating tomorrow, it's ridiculous hot - so not sure how long we'll last out there, but we haven't been out in awhile, so I'm lookin' forward to it. Hopefully I'll get some sun out there too! ;) Anyone got some exciting plans for the weekend? What else is going on? I don't know much else.

Odds and ends...

• 14 days and counting until I see my kids again - not sure if that's good or bad yet... ;) hahh.
• coming up on my 9 year anniversary at work. 9 years? wow - doesn't seem like I've been here that long. interesting...
• Fuddy has his 20 year highschool reunion in August and we are going back to Canton for it. This should be fun - in some ways, I feel more pressure to look good for his reunion than I did to look good for mine - isn't that funny?

That's all that I know - hope you have a great weekend! Talk to ya' later! ;)

The smoke fiddles below the tunnel.

Thanks to TJ - I found this website... How bizarre is that? So now, when I'm stumbling to come up with a title for my post - I can simply steal a randomly generated sentence from that wonderful little gem of a website. Nice, huh? ;) I thought so... ROFL. Yeah, that's the kind of life I lead...

OK anyway - way back a bit here, TJ posted this... I of course, jumped right on this cuz I thought the idea was cool and I really loved how the coins look. Here's what I received:

The key chain was quite the bonus from the happiest place on earth! ;) I added it to my keys immediately. Anyway, when I got them it was hard to give them away - but I have given 3 of them away now - just randomly, like when i have lunch i leave one with the tip if I liked the server, etc... these are just SO cool. Everyone that I have left with one has loved it - kind of a "pass it on" type thing. I like that idea.

In any case, I've been meaning to post about it forever, but hadn't - so here we go. Now, I want more of these! I want to place them in a shadow box to hang on my wall - I love them! ;) Don't you think they are cool?

My new tat!

Here's a pic of my new koi tat! Whatcha think? We went yesterday and got our tats, it was an afternoon family bonding session! ;) It wasn't too bad - took just about 45 minutes or so, he had to adjust my original drawing somewhat, but I think it turned out great, I'm happy with it! OK, just wanted to show you a quick pic - I'm gonna run, we've got lots of stuff to get done today! Hope you're having a great day - chat with you later...tater. Oh yeah - you can read a bit about the meaning of koi tattoo's here.... kinda interesting.

White Rabbit

Well, these aren't the best pictures... but you can get the general idea of my progress. This is based on the Jefferson Airplane song - White Rabbit - go listen to it if you don't already know it, and you can check out the lyrics here...

OK, so the pictures show 3 phases as I've been working on this project - what do you think?

Now, the last picture - I've walked away from this painting for a bit - I don't want to ruin the picture! It's hard to walk away sometimes, you want to finish and work on it - but I'm not exactly sure what direction I want to go in...

My initial thought was that I would paint a black and white checkerboard around the entire frame of the painting - now, I'm not sure if I want to do that or not - I kind of like the white frame. Hmmm... I also still plan on emphasizing the words somehow that are in the picture, but I don't want them to stand out TOO much - hard balance. Let's see what else? Oh - I plan on painting a red Q and a heart in the upper right hand corner, similar to what you would see on a playing card.

well - let me know what you think - good or bad, i'll take it - just curious...

WooHoo!

Today's thursday already! Yeah, I know it's wednesday, but it's still thursday too - ya know what I mean? right! ok then. I love short weeks, always makes work a bit easier to get through! haha. Anyway, it's been a pretty good day today too. FuddyDuddy's buddy made lunch for his whole department today and even tho I'm not in that dept - I got an invite just cuz. He cooked up 30 lbs of hot wings - YUUUUUMMMM! Yep, that was very good. I ate my share and then some. That was 2 hours ago and I'm still stuffed - won't need any dinner tonight. Good luck to hubby and the kids, they're on their own tonight! haha.

So, what else is up? Not a whole lot here. Trying to get my next art project going here's the assignment:

Our next assignment will be a song interpretation. Choose a song, any song and then you can create an image, a collage of images or whatever you choose as your interpretation of that song, a line from that song or a verse from that song. It can be a literal image from the lyrics, or something that you envision when you hear a certain song. Again, any medium is welcome.

So, I think I have my song choice (no, not telling that part yet...) and now I'm working on getting the artwork done. I have some ideas, just not the whole image yet... I'm working on it. I'll post a picture when I'm done.

OK, that's all that I know - gonna run and get some stuff done! Hope y'all are having a great day!

Now what...

I really don't have much to say today. So yeah - I'll probably end up rambling on and on and on ... and then you'll get to the end and say - what the hell did she just say? ;) hahh! Anyway, tomorrow we turn in our 2nd art assignment for my "finer things" art society at work. There are 4 of us in the group now, and we are really having fun with this. Our assignment this week was to turn in a tattoo design that we would get. I'm very thrilled with how mine turned out (the koi here), pretty much exactly how I saw it in my head. I'm actually thinking about playing with it some more tonight and adding to it - we'll see - gotta be careful with that, before you know it - you'll do too much and ruin it. I've also started another tattoo design, but not sure if I will get it finished in time or not. It could be really cool if it turns out how I envision. We shall see.

OK... odds and ends...

• Bistro La Ville's website is up and running now - make sure to stop in and try the place. I'm starving for his food right now. We'd like to take the kids in there soon for dinner and let them see the place, they were kinda bummed that we didn't take them last time. We'll probly need to wait til payday tho. We'll see. Chef Clint said he'd hook them up with some mac and cheese - MAN, I bet even his mac and cheese is that good! ;)
• A group of us at work are embarking on a venture to check out the accuracy of this report... The 15 Must-Have Sandwiches in Madison County...we're starting off today with the Godfather. I'll let you know what I think.
• We watched The Bucket List last night, very good movie - I loved it. I suggest you see it too, if you haven't already.
• Happy early Anniversary to Kimpossible and FuddyDuddy's Buddy - 11 years on Saturday!
• Happy early Anniversary to my lil brother and my sister-in-law - 12 years on Sunday - really, has it been that long? seems like just yesterday we were riding that hay wagon, in the HOT HOT sun, drink away the cold ones.. sigh. What a great wedding that was, still one of the best weddings I've been to yet. At least the parts that I remember... hmmmm...

OK, really that's it now. Hope you guys are having a really excellent thursday and I will chat with you at some later point!

It's monday!

How do you feel about Mondays? Yeah - me too. sigh. Oh well, not much we can do about it, can we? Anyway, lots of stuff to catch you up on... so, ... sorry if I bore you... but whatever. ;)

• My in-laws were in town this weekend, since they brought the kids back, and we had a really good time with them. It was a relaxing weekend, but really wore me out. They left yesterday afternoon and will be back again in about 2 weeks.
• We went out to eat Saturday night to Bistro la Ville again - YUM YUM YUM! - we really love that place, it's quite excellent. We wanted to "show off" to our in-laws and take them somewhere yummy, and they agreed - they loved it too. I had fois gras for the first time ever - wow, that was pretty good. You still can't beat his Shrimp and biscuits appetizer - really, you have to go there if only to try that!
• Working on getting the kids back into our schedule, we'll see. We have our work cut out for us on that. They are used to being spoiled rotten and getting all they want - that's about to change! ;)
• I had physical therapy again this morning, my back feels almost completely all better. That's a wonderful thing! I have 2 more sessions of PT and then I'm done with that. My hope is to start running again next week, so keep your fingers crossed for me.
• My in-laws brought an art easel for me this weekend too - so I can start painting/drawing/whatever again! I'm very excited about this! I can't wait to get back into all of that and start creating!
• With that in mind, my mother in law and I decided to try something new this year at Christmas - we only give "home-made" gifts. So we can do whatever, but anything that we give must be made by us. That actually might be fun to do, of course - we'll probably spend a fortune on getting all of the items together to make the gifts - but oh well. ROFL.

OK, gonna run - I hope you have a wonderful afternoon and I will chat with you folks later! tata for now! ;)

Tattoos...

...here's some pics of tattoo ideas that I've been playing around with. I already have a yin/yang symbol - so my thought is to "embellish" that somehow... I just don't know exactly what I want yet. I really like my drawing of the koi - I think that turned out great, but I like the IDEA behind the carpe diem tattoo better (the flowers signify my children). I don't know, I'm still playing around working on it, we'll see what I come up with. What do you think - any ideas to offer?

Novocaine...

It just doesn't work on me. I mean, yeah - the entire left side of my face is numb - I can't feel my lips, or that side of my tongue, or my jaw- etc... but - I can TOTALLY feel the doctor drilling into my teeth and it HURTS. It always hurts, and I don't think he believes me. I hate that. At least that one is over with and I don't need to go back in anytime soon! Do you feel sorry for me now? Well, OK then - I feel a little bit better, pity always helps... haha!

In other news - my back actually feels pretty good today, not too bad at all - I think I am definitely on the mend and that makes me happy. I was really sick and tired of that sore back - plus - I REALLY miss the running. I hope to get back to that in a few weeks, it's really frustrating - all that training and whatnot on the running and now I can't run at all - none. :( depressing. I'll get back to it tho, soon as this back gets all healed up.

In other, other news - the kids will most likely be back into town late Thursday night now! woohoo! Yeah, I'm kinda looking forward to seeing them - just a little bit anyway.

In other, other, other news (are you bored of that yet?) - I've been working on my latest art assignment - to design my tattoo. It's actually coming along quite well, I've designed a few now actually - and now, I have to decide if I really want to add any of those to my current tats - I think I do, I just don't know what and all that. Designing a "meaningful" tattoo is actually harder than I thought. I'll scan some of my drawings in this week and put up here and you can let me know what you think!

i know, i know - i suck at blogging...

I've just had a bit going on. My back is still hurting, I'm actually working from home, laying on the couch right now. The only time it feels better is when I'm laying down. Sitting is the worst thing for my back, and standing isn't much better. So i'm on lots of meds that don't seem to be helping too much and i hate it. I go to the Ortho doc tomorrow morning, funny thing - it's the same doc that did fuddy's back. We'll see.


Anyway, this whole thing just really BUMS me out. I mean, I had worked so hard to start running, I did my first 5k - and was so looking forward to keep doing that. I actually MISS the running lately. I think that it helped me feel better, more then just physically - but mentally. When I'm running, it was a great way to clean out my head, and de-stress. I need that. I mean, I'm a complete nutcase - I need to have some kind of release. AUGH. what to do?!


So, at least with this - I have been able to do some drawing again - so little by little, I'm actually getting back into my art. That helps, I feel great when I'm doing that. My MIL is coming down here in a few weeks and is bringing me an easel! How exciting is that!! I love it! I can't wait. I'm going to clean out a small area in my kitchen nook for it. MY ART ROOM! ;) This is one of the little drawings I did here lately - whatcha think???

... more of my art...

This is an oil painting that I did in college. I actually ended up doing an entire series of these, but this is the first, and probably my favorite of the entire series. I call it "Hatred". There was a song out at the time with the same name, by the Kinks, and it just got me going. This is one of the funnest series that I had painting too, it was an actual release to paint these. I could let loose on the canvas and have that all be "part of the experience" so to speak. It's a fairly good sized painting, and bless my fuddyduddy's heart, it's hanging up in our house. I don't think that he really likes it, but he lets me hang it in anycase.

What do you think of it?

More of my art...

Here's another piece of my artwork. This is an ink drawing, mostly pointillism that I started when I was a senior in High School and finished in college. This is one of my favorite pieces. It took a VERY long time to complete, but it was worth it. Now where is it, you ask? In my garage on a shelf of course. LOL. I don't know why, we've just never hung it up. I hate that. It's inside now, I pulled it in to take a pic of it for here. Jim has always been my favorite - when I was in Paris, I even went to visit his grave - sigh. Oh well, just wanted to share this with you.
What do you think of it?

Wanna see?

This is a painting that I did in college (1990). I call it Harbor - yeah, pretty original huh? LOL. Well, whatever. In anycase, it's always been one of my favorites. After I completed this, we had it framed and I gave it to my grandparents as a Christmas gift. I've just recently got it back with my grandma passing away last summer. I did it in similar style to a painting by George Braque, which I cannot find a link to that particluar painting, so just trust me there. LOL. I just thought I would share this with you since I am trying to get back into "artist mode". I'll post some of my other artworks here and there. Please feel free to let me know what you think of them, good or bad, I can take the criticism. OK, that's all for now. I'll catch up with you later.