My Immortal

This is my entry for the Dark Whisper challenge this week at Digital Whisper Ning site. I love that Kimmie started a group for the darker arts! Just my thing. We were given the two images of the lady and the tree roots and then told to merge them together and take it from there. Ooh, I loved this one!

She posted a video from the group Evanescence called "My Immortal" to get us motivated. I had forgotten that I even had this CD! So of course I went hunting for it and finally dug it up. I played it as I was creating this piece; especially the song, My Immortal. Hmm...so of course I had to give it that title when I finished!

I just had the best visit with my sister! She was able to stay a full week. I limited my time on the computer because I wanted to spend as much time with her as I could. We don't get to see each other very much; only a couple of times a year and at Christmas so I really looked forward to her visit. We spent our time being silly, shopping, and watching movies (well, one movie at the theatre a few times: Eclipse). Plus, we watched videos here at home. We're both suckers for sappy, sad love stories. So there we sat, watching these sad scenes with a box of tissues between us, tears flowing. It was great! ;)

Then she helped me upgrade my sorely lacking technology supply (as in NONE). I did recently get a Nook (she's had hers for a while) so we both were able to make a visit to Barnes & Noble and plug in there for awhile for the freebies and shop for books & browse online. And, who knew I could even add music to my Nook! Yes, I have the Twilight and New Moon soundtracks loaded so I can listen to them as I re-read all of those books (I know, I'm hopeless...).

Also while she was here I was able to finally get an Ipod. Don't laugh. I've never felt the need to have one before. But she brought hers along and I was intrigued. Now I see what I was missing. So of course I wanted one. I LOVE mine. One of the reasons I didn't have any of these things before now was I'm so out of touch with how to even begin operating one or even where to start. That's why I needed her: she took care of helping me create my playlists and loading one onto my device. Now I'm happily plugged in!

But it was sad to see her leave and now it's very quiet here again. So I'm slowly getting back in the groove, catching up with the massive backlog of email and the different Ning sites and my favorite art blogs. Hopefully I'll be all caught up in the next few days. It was nice to have that time with her. It was very special to me. :)

Finding Balance

I can't believe how fast the weeks are going by. There are so many things I am trying to get caught up on and it seems like I'm just treading water here. It's very frustrating to realize that I haven't made as much progress in any of the areas I had hoped to and yet another week has passed! :(

I made this top piece as a sort of digital journal page. I was looking through my sketch book and came upon a series of fast little sketches that I did a while back. These were whimsical little drawings that I then transferred onto loose canvas. I am planning on painting these individual canvas pieces and doing more with them (yet another project). And I even know where I put the stack of cut out canvas! Yay for me!! :) The background is from Lori Davison at Scrapbook Graphics dot com.

Anyway, this digital piece came together as I was thinking about the word "balance". Kelly Rae has talked a lot about this in her ecourse. If you've been following along in the last couple of posts you know I'm taking her course on starting your own creative business. It has been an incredible course. So much information and so worth every penny. I have met some incredibly talented, generous and wonderful ladies along this journey! What a great experience!

Hubby and I met up with some old friends this weekend that were passing through town and had the best time with them. We met for lunch and I don't think I've laughed so much in a very long time. That got me to thinking about how I miss connecting with my friends in Ohio and made me a little more homesick for family/friends there. And then I started to think about the need to balance time with friends and time in the studio. I spend a lot of time alone creating and usually that's fine with me. But I realize that it's also just as important for me to get out and get some fresh air, interact with others and not be such a hermit all of the time.

I have all of these expectations for myself and what direction I want my art to take. Yet I also need to be aware of the need to balance that with time to take care of my health and to check in with my friends and family too. I'm so glad we had that time with our friends this weekend! It was a great eye opener and a fun trip down memory lane.

I do have a few works-in-progress to show. These are NOT anywhere near finished. This first one is from Sharon Tomlinson's class that I mentioned in an earlier post. Oh, it's such a challenge to paint faces! As you can see, I'm very new at it. I like the idea of the technicolor faces and this was my first try for critique. I used a model from a magazine as my inspiration and to be a guide for the placement of lights/darks on the face. Sharon has given me a few pointers and I'll now go in and see what I can do with it. What I like about this: the background!

This next one is a face that I sketched in my oversized journal I got a while back. It's filled with this heavy, cotton watercolor paper. Lots of texture and fun to draw on. This is purely for practice and play; no pressure. I sketched this face and then just started throwing paint on it. Actually it was paint left over from the face I was painting in Sharon's class. So we'll see where it ends up eventually:

And hubby has set me up a nice little workbench in the basement workshop. We've got a few drills, a bench vise, some copper tubing and lots of metal bits...more to come on that later!