Hmm.. I really did not manage to carve and print every day, actually I made only two prints:
But I did make a nice pattern for this week’s Spoonflower challenge titled Year of the ox. I really surprised myself because I felt totally uninspired by the topic, but once I started drawing I started liking it to and I am really pleased with the result:
And then a complete surprise: my design got featured in Spoonflower newsletter:
Results will be announced next week, I do not think I will win enough votes to make it into first 50, but this was by far my most liked design and being featured is a prize on its own. Yay!
I did work on another design for next week’s challenge, the topic was patchwork and I really like what I made. I am ordering it to make a sofa cover. Will post a photo next week.
It was my birthday on Wednesday. We made tiramisu and shared it and some sparkling wine with our neighbors out on the terrace. Stupid lockdown, but I am grateful we could do that much. Depressing.
Again a busy week at work and fighting for time and light to do some art. I did manage to make a quick pattern for weekly Spoonflower challenge. Here’s video of it:
Nothing special, but I am glad I did it because I want to do as many of these challenges this year.
On Monday a fresh supply of stamping pads arrived:
And I swatched them using an old stamp. I don’t really like the stazon pads, but I am sure I will find a use for them. They are too dark somehow and stamps cannot be cleaned easily after stamping. I suppose it doesn’t matter much as it does not affect the stamp, but still bothers me.
I am working on my 100 day challenge. I am on print number 19 today. I skipped two days this week, but still managed to do a decent number and even carved some new stamps. Here are the prints:
The rest of my life this week was ok. Took car to service on Wednesday and Mother to hairdresser on Friday. Everybody was more or less healthy and well, so nothing to complain about. Today I even managed to update my ‘About’ page here on my website. And hallelujah, l managed to link it here. I find this WordPress app quite difficult to use, frankly speaking. It’s easier on the computer, but you cannot lie on the sofa and type on your computer, so yeah…
It was a busy week at work, so I did not have much time for art. I also did not do anything on this web site, so I am afraid that I will forget the little of what I learned. Not a pity really because it is just a little. Something important happened: I bought myself an iPad, with pencil and all. I immediately downloaded procreate and Illustrator and Photoshop and started drawing. There is so much to learn, but I can finally do it from the comfort of my bed and sofa and not depend on whether I have the necessary light or surface to place my paper on. I expect it will help me being more productive. Here’s a little mandala I drew the first day:
I realized that now I can easily create line art, even in vector format, because there is another app called Fresco, which can draw vectors. Yay the possibilities and hello coloring pages. I can now refresh the supply of coloring sheets that I originally started with on this blog. Maybe some people among you would be interested. Let me know.
Apart from having great fun on my iPad, I continued with the #100littlepatternprints but I skipped a few days because work was really crazy. Here’s what I did:
Not bad really considering how little time there was, right?
Otherwise… I did not take Lola to the vet, because her ear got better. Her digestion is improving, so I will wait February as it was the original plan. Still no date for Mother’s surgery. The snow has melted and now we have mud again. After several very cold days there arrived several very warm ones, today it’s cold again, but somehow smelled like spring. Probably it’s just in my head.
So that’s all for today. I am keeping up with my weekly posts for the time being, we are all kind of healthy and mostly happy, so all good. Let me go back to drawing now. See you next week.
So far so good with keeping up with the plan of posting a blog post once a week. What is not so good is that I started transforming this blog into a web site and it’s going very slowly and with many difficulties, because, frankly speaking I have no idea what I am doing most of the time. This past week, I haven’t done anything on that because I was back to work after holiday and did not have a spare moment to do anything.
I did very little art, but managed to post a print on IG every day. I did a watercolor print with my #carvedecember stamps and added some painted details:
The rest are quick prints that I did for my #100littlepatternprints challenge that I made for myself. The trick is to post more often on IG and these are very good because they are done quickly. Sometimes I carved a stamp, sometimes I used what I already had. The point is I gave myself a short art break every day regardless of how busy I was at work; I made a pattern which could be an inspiration for some future pattern design idea; and I posted every day. Cool, right? Here they are:
So, nothing really exciting, but I like the idea of doing these prints for 100 days. #100daychallenge is apparently starting on 31 January this year, but I started early 🙂 I am sure it does not matter 🙂
Otherwise nothing spectacular happened this week, which is good. No news is good news, right? Lola’s had a little soft-bloody-stool episode, which looks like resolving, I hope for the best. Mother is ok. We are still looking for the best place and time for her surgery. The weather is very cold, but mostly sunny. There was some snow fall, and that made everything more beautiful and finally ended long muddy shoes after walk period. Now it’s frozen fingers and toes period. Not complaining, just saying… and longing for dust and sweat period 😉 It cannot come soon enough… I really do not like winter.
This week I was on holiday, so there was time for art and I did quite some. There is a challenge called #printersolstice which I am doing. It’s easy because it requires printing only one print a week and it’s already week 3, so these are my three prints:
Have I mentioned last week that I enrolled in Life Book this year? If not, I am mentioning it now 🙂 This is a warm-up piece I painted:
Obviously my word for this year are ‘gently flow’. I don’t have a good feeling about this year, probably because it started with worries and anxiety. I want to just sit quietly and be taken to the point of resolution. I know that’s impossible, so I am going to tread gently. Flow, if possible. And try to be very nice and patient with us all. This was the week where I do not solve any problems, but just get ready to act… from Monday. And that’s in a day almost. Mother is anxious about her impending surgery. Lola grew some lump in her ear. Lumps are a no-no, so the vet it is next week, instead of next month as planned. Here she is with her new scarf:
I was playing with Procreate Pocket on my phone, and did some funny drawings, here are videos:
These were fun really 🙂 I wish I had an iPad and a real Procreate. I plan to get one for my birthday. Let’s see…
I also started transforming my web site. I have a home page now with the link to this blog. I have another domain name, which I will change when it’s all finished. It’s hard because I need to learn how to do stuff and most of the time I am just guessing and trial-erring, but I am sure that I will get there eventually.
We managed to walk every day for an hour – that’s a new one, we drive somewhere and them Lola too walks, no problem. We are discovering paths in nature which are very close to our place, like 10 minutes drive no more, so that is something to really be grateful for. I had no idea we lived in such a great place. Does this sound weird? Anyway, I hope I will be able to continue with these great walks when work starts. I really hope. They make these winter days bearable. Actually, there is no real winter, the temperatures are most of the time above zero and there was snow only one day and it did not even require shovelling, so it does not count at all.
So this is it for the first full week of January 2021. Not too bad. We are still standing. Let’s gently flow…
As usual, let’s start the year with a resolution. I feel that this year should be about the self-care and self-love and being very gentle with myself. I’ve been pushing myself too much, with giving to my family, trying to achieve something with my art business, trying to do the art challenges, learning new things, looking to accomplish more… and more… and to tell the truth: I am tired. I worry too much, I sleep badly, I stress about not making the challenges, not getting enough attention from my followers, not reaching my business goals, not writing my blog every day. I neglect myself by not resting enough, not meditating enough, not exercising enough, not pausing enough, not making art that has meaning to me.
So, this year I will try to make things better for myself and do less of what stresses me and more of what has deeper meaning and nourishes my soul. Starting with this blog, I am not going to post every day. I will try to do weekly posts and if I do not manage that, I will do monthly. Daily did not work for three years now, so I better let go of it.
I set myself monthly goals, but not for more than two months ahead. If I do not reach them, I will just move them to the next month. This month the goal is to transform this blog into a web site. Apparently it’s possible, I just need to learn how. Because, right now I am struggling with even simple image insertion in this new editor. Maybe the editor is not even new, just I did not come here for a very long time 🙂
Things have been ok last year. We did not get ill with the virus. We built the garden, which was a huge undertaking for me, both financially and emotionally. I advanced my skills with learning about pattern design. That was big too. I struggled with Lola’s health and it seems that I finally won there too: since November she is eating raw. I stopped all supplements and all carbs (grains, fruits, vegetables). Her last bad diarrhoea was in October. She is eating only raw meat and fish, raw organ meat and occasional bone. She is improving. I am calming down. Let’s hope that’s a win. So, 2020 is done and all is ok.
End of 2020 Mother got a moderately worrying health issue, so this year we are starting with worry about that. She will need a surgery, which involves general anaesthesia and she is extremely worried about that. I worry too. Many things could go wrong, but let’s hope they will not. So, that’s a big one to deal with in January too.
I enrolled in Life Book this year after three years of pause. I felt it’s time to get back to it and work thorough the self-care lessons I will find there. I am not expecting to do them all, just what inspires me. This time, I have an old book from my childhood that I will alter for Life Book. I am looking forward to it. It’s been a long time since I painted mixed media.
Last month of 2020 was dedicated to #carvedecember challenge and that one I did, all 31 days and I recorded a video of all of them. I quite enjoyed it and managed quite well time wise. I will try to post a video flip through here. I know it never worked before, but let’s see, maybe it changed 🙂
So I was kind of lazy these days and did not write anything. Nobody got sick and even our gardener appeared to say that he will start the works on 17 August. So there was no bad and scary reason for not posting 🙂 I was just very very busy at work and around house, so there was simply no time. Lola had her lab check on Friday and all is good.
I was further using my watercolor painting to make patterns. These three are made of two flowers from that painting, I just added a glow filter around them. I am quite happy with how they turned out.
We are travelling today again to Slovenia. The weather is nice and hot, so the summer is finally here. Sad to think that it’s already August, so it will not last, but at least we did get some hot this year.
I am continuing with turning my watercolor painting into a repeat pattern. This is element number 3 added. I really like how it turned out 🙂
There is a lot to do this week, at work. Also we are preparing for the garden rebuilding, doing last minute planning and shopping for materials. Actually I will be really happy when August is over, I hope all works will be finished by then. But let’s not plan too far ahead, they haven’t even started, LOL!
Well, if it’s not Lola, it’s something else. Lola was fine thankfully, but I got a pinched nerve in my shoulder and for two days could not move my little finger and also did not sleep almost at all for two nights. Since I had a lot of time and could not do anything, I downloaded an app called Procreate Pocket, which is kind of Procreate for iPhone, because I do not have an iPad. So I played a bit with it once the pain got bearable and made a wonky mandala (first photo), Then once I could hold a mouse I tried to see how it works with exporting it from Procreate to Photoshop, and I can report a success. Made just a very simple pattern because the drawing does not deserve better, but it’s good to know that there is that option. Today I continued to extract elements from a watercolor painting, the job I started before the shoulder hit me. The idea was to extract element by element and then recombine them into a seamless pattern. The last photo is two flowers combined into a pattern. Tomorrow I continue.
New patter from a watercolor painting I did two years ago. The colors make me happy. The weather has improved today and the sun came out. I hope we will have a beautiful day, despite it being Monday… I feel unsettled and worried… There is a full list of chores to attend to, so I better start working on crossing them out. It may help me focus and feel better…
Indigo pink 