Lucy’s coloring book

Color me brightly

recent posts

about

Artist, pattern designer and believer in healing powers of art making.

  • Life Book 2017: Warmup Exercise

    Seriously… I promise I will practice drawing and painting animals this year. The animal from my meditation was a cute fawn and what I managed to produce is this:

     

    Ok, I did not try to reproduce it realistically, it is supposed to be cartoonish and whimsical, but this is just… the best I could do at this point [blush].

    Anyway… I saw a symbol in my meditation, it’s up there in the left corner, and there is also my word of the year. I have no idea what the symbol means, but I will go with it anyway. It must have some meaning to my subconscious. I quite like the color combination and doodles. I used Ecoline and water-based markers, lots of gesso, black markers and pencil. Ah yes, and some oil pastel in places.

    I have started the main lesson this afternoon and I spent at least an hour trying to get the hands on mu girl looking anything like hands. I’ve had enough of painting mittens instead of hands on my girls (Tam also does it, nothing wrong with it, but I would like to learn how to do those fingers). So there is another challenge for this year: learn to draw acceptable hands, not realistic or anything because my faces are not realistic…. But enough about the challenges.

    It was the coldest day this winter so far. When I woke up it was minus 17 and around midday minus 8. We did not go to the market, we just went to the mall and had the usual breakfast and coffee and bought out vegetables in the supermarket. Real pity, because the day was actually beautiful and it would have been nice to go out for a walk or skating. But I guess that’s it, I have to accept the cold, or rather to detach myself from it, right?

    Have a great weekend people!

  • Black Book January

    I did this challenge last year in January, I was probably inspired by #carveDecember and wanted to try something new and do it for a whole month. I called it Black Book January. Even a friend from Instagram joined and did several pieces. The goal of the challenge is to create something on black background. I bought a Derwent Black Book and did the challenge for the whole month last January. I did not create 31 pieces, because these are a little bit more complicated and time consuming than carving a stamp every day, but I quite enjoyed exploring what can be done on black paper.

    This year I am repeating the challenge. I will be doing mandalas, because I am currently inspired to do them and I have already tried some supplies that can do wonders on back paper. I finished two mandalas until now. The first I did with white UniBall pen, Carad’Ache Luminance 6901 pencils and Liquid Pearls.

     

    For the second I used UniBall pen and Sakura Metallic Gell pens in gold and bronze.

    In parallel I am also doing the first lesson of Life Book, actually not the main lesson, but the warm-up. I did the meditation and for the first time I actually saw a symbol and an animal. I decided that I would include them in the painting, so it’s not really a simple warm-up exercise, but a whole thing, with the animal and the symbol. So I am a bit stuck, because my animal (which was actually a fawn in my meditation) does not look anything close to what I saw, meaning that it’s as far from the fawn as at all possible, but I am accepting it, as there is no choice, it’s either that or nothing at all. I think I will finish during the day… I keep wondering why I cannot draw cute animals… Maybe I should make it a challenge… Maybe in February…

    Anyway… The weather is beautiful and sunny, but so horribly cold that I think I will not go out today. Last two days I went ice skating and enjoyed it enormously. Yesterday was also nice and sunny, but very windy and the day before was snowing and that day was actually much more to my liking even though it was cloudy, because the snow made it so calm and charming. So, off I go to nurture my muscle fever and wrstle with the ‘fawn’ 🙂

    Have a nice day!

  • Detachment

    I was watching a movie the other night, and a word came up, and I thought – yes, that’s the perfect word for 2017. Detachment.

    2016 was not one of the years I would remember as good or particularly important. It was emotionally draining: started as very promising regarding a long relationship I was trying to resurrect for past 8 years, culminated in an almost disaster in July and then winded down towards the end to a peaceful business as usual. I am basically in the same place where I was in end of 2015 and would happily pay a small fortune if I could forget 2016 as it never happened. That’s how significant it was.

    Anyway… I am a bit fed up with always being there for everybody who needs me, uncoditionally, accepting literary everything that’s thrown my way without asking questions and giving my positive energy to those in need and being left drained, frustrated, empty and tired. Yes, last year’s word was “acceptance” and I lived true to it until almost the last day of 2016.

    Don’t get me wrong – I love being there for people in need. The problem is, I cannot feel that point where I need to detach from their problems and to deal with my own. Because, my positive energy is not infinite, my helping hand is not made of steel and my heart not made of stone. I get too involved in what is going on. That’s why it’s “detachment” for 2017. I need to hold my own space for awhile and to replenish and refocuss. It’s not that I want to spend the year alone meditating in a cave, but something similar. LOL! Let’s see how it goes.

    This is the first spread in Book of Days 2017. It was inspired by a spread Effy did in her class Facing Forward II (which I did not attend, but she was so generous to share this lesson as a bonus with us). I modified it a bit to include my word for the year. Speaking of classes, I did it again, I bought four already for this year. I was seriously thinking to give up Life Book this year, but then I decided I will enrol anyway – I could not bear the thought of all those wonderful classes happening without me 🙂

    I also enrolled in Book of Days, obviously. Previously I bought Jane Davenport’s new class called Over the Rainbow, which will start end of January, and Juna Biagioni’s course Drawing in the Soul, which will start in March. It should be all for this year, I promised myself, unless there will be another new class by Jane Davenport, which I will not miss, because she is the most fun and amazing teacher I ever knew. So, I am fully booked for the year, and I am so happy about it.

    January is the month off work for me. It’s been like that for the past three years and I hope it will continue. I have the most amazing bosses in the world who let me take time off for a whole month. I got so used to having the January for myself and find it essential for settling in the new year and getting myself started in the right way, according to what I planned. Not that I make big New Year Resolutions, no way, because I cannot stand the pressure, but I do detemine a general direction to where I want to move and think of ways how to move there. It works. Even though the direction can be wrong, like it was in 2016. But enough of that. It’s a brand new year, I practice detachment and have no regrets.

  • #carveDecember: Days 25-31

    I promised the other day I would show the rest of the stamps. There are seven left. The first one is a double-sided garbage stamp:

    Then there is the only one of the large ones which is not a snowflake but a flower:

    And then this one that I particularly like, also a garbage one, but very nice I think because it can be a flower or a butterfly 🙂

    The next one is a snowflake which was quite successful and I like it a lot.

    Then, there is this garbage one that I didn’t find very successful when I first stamped it, but then I realized that the leaf shape is very nice on its own and it can be used as a leaf or as a flower:

    Another very simple garbage stamp, but if used with imagination, can produce interesting pattern:

    And finally the one that you have already seen and maybe wathed the video, the last snowflake for this December:

    I downloaded a new program for blogging, because I was extremely annoyed with WP interface and lack of responsivenes. The program is called Blogo, it’s available for Mac and I-devices only (which is a pitty, because I have an android phone, so I will have to post from computer if I want to avoid frustration of WP app) and it works well, I am still getting used to it so I cannot say if it will make me completely satisfied, but for the time being (two days) it looks good.

    That’s it for the second day of this year. I am on my usual month-off, so no frustration about work and lack of time for art. Ah, the freedom…

  • #carveDecember Flip Through

    And here are all 31 stamps that I carved during the 31 days of December:

    I am very happy I did not miss a single day and I did not run out of ideas 🙂
    It seems that actually it is not possible to run out of ideas when you are drawing snowflakes, they are such an amazing subject, so many combinations, go with simple chapes and you cannot go wrong.

    Here is also the video showing all the stamps and prints I made:

  • Video: Stamp Carving

    Yesterday I carved my last stamp for this year and I recorded a video of the whole process:

    Tomorrow I will post the rest of the stamps I did, as well as flip-through video.

    For now, have a good last day of 2016!

  • Mandala: 30 December

    Some time ago I drew this one:

    cci27122016

    And then I also colored it:

    wp-1483112766962.jpg

    Used Faber Castell pitt markers, mu Rotring pen with white acrylic ink and they yellow bits are golden gel pen. Feel free to download and color yourself.

    Have a great Friday!

  • Life Book 2016: Flip Through

    Yesterday I bound my Life Book for 2016. This is the first time I did it – last year my papers were too large and I gave it up. Even though I promised to do all LB lessons this year, I did not keep my promise, but I think I did really well, because I skipped only a few and did not finish four of them (there is still chance for doing them, as they are in the journal just waiting for me). Anyway, I recorded a short video:

    The year is coming to its end and I am slowly closing up open projects (which can be closed), cleaning my craft space, making big plans for 2017, considering which courses to take, thinking about my word for the year…

    Today is a beautiful sunny day – it snowed last night just enough to make trees and paths in the park beautiful. We went for a light walk and now it’s back to editing videos and finishing some other art stuff.

    Have a wonderful Thursday people!

  • Mandala: 27 December

    Finished coloring the mandala which I made using one of my stamps:

    wp-1482843258931.jpg

    Sorry for the light… It did not want to be photographed under natural light: the whole piece had a blue tone, including paper, and I could not get rid of it. The artificial light actually helped in this case… Weird…

    Anyway, if you would like to color this one, please go here and download it.

  • Mandala: 25 December 

    I finished it several days ago but waited for some light to take a photo. It was raining in the morning but it cleared now so I grabbed my phone and made a shot.

    It was a nice Christmas Eve but a bit too much food, as usual. But that’s ok 😊

    I hope you are enjoying your holidays!