New Paintings – The “Gaga Fish” Series

'blue gaga"

Here’s a peek at some of my lastest work – a collection of paintings I am calling the “Gaga Fish” series. These are acrylic paintings on canvas prepped with mixed media. These canvas prep ideas and the glossy, shiny finish, were introduced to me by the fabulous and fun artist, Cindy Wunsch.  I took classes from Cindy in Nashville, TN many years ago. You can check out her website here. For all of you facebookers out there, she also has a fan page called “Studio Be.” She is so creative and talented! Be sure to look at her beautiful and inspiring paintings.

I’ll be posting a “tutorial” soon on how I painted these fish, but in the meantime, here are a few more completed “gagas” for you to look at.

"red gaga"

"purple gaga"

"pink gagas"

Check back soon for the “how to paint a gaga fish” tutorial:)

Hello Blog-land!

Hey blogsters! Taking a little bloggy break to paint, paint, paint! But come back again later this weekend for some new, fun stuff! (more journal pages, dream updates and fun instructions on mixed media paintings!

Thanks for all of the bloggy luv!

Lisa

A little list of dreams for 2010 ….

My blogging, twittering, facebooking friend Andrea Schroeder is promoting an online, community “support group” for participants to reveal and realize our own dreams and support others in realizing their own dreams. How nice is that? Hard to turn that down!

The first “assignment” was to make a “big” list of dreams that we had for ourselves …. she suggested listing 100 dreams. I have 100’s of dreams but when I started listing them I started feeling really guilty for having them. What’s up with that? I feel really lucky and grateful to have the life I have …. it’s really hard to complain …. but do I really have to feel guilty for wanting a bigger, better more satisfying life?? Does wishing/dreaming/hoping have to mean that I’m complaining about my life as it is?? Seems I need this challenge more than I realized. I’m going to give myself permission to dream some dreams. I’ll start with these 25 dreams:

1)  forgive more

2)  love the people I find hard to love

3)  learn to scuba dive

4)  win millions of dollars in the lottery

5)  be a better friend

6)  paint more! paint more! paint more!

7)  sell some art

8 )  build community:  connection + friends = community

9)  trust more

10)  show more gratitude

11)  give back

12)  get a “really nice” camera

13)  do some home improvements

14)  landscape my yard

15)  start doing yoga again

16)  journal more

17)  knit more

18)  have lots of flirtatious fun

19)  travel overseas again

20)  learn encaustic painting

21)  find a new, fun, creative, profitable career

22)  teach an art class

23)  make a positive difference in at least one person’s life

24)  go deep sea fishing

25)  dream a bigger dream for myself and others

Whitney’s Creatively Fit Marathon – “Mile 20″

"mile 20"

“Mile 20″ in Whitney Ferre’s Creatively Fit Marathon focuses on the design element of proportion. We were supposed to paint a painting inspired by a nautilus shell. This was a tough one for me and I admit I really lost patience with it. But here’s how it went:

First, I painted over “mile 19″ and tried and tried to get it “right.” Sadly, it just didn’t happen for me so I eventually just stopped …. having decided I’d spent too large a proportion of my day on it:

goodbye "mile 19"

I was actually still pretty happy with the process until this point.  Love these neutral tones! Then went through many stages of ugly until I just decided to stop.

Some miles are more challenging than others …. some miles I really hit my stride …. but this mile was just really difficult for me. Perhaps I’ll come back at some point and try it again? Gonna keep moving on though for now …. 6 more marathon paintings to go!

Whitney in starting a new marathon this month! To find out how you can join click here and go to her “events” page.

“December Views” – Day 27

“December Views” – Day 21

12/21/09

“December Views” – Day 18

12/18/09

“December Views” – Day 15

12/15/09

“December Views” – Day 14

12/14/09

Whitney’s Creative Workout – “Torn Paper Abstract”

torn papaer abstract painting

You may remember that the last painting I completed in Whitney Ferre’s Creatively Fit Marathon was a torn paper abstract. That one was so much fun I wanted to try it again. This time, I created 2 of them in my art journal.

This month in Leah Piken Kolidas’s Creative Every Day Challenge, the December theme is “recycle.” Creating a torn paper abstract is a great way to use scrap paper that might otherwise be thrown away and incorporate it into a painting instead. For these art journal paintings, I mod-podged some scraps (packing paper and paper from a package recently received in the mail:) onto the journal pages:

torn paper for collage paintings

Next, just some layering of paint:

paint layering

more paint layerin

painting in a few details

I finished this page up by adding in doodles with some gel pens:

torn paper abstract journal painting

Here is how the other page evolved:

paint layering

torn paper abstract journal painting

I think both of these pages are great just as they are, but they will also make great backgrounds for some future journaling.

To learn more about Whitney Ferre, her Creatively Fit Marathon and her fabulous book The Artist Within – A Guide to Becoming Creatively Fit click here. And to learn more about Leah Piken Kolidas, her Creative Every Day challenges and other inspiration click here.