Happy New Year!

Hello Everyone!

Well, it's a new year, with a new focus...

I've been hard at work creating a new website that features my art, as my art process is leading me in the direction of mixed media work and away from scrapbooking, which was the original focus of this blog when I first started.

Please visit my website: www.paintedpinecone.com to follow me and my healing journey there. Hope you will come visit me there and take a look at what I'm up to now.

Wishing you inspiring adventures in your creative process and may you find peace in the beautiful mess of creativity ♥

Happy Trails!

Fearless Art

I'm featuring an art process featured in Lifebook 2016 by Annie Hamman called Fearless Art.

I chose a picture from a magazine and started from there, creating a portrait.

As a part of one of the Lifebook 2016 exercises/prompts, you are to create a basic portrait then allow a child to come and add to it (which will feel like messing it all up) and then must try to incorporate the elements as best as possible and add to them to create your painting.

Unfortunately, I didn't take pics along the way, but this is how it ended up...

She is some sort of mystical creature, with a flower in her hair, a feather hanging from her nose ring, stars for freckles, and choker featuring a giant green stone around her neck.

This was a great exercise! It's hard to let go of the outcome when you create art, and this forces you, it forces you to allow influences into your painting that change the entire end result. It forces you to let go of realism and attachment and view the world a little more as children do, without the boundaries that keep one inside the box. It creates art that is more about the process of art making than the finished image.

I didn't have a child around at the time, so a friend of mine who does not consider himself artistic, came to the rescue and agreed to "mess up" my painting for me.

I will be trying this with a child soon and show you what comes of it. I'm very interested to see the difference! 

Moonlight Sauna

Another piece from my Art Journal.

 I re-use an old voice coaching book from my brother-in-law. He has gifts me a wealth of old music related books that I scribble and release my worries into, or use as pieces in my mixed media art.

I took three pictures in different lighting, the one below is most true to the original.

However, here it is in a different darker lighting, and I think it looks cool too, with the silver pen shining on the edges of the women.

My friends and I coming out of the sauna into the fresh air to cool off on my friend's land, and are surprised to find a big giant moon shining down on us!

Here She is

!

A great moment in time ♥

Aurora Borealis camp

A piece I created in my Art Journal last year, women dancing by the campfire.

 Something I created after a weekend at Long Lake Provincial Park with some truly amazing souls. A gorgeous little place that was equipped with cabins that had these tiny little wood stoves, so cute!

A lovely lake, beavers abounding, serene and so rejuvenating.

Transmute

One of my earlier pieces...

Created over old calendar sheets, many layers creating textures of all kinds throughout.

The steam that rises from the embers of the depths of our darkness transmutes and creates a new dawn

Used my die cutter over a mixed media piece I created with re-inkers, glitter, and layers to match the painting.

Close up of the texture in the dawn portion of painting.

Thanks for visiting !

April's Robin

I recently mounted some of my work onto cardboard. I sometimes do so when I've painted on old calendar sheets since they are an odd shape and rather floppy because the paper is thinner than watercolour paper.

This post would have been more on the mark had I posted it during spring, but I bring it to you during summer instead. Oh well!

Here is my Robin. I remember painting it this past April, but specifically using an April calendar page from a previous year's calendar, so the word April could be in the picture. Fun times! Stuff like that makes me pretty happy. I was also so excited to see the return of the Robin, flying in and carrying Spring to us in her song.

She has some cool symbols and markings in her wing.

The grass she walks through includes music paper, but also facts about the Robin as a Spirit animal.

Robin shows us how to ride the wings of passion within and she shows us that any changes can be made with joy, laughter, and a song in your heart. Some of Robin's other messages are:

• tomorrow is a new day
• excercise compassion and patience
• exudegrace, tenacity, perserverence, and assertion
• find pleasure in the simple things
• become independent and self-reliant through change
• incorporate new beginnings with faith and trust in the process
• stimulation of new growth and renewal
• it is time to sing your own song
• letting go of personal drama
• find contentment in all types of circumstances

...and here is the song she carries in her heart.

Welcome back Robin!

Jade Water Lily

Just a quick post to share another mixed media piece. I made this a couple of years ago onto an old calendar page. 

I have a jade necklace that was piled up on my dresser, made of round beads in varying sizes, and that's where this all started.

Yes, I have a lot of circle punches of different sizes, which came in handy!

I would like to get all my pieces up here someday and have them all nicely catalogued in one spot..