Butterfly unicorn rainbow shine muffin balls!

On Life Book, the people who signed up to the early Rainbow Package are also entitled to 2 hours of Skype coaching with me. I limited this offer to about 50 people to make it manageable throughout the year, but gosh, just organising all these sessions with everyone living in different time zones and having different work/ family circumstances wasn't easy, but I now have my diary fully booked with all the sessions! I've already had 2 calls with 2 students and really enjoyed doing them.

It's so nice to get to know the students a bit better and really connect with what is going on in their lives. I find myself really deeply caring for what is up for them and want to reach out and make a difference. I used to be a hypnotherapist and nlp practitioner and found that the same thing happened for me then: through connecting with people on a deeper level, you realise even more profoundly how we are all just human beings with the same feelings and needs all trying to live our lives the best way we can. It's a humbling and sobering and moving experience to talk to someone for an hour or so like this.

In the call, students can talk about anything they want, they can ask me about their art, I can critique it or if they want to talk about personal things they can too or art business related stuff, anything they want. Part of me really wants to offer more of these sessions, but they are quite time consuming and difficult to organise while Elliot is still so little, but I'm thinking of making it something I offer in the future.

In other news, I like it when I follow a blog and they sometimes share links/ videos/ others blog posts etc that inspire them, so I want to do some blog posts like that too, starting with NOW! :)

So, here is a list of link love and internet finds that have inspired me lately: 

• Girl's Gone Child: http://www.girlsgonechild.net/2012/03/on-finally-accepting-feminism.html - a touching post about a woman finally coming to terms with being a woman. Favourite quote from the post:
  
  "I had an inner strength. Two inner strengths! Dude might have been bigger than me but I HAD THREE VAGINAS, BITCH"
  
• Jane Davenport: http://www.janedavenport.com/2012/03/19/you-are-invited-to-become-a-frolicaholic/ - my good friend and colleague Jane Davenport will be a guest teacher on 21 Secrets again and I just love the snippets of art she's posted. I love love her work and am considering taking one of her workshops soon even though I have no blooming time ... :)
  
• There are certain people in the world who just make me feel sane, safe and happy because they are in the world. They're the kind of people that have qualities about them that are reassuring, like, my good friend Beatrice who has a heart of gold and buckets of empathy or Whoopi Goldberg who's comic timing is just genius, David Mitchell (from peep show, correspondent for the guardian amongst others) who just seems plain sane therefore making me feel sane. There are many more of course, and I want to highlight 2 of the many more here:
  
  • First up; The Bloggess - she is allround awesome. Proof here: http://thebloggess.com/2012/03/unicorn-success-club/ - the world is a better place because she is in it.
    
  • Second up: Alex Day (or: nerimon on youtube) - he is the kind of young kid (though he's not *that* young anymore) that I hope Dylan and Elliot will grow up to be:
    
    

• Cool Vintage Photo Frames (FREE) from the Coffee Shop Blog via Geri Centonze http://www.thecoffeeshopblog.com/2012/03/coffeeshop-vintage-frames-25.html

• Alisa Burke Free Class Finding Your Muse - check it out here: http://findingyourmuseonlineclass.blogspot.co.uk/

Anyhoo, those are some people/ blog posts/ art that have inspired me this week! I'll try and do posts like this more often, it's fun! :) 

Now onto showcasing some new art and a new art video by me!

In this journal page I used stencils and the mask of the stencil to make interesting background patterns. I really liked this page, though I really did not enjoy the purple paint splashes added with the palette knife. I hoped the knife would have a brayer type effect, but it did not. Nevermind, in the end I was happy with the spread. :) I hope you like it too!

And here some photos of the spread:

Argh, I really don't like putting a link on my photos as I look at it now, but if people don't link back or credit when they re-post our stuff we're a bit forced to. Not sure if I want to sacrifice aesthetics for exposure though ... Harumpfff. Will be pondering on this. Also, it's a load of extra work to put links on all my photos.

Oh well, ending this post on a happy and will say: butterfly unicorn rainbow shine muffin balls. ;)

Stay groovy!

xoxo

Oh PS. I want to do this thing that Tara Leaver is doing on her blog: ending each blog post with what you're currently: reading/ thinking/ tasting/ seeing/ touching/ hearing! So here goes:

Reading: "Unwind" by Neal Shusterman & "Eating Less" by Gillian Riley (will blog about this one, it's making a huge difference to me and my eating behaviour so far!)
Thinking: On the concept of 'feeling safe' in one's life and how one maintains that feeling even if external factors would cause one to not feel safe - think: Byron Katie, non-duality, Eckhart Tolle, Alan Watts
Tasting: water, at the moment!
Seeing: Hipstamatic and Instagram photos of Elliot, Dylan, Andy and Myself (see below).
Touching: Soft baby blanket material wishing they made duvets for grown ups out of it.
Hearing: "Night & Day" Sarah Blasko
Smelling (Tara doesn't have this one but I'm adding it in!): Mango Body Butter (Bodyshop) Mmmmmh!














now over-and-out for realsies man. ;)

On trusting the universe & fart times.

It's 5am fart time. Elliot, without fail, has "gut issues" every morning from about 5 to 5:30am. He starts to grunt, kick his legs, shake his head for about 10-15 mins, cries a little and then usually that episode ends with either 2 or 3 big trumpet-like farts or a proper (noisy) poo. Before babies, I really didn't know that farting could be THIS big a deal!

It's not great timing for me as it wakes me up, but it also has the potential to wake Dylan up which is much worse! (The 3 of us co-sleep, Andy is in Dylan's double bed). An awoken Dylan at 5am unwilling to go back to sleep is every parent's version of a nightmare I tell you! ;) But this morning Dylan slept right through the farting cacophony and I decided to take this opportunity to blog about my youngest son's fart habits amongst other things. Aren't you a lucky and blessed reader right? ;)

So I sit here with my iPad in the pitch dark, snuggly under a warm duvet listening to the breathing of my two little boys. This is rather blissful I tell you. It feels safe, cosy, snug and full of love.

Now that Elliot no longer just sleeps during the day like he did in his first 3 months of life, I have much less time available to work so I'm having to find "sneaky" moments of getting some work done. Like 5am on the iPad. :)


This pic was taken moments after they woke up this morning:

I wanted to talk about a few things. One is the pinterest debate;

I'm not entirely fully informed about what it is that people are hung up/pissed off about but I see it all as follows; I have no issues with people pinning my work, using it on their blogs or websites as long as they're not using it to sell my work. Ie; blogging about me/ my work with images and credits is cool, selling prints of my work on T-shirts; not cool (this is apparently happening somewhere in Argentina!)

More specifically about pinterest; I like that place. I don't LOVE it obsessively, but it's a handy place to keep inspiring stuff neatly categorised. Instead of downloading images I like to my machine I can pin them there including my own work. The thing that does bug me is that people don't often credit to the original artist, not because I'm so hot on copyright, but because I often see pinned work, think WOW, want to find out more about the artist and see more work of theirs but can't find a thing about who created the work; that annoys me. Therefore I would love it if people not only link to other artists when they pin work, but also link to my website if they pin some of my work. This so that others can more easily find me should they want to look at more of my work. And if we all make sure we do this, we're nicely advertising for each other; win-win no? :)

Now I'm confused about this thing where they say that pinterest owns all the images posted there and also what that means? Does that mean they might take one of my images and start selling it to a licensing company? Why would a company like pinterest want to own the images and aren't there other sites that have this in their user agreement too but it doesn't actually mean anything? Thoughts on this welcomed! :) I am simply a bit ignorant in this arena.

When it comes to sharing my work, putting it out there, having other people blog it/ pin it and apparently big companies own it, I'm kinda just wanting to trust the universe and have an "open" energy about it all rather than a defensive/ closed energy about it. Sure, it may mean that someone in Argentina does a bit of T-shirt selling with my work on it, but I still think that there are more benefits to letting people share your work than not. There is a lot of free publicity and hey, it makes for a richer internet experience in my opinion! So I'm going to be OPEN (cool, this is my word for the year too!) about it and trust the universe! :)

So I am still on pinterest; willowing, but I'm not a big pinner! I often forget the site is there. Then I remember it, take a peek and repin a few things that inspire me. I'm on there maybe once a week. Feel free to follow me! :)

{edit} after reading a bit more about the pinterest debate, something I did not cover/ think about is the whole issue of if *I* should be pinning other people's work without permission. And if I don't have permission I can apparently, legally, be sued. Ok, look, I really do understand that some people don't want other people sharing their work on other sites (not the best marketing move in my humble opinion, but ok ...), but I am not going to be spending ages of my time contacting the respective owners of the work just so I can pin it. If someone wants me to take down a pin, I will and then no need for sue-ment right? It's not like I'm making money of off pinning other people's work, it's just for keeping it together in a neat place. If it really becomes such a big deal, I'll just download images back to my machine in my 'inspiration' folder. Tsk - I think it's taking copyright a bit too far. I say: take advantage of people wanting to show the world your art man - let them pin it!  (with a credit, of course).

Ok, enough on this one now.

In other news! I was published AGAIN! This time it was in Somerset Apprentice, and Somerset Digital Studio with some of my digital girlies! Look!

That last image is of all 3 magazines I've now been published in. :D Can you feel the stretch of my grin?! :) 

*Dances Happy*

I feel overthemooncrazyhappy to have been published in these great magazines with these other  established and amazing artists. Thank you to all over at stampington's. I'm so so grateful! :)

In more other news: I did this new painting and was initially so pissed off with it. People on FB asked me why and it's hard to put my finger on it, but it was something about her facial expression, a bit too gloomy for my likings. Also I was going for some deeper contrast shading and some Avril Lavigne type eye make up which came out alright but the whole thing was a struggle.

And sometimes when I start a new piece of art I have a bit of an "artist identity crisis". I don't know if I want to draw and shade more like an illustrator or like a painter. For me the 2 are a bit different. Illustrator shading is much more precise and neat while painting shading is much more free and "slap-dash-bang-messy" (that highly technical term I'm sure you're all familiar with ;)). But the thing gets very frustrating when I mix and match the two. The two styles don't really mix and sometimes I can't decide on which way to go so it's like someone with multiple personalities trying to paint something and it feels off and a bit fractured.

After all that though, I decided to like the painting in the end. I am now quite pleased with how the shading came out and her brooding/ mysterious intensity. :)


Oh I also took some proper pics of the other 2 that are now finished (though they came out a bit darker than they look in these images!)

And I started a new painting on wood which I hope to do some more work on next week if Elliot lets me! ;)

That's me for now.. It's slowly getting lighter and lighter, boys still asleep, better do a bit more work before they wake and chaos ensues again! :) Ta-ra faithful readers, I shall leave you with a few more pictures of the people that light my heart, soul, mind and life: 

Testing another iPhone/ iPad app for blogger

Hello again! 2 blog posts in a day well wowie! I'm hoping to post more often and shorter posts and a blogger app would be useful for that but def don't like how the other app posts photos, hoping this one is better!




Oh great! It. Let's me post photos within the body! Great start :). Above a pic of my boys in the park this morning. And here more Dylan on the swings.






The day actually started really badly. Dylan just would not cooperate and I got really exasperated with him. Bit when we finally managed to get out of the house it was pretty lovely AND I managed to go to hobby craft and bought some more art supplies! Yay. Anyhoo, here some more pics;









Now let's see what this looks like on the blog! xox

Work in progress

Typing this on the blogger iPhone app. Let's see if it posts in a way I like!

Here are some pics of current work in progress/ semi finished/ finished. I'm really happy with how the portrait came out with the lady with headband. I think I'm really developing my shading skills!

The blue/ green one is the first entry in my new journal! Trying to process some difficult emotions in that one. It's far from finished but I like where it is going. I finally bought some golden fluid acrylics which I used in this and I LOVE THEM. My god they are expensive but they are worth the money!

The colourful portrait is almost finished. I kinda "screwed up" a section of it but I still ended up liking the whole thing. :)

Happy Saturday groovy art gang! <3