Banner Day

Yesterday was a BANNER DAY for me. It was COOLER and I had ENERGY and I MADE ART. I decided to do some of the 21 Secrets classes before the end of the year gets here and I've wasted my money!

Slow Journey

This was inspired by the class with Gina Rossi Armfield called 15 Minutes to Sanity. I selected a passage by Mary Oliver as the journaling (which is done before adding paint). 

What does it mean, say the words, that the earth is so beautiful? And what shall I do about it? What is the gift that I should bring to the world? What is the life that I should lead?

I selected the image because it was the only "animal" image I could find during a quick search. It turns out that the turtle represents the slow journey back to art. Back to bringing beauty into the world. Back to my gifts. While this took more than 15 minutes, it was a joyful time.

Autumn

This is from Connie Hozvicka's class called Flow. This piece felt very intuitive with several steps and layers. 

1. Light a candle
2. Journaling
3. Gesso
4. Play with paint to cover background (acrylic paint). Loved getting messy with finger painting :-)
5. Draw lines and shapes (pencil and black acrylic paint)
6. I painted the shapes white (acrylic paint)
7. Then colored them with water soluble oil pastels
8. For some reason I was led to paint over the background with white paint. Not sure why but I followed the voice.
9. Colored in the background with acrylic paints and oil pastels (really looks much better!)
10. Repainted the shape outline
11. Added texture and interest with stamping and stenciling.

I incorporated journaling as first layer from the other class and wrote about getting back to creating and finding ways to bring beauty into the world. I really like this technique - journaling as the first layer - even when the words are completely covered. There is something about the process of lighting a candle and setting your intention before creating ... something I have done in the past but forgot about. 

I finished this banner day making a colorful and tasty meal of grilled salmon, baked yams, and stir fry kale. Crushed and cooked raspberries as a sauce for the salmon. Oh so good!

It felt like a fall day today. I'm so tired of the heat. I hope this coolness lasts but the season for Santa Ana winds is approaching. I miss autumn here in Southern California. Perhaps we should take a trek up a mountain to see some color!