High Tech Easter Egg Dying: No Colored Fingers!

Creative Fingerpainting

I was thinking today about coloring Easter eggs with my daughter in "Days Gone By". I was reminiscing a bit and thinking how I missed doing that, but in the course of my memories I also remembered the mess that those eggs caused. In our house, "the house of an artist", of course...the plain old solid colored eggs, or even two toned eggs "just did not fly"!  We ended up using our hands and fingers to dip and dye in many angles with overlapping stripes and then using our fingers to put dots on the eggs, etc. The sky was the limits to our creativity. We always ended up with "dyed fingers" in the process of creating such beautifully colored eggs!

An Easter Egg Fix Without The Mess
Wanting to foster my fixation with Easter eggs today, I went online to see if anyone else had posted any eggs that they had made with their family and in my google search I came upon a wonderful little electronic Easter Egg Maker. Oh Yes, I had found my "egg dealer" to get my "Egg Fix" and I submerged myself in this new endeavor! I set off playing with several variations and even sent a few off as little Easter cards to some family members and friends via the email option that the website gave. These little personalize eggs were put in a cute little basket and then sent out to the people you selected to share them with. What a cool idea!

I've included a few of my little egg creations that I made here, just to show off. I should be ALL SET if I ever become a grandma. These designs seem more refined than the ones that my daughter and I created, but it did allow me to have a little fun today and to go down memory lane. My daughter is 20 now, she is in college and she lives in Chicago. She has her own apartment now and when I talked to her last, her and her roommate were making Easter Eggs together. I hope she thought of me when she was doing them with her friend Amy, much like I thought of our sweet, cherished memories today when I was creating my eggs.

Did you do Easter Eggs with anyone this year? Do you have a great Easter Egg making memory that you are willing to share? I would love to hear of others that miss this process...AND if you aren't able to do the old fashioned "dying" way try this online version and let me know how it went for you.

Much Love and Blessings,

D.

Playing With Blobs: Day 22

Still Playing With Photoshop

I got out my Wacom Tablet today to do a little playing since I have not used it in quite sometime. I started out with one of the drawings that I posted at the beginning of the month that I did in Fluid Painter and used that as the original background. Then I started playing with drawing various brush strokes, but I quickly decided that I did not like what was happening and switched gears. I ran the poster edges filter over the background and I got a cool effect that I liked and then I started just playing around with hues, saturation and layer effects until I got something that spoke to me today. I added some simple shapes and found a pleasing composition that was kind of fun! (click on the image to view a larger version)

I hope everyone will forgive me for not writing a lot today, I have been up since 4:00 a.m. to finish a 20 page research paper before starting work, on adolescent suicide and the art therapy interventions that can be used to help them with depression and other feelings and behaviors that increase the likelihood of suicide. My brain is now mush, but I wanted to do a little art and to at least post. More "verbage" tomorrow I hope when my brain gels back together and I can think again.  

I hope everyone is still having fun with Art Every Day Month! 

Blessings and Much Love,

D.

Lilies Gone Wild: Day 18

Well, it is Day 18 and I am still playing with texture and abstract images. What fun it has been. I have really been surprised by some of the images that are happening while I am just playing around and letting my mind wander, trying this and that...not really having any sort of cognitive plan prior to just diving in and working very intuitively. I have noticed quite a few others this year are working on the "intuitive" level and having great results. One of them is the organizer of this great Art Every Day Month event, Leah Piken Kolidas. My thanks go out to her for continuing to host this event every year! I know that it must be hard work to get everything set up for signing up and signing in every day. She also manages to make it around to everyone at least a few times during the event to offer them kind words and encouragement since not everyone always feels what they are creating is worth posting. Myself included. Signing up is the easy part, then comes the "TERROR" that you are committing to create art and that you are going to maybe share that art with the world via the internet!

But you know what? I have come to know that the world will receive it as it was intended. I have come to believe that those who are intended to see, respond, and feel connected in some way with the art that is produced during this month WILL see it and it's purpose will be played out in their heart. This creative, sustaining energy will in turn come out in another creative creation of theirs whether that is art, music, dance, writing or just how they creatively respond to the world and to the relationships that they have in their lives. 
I fear no more! Well...I can't guarantee that a little fear won't creep back in, but for now I am trusting in the process.

Do you work intuitively when you are creating art? I am curious about how you have experienced working intuitively and if you have been pleasantly surprised by the results. How does working intuitively contrast to when you work in a more planned or structured way?

Blessings and Much Love,
D.

Texture Playfulness Is The Name Of The Game: Day 5 and 6

I am posting quick since I have to get focused on homework this evening. A big art therapy case review is underway for our Clinical III course, so the rest of the weekend is focused on that.

Day 5 Texture Play
This day found me just quickly playing with some texture strokes on the computer on one of my new found online sources Flame Painter since I did not have a lot of time. This was a quick half hour, and I got the image above happening. It kind of reminded me of fireworks and got me thinking of summer days...not the fall days that we are experiencing now, which are cold and grey. I did a screen shot of this...low res...but okay for using as a background texture, given that I plan on "gritting" it up a bit anyway so I am hoping the resolution will still do okay with all the texture overlays. I won't really know until I print something out...everything looks good on the 72 dpi screen resolution.

In the Morning of Day 6 
I found myself playing a bit with some other textures and filters over coffee before starting on homework and heading out to the gym. I created both images by adding the texture photo to the right and then playing with various filters, layer blending modes and opacity's, and layer masks in Photoshop. Again, just works in progress to move forward on maybe as the month unfolds. You can click on any image to see it larger for more details.

The bottom image definitely needs some things brought out of the added "crackled" texture but I am playing and I really like the effect, but I need to enhance some of the circles and bring them forward a bit so the texture isn't taking over so much...but it is a beginning.

Now on to art therapy...treatment planning: goals, interventions etc. for my homework. Later this weekend I hope to check out what some others are doing on Art Every Day Month.

Suggestions or comments would be welcomed!

Blessings and Love,

D.

Day 2: A Playful Immersion Into Texture Bliss

This "playing" is really fun! I chose to take one of my snowflakes from yesterday and do a little exploring with various filters and additional layers of various textures in Photoshop. 

I allocated just over an hour to these babies...since that was the time I had and I am just going with it. There are some fun things happening here, don't know where they will go. 

These might be backgrounds for some more elaborate digital art or some might stand alone...hmmmm...we shall see where the energy of creative play leads! Not a verbally saturated blog post, but I am letting the images speak for themselves...AND of course anyone that wants to comment can also add a voice to this blog. 

What are your thoughts on these? Do they create any feelings or emotions within you when you look at them? I am curious?   

Feedback if you please!

Blessings and much love,

D.

What Does Playing Do For The Soul?

I have been working over the past two days on my Art Every Day Month Challenge piece that is shown here. It is my offering for both Day #16 and #17. I drew in the big shapes with the colored markers on Day #16 and I managed to finish up the many details while I drank my coffee and sat in the sun that was streaming into my dining room this morning. It seemed deceivingly warm to me, but I was forced back into a midwestern Fall reality when I took my dog out and I realized that it was quite brisk and windy. Once I was back inside, I was pleased that I could feed two important needs at once, my creative "innerspirit" and my physical and emotional need for sunshine. More and more is being found out about the importance of adequate vitamin D in our bodies and the sun is a great source of that in a natural form. This time of year in Michigan it is a little too cold for me to enjoy being outside drawing for a couple of hours, so sitting inside at the table was a good way to still benefit from the warm sun.

A Planetary Mandala Drawing Emerges

I just allowed myself to play with the shapes and lines again today with this Mandala since it is also part of my Circles In Time Mandala series. I did try today to stretch the series a bit by doing a mixed media Mandala. After playing with the watercolor Mandala on Day #13, (see the previous post if you would like to see this image) I felt that I could take some artistic liberty and use whatever I wanted on this Mandala and it still would be part of the same series since it was the same size, I approached it the same way, and it was still being used for the prayer/meditation time that it was intended to create for me. I really became quite involved in the intricate line work in this piece and it ended up looking like something from outer space, maybe a really cool planet that is yet to be discovered with many circling moons or suns? I listened to several soothing, contemporary Christian music selections, while I created, and I thought a lot about how God manifests himself in my life. I began wondering why it is so hard to see God sometimes in my life, and other times it seems that he is so very close that I can actually almost touch him...I felt closer to my creative source when I was done, which I believe for me, is God.

Missing AEDM Days Creations?
Those of you that are following this blog might wonder, what happened to Day #14 and #15? Well, I have to admit, Day #14 did not consist of any art, but I was excited that I did manage to do a little artistic "playing" in the way of incorporating music into my Day #15. I have not played my guitar much over the last year, it seems this goes in cycles for me. Sometimes I play a lot, and other times I move away from it and into other things. I enjoyed playing and singing a few songs, but I soon regretted having let it go so long when my un-calloused finger tips started hurting after only a few short songs...this should be reason enough to not let this pleasure go so far between music sessions. Singing and strumming the old familiar songs was a soothing and relaxing way to feed my creative and artistic soul. I find that music in all forms can really move quickly into my heart and it makes me feel alive.

What types of things do you do to feed your artistic soul? Do you take the time to "eat" regularly from this "soul food"? It is easy for us to push time for ourselves down to the bottom of our "To Do" list, even society would tell you that art and artistic endeavors are "frivolous", especially if they do not make money. Don't buy into it, our soul needs the time and the honor of being "fed" and "cultivated", and in return, it will feed and cultivate us in many abundant ways.

Blessings and Love,
D.