You’ve Got Mail!

“Mail” Challenge

and

Paint Party Friday

“Par Avion”

It's hard to believe Kristin's and Eva's 

Paint Party Friday is 1 year old already!

Congratulations to you both for hosting this awesome

weekly event where artists can display and chat

about their newest artwork via blogging. Thank you!

I wish I could say I have participated each week, but

I guess I'm not fast enough or prolific enough to have something

ready each Friday. It's been fun anyway!

Even today, I am posting very late but still wanted to participate...

However, late for PPF is still early for Inspiration Avenue! lol.

Early for me at least, 

who is usually typing my post on Sunday morning.

The IA challenge this week is brought to us by Jenn,

one of our newest Inspiration Avenue members.

Jenn is wonderfully talented, upbeat, innovative,

and a great addition to the team!

I love this theme...thanks for a fabulous topic, Jenn!

I wanted to convey the happy feeling you get when

the mail holds something special amidst

the bills, ads, flyers, magazines and other, well...junk.

I started with pieces from mail, stamps, postmarks,

decorative papers...

I photographed the background before adding the 

little girl and winged letter. Thought I might

use it in a digital piece someday.

No ideas yet, but you never know...

Please visit both 

Paint Party Friday and Inspiration Avenue

for much art and inspiration!

You'll be glad you did :)

Have a fantastic weekend!

Inspiration Avenue - The Allegory of Spring

The Three Graces

Splendor, Mirth, and Good Cheer . . .

 

Beauty, Grace, and Charm . . .

Aglaia, Thalia, and Euphrosyne . . .

The daughters of Zeus and Eurynome.

I decided to take a small portion of Botticelli's

Allegory of Spring and paint the three graces, modern version.

(Do these lovelies have even one bit of grace among them, 
let alone three? I'm not at all sure.)

I took the Cupid aiming at the three graces from Botticelli's painting also.

I was hoping he would strike the apple, but I think he is going to miss.

The robin, flowers, green grass, and falling apple blossoms

all are some of my favorite parts of Spring!

The apples themselves are a bit out of season,

but they're included in other representations of the three graces.

These are modern girls, they probably picked them up at the Giant Eagle. lol.

I'll leave you with a tiny portion of a poem by Lucretius

(written in six books, eons ago, in Latin) called

De Rerum Natura or On the Nature of Things

Springtime and Venus come, and Venus' boy,

The winged harbinger steps on before,

And hard on Zephyr's footprints Mother Flora,

Sprinkling the ways before them, filleth all

With colors and odors excellent.

This thoughtful challenge was the brainstorm of Priti.Lisa ,

who always presents us with a challenge that requires our thinking caps!

Visit Inspiration Avenue on Sunday to see

the gallery of Springtime Allegories!

29 Faces and IA Weekly Challenge

Texture and 29 Faces

Day 25

This is my favorite imp, that rascal Puck.

I created this for the Inspiration Avenue challenge, Texture,

but since I've spent some time on his face,

I'm posting it for 29 Faces also :-)

Puck is strolling through the forest with a friend and looking for mischief.
 He may have found it in the floating fairy lights.
Care to play catch, Mr. Fox?

It's colored pencil and acrylic paint with bits of collage paper,

magazine pages, tissue paper, ribbon, and corrugated cardboard.

Did I forget anything? Oh, book pages. And who knows what else,

since I was pasting the kitchen sink on there to create some texture.

I've been visiting blogs and reading how texture has been difficult

to show in a scanned or photographed image.

Everyone is so right ~ it's tricky . . . my photos were showing

bumps and highlights where I didn't want them and

skipping right over the texture that I wanted to show up. Bleh.

I started this canvas a long time ago and thought it would be a good

candidate for the texture challenge. It doesn't resemble what I 

started with at all. You can see the original post here, along with

the insightful "critique" from my office assistant :)

No wonder it took me so long to complete it.

 Notice: where I was once going to put a cat,
there is now a fox. Sorry, Oliver.

Visit Inspiration Avenue on Sunday afternoon to see

the entries displayed in our gallery!

I hope you are enjoying the weekend...

Mother Nature has decided we needed a bit more snow.

What can I do but say 

“Thank you, but I hope we won't be needing any more after this.”

 29 Faces

Day 18

Watercolor and colored pencil

Paint Party Friday and 29 Faces

Day 17

I've worked on this painting a bit more.

I added some collage elements, more paint 

(brayered on...learned that from 

Tam at Willowing, teehee. Brayering's kind of fun but scary too).

I put in some lines in Payne's Gray... (love that color)

and some Japanese anemones.

So that's about it. I don't know if it's finished. 

Seems it is still missing something...

If it strikes me what's missing, I'll add something else :-)

It looked like this before:

I've missed some days in the 29, but will add this as Day 17.

If I get extra faces completed before the 29th (haha), I'll

put them in for the missing days!

I'm also posting this for Paint Party Friday.

Please visit over there to see everyone's PPF entries!

Happy PPF . . . Happy Weekend!

29 Faces

 I've been working on a sketch that may or may not become a painting.

The faces of the two brothers will be Days 9 and 10 for 29 Faces though.

I am behind by two days since my last post was Day 6.

So...since I do have some time for art today, they may even become 7 and 8,

and I'll have 2 new faces for 9 and 10.

Following all this? Never mind...it doesn't matter!

Day 10

These are just graphite in my sketchbook.

Day 9

I saw an enchanting photo on Google of 2 brothers
witnessing a butterfly emerging from its cocoon. 

I thought it would make a lovely painting.

I was reminded by Ayala in my last post not to forget to list the materials...

I will go back and do that for my previous faces.

Happy Friday! Enjoy the weekend!

Oh, here is the photo of the 2 boys.
I'm so sorry I don't remember who to credit it to :(

 29 Faces

Day Six

This is a page in my journal done in acrylic paint
with torn scrapbook paper for the queen's dress.

Day Five

Colored pencil on watercolor paper.
It's an ACEO.