Blue is my favorite color to paint with. Have tried to move away from blue for a few days. Found myself gravitating to my blue acrylic paints today. I painted her first and then a friend came to visit her. Bringing her some words of wisdom. Oh how I miss the big open sea…
Landscape is my Achilles heels. I can’t paint them to do them justice. But I love to take photos of sunsets by the river on my daily walk. Yesterday was exceptionally beautiful. A friend suggested that I paint something inspired by the sunset photo. And this is what I did. It surprised me. I love it. It combines my love of abstract and ink plus my faces..May start doing more. What do you think?
I love the process of making abstract art. Never thought I could do it but now I really enjoy it. Start off with some splashes of ink. Then more scribbles, water and paint. See what happens then add more paint, here and there. And before I know it, she appears. And this time, only one word. 静。 meaning quiet. Yes, need to quiet my mind.
Still practicing waves. The details take a long time but I have no where to go🤷🏻♀️🤣 actually quite therapeutic…
My process. First a sketch, then decide on a color palette and finally paint. Today, Pink and gray/black.
I have recently taken up slow stitching. Stitching by hand. Big stitches. Experimenting with different stitches. It is surprisingly cathartic and relaxing. This will be a journal cover which I hope to fill with more stitched pages. This is like collaging and painting with thread. I included the embroideries I did recently, the gnome and the butterfly. And included scraps of cloth from my kids, e.g the piece of jeans and the pretty pink fabric. Memories all stitched together. I love the messy homemade look. Thankful to have something that helps my brain to slow down. And focus on one stitch at a time. Keep calm and stitch on…
A few weeks ago, I created this page in my altered journal. I did not know where I was going with this page, so I left the other side alone. I know that one day it will come to me. And it did. I added some messy threads to the page and some words to remind that I need to give myself permission to rest. Especially in times of crisis. I tend to jump into action, keep myself very busy, as a way to deal with the stress. To avoid thinking. It is not healthy. Yes. It is ok to rest.
Ok this is a long post. Beware….
I had the most incredulous and incredible experience on Facebook. I posted this painting a few days ago. It started with playing with inks on a page and I did not like how it turned out. So I left it aside for weeks. A few days ago, I decided to pick it up and painted a face on it. And added some glass shattering. Not sure why. Maybe it was how I was feeling. My son was coming home from singapore and I was worried. I posted to different art groups on Facebook simply saying some days this is how I feel. And asked if anyone can think of a title for it.
The suggestions and comments started to flow in. I always reply to each comment to show my appreciation. And I was finding it hard to keep up. And boom, I received a notification from Facebook, banning me from replying to prevent spamming. Yup, spamming 🤣 when I was trying to reply to people who commented on my post! That was the incredulous part.
The incredible part is the suggestions from everyone. They were insightful and brilliant. I have never had so many likes on any one piece of art I posted before. I think it is less bec it was a spectacular art but more bec we are going through something deep something similar together. Some people saw it as a positive thing, like “peace amid chaos”, “fractured but not broken”, others saw something negative like “shattered dreams”, “quarantined” What amazed me is how we can see different things based on how we feel even if we look at the same thing. So, did I pick a title? No. They were all good. I can relate to everything everyone suggested. Positive and negative. Ups and downs. Yes, there is chaos, yes there is peace. yes something is shattered. Yes I am not broken. And yes, I am grieving. For the life we had before. But I will look forward and emerge stronger than before. Thank you all for taking the time to connect with me on this. We are going through this together… apart. Stay safe my friends 🙏
My son is finally coming home after being away for a few months in Singapore. The thought of him traveling across the world and the risk of exposure kept me up all night yesterday. I painted this while waiting to hear from him… glad he is home. Time for some self quarantine!
Watercolor ink and salt play
Blue serenity. It is rare that my heart is at peace these days. But I do have rare moments when I experience it. That moment when I forget what is going on and just focus on the now. Thankful for those moments of serenity. Breathe in, breathe out.
Watercolor painting. It was therapeutic painting her strands of hair… love the color blue.
justpaintandplay 