Archives

Welcome on a new edition of my weekly ritual, Gratitude Friday (if you are not familiar with it, please go read how it came up and what it is about).

I know I know… I have not published a Gratitude Friday in a while. Well, practicing what I preach seems in order so here I am, hoping that you will jump on board with me and take a few minutes to rest in Gratitude 🙂 And I even publish this on a Sunday !

This week was our quarterly week of my Husband being in the US for a work trip. It has been like this for a while now, but despite everything it is not becoming easier, as it should.

This week, I am thankful for:

• Today being Friday, meaning a lot
• FaceTime with a Kindred
• Private messages with other Kindreds
• Cooking good healthy food
• Getting things done for my next class, TextureTales
• Hot bath
• Good books
• The first book I am published in has been released
• Looking at them while they sleep
• Time spent with friends
• Time spent in Vancouver itself

It is the little things, added together, that weave what makes it a beautiful life <3

What about you ? please, feel free to share

When I don’t know anymore, I usually have a few options:

• I take an existing ugly painting and completely rework it (remember my Operation Cover Up ?).
• Or I sketch with no intent (Nixies and Sprixies that will unfortunately never make it to the canvas).
• Or I play with what i do know.

For this Nixie, Nymphea, I took a rather big canvas (18×24”), set it up on my easel (which does not happen often, when I think about it. I mostly work on my Studio table…) and started to play with textures. Because this is what I know. Because this is what makes me happy. 

She is very very heavily textured. Modeling paste, gesso, crackle medium, gel medium… all my favorites are on the first layer. The hardest part in using them is having to wait for them to be 100% dry. 
Of course, i also had to play with stencils, because I always do. I tried to apply crackle medium through one and it did not come out the best but I like how it went (you can see on one of the pic below).

I currently have an obsession with blending colors together, so this is what I did for her hair. I love when two colors come together to make a new one,  but that we can still see there differences (if that makes sense ?), I love the feeling of the paint on the surface, even when I have to be careful not to break any of the texture created in the previous layer(s).

Nymphea went through many stages, many many layers to have her look like this eventually. Ugly stages happened, as everytime. But I knew she was important. I knew she needed my devotion to her. I knew she would be amazing (to me). She will be the Water Element card in my Oracle deck in the work.

I had to let her be.

A few more pictures:

I am so happy today has finally come. You can find some of my art journal pages in the newest book from Dawn Devries Sokol: A World of Artist Journal Pages. You can even see my owl on the corner of the cover *swoons*. (and Dawn is currently giving one copy away on her blog, you can enter here).

I am in 9very) good company in this books, with some of my friends, some artists I know by name, and some I am discovering along. This truly is an honor to be in this book and I hope you will enjoy it.

Art Journaling is very important to me, it changed drastically since i started back in 2008 but the reasons why are quite the same though. Processing feelings and events. Getting out of my head. Releasing the steam. Exploring. Having fun. Recording the everyday and the extraordinary.

This book is a pile of inspiration.

You can purchase it here (click the image):

Et pour vous les francophones, il est disponible également sur Amazon.fr <3