I Think I Have Chosen a Direction

I seem to have made a decision about a direction.

 I have been buying books about drawing, mixed media, and who knows what else for years. And I've got a bunch of art supplies as well. Not as many as I think I need because I've bought still more books, a couple of downloaded tutorial files on two kinds of drawing, and a bunch of art supplies that are different from what I already had in the house.

I want to draw and I also want to do mixed media Art Journaling. I've known that I wanted to do those things for a long time. I was an art major in High School and in College. The problem was that I didn't like the stuff I was doing and didn't have a whole lot of respect for it either. After I left college I never picked up a pen or a pencil, and every time I tried to I discovered that I just felt awful and clumsy.

Instead I used both needlework and computer arts as creative outlets. I did digital scrapbooking for years until Joe got so sick I could not stand the idea. And I did very nice work. But it just wasn't enough. I kept buying books.

 Here are just a few of them.

I also took some photos of some of my art supplies.

I never had a full set of pencils when I was an art student. So those were fun to buy. And the Prismacolor pencils were actually bought for a quilting art project that I couldn't get to because of the Fibromyalgia. I did practice coloring on one of my sample  free motion quilting pieces, and they are an amazing tool.

 I did draw a few flowers from the How to draw a tulip. And it felt OK, so we will see where that goes as I go through the tutorials. The one already in the house is for what I call Art Journaling faces. I followed along with my first time watching the first half of that and sure enough I got a reasonable face.

The second downloadable tutorial is on regular pencil drawing. I need to find out how to get that after I finish here.

But I think my next hands on project will be to make some background pages using some of the paint I've got in the house and a couple of the surfaces I've already bought. I'd do that today, but I've got some gesso coming from Amazon and one of the YouTube tutorials I've already seen tells me that I need to put that on the paper first to make the grounds work better.

There are a couple of other things going on in my life that I have not blogged about. I bought a Roku box when I upgraded some of the television equipment earlier this month. I am slowly learning how to use it and adding channels. YouTube is one of the ones I want to add.

And I'm looking for a new church. My neighbor goes to one that is local and I went with her last Sunday and will do so again this Sunday. I was shocked when I received two "hello" notes on Thursday. Very pleasantly surprised. It is the one thing that my old church never managed. When I first went there I asked for someone to contact me for weeks, but no one ever did. And when I got sick they didn't figure out that I was missing for a very long time. I've discovered that I need a congregation that manages that kind of thing better.

Take care all.

I DID IT!

Hi all. Today I did it. I sat down and actually used some of my art supplies. I copied a bunch of tulips from a book of flower drawings. The author says you learn how to draw (or how to draw again) by drawing. And I've decided to go with it.

It was supposed to rain, but instead the sun came out. I decided to go to CVS to buy a couple of things I needed since I had a 20% off coupon. I looked over at their art supplies (not much) to see if they had drawing pencils since what I thought were pencils turned out to be charcoal pencils. They didn't have any so I went to Hobby Lobby. Got the shock of my life when one of the two handicapped spaces was empty. I ended up doing both stores with carts and not with my walker. I'll admit when I got home I was dead tired.

So I bought a bunch of drawing pencils in a package which I have not opened yet, and found the Kindle copy of a book on DRAWING FOR THE ABSOLUTE BEGINNER, and my intention is to spend a small amount of time every day learning to draw again.

I'm also taking a Craftsy Class on Colored Pencils. And now that I've got the materials for that too, I'm going to start the exercises she shows in Lesson 2 that are intended to teach you how to use the pencils. I'm going to be doing some exercises with the drawing pencils as well. The idea is to learn how pencils of all kinds work.

Take care all.

IT HAS BEEN FOUR MONTHS

It has been four months since I blogged. I was still feeling pretty weak in late November and I was in pain until January 31st. That Friday I realized that I had had an almost "normal" day. There was still pain, but it wasn't enough to keep me from walking, moving around and even going out to shop. Each day after that, I looked for the pain to come back, but mostly I just kept getting better.

What I have now is twinges. And I've kept getting more energy. Both the energy to do stuff, and the energy to want to do stuff. Right now I've got the energy to start blogging again. So here is a beginning of a new kind of blog for me.

When I started this blog, it was about grief and quilting. Grief because my husband had died, and quilting because that was the creative outlet I was busy with. The grief has basically resolved itself. I still sometimes get the feeling that I need to get something finished up because Joe is coming home, but then I realize that no, he isn't coming home, and I feel sad for a little while, but then pick up the pieces and go on. There comes a point where you no longer think about the person you have lost first thing every day, and then life goes on, and sometimes you think of them, and sometimes you don't. I'm at that stage.

As for quilting, I haven't been on the machine for 6 months because of fatigue. And right now I don't have a clue as to what I would do with quilting even though I'm beginning to want to do something creative. I've been buying books from Amazon, but they have been all over the place. Still not sure where I go from here, but I've got supplies for multiple crafts and artwork, and it is time to DO SOMETHING. And not just think about it.

Over the next few days I'll be doing some tweaks to the blog itself. If any of my former readers are around, please comment.

Take care all.