An afternoon of art

Today was a gift. Several peaceful hours; just me, some scissors, paint and paste and The Eagles on the iPod. Ahhh.

What I've actually done is cannibalize a watercolor I made of a sketch I made of an ad for furniture from a magazine.

Of course, now that everything is all pasted down, I wish I would have cut the white out of the base of that little lamp. (Note to internal critic: It's OK, really.) Maybe I'll hit it with a little black marker.

I'm working toward a most yummy cardboard journal that Katie Kendrick presented in the Nov/Dec issue of Cloth Paper Scissors. This is one of those things that keeps me happily awake at night; planning and plotting how I'm going to do this. I've saved up many pieces of cardboard, bought some cheese cloth and now I' starting the art part. At the rate I'm going, I'll finish this sometime before I'm 100. Something I have learned, however, from doing art is that it's all whole, each piece in itself. Heck, I took much pleasure just reading about this project in the magazine.

In the course of working on this I discovered that a big old box of paints I received as a gift years ago contains oils (as well as a huge array of colored pencils, pastel crayons, and colored markers) which scared me at first. I overcame my I-don't-know-how-to-use-these resistance and squished some of these oils on my paper plate right along with the acrylics I'm used to. Of course, I got paint all over my hands and panicked about the clean up. I was prepared to trash any brushes that didn't survive, but I really cannot trash my hands!

How happy, as well as surprised, was I when most of it washed right off. I used the scrubby side of a dish washing sponge and, except for a few colorful nails, my paws are clean.

Now for some weird news. Several years ago I became aware of the phenomena of synchronicity. You know, seeing or hearing the same thing over a short period of time. Before about ten days ago, I'd never heard the name Xander. Must have been living under a rock or something, but I have no recollection of ever coming across that name. Last week I saw the name in a magazine, a few nights later someone in the news was Xander, and yesterday I started reading Stephen King's newest book (I am a huge fan) and there it is again. A character named Xander. I am aware of the neurolinguistic theories about this, but I prefer the school of thought that says when you notice this you are "in the flow." Oh yeah, I want to be "in the flow." Me and Xander, just flowing by.

Peace and Art to all.