Grab your art journal, pull together some of your favorite acrylic paints, brushes, and a few other supplies {scroll down for the supply list} and get ready to create a sweet little whimsical figurative painting.
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If you’ve been around here for a hot minute, you know that I’m a diehard art journaler and that I absolutely love intuitive painting — especially figurative abstracts. I art journal almost every day, even if it’s just for 10 or 15 minutes. And painting intuitively perfectly suits the short bursts of time I spend in my art journal. I can leave things to dry, come back and look at my art journal spread with fresh eyes, and find stories within the layers of paints and marks.
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I had filmed this expressive abstract painting at the end of 2020, and forgot all about it! But it was fun to go back and listen to my musings on struggling with the pause between one year and the next as I created this abstract acrylic painting, and to see how much better I have become now, at the start of 2022, with embracing the pause!
Though I am working on a small piece of mixed media paper, you can easily follow along in your art journal.
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On this episode of the Art with Soul podcast, we talk about art as therapy, about how we can use a simple daily creative practice as an act of restoration and care. I share an expressive arts exercise from my own creative practice, plus many suggestions for creative practices that you can adapt, adopt, or tweak to suit your own preferences.
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On the first episode of season 4 of the Art with Soul podcast, we talk about different ways to approach the 100 day project; discuss process over product; and see how a gentle reframe of this popular challenge can help you develop your own visual language and style.
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“Solitude, like a long love, deepens with time, and, I trust, will not fail me if my own powers of creation diminish. For growing into solitude is one way of growing to the end.”
– May Sarton, The House By The Sea
The world isn’t designed for introverted, solitude loving people. For a long time, I thought there was something wrong with me, what with my hermity tendencies and my need for pockets of quiet time, especially after I’ve peopled.
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On this episode of the Art with Soul podcast, we talk about information overload, how it impacts your creativity and your art, and how to create healthy boundaries around how much information you consume vs how much you create. Let’s get into it!
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What a miracle you are
sweet little pea
pushing your way resolutely up
through that sidewalk crack.
There’s no one quite like you
in close vicinity —
you look around you
at all the sidewalks
and all the sidewalk cracks
as far as your eye can see.
You realize that you’re all alone
oh no, not alone — unique
swaying with the slight breeze
that swirls around your tiny leaves
beaming up at the sun
as it kisses your tiny petals
at the dog who walks around you
wondering at this tiny, fragile thing
that stands there so sure
so delighted at the simple joy
of being here
of being alive
of just being
Follow my art on Instagram!
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But how often are we willing to even acknowledge our bad habits; our insecurities and fears; our anxieties. How often do we stop and reflect on our inner voice, and on how mean it can be sometimes…oftentimes? How often do we justify our bad behavior by blaming someone else for the way we may have acted out? We have a choice in every moment: we can choose anger or acceptance; irritation or flow.
This does not mean we have to put up with bad behavior – it simply is about how we choose to react to it. We can respond to situations by ranting and raving; acting out in anger or irritation…and often, that is our default. Or we can calmly address the problem at hand, or assert our boundaries and simply walk away from someone else’s drama.Continue reading
I’ve been experimenting with abstract art recently, and it has been fun – challenging too, but fun. I find that I tend to slip back into slightly familiar territory when I am painting abstracts – adding in leaves, plants, flowers, or figures as a focal point and to try and bring everything together.
In this latest piece that I did, I was determined to keep it completely abstract, using only lines and shapes and color to tell a story. And what a story it turned out to be!Continue reading