Serenity

My serene Budda. Her name is Ali because she looks like alabaster. Her presence calms me.

I am using Grungetastic again on my iPad to edit these images which were also taken on the iPad.

Groupon doesn't honour their own policy

My first and LAST experience with Groupon really sucks the big one!

I am not one for coupons much but when a friend sent me one for The Hive where I normally get my hair cut for $29 instead of $65 I thought I would try it out. After all I know my hair dresser. I am quite broke right now so I thought I could get my hair cut sooner than I normally would. My hair dresser is really busy and gets booked up quickly so I looked at the Groupon carefully and saw that it was good till August. Ok I go for it.

So at the hair dresser when I pull out my coupon for Groupon and the owner is present and says that it is for first time clients only. Gee this is the first I heard of this and I looked at the Groupon pretty carefully when I purchased it. NO she says that I can give it away for a gift but I can't use it.

So now I have paid over $100 dollars for a $65 hair cut that I thought was going to cost me $29! I am NOT HAPPY!!!

I go and check out the Groupon site and they have a policy stating if you are not happy they will automatically refund your money because they want happy customers.

Quoted from the Groupon web site "We’re confident in the businesses we feature on Groupon and back them with the Groupon Promise. If the experience using your Groupon ever lets you down, we’ll make it right or return your purchase. Simple as that."

Well apparently this is a pile of bull crap because they sent me a note that says in the Fine Print that it did say for first time customers only and that it is too bad so sad for me. Why don't I give it away as a gift. Well isn't that sweet of them to think of others.

I am one UNHAPPY CUSTOMER!

Painterly

Pallet knives and acrylic paints

Picasso bits edited in Photoshop

Alter Ego Patti Poop

Ingrediants:

J.Herbin Marron Brown ink

Portfolio Oil Pastels

Canal Paper Montreal

Musical Inspiration

I was and am always inspired by music. I love all kinds and one style I have been enjoying a lot lately is Gypsy Jazz like one of the originals Django Reinhart. I came across this video of Caravan Palace and it is just so fun and really gets your toes tapping. I love to listen to music while I create art and this cool tune inspired this art.

Ingredients:

Walnut ink (always!)

Fluid and heavy body acrylics

pencil and pen

Text paper

gel pen

tissue paper

iPad play GrungtasticHD

All these images where edited with Grungtastic. Some photos are by me and some by my hubby Tim. I love the distressed look and as you can guess by the name there are tons of grungy filters in this app. I really like how easy it is to use too. I only wish there was an easier way to transfer files from my iPad to my iMac.

Maiden Hair Fern opening

My DH Tim

Jazz two weeks old

Gizelle and I

she is only one week old

Gitano and I

Gizelle's full brother at about 4 years old

Gizelle and I

Percolated Art

I got this simple but really fun new app for my iPad called Percolator. These are either my photos or art that I imported and played with the filters in Percolator. So I call it "Percolated Art"

"Gillian" Original is Mixed media

This is a photo of an abandoned nest with my porcelain quail eggs.

This was a pencil drawing

A mixed media painting in my journal

an acrylic hand print

Mixed media in my journal

Professor Longhair

"The happy blue horse"

Me photographed with my iMac

ciao!

Inspired

I have been enjoying Milliande's videos of her Seed Journals. Her day 7 inspired this face. I did a face in wet on wet watercolours and walnut ink after adding text with matte medium. I sprayed it too to make the colours blend as they would on their own with no help from me. Then I ripped the face in half and painted a new half responding to side one. Once it dried I went over it with a fine black pen, then I added a bit of highlights with a white oil pastel. Fun! Part of what inspired me was her spontaneity and part was her colour palette.

I am using the Strathmores new Mixed Media Pads, the 400 series. I really like the paper and it is really sturdy and takes a lot of wet media and collage and it is very reasonable. I am a happy customer. :)

Coming up Roses was inspired by Traci Bautista's free workshop through Strathmore. I say inspired because I got so excited that I kept going off on tangents from Traci's instructions. :) The fine lines in her hair are acrylic paint laid down with a pizza cutter. I also finished it off with the Portfolio oil pastels. The are so creamy and smooth.

"Coming up Roses"

"Tumbler" is inspired by the above and Traci's Lesson 4. Tumbler also has pizza cutter hair. In the background are stamps and letter stencils. He is also acrlyics finished with oil pastels. I love how saturated the colours are.

Inspired by Carla Sonheim's Picasso Dogs. Tons of fun.

The dog page is a work in progress there will be more added to the page when I'm done.

Happy arting!

I owe it all to Jazz

Jazz

my mahogany boy, grazing at home

A small Combined event at Beaver Lake

One day old

My buddy

Jazz Braided for a show

Hello there, my camera is not working right now so apologies for not posting much lately. I love to share which is why I am motivated to blog and show my art. I do it for me.

Originally I tried selling my wares at craft shows and got into the Sooke Fine Arts show which I was so proud of and sold my piece. I was ecstatic! I have a great job with the government of BC in Avalanche and Weather programs and now I only have a couple of years left before I can retire so I didn't want to give that up. I decided a few years ago that I would stop selling my art as my paying job can be quite stressful and I needed to take better care of myself. It was a great decision and I started making art I wanted to make not what I thought other people would buy. Now isn't that what an artists is really supposed to do. Hell Yes, I say!!!

As a result I feel like I have really grown as an artist and I am so much more satisfied with what I create. I find it far more therapeutic too. It helps me cope with any challenges I have to deal with and I have had way more than my fair share of challenges in the last year! I don't think I would have survived if I didn't do art and art journalling.

I owe my artistic gift to Jazz. Jazz was my horse I bred and I was so proud of him. He was a great blend of both his mom and dad taking the best qualities of each. A breeders dream. I pulled him out of his mom, Personality on May 19 1986, cleared his nostrils and the first thing he saw was me. Mom? He had 2 moms me and his real mom :) He was a huge brat but very loveable, and a huge challenge to train. I discovered when he was about 4 years that he loved to jump and so I indulged this to assist with training and it worked very well. Dressage is what I really wanted to do but he found it so boring. Once we got the basics down and on to the more challenging movements his interest started to peak. He was elegant and athletic so when you got him engaged it was INCREDIBLE! He had just started to excel at Dressage when the unthinkable happened.

When he was 11 he ate some Yew tree branches and died. I was devastated. We were 2 peas in a pod. He was like my child and we shared a dressage and jumping career, we we best friends, I have never ever had such close relationship with another soul before. For 2 years I sunk into a deep depression I was obsessed with not forgetting any detail of him. I started writing about him, anything I could think of no detail too small. I also added any and all photos of him I could find but there was so many moments that there was no photo for and there was never going to be that opportunity. :(

I must learn to draw.

And so it started.

My gift of art is from him and now I can't imagine my life with out it.

I still miss him but he will be in my heart forever. Thank you Jazz!

Once in a Blue Horse

I signed up for Strathmore's free online art workshops and first up is Traci Bautista with her offering of "Doodles Unleashed". I have admired Traci's art in magazines for some time, but never have taken a workshop from her. I have been enjoying watching the video which is organized, professional, well thought out. The only minor criticism is the audio fades in and out in places. But it is colourful, fun, inspiring, and gets me motivated to grab my supplies and play. Yahoo! I used some of her suggestions to create this spread in my journal. I already had the outline of the horse and was especially inspired by Traci's freedom to create by asking us to think of our approach as doodling with paint. I found this made it more fun and made me less inhibited with my paint brush. Cool! I love it when that happens.

My red paint swirls became birds as I further doodled little faces, beaks, plumes and feet. Then the horse seemed to boring so more doodling there too. Then I finished it off with some rubber word stamps.

And here is a detail of the horse.

I got so excited I only used a portion of Traci's techniques and I am looking forward to trying out some more. Check out Traci's "Doodles Unleashed" for an injection of inspiration. :) Only the first of the four lessons is posted so far.

Wishing everyone a happy and healthy new year