Inspire Me Thursday - Goddess

This week the theme is "Goddess" and I thought of my cat Amora! She does flounce about like a Goddess (don't all cats?) and she has lots of the male cats on our street following her around. I have painted Amora's two main admirers Hoppy and Stig and I have drawn a cartouche for each.

I thought it would be fun to give the painting an Egyptian theme to tie in to their beliefs in sacred cats. I did some research and found out that female felines may display a scarab - the symbol of the rising sun and is equated with the solar eye so I have included these two symbols. I've limited the colours to those used in Egyptian papyrus paintings. I have also included the name of my family in Hieroglyphics at the top of the picture.

I really enjoyed doing this one. It was great to do something in a totally different style and quite funny to think of my cat in this way.

Here is a photograph of her posing for this painting - looking regal as always (but don't let that fool you).

Golden Donut Necklace

The style of this beaded necklace was inspired by this bold pendant from Beads Needs. I tried to match the lovely shades of gold and browns with the beads in the strands.

Citrine for Christine

This is a brooch I made for my friend Christine's birthday. The petals of the flower are Citrine, which is her favouite gemstone, and the cluster in the centre is made up of small beads and Swarovski crystals.

It was made with Eni Oken's flower brooch tutorial, which you can find here

http://www.enijewelry.com/jewelry/lessons.html

together with all her other excellent jewellery lessons.

Inspire Me Thursdays - Bold

When I saw the prompt this week was "bold" it brought to mind this self-portrait I painted a while ago. I was just looking back at it and remembering the way I felt when I did it - I was definitely more bold at that time - and I think this comes across in the painting.

Inspire Me Thursdays - Seven

The theme this week was the number seven owing to the date being 07/07/07. Here is my response. I thought about how to approach it for ages and was thinking mainly about identifying with particular numbers, and then when I was making this blog, I came across the quiz "What number are you"?

My answer was number 4 and I really agreed with the analysis so I decided to use this as inspiration. To bring it back to the number seven, I decided to produce seven self-portraits representing aspects of my personality as revealed in the quiz.

1. Creative & Dreamy

2. Dramatic & Unpredictable



3. Emotionally Honest, Real & Easily Hurt

4. Totally Expressive

5. At my best -Inspired, Artistic & Introspective




6. At my worst - Melancholy, Alienated & Withdrawn

7. Fixation - Envy (with love as the opposite virtue because I didn't just want to be negative)

You Are 4: The Individualist

You are sensitive and intuitive, with others and yourself.You are creative and dreamy... plus dramatic and unpredictable. You're emotionally honest, real, and easily hurt.Totally expressive, others always know exactly how you feel. At Your Best: You are inspired, artistic, and introspective. You know what you're thinking, and you can communicate it well. At Your Worst: You are melancholy, alienated, and withdrawn. Your Fixation: Envy Your Primary Fear: To have no identity Your Primary Desire: To find yourself Other Number 4's: Alanis Morisette, Johnny Depp, J.D. Salinger, Jim Morrison, and Anne Rice.

http://www.blogthings.com/whatnumberareyouquiz/

Animal Attraction

This is a necklace I made for the UK Beaders monthly challenge. The theme was animal attraction.

You can see the other entries and the winner here http://ukbeaders.forumup.org/viewtopic.php?t=3787&mforum=ukbeaders&sid=a8c6d978e5d630b9c030928e80720dc9

I am now working on something for the next challenge. The theme is "holiday destinations" so I'm going to do something inspired by my holiday to Russia last year.

Experimenting with Colour

I've been reading "The Beader's Colour Mixing Directory" by Sandra Wallace. Shes a really really nice lady and has written a great book all about the use of colour schemes in jewellery design. I love making colourful jewellery so thought I'd have a change and limit myself to beads of just one colour.

So I made a turquoise necklace with a large silver foil glass bead as the pendant. The book lists the many different finishes and types of beads available - so even if limiting the design to one colour there are loads of different shades and effects which can be combined to make a bold piece of jewellery that is interesting to look at and pretty to wear.

After I finished this one, I liked it so much I made 4 more in pink, green, purple and gold.

Ars Lnnuleoa!

Well my art therapy class exercise seems a good place to start. The process for this quick sketch is interesting. We mixed up the letters in our name - giving me ARSLNNULEOA and interpreted this new name by creating a piece of art we felt matched it.


I split mine into "Ars" - which I felt was very masculine with strong angular shapes and "Lnnuleoa" with softer sounds and lines. In the above image the two conflict with each other so I decided to do two further paintings developing each idea separately, kind of seeing what would happen if each was let loose.

This picture is all about the dominance of the three letters which are reigning supreme over all the others - shown in the mud at the bottom of the page. The inspirations were the novel 1984, military branding, the architectural plans Hitler drew up for post WW2 Germany (which are amazing) and the Soviet Union.

For me the overriding impression is one of strong, definite lines, strict order and total control.

The second painting is about femininity. It is much softer and more gentle. I tried to show the role of women or mother nature as nourishers and carers particularly their role in reproducing and creating new life.

I thought this was a good exercise for our first class and is fun to do.

If you are after a bit of inspiration, why not try it with your own name and see what happens?

Welcome to the blog

I was partly inspired to start this blog (after resisting it for ages!) because of the art therapy course I'm currently studying. Its really good and has inspired me to be more adventurous with painting and I'm feeling very creative... So I created this blog.

The purpose, hopefully, is to share paintings, jewellery and whatever other random things, in the hope of getting involved in online artistic communities and to get any feedback - its all appreciated.