Zendala 1: Mandala Meetup class coming this Fall!

01 Saturday Jul 2017

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Zendala 1

Yesterday I met with the board of the Morris County Art Association and discussed class offerings. I will have 3 opportunities to teach, mostly Zentangle®, but I will have a one day workshop on making artist trading cards.

I will be offering an in depth 8-week Zentangle® Method class for each session. The first session runs from September 14 – November 2 and will be on Thursdays from 4:30-7pm.

What is the Mandala Meet Up?  The third Saturday of each month from 2-5 pm we will meet at the Art Association Studio to create Zendalas®. Zentangle® patterns are used to provide a drawing meditation to fill the circle with beauty. All materials will be provided. Materials fee $5. Prices and full descriptions of the classes will be available on the home page of my blog. While I’m going to continue my 100 mandalas challenge, I’m going to try for 100 Zendalas® also. I’m looking forward to helping people create these little works of art.

Biggs Museum of American Art, Dover DE

26 Monday Jun 2017

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I’m not much of a beach person in the summer. Crowds and traffic can trigger my anxiety and heat triggers my migraines and vertigo. So on my trip to Rohoebeth Beach with some friends my husband and I headed home a day early and stopped in Dover at the welcome center. The Biggs Museum of Art was a block a way and was having an Ansel Adams Exhibit.

Mughals Garden of Laughter Louise Gatanas

I totally fell in love with this contemporary artist, Louise Gatanas.

Natures Pulse II Marcia Reed

I love the use of color and lines in this one, Nature’s Pulse by Marcia Reed.

They also have a nice collection of historical work.

The view of Broadway at the top left is a different take on the big apple. I am finding I enjoy the Hudson School of Art and, as always, the Impressionists. The painting on the top right is of Rehoboth Beach, DE. It didn’t look like this when we were there. There were hoards of people and not any green spaces. The boardwalk was interesting, if not my cup of tea. I didn’t take my camera to the beach because of concerns of carrying it in my increasingly heavy bag and sand.

Here is another lovely selection of Hudson School of Art and I’m not sure what category the flower box falls into, but I liked it. I think my favorite painting in this collection was the one of the trees.

Gratitude Journal: Zentangle Explorations

21 Wednesday Jun 2017

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library zentangle class

This page layout is a little bit of a mess, but that is because I’ve been doing so much work. I made a batch of Artist Trading Cards and included some leftover bits from that on the left hand page. These include my new business card stickers from MOO that I put on the reverse side. People love these as my business cards. It is like they get there own little piece of art. I love the stickers and I hope you do too!

The right page has a prototype of one of the pieces of my Draw the Circle Wide mandala that is under construction. I made a photocopy and painted it with gouache to test how it would interact with acrylic matte medium. No smearing or bleeding of colors and the colors turned out nice and clear. I think this is how I’m going to paint these sections. Part of the development for that mandala was finding just the right purple. I also used this layout to document all my new Prismacolor colored pencils.

finding purple

It turned out that I needed to use magenta to get any purples that I liked. What was interesting was experimenting with Payne’s Gray as a blue. It also demonstrated that I have a lot of shades of blue and not as many reds. I may explore that further. Or maybe there just isn’t the same variety of hues. Do any of you know about that? In any case I used Ultramarine blue and magenta to make the purple for my iris.

Another feature of the right page of the gratitude journal entry was my playing with reticula in a mandala. What is a reticula?

Reticula play

It is a pattern that you put in a grid. Changing the orientation creates different  meta-patterns. This was one of the really wonderful things we explored at the Certified Zentangle Teacher seminar I went to in April. There is a lot of gratitude for my husband in these pages, too. I haven’t used one of my stencils for him in a while. Maybe this week. What are you grateful for? What is new in your art practice?

I hope you have a beautiful day.

New York Botanical Garden: Chihuly Exhibit

13 Tuesday Jun 2017

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I don’t generally post my photography on this blog, but I think I will share my art observations. This Chihuly exhibit at New York Botanical Garden was really wonderful and I recommend it to anyone going to New York City this summer/fall.

Some of my favorite blooms in the NYBG were made of glass at the Dale Chihuly glass studio. Like this one.

NYBG Chihuly yellow in front of conservatory

To see the rest of my post check out New York Botanical Garden Chihuly Exhibition.

NYBC: Gratitude Journal

09 Friday Jun 2017

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NYBG and Chihuly

Here is my gratitude journal for the past week or so. I have been doing a lot of journaling on the large mandala (with the iris) that I have been working on, so I haven’t been doing quite so much work in my journal. The printed iris photograph on these pages was the inspiration and all of my iris were a gift from my father-in-law. It was such a happy coincidence that this week we also went to one of his favorite  places in the world, the New York Botanical Garden. It was magical. There is an exhibit of Dale Chihuly’s glass work and I will be doing a post featuring that later today on my other blog.

Diva Challenge 319: Beads of Courage

06 Tuesday Jun 2017

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dc 319 Beads of Courage

Here is my tile for the Diva’s Challenge this week. I used the tangle patterns Onamato, Snail, and Satsu. They represent beads for the Diva’s son who lives with chronic health problems. Here is her definition of Beads of Courage. She does this challenge once a year in conjunction with a fundraising Color Fun Run she organizes.

Beads of Courage is an arts in medicine program that helps kids with chronic or life threatening illness tell the story of their medical journey.  Each bead represents something different.  A different procedure or appointment, or special circumstance.  For example, when seeing a doctor or getting a poke instead of getting a sticker when they leave, they are given a glass bead for each thing.  (blue for doctor, black for poke… some other beads are yellow=night in the hospital, pink=respiratory support, magenta=trip to emergent care, teal=tube insertion or removal, rainbow=therapy; physical, speech, occupational, respiratory) and every child’s string is different and unique to their story.

Art is so therapeutic for me in so many ways. Laura’s story is one of the great examples of the power of art. She and her son are surrounded by love and support. That is why I used a heart as the string for my tile. I kept a nice peaceful, clear space in the middle for healing and surrounded it with beads for the courage of Laura and her son.

I’m also including a picture of my cat because he is hilarious. Here he is curled up with the book my husband is reading. I’m not sure anyone else could sleep on Guns, Germs, and Steel, but sometimes when I have insomnia my husband will read it to me to help me fall asleep.bo on book

Flower of the Day: Painted Iris

06 Tuesday Jun 2017

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draw the circle wide mandala iris layer

You may recognize the purple iris photograph I posted a few days ago on my other blog. This is one of the background layers for a mandala that I’m working on. The gessoboard is 30 x 30 inches and I’m loving working BIG! I have more process photos of this, but I will save them until it is done.

To see many inspirational flower photographs, check out Cee’s Flower of the Day.