Busy busy busy

This month I have been working on paintings. There are so many festivals coming up, but I have decided to lay out for a year, maybe, and work on painting skills. This is not set in stone however. But this week I am working with glazes. I have all the Golden mediums and airbrush colors to work with, but am mixing colors and creating more glazes as I work out difficulties I have with colors and design principles. I am a "learn by doing" person, so no matter how many books I read on the subject, it matters not until I try it for myself. I am still doing art journaling with the Meetup group, but with my jillions of stencils that I have either purchased or made myself with various cutters and cardstock or plastic, I tend to just get lost doing that instead of what I REALLY want to do, which is paint paintings. (It's hell to have ADD!) Other new products I have yet to try are some metal for embossing, and some instant mold stuff to create yet more things for collage (that I don't need.) My website has a couple of de-stash sections for collage elements because I have created boxes and boxes of stuff that I have set prices for, depending on the size of the Priority Mail box. I work now with two creativity categories: painting and cutting projects are done in the studio, then at night, around 8 pm I go to my room, where the art journal is, or my sewing machine and crochet projects. I am going to make a new neck pillow for myself because the old one is worn out, and since I plan to spend a couple hours in oral surgery this week, I want my OWN pillow. So that's on my to-do list. My daughter and her girls have been out of town this weekend, so I assumed I would get tons of things done this weekend but for some reason, I get less done than I would like before I just poop out! But for this afternoon, I am going back to my painting. Right after I put another load of laundry in.

It's Tuesday, I think.

Yesterday I dragged out the knitting looms and feel like making scarves for awhile, as I think about what I'm going to paint this year. Communication has always been a challenge for me, and this year is no different. In my journals I seem to be more free with expression than on paintings, where I feel "judged." (Could be why I never enter any paintings into competition.) This year I want to do a spectacular painting; one that I take weeks and weeks to complete. I love drawing figures, recognizable or not, and this "spectacular" painting will incorporate not only recognizable figures, but emphasize the texture that I love. The gallery lady last year said all my paintings are orange, and that shut me down for six months! Well, she's actually wrong because some of them are purple. Anyway, I love warm colors and can't help it! We use the palette we like, in any case, but I do want to experiment with different colors this year. Last year I spent a lot of time with paper arts, stamping, cutting and pasting. Therefore, I have a mountainous pile of collage pieces which I am selling as a lot on my website (FriedellArt.com) and plan to put some on eBay. I have to de-stash somehow. I have more than I will ever ever ever have time to use.