Dragonfly Challenge

Every week, Inspiration Avenue has a blog hop where people post around a central theme, a theme that changes each Monday morning.  This week, it is all about dragonflies, those mystical, mysterious, marvelous creatures.  They are everywhere in the summer, and each time I see one I am mesmerized.

Go on over to this link and check out the posting, then follow along or even check back during the week to see others' posts about dragonflies.  The challenge lasts a week.  It is fun!

The Dragonfly Darlings Challenge shows a few of these creatures today:

You can just see the wonder on the little girl's face.  (She came from Lynne, a children's book illustrator, at this blog.)

Would you want this on your back?

source

Yikes!

Anyway, join in here!  I will be checking in on all participants' blogs and leaving a comment.

You Knit Me Together in My Mother's Womb

For the Inspiration Avenue Weekly Challenge on "hearts," my brother tried his best to help me use the basics of Photoshop, but I failed miserably.  He even made me a 13 minute tutorial on layers and how to create images by combining pictures together.

It looked easy when he did it on his video, but there were so many intricacies that I could come up with only one half-way presentable image by combining two heart art clips on top of one image. Then I couldn't save the danged thing except to a .pdf file.

 (Mother and daughter in NIC unit, Kentucky, 1970)

"...You created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body."  (Psalms 139, verse 13, 15, 16)

So there are a couple of clip art hearts on my daughter and me.  My entry...it certainly won't win any awards, but it was valuable in at least learning a few basics on the software of Photoshop.

Join in Art with Heart and show us some of your favorite heart-y inspirations like these:

                                                                               cianellistudios.blogspot.com

                                                                              Palmarin Merges : In the Studio

Inspiration Avenue Challenge: A Mother's Hand

Happy Mothers' Day to All

Inspiration Avenue, hosted by Shelley and her mom, Loretta, is challenging you to participate in something to do with a mother's hands.  Loretta says...

Did you know that the word hand appears in the King James Bible 1296 times? Now that definitely shows us how important hands were to God, our creator. Don’t you know He put a lot of thought into creating our hands, knowing all the things they would do for us in our day to day activities?

Being uninspired, but loving the picture of my mother and me in 2000 just before she died, I used it as a tool to try and draw my mother's hands; in this case, it was her left hand.  

I had always loved her hands.  Those bright red fingernails were one of her fashion signatures.

This is the sketchbook drawing:

And here is mother's (cropped) left hand.

It was a true art challenge, but it was a way to say "Happy Mother's Day" in a fond remembrance.

Please go here and join in the challenge.

also for ppf

What Day of the Week Were You Born? - Challenge

A new challenge is going on at Inspiration Avenue.  Click on this link to join the challenge.  Here is the deal:

The challenge this week is  "The Days of the Week"  from the age old nursery rhyme that was written to help children to learn the days of the week.  The challenge is not specific to the days of the week, but rather to the actual day of the week that you were born according to the nursery rhyme. 

If you don't know the actual day of the week you were born, I have included a link to a handy dandy birthday calculator that will help you make that determination. 

Here is the Link to the Birthday Calculator to find your day. 

And here ...is an example... of just a few possibilities for each day! Use your imagination according to your day and any medium is a go!

MONDAY'S Child is FAIR OF FACE

http://www.etsy.com/shop/dimestoreemporium

Since I was born on a Thursday, I had "far to go"... my husband was born on a Saturday, and he had to work for his living.  So true for both adages!

So, since it took me a period of 44 years of schooling (off and on, between pregnancies, jobs, health issues, etc.), my challenge incorporated schooling and rough times into my theme of "far to go"... And after those 44 years, I still lack the doctoral degree.  Anyway, since school was always a theme in my life, I took the images of the little girl with an umbrella against the wind,

(Morton's Salt)

(Good Housekeeping)

 and school books, combined them together with a computer cord and came up with this altered image:

















... click on this link to join the fun.

Thanks to Kim from IMGIRL for hosting this at Inspiration Avenue Challenge.

P.S. Post Card Swap

Post Card Swap

What  is it?  Just what it says, Swap A Postcard!

• You make five postcards and mail them. 
• You will receive five postcards from five other people in the swap.

What do you provide?

• Five handmade postcards
• You can draw, paint, cover with fabric, use rick rack, copy images, whatever!
• Anything that will go through the mail will work.

What do you get?

• Five unique postcards from five different members in the swap

How do you sign up?

• Just let us know you are joining the swap by mailing your snail mail address to: inspirationavenuepostcardswap@yahoo.com

Sounds like fun to me! I am in. It starts TOMORROW! All details can be found here TOMORROW!

National Poetry Month and a Creative Challenge

On Inspiration Avenue, and in conjunction with National Poetry Month, we have a weekly challenge.

April is National Poetry Month and in honor of that... a challenge to revolve around poetry, but also include other forms of the written word, a favorite quote, or novel, or perhaps merely a special word. What inspires you, and how does it make you feel? Pour out those feelings artistically! Whether in oils, collage, watercolor, mixed media, photography, digital art... anything goes, just express it!

Iris are fun to paint, and inspire me.  So I decided to find a poem about iris and then paint one or two.  Here is a poem about iris written by Edith Buckner Edwards in 1961:

Iris, most beautiful flower,
Symbol of life, love, and light;
Found by the brook, and the meadow,
Or lofty, on arable height.
You come in such glorious colors,
In hues, the rainbow surpass;
The chart of color portrays you,
In petal, or veins, of your class.
You bloom with the first in Winter,
With the last, in the Fall, you still show;
You steal the full beauty of Springtime,
With your fragrance and sharp color glow.
Your form and beauty of flower,
An artist's desire of full worth;
So Iris, we love you and crown you,
MOST BEAUTIFUL FLOWER ON EARTH!

Inspired by iris, I got out the silk paints and spread them and all the paraphenalia that goes along with painting on silk, and began this painting with iris as the theme.  It took about a week to complete.  It is ready to frame in a convenient size of 16" x 20".  This is my answer to the Inspiration Avenue weekly challenge.