Determined to Fly - SOC3 week 3

I enjoyed letting go and making last weeks winged girl so much, I decided to make another one this week before my short attention span kicks in. This week's winning colors were lime green and purple.  I used basically the same process, although I did catch myself getting more perfectionisty (if it's not a word, it should be), and would have to try and stop myself.  This week's girl is a little more confident about trying to fly with her (encaustic wax) wings, because her butterfly friend is whispering advice in her ear...

 

Don't Fear Your Wings - SOC Week 2

Sometimes I feel the need to force myself to unclench, and let go of perfectionism, and just create as if I were a child again.  This does not come naturally to me, but at the same time I'm often drawn to art created this way.  So for this week's challenge I roughly tore out pieces from my collection of old papers, the rough shape of a head and dress, and created and painted a girl in one of my journals, with wings she's feeling intimidated about using.

I love the old papers against the bright pink and orange, the winning colors for this week and ones I wouldn't normally think of using together much - that's the beauty of challenges like Summer of Color that force us out of our comfort zone a little.  Her wings were created using white encaustic wax.

 

If you're not already participating in Summer of Color, click the link at the top of my sidebar to come play!

She hitched a ride with a butterfly - Summer of Color begins!

The long awaited and much anticipated 3rd year of Summer of Color has begun, hosted by the lovely and talented Kristin of Twinkle, Twinkle. If you're not already involved, click on the link at the top of the sidebar and come play!  The color combination for our first week is Citron and Turquoise, a combination I quite like.

This is done on a 6" x 12" piece of wood, with a lot of vintage bits and pieces. The Frozen Charlotte is riding a butterfly that I cut out of a very old piece of lace, some kind of elongated doily that is full of these butterfly shapes. The little straps I used to hold her in are all already part of it - this kind of thing can seriously make my whole day!

Lake Tahoe - part Deux

We swore last time we were at Tahoe that we were going to come back more often, and so far so good.  It was 100 degrees here yesterday, so we decided to escape the heat and go back to Tahoe, where it was a fantastic sunny 73ish.  We went to a State park that has a wonderful mansion, we'd toured it a couple of years ago and vowed to come back soon with chairs, books and picnic supplies, then promptly forgot about it. This time we came fully supplied, dogs in tow, and settled in for the day.  It was so beautiful - quiet and peaceful, we could hear the water lapping softly against the beach, which was about 15 feet from us.

 

I created my first "plein air" (I assume this means painting something outside while you're looking at it) there. Not great (it turns out it's not easy doing a watercolor in a beach chair!)

, but it captures the scene and I really found myself immersed in just seeing, and being there while doing it.

 

 

 

Looking up at the mansion from the lawn.

 

 

 

The boys, VERY worried that their Father did the unfathomable, walking away from our spot without them.

 

 

Looking back at the grounds from the pier.  Not a bad spot to have had your summer home, huh?

 

 

 

A coyote strolling through the grounds, stopping to look at us.