Traveling on the Right Side of the Brain

Who knew that painting on pottery could be so much fun!  Or so easy.  Just paint and doodle, paint and doodle.  Except for the fused glass, which requires only minor glass cutting skills.  Really, the art work creates itself.

A few weeks ago, my friends and I discovered the Practically Pikasso store in Waco and have been having a blast ever since.

It's like combining art therapy with group therapy.  After a couple of hours in Sammi's lovely studio all's right with the world.

Fun with Sharpies

Who knew that playing with a $3 Sharpie could be so much fun!  Drawing upon ideas from Alisa Burke's newest online class, Create Daily Holiday Edition, I've been in right brain bliss for hours this morning.  I don't know what chemicals my brain releases when I start playing around with creative stuff but it's a real mood changer.

It also got me from the breakfast table to the craft table.    Good thing, since I was in real danger of  major calorie overload.  So easy to do on a lazy Sunday morning.

Along with the glass items I found at Laverty's I also picked up some old Christmas ornaments.  All are perfect for doodling with the new oil based Sharpie pen.

Extra river rocks found in my garage work well, too.

Back to the playground!

Sketchbook Pages

I finished Dave Fox's "Globejotting" online travel writing class this month.  It was immensely helpful, showing me how to eliminate excess words, redundancies, and most cliches.  A few still slip through.  In my final submission, which had gone through six drafts and which I felt was tight writing, Dave managed to eliminate almost a hundred words.   Like a typical student, though, I'm avoiding going back and editing my earlier stories.  Hence, this sketchbook post.

Week 1 of Alisa Burke's Sketchbook Delight - Part 2 class was a refresher exercise using pens, pencils, and watercolor.  Homework: sketch our supplies.

Week 2 - Draw Everyday Objects

  Tax season paper purging.  Files are thinned out and the taxes are off to the accountant.

Yippee!  Back to the fun part of life.

more everyday objects with a dash of doodling

Week 3 - Draw from Nature

I couldn't resist adding some swirls and a lettering style learned in LetterLab, 

another online course.

Week 4 - Advanced Doodling

This week's assignment is Faces.  Stay tuned.

Filling the Page

Still working through Alisa Burke's online class

Sketchbook Delight

www.alisaburke.blogspot.com

I've been trying to learn to 'fill the page.'

As you can see, it's a bit harder than it looks to cover that blank

white space.  Drawing on both Alisa's suggestion and 

Stephani Corfee's new book, Creative Doodling & Beyond

http://www.amazon.com/Creative-Doodling-Beyond-Inspiring-exercises/dp/1600582478/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1324741609&sr=8-1

I tried doodling some shapes and forced myself to keep 

doodling until the page was filled.

This is still a work in progress but I'm starting to get the hang of

filling the page thanks to good teachers and good examples.