How bright can I make this picture?  That was the one thing I had in mind when I put together this mixed media piece.  I'm crazy about bright colours, but you wouldn't know it if you saw me on the street.  I wear mostly black and neutrals, but when it come to art I just can't get enough colour!  While I was concentrating on how to put as much zing into this as I could without being garish I inadvertantly solved another delema of mine which is how to combine my printmaking and mixed media.  Sometimes you have to stop thinking about something to find the answer.  I also put together this blue one because blue is one of the most mezmerizing colours I find.

These are my answer to the dark November days we've been having.  I also managed to get another little lino done.  It's been a productive week!

Tomorrow is December 1st and I'm going to totally give up resisting the wave of Christmas frenzy that is everywhere and get swept away!!!

I've decided to add some affordable little linoprints to my Etsy shop.  This is the first and hopefully I'll add more soon, but Christmas is coming!  After a certain date I find I forget about everything and get swept up in the Christmas rush.  It's still November so I'm holding off, but it's difficult.  Neighbors are putting up their lights and I hear Sufjan Stevens has a new set of Christmas CD's!  I can feel my resolve crumbling! But this little lino was so much fun to do.  I going to try and do another!

In an effort to get over my block, I've tried something new.  This technique isn't new for some, but it is for me.  It involves printing a photo on tissue paper and then gluing it down with mat medium.  You need to give it a light spray of fixative it you are using an inkjet printer so that it won't run when you paint on top.   I quite like the effect and this new technique has given my ideas!  What about altering the photo in GIMP.  The possibilities are endless!
Here's another little, and I mean little, piece.  My A is for Antelope is only 4 by 4 inches.  I could do the rest of the alphabet and that would keep me busy for a while!

I haven't posted anything for a while because I've been suffering from a kind of artist block.  I'd always assumed that an artist block meant that your creativity had temporarily dried up and you couldn't think of what to do.  But that's not really a blockage, that's running dry.  I have too many ideas and they are blocking up my brain.  I make lists of thinks I want to do, but then I can't seem to get to them.  I've painted my fireplace, invested in a mixmaster and made cookies and raked bags and bags of leaves.  Then I wonder where the week went and why I haven't created any art.  I'm blaming pinterest for this new type of blockage.  Never before have I been able to see so much inspiring art...my inspiration boards are bulging! It's a feast for creativity, but I think I need to go on a diet.  There's only so many ideas one can digest at once.  I've decided to turn off pinterest...just for a short while until the art starts flowing again.  I did manage to finish this linocut which I had started some time ago and I had to chuckle because I think I've got a few to many ideas in the garden of my mind!

I'm so glad Etsy had made their listing process easier.  However, five new listings is still a lot of typing!  These new art cards are a combination of printmaking and mixed media, or, in other words carving, printing cutting and gluing.  It's a happy process for me.  Much more so than typing! It's time to get up and stretch!