June roundup

Art

Juicy paintings. This month, I am featuring juicy oil paintings instead of watercolors:

• Ronell Van Wyk (African Tapestry) posted her plein air painting La frontier in Plein air paintings 1. Take a look at the colors and the light reflections in the water – lovely!
• Elizabeth Floyd (Elizabeth Floyd Studio) also has a way with her brush, making her paintings look both realistic and juicy. Check out Peach daily painting and Green pear daily painting!
• Gesa Helms (Paint and Pastel) showed her abstract yellow and blue Elqui 1 in Landscape, fields, and abstraction (scroll down a bit to find it.) Juicy progress pictures were shown in the earlier post And then I lost the hilltops… I love these glowing color combinations!

Birds. Several artists featured birds in their June posts:

• Ronell Van Wyk (African Tapestry) sketched the most lovely, “loose” geese in her post Sketches on a perfect Friday.
• Katherine Tyrrell (Travels with a Sketchbook in…) drew a beautiful heron in pencil and a coot nest in color pencil in her post Herons, coots and goslings – grooming, housekeeping and babysitting.
• Roz Stendahl (Roz Wound Up) painted a colorful vulture and wrote about Where do you find birds?

People. There are so many good sketches of people out there that I couldn’t help but linking posts by Jana Bouc (Janas Journal), Adebanji Alade, and Casey Toussaint (Rue Manuel Bis) as well.

Creative process

My posts on the creative process. I wrote a post about How do you nourish your inner artist, citing artist’s dates as one of many possible nourishments for that artist within. Check out the comments for more ideas and feel free to leave your own! Another of my posts was written On the importance of nature; time spent in nature being one of my favorite ways to unwind.

Vision boards. Several artists have posted their vision/dream/inspiration boards online and I find every one of them fascinating. This is a great idea to help understand as well as visualize where you really want to go. Check out Caroline Roberts' (From the Studio) post Blasting off with a dream and Jess Constable's (Makeunder My Life) post Makeunder step one: Create a vision for a few examples.

Procrastination and resistance. Danny Gregory wrote an interesting post about this in Anti- and procrastination. Amongst his tips are taking the first step and starting with a bite-size piece that will only take a few minutes. Related to this, Rose Welty wrote about exercise in What if you want to but can’t get started? She starts small and takes a few moments here and there instead of one long stretch of time. In the same spirit, Roz Stendahl (Roz Wound Up) advocated Being happy with the little bits.

Meditation

Jon Kabat-Zinn is back. I have looked forward to Jon Kabat-Zinn's next post since March, but missed his May post, so I will link it here instead. Jon Kabat-Zinn is the founder of the Center for Mindfulness at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and the author of Full Catastrophe Living - Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness, a book on mindfulness that I have been reading on and off since 2006!

One-Moment Meditation follow-up. Last month, I quoted Martin Boroson’s new book One-Moment Meditation. The next day, I found an email from Martin Boroson in my inbox, asking if I would like a copy of his book! Based on the excerpt, his book seemed to be the missing link for my current focus on spaciousness and being mindful in the moment. As this indeed turned out to be the case, stay tuned for a book review and an interview with Martin later on this summer!

Art business

My posts on art business. I wrote a post about IKEA for artists, with tips on IKEA furniture that I used to furnish my studio.

See. Be. Draw.® trademarked! Perhaps you have noticed the ® after See. Be. Draw. in the blog header?! Since April, See. Be. Draw. is a registered trademark! A time consuming process, this has been in the making for over a year!

Time management. Many artists are writing about time management these days. Amongst them, Michael Nobbs pondered Rhythm rather than routine in a post and podcast and Still learning (more on my quest for a creative routine). Check out the comments for more tips!

Health and wellness. For those of us running a small art business, health is an important prerequisite. Lately, several bloggers have written about what they do to stay – or get - well:

• In Back to basics, Jill Bliss describes how she assembled a health team consisting of a chiropractor, a massage therapist, and an exercise trainer, to help her back, shoulders, and hands get back to sewing again. I love the idea of a health team, and think many of us realize its importance only when it is too late. Maintaining one’s health is just as important as healing that which is not well!
• Jess Constable (Makeunder My Life) has, inspired by Sean Covey’s book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens, set up a personal bank account, which is a way to build self-confidence and trust in yourself. She explains this in her post Increasing my personal bank account and writes about her progress in June’s PBA.
• Katherine Tyrrell (Making a Mark) started a Sketchercise community on Ning, for those enjoying both sketching and exercise – in combination! (For those new to sketching in combination with activity, there is a Flickr group set up to get your feet wet, as explained in Sketchercise – now on Flickr too.)

Blog updates

Blog schedule. As summer has arrived and I just returned from a both inspiring and refreshing meditation retreat, I am reverting to a blogging schedule of one post a week; day yet to be determined. The idea is to free up some more time for art, spaciousness, and other important things...

See. Be. Draw. sightings. My post An experiment in being was recommended by Katherine Tyrrell (Making a Mark) “for those who love planning, being focused and 'to do' lists” in her post 7th June 2009 – Who’s made a mark this week? (Hint – An experiment in being is the antithesis to the to-do list…) Katherine also highlighted my post How do you nourish your inner artist in 14th June 2009 – Who’s made a mark this week? In addition, Leslie Rinchen-Wongmo was inspired by my post On the importance of nature as she wrote about Environment, meditation, and soft fascination.

And lastly: Another Kreativ Blogger award for See. Be. Draw! Countrymummy (of Craftdelight) awarded me a Kreativ Blogger award in her April post I’d just like to thank… - and I only just found out! Thanks, Countrymummy!