Creation Station

I have my art table supported by storage bins that have been bending under the weight of my beautiful supplies and their containers. Like my grandmother's juice glasses, jelly jars, old jars from my mother and a flower pot that has been in the family for a few generations. And of course there are the dollar store, thrift store and wal-mart finds.

So Thursday I dragged all the bins out of the harry potter closet and put two deep of bins under the table top my mother gave me from a woman she took care of years ago who past away. It's the perfect size for our small space! I put the leaf on top against the mirror and all my supplies sit on that. I dusted, edited, & rearranged my creative station ending in results I luv. Though I miss having my glasses of brushes, pencils, etc. spread out more.




ps: sorry the pics are SO bad! please forgive me!

Inspire Me Thursday . . . Pear

I can't stop drawing, doodling, creating something! Usually I struggle to create now I struggle to stop. Going to enjoying it while it lasts!

I went to Inspire Me Thursday and was inspired to make this doodle. I love pears and the piece they had up for an example got me going. I started that night and couldn't stop. I was up past 3am and started again when I got up early afternoon.

Broken but Healed by Art & Creativity

With all the losses and other things I've been through the last four years I see the therapeutic benefits and necessity of art, of creating something, anything to let it out. A poem, painting, scribbles, anything. Right after the loss of my brother I literally couldn't think. I couldn't read, I couldn't even watch TV because I couldn't fallow what was going on, it was gibberish. But I could knit. Some may not see this as art but it is creative, it is zen. I find myself looking for my paints or typing away when hit with more stress or pain than I can bear. I feel the need to express it in some way. Cry yes, I needed to cry but I needed other outlets.

Right now I want to paint, I want to write, I want to play with my web designs, make graphics and I will and am and have. Those who are already artist's or creative types know what I'm talking about. You do it too. But those who may not be right brained like us, I encourage you to try it. Find ways to express your pain. It is so healing. There is a reason why the loony bins have arts & crafts, music therapy and tell you to keep a journal. So lets do all that before we need to be locked up! Ok, the last part largely applies to me but it makes sense to do what works for even the worst cases, art and therapy!

What are the ways you deal with great losses or everyday stress? What do you do when you feel broken like I do now?

My Creative Journey

here i've put together a list of my blogs focused on my arts and crafts. i have such a wide range of interests i thought it would be nice, easier to just put them all in one place so if you like, you can fallow along with me on my attempt to create. i may not be an 'Artist' but i am an artist as are all of you!

starting on Tuesday, January 15, 2008 to February 2009:

passions wain
i did it!
Paralyzed
I've Got My Mojo Back!
Inspire Me Thursday ~ Peace
Creation Frenzy
My Shop is Open!
Creative Cruse
Illistration Friday ~ Primitive Flower
Inspire Me Thursday ~ Scrap Yard
Midnight Creations ~ this is what i do when i can't sleep!
Read All About It!
New Girl!
Art is . . .
Soul Food
Great Loss
Sewing, Knitting, & Crochet
Autumn Pear
hiatus
I Think I'm Back
Divine Insperations
Juicy!
Netoholic, Reporting My Deviations

I Won 1st Place!

jessicadoyle.com
jessicadoyle.etsy.com

Netoholic, Reporting My Deviations

pic i took yesturday

I'm not in the mood to paint. I think that i am afraid of what crap i might come up with bursting the bubble from the beautiful girl i made the end of last month. I've made some backgrounds and painted Hecate on cardboard, gesso'd the cardboard from frozen pizza's but when i tried to paint another girl i couldn't even get the sketch right. So i'm going to let it go for now. No use in torturing myself. If i force it i will only get frustrated and make it harder to do it.



So i am sketching fairies instead. Something i am in the mood for. From the book, Dreamscapes by Stephanie Pui-Mun Law. She makes the most beautiful fairies and fantasy creatures! I did one sketch before my brother past-away and when i came back to it recently i was surprised that i thought it looked pretty good. Feeling confident about what i have already done makes it easy to go ahead and do more.


My resolve as an artist is so weak. I have to be gentle with myself. Let go of what i can't bring myself to do and just redirect my creativity and try something new, something different.



One of the other ways i have been expressing my creativity is through all the many social networking sites, blogs and net toys that i have started, well, mostly improving the one's i already have. I have 14 social networks, blogs and net toys besides the other 6 or more blogs i don't fool with anymore.


You can find and friend me at Vox, LiveJournal, FaceBook, MySpace, Xanga, Twitter, seesmic, last.fm, MyBlogLog, wakoopa, stumbleupon, Flikr, listography and goodreads. Woah, that's a LOT! Lol, I will be and have been posting regularly so you can keep up with me at any of these places, especially twitter, i so love it! When i first heard of it i thought it was ridiculous but now i find it so useful and fun! Oh and Every once in a while i post to deviantArt. I'm having so much fun organizing, beautifying, and connecting to people on all my sites! Ooo, i am so loving Vox. It is so easy to use and i like that i can keep up with my books, video's, movies, music, etc. It's easy to add your other sites, you just put in your url or user name and it adds your site links like the sites above and it puts the matching icon in front. Tre cool! I'm using it for my personal blog.



I have been so bad about reading. I've been playing on the computer ALL the time so i haven't done much else. I'm so naughty! So i have decided that i will commit to reading one chapter a day out of my top four books i am currently reading, Soul Lessons and Soul Purpose, The Love Spell, Why Does He Do That?, and Talking With Tweens. I keep track of my books at vox and good reads if you care to know what i think of them and what's on my night stand, bookshelves, and on top of my t.v. :D What are you reading?


Hope you all had a great weekend! Have a wonderful, fulfilling, peaceful, prosperous, fun week!

xoxo,
dinah

Great Loss

I was writing a book. Words flew and flowed, ideas, characters, and plots. But then my world came to an end and I suffered a GREAT loss. For a long time I felt like I would mourn forever. That I would never stop crying or hurting, it hurt worse than anything I’ve known. When I got the news that he was in a comma my world came to an end, I knew that he wasn’t going to make it and unfortunately I was right. A week later my brother was taken off life support and his body died along with the brain that had died a week before.

I can only talk to my family and my mother about this. Everyone else say the wrong things. I can’t stand to hear them talk about it, to try to console me. When someone dies everyone should shut the fk up! I need the sympathy and support but in as few of words as possible. Just hug me. Tell me you love me. Say, ‘I’m so sorry.’ then shut up. This sounds so awful but that is how I feel. Each word wounds if it’s the wrong one or from the wrong person. I am so fragile that your breath could collapse me.

Art. I would have thought this a great time to write my pain out or paint. I’ve thought of it but haven’t wanted to. I don’t want to be in life when he is gone. I haven’t been able to think for the last few weeks. Even the simplest things that I never get wrong I couldn’t do. I think all the time, my mind never shuts up but since the first call I would sit for long moments with nothing in my head, just silence. I couldn’t think if I wanted to.

I started reading. I do it slowly and not every day. The book is about a mother who loses her little girl and per her mother’s advice she takes up knitting and joins a knitting circle. The repetitious movements of knitting some how get her out of her sorrow and gives her a break from pain. This book, The Knitting Circle, has inspired me to knit again. It does help, the repetition is soothing like rocking back and forth. I can’t write, I can’t paint, not today but for now I will knit. That will be my art.

Soul Food

I’m not much of an artist to tell the truth, as I’ve been told. But I don’t say this because I’m not good at painting but because it isn’t an abiding passion. It is a passion but one that flees from me while another comes in. But am I still an artist when one artful passion is temporarily replaced by another?

What is art? I think one way it can be described is creative ways we express ourselves outside of logical linear thinking. When I was young it was truly an art to apply my make up. I took time to consider tones and hues, how to make the contours I desired, how to make me more beautiful. It was art when I would make beautiful resumes for my job applications. The effort I put into its form style, font, balance, and spacing. Also the words, how I described myself, what I had done. When I described my years as a house wife with a baby I called myself a ‘domestic engineer’ and used big important words like negotiator, manager, accountant, etc. One woman thought I was employed (as if it were a real job outside of home) another waved it in her husbands face reminding him of all the things she really does. That was creative, thinking outside of my box.

Now what makes me an artist? A creative person? My current medium is the pen. Or more truly my keyboard! I am writing. May not sound impressive. I don’t seem to write very well here. But that isn’t the point. Weather I am a genius or suck doesn’t matter. The important thing is that I feed my soul. The soul’s food is art! This is art, writing. Mine may be bad art and that is ok. But unlike some people out there I am happy, content, Sometimes even blissful when I am doing and being art! I write because I love it, because it feeds my soul. NOT to please the ‘critics‘. NOT to receive the ‘critics’ approval. But only to feed my soul and that is ‘following your bliss’ my friends as Joseph Campbell was fond of saying!

What is your soul food? What feeds your soul, makes you happy, content, blissful? Do it and stop for NO ONE! No mater what they say. What do they know? We all know that ‘critics’ don’t know anything!
Now dig in!!

Read All About It!

I have been featured in Divine Comforts website! It’s a short article where I’ve been interviewed. I’ve mentioned this before. Well, now the article is out! Go take a look and learn a little more about me :)


I also wanted to thank all of you for your incredible support and faith in me. I don’t feel deserving but am so appreciative! You all have blown me away! Thank you!

Luv,
dinah

ps: don't forget to visit my Etsy shop he was talking about!

Midnight Creations ~ this is what i do when i can't sleep!

I tried my hand again with the now “primitive flower II”. The first one for Illustration Friday had a blemish on the top left. I just made it on a whim, experimenting with the walnut ink I had just got using a journal page that wasn’t fully prepped. But I loved it so much I had to show it even though it was imperfect. I don’t like this as well, spontaneity has it’s virtues! Forcing, planning too much doesn’t seem to work for me.


Now here is a spontaneous piece, I sat thinking of trying another “primitive” but it turned into a fig, yes, that is supposed to be a fig! lol It is one of my favorite fruits! My grandmother had two fig trees when I was growing up. we would climb into it’s low twisted branches and just stuff ourselves with delicious figs! I call the painting “childhood sweetness” because that’s what it was, sweet tasting and a sweet a memory!


I have new art journal pages on my flikr if you want to take a look I would love for you too. And don’t forget to stop by my store at Esty!

Inspire Me Thursday ~ Scrap Yard

I’ve wanted to make something out of all the scraps I have left over from other projects. Now I got the chance! This is my version of recycling my art scraps as well as showing a recycled home and world. Even the sun has been recycled!



I used paper, charcoal, acrylic, water color in this piece. I feel like I used more but no.

Because of the sun I couldn’t get the color right. There is more shading over the lawn than you can see here. I need a shaded spot out back. I’ll have to create one as there are no trees. I’m working on taking better pictures, give me some time to get it together. I’m trying :D Oh, and if you have some good advice I would love the help!

ps: take a look at my inspiration friday pic below!

Illistration Friday ~ Primitive Flower

I spayed my prepped journal pages with the walnut ink I recently bought to see what would happen. Then later that day I came back to it and drew this, what I am calling ‘Primitive Flower’. When flowers where beginning to spring up they where very simple, hardly looking like a flower at all.



I used walnut ink, gel pen, permanent marker, water color, charcoal, and acrylic to make this very simple painting. I can hardly believe I used so many things! I hope you like it :)

Help! I've Been Tagged!

Yeah! I’ve been tagged by Alyssa Elza for this ‘6 weird quirks/habits’ game. Thank you Alyssa for tagging me :D sorry it took so long to post this since I just found out about it today! Here are my strange facts!

1. I can’t function properly without my cup of coffee with hazelnut creamer every morning, even if I don’t wake till noon!
2. I can’t stand to ware shoes in my home so I take them off at the door. I just think about all the nasties I could have possibly picked up.
3. I nearly always feel like I have a fever.
4. I fight sleep most every night and end up working on some art to relax or read a book.
5. I can’t take a bath without sliding under and getting my hair wet no matter how clean I already am.
6. almost every time I sit, I sit on my left leg like my mother.

Hope I made you giggle ;)


I am tagging: Suzi Blu, Paulette Insall, Danita, Darlene, moonwillow, and Letha.

And here are the rules:
1. Link to the person that tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Share six non-important things/habits/quirks about yourself.
4. Tag six random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs.
5. Let each random person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their website.