I Won 1st Place!

jessicadoyle.com
jessicadoyle.etsy.com

My Son Corrupted by Twain!

we watched 'Mark Twain' a documentary after school. it told of his life and his careers, what made him a writer, they had quotes and excerpts from his letters, books, and articles. we laughed out load the whole night. i didn't realize how funny Mark Twain aka Samuel Clemens was. i new he was a great writer but i felt like i could relate to him and his style of humor. humor is my son's first love, how he copes and all he wants to take in. he doesn't care for anything unless it's funny!

as i put my son to bed tonight he repeatedly told me, 'i think i'm going to write! i can cuss when i write!'. 'yes', i told him,' you can cuss and say what ever you want in your journal. it is your world and you are god but. . .' 'but not out load!', he finished. he's very happy to get to cuss... lol

oh yes, Twain cussed! :)

The documentary is titled simply, 'Mark Twain' a film directed by Ken Burns. through PBS home video.

xoxo,
dinah

ps: another example of how corrupting art can be ;)

The Power & History of Woman

part 1
part 2
part 3
part 4
part 5
part 6

i encourage all to watch this documentary. those of all faith and spiritual belief and non-belief will get a lot out of it. i strongly encourage woman to watch this to learn more about our history of which there is little.

this is my path, this is me.

Happy Valentine's Day!

So sorry i am late! We have had a interesting weekend! ;) Just like my birthday i also celebrate Valentine's all month long! This is the month of love! So go out and buy up all the half price chocolate to get you through the hormonal months ahead! Lol ;)



Have a great week!

xoxo
dinah

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

Double Birthdays!!

Ten years and one day ago I gave birth to a healthy baby boy. the next day was my birthday! Needless to say I got nothing for that birthday save my son. That was fine with me :) he was present enough. So all that means is that today is my birthday and yesterday was my son’s!

Please everyone wish my son a happy birthday, it’s been a rough one this year! Wednesday he started complaining of a soar throat that night at midnight he sat at the foot of my bed throwing up. all night he was up and down with fever and so on. When morning came his temperature climbed to 103.7 and I couldn’t get it down despite the Motrin and Tylenol and the cold bath, all of which usually works. So I rushed him to emergency. By the time they got to him his fever was almost gone. We got the best room in the e.r. and he was treated to a pop after given some medicine to keep him from getting sick. Well after his shot for the strep throat it was clear the medicine didn’t work. After 2pm we finally headed home.

The next day was going to be his birthday. He was so upset to find out that he wasn’t going to get to celebrate! But he came to terms and was thrilled to get many calls from family wishing him a happy birthday and getting to open his present from me, a kick bleep water gun!

So we have been spending our birthdays in isolation with plain bread, ice pops, and cartoons. It hasn’t been that bad though. I’ve really have enjoyed the quite time alone with my son. :)

Btw, he is doing really well. Since he came home he has kept everything down and has felt relatively ok. Nothing like the strep throat I had as a child of utter misery.

Hope you all will have a healthy, happy week!

Love,
dinah

New Girl!

Good Day everyone! I just wanted to thank you all again for coming by and especially for your kind and supportive comments. You all have stirred up warms fuzzies inside my heart! I feel more hopeful, like I can do it. That I can be an artist that creates art that others would like enough to buy! That’s big for me, so THANK YOU!! Warm hugs for you all!

This is my new girl above, like her? I just don’t know what I was thinking but this is what came out. I think of her as being spiritual thus the halo. I had one heck of a time with her face. I couldn’t use my colored pencils for some reason (I’m learning here!) and so I pulled out the charcoal, no go, then the marker but that was too harsh so here came the charcoal again. Finally I got her to where I liked her. I will have her up on my Etsy shop soon! Think I should??

Soon I will be getting a cd on how to blend faces from Suzi Blu. I can’t wait till it comes out. In the mean time I’ll be relying on a new book on acrylics I ordered the other day, I’ll get it tomorrow, yeah!



This is just a background right now. I don’t know what I want to do with it yet. But I love it where it is now finally. I struggled with this as I experimented with different techniques with water bottles, paper towels, and plastic wrap in hand. I finally pulled my brayer out and it solved the problem and made it complete. I couldn’t even tell you how many layers I put on there!

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.