Rain, rain!

Friday, March 18, 2011

Today was a good and relaxing day. I got to babysit Cam again, and like always, he was a complete joy. Then I got home and hung out with the bro a little bit - I love being able to spend time with him, all our little talks about art, cell phones, cars, growing up, and watching movies, I take to heart. He is growing up so fast! I can't believe he is in High School. Crazy. But like always, I am so proud of the person he is.
I also made a few phone calls for wedding stuff, and sadly I found out Outback is no longer catering for smaller events like a wedding! Blah so sad about this one, I really wanted a more laid back, but enjoyable and good dinner for our wedding. But, I am more than positive that something better will come along.

After a while we spontaneously went with Kels to Tiff's for dinner, and it was so good to see her new place! She did such a good job decorating it and putting it together, and I am so happy for her! Also, she makes the best spaghetti ever, no joke. So it was great to hang out with the girls, and Juan - but poor Juan, I think he heard more than enough girl talk today, ha!

And then it was home to have a movie night, we watched Easy A, and The Switch - which I loooved! The kid in it was so adorable, and not your typical pretty little boy with an attitude, but a more normal kid that deals with issues and fears. And the kid and Jason Bateman combo, uh yeah! Now, I love movies all of kinds (unless they are scary movies), so if you're a movie snob, then don't take my opinion into account. If you, however, just enjoy movies and want to be entertained, then you must watch this!

And now I am typing this, craving cupcakes because DC cupcakes is on. I promise, next time I go to DC I am definitely waiting in line (unlike last year) and trying a mojito cupcake! And maybe I'll convince Ryan to stop at Frostings Etc., in South Tampa ... they have THE best chocolate chip cookie dough cupcake (and I don't even like cookie, but their stuff is a-mazing!), plus they have other flavors I'd like to try, like their Margarita and Guinness Beer ones!

Creativity Today
So yesterday I started on my mixed media painting, and today I got to finish it while I watched movies with Juan. Let me tell ya, this was so fun! I seemed to find more freedom in this kind of paintings, and like I could just let loose more than usual and let the painting take a life of its own! I am super happy about it. All I knew when I started it was that I wanted the main focus to be a girl that was walking in the rain. That was it. So there was no plan. I just took out a bunch of material and starting gluing, painting, cropping, adding, etc. 

 

So why is this mixed media, you ask? Well, there is a mixture of tissue paper, crepe paper, strips scrap booking paper, cut outs of book pages, acrylics, glue, and aluminum foil... on canvas. Bear in mind though, that all the pictures I have posted on this blog come straight from my phone. I touch them up a bit, but still the quality is not great, so yeah.

And now all I want to do is go run in the rain like I used to when I was little! Too bad Tampa Bay's rain is usually accompanied by lighting. And that its not raining right now, ha!

I should go to bed...

Sweat and glue

Thursday, March 17, 2011

So today was an awesome day! A little tiring, but really fun!
It all started with me waking up at 6:20 to take my brother to school, ughh I am NOT a morning person, and even less so when the morning still looks like night! And it definitely doesn't help when I go to bed soooo late the night before. I don't know what it is, but I love the solitude of the night - being able to be by myself, doing art or something different to the norm of the every day life, that totally makes time go by without notice. But either way, I went back to bed after, and woke up with five minutes to get ready... Ryan was on his way to pick me up to go to the NCAA games!

Oh what fun! The only basketball games I've gone to have been in high school, when I went to IRC, and let me tell ya.. I absolutely loved them! There's just something about the adrenaline, suspense, speed, and squeaky noise of tennis shoes on the court that get me super pumped! And so not that I was into the NCAA before, but after today, I am hooked! Sadly, both of the teams I was rooting for lost, but I had so much fun with my love. Although I did talk his ear off a couple of times and asked way too many questions about how the championship worked ("seed?" "What happened? Oh a foul, why?" You get the idea), he was so great and patient with me, and explained tons of things... And that, is one of the reasons why I am marrying him :)
So I learned a few things. West Virginia is the yellow team, Clemson was the underdog. U. Kentucky people are cocky (I know I know, I shouldn't generalize, but that was the vibe I got there), and Princeton has the most fun band!!

Anywho, my night ended with some more basketball on the tv at home, a runny and not very yummy spaghetti that I prepared (I got distracted and didn't take it out of the boiling water on time), Off the Map - love that show, and some painting prep for tomorrow's creative activity!

Creativity Today
So for a long time I have wanted to try out doing a mixed media painting, but never got the courage to do it, the texture, color, and abstract concept to it was kind of intimidating. But recently, I was inspired by Marjolyn van der Hart's work, and I decided to give it a try! And since I am pretty tired, I decided to split the work into two days - because I know myself, and I could easily stay up all night working on this. So here is the prep work. There has been minimum paint used to this point, its been mostly a work of textures, papers, and glue. And because its not close to be finished, I'm posting a picture with not so much focus on the painting itself, but the work behind it, so here it is!

It is bed time for me! So come back tomorrow to see how much depth, meaning, and overall consistency the actual paint will give to this piece. I'm so excited about this one!