Re-Dedication

You know that Southern Baptist tradition of re-dedicating yourself to the Lord? I'm bringing it home. Bedtime has been rough. Meals have been rough. Getting the kids to play without fighting constantly has been impossible. And I've been busy with other things.

But I'm re-dedicating myself to the children. To my role as their mother. To adjusting my priorities.

I've already started. I read to them more, practice patience, try to be more intentional in all our daily activities. Etcetera, etcetera.

My gosh, this lot is a hard one! This may be a bad time to try to cut back on the vino.

Before

Now the kids share a room and I get Am's room as my new studio. Let this serve as a before shot. It is a terrible cell phone picture, which will make my future studio tour look all the better. I think I'm going to keep my (old library table) desk smack in the middle of the room. That way I can get at it from all angles. My wine, of course. I need a bookshelf, but otherwise, I think I can fit most everything in the dresser or closet. 

Costumed

Yeah, so I'm late getting these up, whatever. The kids had a good Halloween. They went trick-or-treating with their Daddy. When they came home, I made popcorn and we all watched Frankenweenie. The old one from 1984.

(While they were all out, I did a tea leaf reading. But that's a story for another day.)

She's lucky I'm an artist

My view has always been that no canvas or wall is truly big enough for my vision. My daughter shares this. Mere paper? No. That won't do. She needs walls. She needs to climb on furniture to make the faces big enough. She's lucky that her momma understands her vision. 

I tried to capture some of her work, but it just doesn't come across in pictures with the same impact as in real life. Her work is bold and striking and raw. I can definitely see the early influence of Seuss and the Minions coming through, but her voice is her own.

That first image is one of my favorite of these pieces. It has been a while in the making. She will work on it in chalk, wiping it away over and over until she gets it right. Then she'll set in down in graphite or (washable) crayon. 

The final image is the start of her mural in her brother's room. It greets him upon waking. The top is higher than his head. 

Bea's Hair

This is old news for my facebook friends, but for my blog readers, here's something that happened recently. Bea's hair had become a monstrosity. It had a life of its own and would not be tamed. I had taken to calling her Tatterhood because she was generally disheveled and impossibly scruffy looking. I mean, look:

I did not add a vignette effect to this; The light naturally comes in that way.

It was starting to dread up and had inevitable foodstuff at all times lodged in it. De-tangling it was a long and screamful process that left us mad at each other for extended periods. So it just had to go. She was ok with it, surprisingly. I made the mistake of letting her see Tangled when she was 2 and she's wanted butt length hair since then. But lately she's been begging for an "Amby haircut."

This is what she got:

One of the best decisions of my life.

Book Worm

Last night after I put Ambrose to bed, I heard him in his room and found him with the light on. After he's been tucked in, that totally doesn't fly. He was in bed looking at a book. I made him lie down and I turned the light back off.

Then this morning, I was up at 6:15 getting ready for school when I heard sounds coming from his room. He was awake, had turned on his light and was back in the same book.

He amazes me sometimes. So determined!

Signage

Lately, I've been working on a sign for Hub-Bub, the hub city's cultural edge. The awesome folks up there gave me creative license, just saying they wanted hand-lettering. It was such a fun project! I learned a lot about materials and technique and I can't wait to do this again.

I didn't take a "before" picture, but you can see the blue that it was. There were sticker letters on it and these tan painted lines. Getting the sticker letters off took awhile and the lines never quite came up.

The folks at Hub-Bub suggested I go with cyan or orange. I worked with cyan a lot on a mural recently and chose orange instead because, well, Clemson, of course.

I used an old dinosaur projector to set my guides. It was really, really cold in the studio! If you look there on the right hand side, you can see some of Cesar Maxit's stencils. :)

Painting and painting and painting! My hand is so much steadier with all this practice. 

Here is the finished piece. This is a stupid cell phone picture so the color is weird; It's more orange than this in real life. I love how it looks!