ARTful Challenges

    I love a good art challenge, don't you? There are so many challenge blogs to choose from that it's sometimes difficult to keep up so I end up checking out the week's challenges and if something immediately comes to mind I go for whatever I can complete.
                           Do you have any favorite challeges? And if so please do share :).

    I'm always looking to have a variety of cards on hand for any occasion so first up are some cards and the corresponding challenges I will be linking to.

  Sketches are such a great and quick way to put together a card. The DT at Freshly Made Sketches not only provide you with a sketch each week, but they also each make a card using it! This is the card I came up with using this week's sketch:

 Products: large white note card (Canvas Corp.); white card stock; patterned card stocks (Mediterranean Café-DCWV); rubber stamp (Hero Arts); Versafine Onyx Black ink (Tsukineko); Grand calibur die cut machine and Standard Circles Lg. dies (Spellbinders); paper flowers (Recollections); rhinestones.

 I am linking this to Freshly Made Sketches, Simon Monday Challenge blog (theme is "big stamp"), and Simon Wednesday challenge blog (theme is" keep it clean and simple", featuring Hero Arts although it's not necessary to use Hero Arts products).

 The next two cards are also for the Simon challenge blogs although I can only link the same post once.

  Products: turquoise card stock (the Paper Studio); clear stamp (Think Big Favorites #1-Papertrey Ink); Versafine Onyx Black ink (Tsukineko); paper flower and fabric and washi tapes (Recollections); tiny button (Gary Burlin and Co.).

  Products: yellow card stock (the Paper Studio); clear stamp (Think Big Favorites #3-Papertrey Ink); Staz-On Stone Gray ink (Tsukineko); fabric and washi tapes (Recollections); tiny button (Gary Burlin and Co.).

  In this post I shared my new collection and storage for the washi tapes and I've been a bit obsessed about using these pretty tapes :)

  And for Paint Party Friday I'm sharing an abstract practice project. The beautiful art of the PPFrs, along with Jane Davies and Jo Murray have gotten me really longing to go back to it! I've been putting most all my time this year into my drawing classes and lettering practices  and I am enjoying it, but I'm finding my real passion is in mixed media abstract and wabi-sabi painting.

 I went back to a book I had gotten quite awhile ago Painting Abstracts by Rolina van Vliet. Do any of you have it? It is an EXCELLENT book filled with so much content about composition, mediums, color, texture, movement, etc. etc.. There are hundreds of projects and practices to try along with some directions and many examples- I LOVE this book.

 Here's what I started with:

 This  was Exercise 30 about rhythm, design, and repetition using oil pastels only. I used a piece of  8 1/2" x 11" Strathmore  Texture paper for the effect of texture with the pastels.

 

  After adding color I used my fingers to smear/ rub the colors around. The white circles were added after I was finished smearing. Then I decided to rotate it all four ways. Do you like one way better? Do you even like it at all? Any thoughts? Advice? I have another practice I'm working on and have a few more in mind I can't wait to get to! I have discovered I NEED to do that which I TRULY love and must make time for it despite whatever else I'm working on.

 Thanks so much for your comments and input as always. Can't wait to see what everyone else has been up to!

   "Abstract painting is abstract. It confronts you. There was a reviewer who wrote that my pictures didn't have any beginning or any end. He didn't mean it as a compliment, but it was." Jackson Pollock