Art and Soul Painting Class

On Saturday afternoon I had a painting class at church (First Presbyterian Church, Stephenville). I invited my friends to come paint a nativity scene. And boy did they show up!

I had 40 people painting. It was so much fun!

We had moms and kids, friends and church members. 

Here are a few pictures of everyone painting.

It was a little crazy.

Thankfully Doug and Maddie didn't paint and helped by taking care of refreshments and ran interference with Kylie!!

And here are some of the finished products.

Everyone did great!!

I LOVE this picture!! :) :)

I realized this morning at church that I didn't get a picture of Lexi and Kylie together with their finished pieces, so here they are.

This event was such a success that I can't wait for the next one. 

I'm thinking February...

It's the little things that are the big things

My children are my daily mirror. If I want to know about life, my attitude and my habits, all I have to do is look at them, see what they are doing and what they are interested in to know what I have been busy focusing on.

So this week, I am trying to look in the mirror of their eyes more. 

But first, I have to share this.. 

I can't believe that my baby is about to complete kindergarten. 

I love her drawing of herself!

And because I know that I will blink and she will be ready to graduate from high school, I am trying to document some of her little girl moments!

I love that she loves writing stories and reading.

Moving on..

People ask why I do challenges, I do them because:

• it keeps me accountable to complete the task
• it makes me try new things
• it makes me try HARD things

And teaching my girls to complete hard things is one of my jobs as a mom.

So with this handstand challenge and healthy eating, there are days when I don't want to continue the journey. Some days I want to sit on the couch and eat potato chips. But you know what, my girls are great at reminding me to get up and get going. 

Lexi is eating salads with me and is my official handstand photographer. Kylie is working hard on handstands too. 

So even though the other night I had tons of chest congestion and a bad headache, legitimate reasons to take a day off the handstand, you know what? I did that stupid handstand. And Kylie sat there and watched me, and afterward, I felt like I had accomplished something!

Cause look at my girls.  

They will follow my lead, whichever path I take them on.

And this is last night. 

I'm getting stronger.

And relishing in a few moments with my baby girl who likes to draw butterflies on her face. 

Whew, there is something about that first full week of May

There is just something about the first full week of May each year. It's like the turn of the calendar makes everything go into warp speed.

I am trying to slow down my brain and enjoy the moments as I can.

The week started out with Maddie celebrating her 15th birthday. Like every mother, I just shook my head and wondered where these years have gone!

I continued my daily handstand challenge, and even mastered the handstand in the yard without a wall to lean on! I was so pumped.

Also this week Maddie had colorguard tryouts for next year's guard. It wasn't nerve wrecking this time as we knew what to expect, and we knew that as long as she didn't just do horribly, she would make the team.

She did, along with her best friend! 

Friday night found Doug and I out to eat with just Kylie. We haven't had many meals out with just the little one, but I have a feeling that this is a glimpse of our future.

I found it nostalgic.. Kylie loved having all of our attention.

And we finished the week with Mother's Day today. Here we are at church. 

And then we came home and Kylie did handstands with me!

 Life is busy, but oh so good.

Music is Good for the Soul!

I've been playing around and painting just for fun.Well, actually, all my painting is just for fun, but my music series of paintings is really just completely fun and freeing!

Here is my first one.  It is 2 feet tall by 4 feet wide.

It is currently hanging in our school office.  It's nice to have a "gallery" space to hang my oversized artwork! (and I like for my students to see that I create too!)

This second piece is actually a rectangle as well, but I posted a picture of it on instagram, so it is cropped to a square. My dad is a guitar man and this painint is for him.  I have painted this on top of a different painting, so the layers underneath provide great depth.  I can't decide if I am finished with this one yet. 

My goal is to paint three or four more music paintings before I move on.

But.. Remember this "selfie" Kylie took when I was working on her painting?

Look at it edited in black and white.  I'm thinking I'm going to have to create something with this!!

Looking at Life from a Different Perspective

I'm working on a new painting of Kylie.  Here it is below.

Yes, I am currently painting it upside down.  There are a couple of reasons for this..

The biggest reason is that I was frustrated with it and mad at the paint, so I flipped it upside down to change my perspective (and my attitude!)

Why? Because I was moving right along with my painting and enjoying the process when the paint on the face started bubbling and being weird. 

See. So I scraped off the worst of it.. 

And that led to this.

A mostly scraped off creepy painting!

Ugh!! And very frustrating!!

So I flipped it over and decided to start again.  I knew that if I embraced the canvas as it was, the colors would provide a wonderful depth to the piece that I would like.  I just had to look past the current issues.

So I got some new paint out and got to work.

A little fresh paint and clean paintbrush can totally change an attitude!

And why do I go through the process? 

Cause this little girl is watching me.  I want her to know that paint (or life for that matter...) sometimes doesn't do what you planned. That sure, we can just give up and throw the canvas away, or we can scrape off the crud, turn the situation around and keep going!
  

And when you have this face for inspiration... how can you give up? Kylie took this for me because she saw that I was going to work on her eyes and she wanted me to see their color! 

Oh how I love her!

Perler Bead Portrait

My advanced art students and I have been talking about creating perler bead portraits. It's taken a while to gather the supplies and figure out the process, but after today, I am SOLD!!

My students haven't started the project, and since I like to know what we are getting into before the students start, I went ahead and created my first perler portrait. I chose this sweet picture of Kylie.

I first had to edit the picture in photoshop. I removed the background, really bumped up the contrast, changed the color mixing and a removed some of the different color tones so that the picture would work as a pattern.

Then I started the pattern process. I tried a dozen different things to make this a pixelled grid piece. Lots and lots of suggestions and processes on google. Then I found http://www.perlersnapshots.com/ I was PUMPED!! This was exactly what I needed!

No further edits were needed and it was easy.

I uploaded my edited photo and it made the grid for me!! WOOHOO!

However, a note for the user... you can print the gridded picture and you can save the snapshot grid, but you can't save the gridded picture. At least I couldn't. When I opened the saved file, it was just the blank grid. But that was okay as I had the project printed.

Another super cool thing about the website is that you can change the color of beads if you don't have all the colors. My portriat here has at least a dozen different color beads... but it is a big piece coming in at 11x14 and 4000 beads!

So here is the project in process.

project grid with plastic plate

get little cups to keep beads in!

lots and lots of beads. don't bump the table!

a few days of on and off again work.

almost complete

When the piece is finished, you use the ironing paper that is provided with the plate. When ironing a piece this size, be CAREFUL and TAKE IT SLOW!

I didn't take it slow enough and had to do a number of repairs mid iron.

fixing the beads that popped out of place while fusing

to repair, pull the paper back and carefully lift the beads back into place.

more ironing. 4000 beads take a while to fuse

The biggest challenge was that as the beads fuse, they pull off the board and leave the nonfused beads left on the pegs. Then the beads don't line up.

After I had gone over the piece a number of times, I got a piece of masonite and flipped the piece over, making sure to sandwich the beads tightly.

Then I took the plastic board away. Here is a close up of what some of the issues were. I carefully flipped the piece back over on the masonite and finished working on it without the peg board.

As I repaired, I  made sure to really, really heat those beads up! You can see that in some areas, the beads fused to little squares instead of circles. Those beads aren't going anywhere!

As the piece cools, the sides curl in. I had to turn mine over and let it cool while I flipped it back and forth to keep it from curling too much.

The completed piece.

Kylie. A perler bead portrait by Emily McLemore

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