Trust Your Heart

In my life I have found that I tend to listen to my heart far more than I listen to my head. In some cases this has lead me to make a some bad relationship and financial choices...and ending up with a battered and beaten heart. But, I get out the duct tape (cause duct tape fixes everything) and do the best fix-it job I can and carry on. In art though, I find that the heart is never wrong, in fact some of my best mistakes in art have been my heart screaming at me to put some color here or there and what I initially thought would be a huge flop turned out to be quite the Happy Mistake. As it was with my latest painting... I had been working on a piece for a while and though the colors were pretty, the girl was lovely... she had no character. So I started throwing big, bold colors at her and to my surprise, it not only worked, I loved it.
So, listen to your heart and be open to new and bold enterprises... You might just surprise yourself!

This is a little peek at my painting, "Trust Your Heart"

Beauty is skin deep.

My art challenge for you today is a self portrait OR portrait. It can be in any style, preferably in YOUR style.

As an artist I have always been fascinated by the structure of faces. No two people are alike and once you start looking with an artistic eye, everyone is beautiful in there own way.

Step 1 - Draw a circle or an oval

           - Draw a line down the centre, if you want the head tilted then draw it at an angle as I have done here
           - Next draw a line one third up from the bottom and one slightly higher up from that ( I love big eyes so the distance between my lines are greater.)
           - Draw a contoured line for the chin and jaw line if you drew a circle (optional), add your neck and shoulders

Step 2 - Draw the eyes, nose, mouth and give your portrait some hair Remember, it's all about you and your style. Practice makes perfect. Even though there is pencil crayon on this page already, once I paint her it will all but vanish. That's the beauty of mixed media, acrylics... if you  don't like something you can paint/gesso over it and start again). There are no mistakes.




Step 3 - Get creative and have some fun. Add color, texture and lots and lots of layers.

I chose, Yellows, Pinks and White for my colors.

Here are a few of my portraits... I call them Ethnic Beauties. Hope you enjoy creating your own.

All pictures/art within this blog, WorldOWhimsy-blog spot are the sole property of Danine Mroz. No reproduction may be used without the written consent of Ms. Mroz

Sow thy Self

Seed Journal #3-2012 - S-Words

So I'm sitting in front of a blank piece of paper trying to think of "S"-words that are seed related and have meaning to me OR perhaps define me in some way, shape or form. And believe you me, it's a lot harder than it looks. These are the words that I was able to come up with; Serendipity, Seeds, Sow, Stand, Self, Signature, & Strong.

As always I wrote a short journal entry upon the finished work, today I used orange ink which blends quite nicely into the background.

As my skill as an artist becomes stronger

I feel a greater sense of self.

Life is full of happy accidents, in art this is especially true.

This year I hope to learn from these mistakes 

And maybe even create my signature style from one.

2012 is going to be an outstanding year!

So in short I hope to SOW the SEEDS of good STRONG habits to become a better artist in 2012. Learning new skills, finding my SIGNATURE style and simply being my Authentic SELF. Perhaps finding a little SERENDIPITY along the way as well.

Doodle till your Hearts content!

"Doodles Unleashed", that is name of the online workshop that I started yesterday is titled. The artist, Traci Bautista, is lovely and talented and I'm thrilled to be involved.~Thanks Strathmore.

But, doodling is a new concept to me, well sort of. When I was in grade 8 or so I would doodle all the time, until a teacher caught me and would tell me to get back to work. I loved to doodle, but inevitably there was always someone there telling me I was wasting my time or that I should be doing something else, something better, with my time. Oh how I wished I hadn't listened to them. Sigh.

Now I'm actually finding it hard to start me doodles. "What if I make a mistake?" "What if it looks stupid?" "What if I don't like it?" and the Ego goes on and on, badgering me and making me doubt my self. Lucky for me I have never liked being told what I could or couldn't do. So I fight against that nagging feeling. I have learned, in a very short period of time, that it's just paint and paper. There is always more and you can always paint over top of it if you really don't like it. Mistakes are sometimes happy and some times not so much, but they are always a learning process. So now, in my wisdom, I welcome them.

I have begun my first piece for wk 1... this is the start (the background if you like) of that first piece.

Happy Doodling.