Playing in the Studio!

I am sensing this need to stretch my creative wings lately and am thinking about trying out some
 new techniques.
You know, just to shake things up a  bit.

My current process is very
SLOW.
I painstakingly trace every little line
and then spend hours making tiny little cuts to take away the white space.
It is meditative and quiet, for sure
and I like that.
But do I love it?
I want
to LOVE it.

This week, I finished this painting (started last week and inspired by a photo taken in Hawaii)

"Pink Blossoms" Print of Mixed Media Original
(now available in my etsy shop)

then played around with palm tree inspirations,

and waves,

and then just to play,
I created this yoga illustration,

I had so much fun creating this last illustration!

What do you think?

(notice something you may have seen before? clue: check out the shirt!)

 I have a feeling there may be more of these coming...

I'm thinking there are endless ways to give life to creativity.

Maybe I'm just still searching for an art form that I really, truly, devotionally love. 

I've been on the swirly stuff for awhile,

the splash paint around in a circle

trace it, 

cut it out

and paste it

kind of swirly stuff.

Am I ready for something new?

Are you?

Playing in the Studio!

Inspired by...

I spent a lot of time this weekend going through the roller-coaster of emotions brought about by my engagement with the creative process. I went through the whole cycle, feeling uninspired and like giving up to pure elation and excitement about being in the midst of this wonderful, creative life. I brainstormed new ideas and new places I want to take my art and scribbled down all kinds of notes in my notebook. I filled out goal sheets and thought about a lot of things I could do with my art and this blog.
Now, I'm on an inspired up-swing!
I am having trouble falling asleep at night because of all the dreaming and scheming...
I am just hoping that I will actually be able to do something productive with all this creative energy!
We shall see....

One of the things I'd like to start doing is posting about people (artists/yogis/other creatives?) and things (products, ideas, causes) that inspire me.
So we begin today with artist,
Shayla Maddox and her fabulous light reactive circle paintings:

I ran across Shayla's work on etsy and was immediately drawn to her work. As I might have mentioned a few times before,  I really have a thing for circles.
Perhaps its the sense
 of wholeness,
of inclusion,
of cycle
that I am drawn to.

Circles feel safe.
They can be calming or energizing.
I have been thinking too about the Chakra system outlined in yogic philosophy that seems to me to be at play in circle symbology.

Anyways, with all the circle paintings I've been creating lately, it's no surprise that I was excited to find Shayla's beautiful work.
Here is what she has to say about working with circles:
"To me, circles are completeness. Atoms, molecules, planets and stars, the cycles of time, and the universe itself all exist within a circle, radiating outward, with no beginning or end. In Zen, a circle is considered a type of meditation, requiring clarity of mind and full concentration. Every circle is unique, and can be seen as a type of fingerprint of the artist who created it. Some hold that a Zen circle is the depiction of enlightenment itself." 

Aren't these incredible!

I love the idea of each circle being a fingerprint of the artist who created it, it's a lovely way to think about the art we make.

Shayla also said that when she looks at the universe
 all she sees is circles.
I have to say, I feel the very same way!
Thanks so much for sharing your light and work, Shayla!

 Check out her website, etsy shop and blog for more!

Inspired by...

Five Random Things: Organization Day

"Shakti Drops Mandala" Print of Mixed Media Original
(available in my etsy shop)

This week I have felt super busy, but haven't actually gotten a whole lot done.
Do you ever have weeks like that?
I was pretty jet-lagged at the beginning of the week, still flying high on Hawaiian time and so I was up all night every night and then exhausted and dragging during the day. Being away for several days also left me feeling behind on the tasks of keeping business up and running. 

In an attempt to catch up, I've been jumping around from task to task, catching up on emails, getting some new work started and it has felt completely unorganized and cluttered. 

I also taught my first scheduled yoga class at BLYS on Wednesday. I poured an incredible amount of energy into dreading and feeling fearful and doubtful about the class. It's amazing how much energy can be consumed by resistance! It always surprises me how the things I want most in my life (like becoming a yoga teacher), are also the things I am the most scared of. 

All in all, it's taken me the whole week to realize that I'm just not completely grounded.

So, in order to get myself back on track, 

I let go of my to-do list today and spent some time getting organized!

5 resources I'm using to help keep myself 
organized and motivated:

1. Productive Flourishing

This blog, run by Charles Gilkey, has all kinds of daily tips about how to get creative, stay organized and   get things done. Also, he offers a whole bunch of planner templates which you can print out and use to organize your month, week and days! I printed out several and filed them into a binder which I am hoping will help to keep me organized!

2. Precision Change: From Shy to Confident

I found this podcast series by a guy named Duff McDuffee and listened to an episode where he interviews another guy named John Wesley about letting go of shyness and becoming more confident. One of the points they made really stuck with me and is something I'm going to try on the next time I'm feeling dread and fear about my teaching. They talked about how if you believe you're cool (or in my case, if I believe I am confident), then I will be. If I believe that I am confident person, then others will believe it to. 

I've heard this same lesson before, have even written about it here. But a gentle reminder every once in a while is always a good thing, especially on a week of feeling a little less than confident.

(p.s I taught another class last night and went in with this attitude of believing I was confident and totally NAILED it. So there must be something to this.)

3. Craft Inc. Business Planner

I ordered this book from Amazon and it arrived this week! I had the book Craft Inc. checked out from the library for a little while and found it very helpful. So I decided to get the business planner as well. I have begun to slowly work through it and it's helping me to organize and think about different aspects of running a creative business!

4.  Yoga Teaching Tracker

After printing out all the planner sheets from the Productive Flourishing website, 

I decided to make a couple of my own. The one below is a way for me to keep track of my teaching schedule and what it is I'm teaching and a place for notes/thoughts about how the class went, ideas for next time and that kind of thing. If I can figure out how to make and share this as a pdf, I will put it up here on my blog for anyone who wants it! (If anyone knows how to do this, please let me know!)

5. Unclutterer

This is yet another helpful blog that I stumbled upon this week! This one has lots of great tips for de-cluttering and staying organized in my home and office. I'm planning on spending a few hours this afternoon and this weekend cleaning and organizing my living and working spaces, which have gradually deteriorated in their level of organization over the last few weeks. I learned from my mom that it is much easier to live and work in a clean, organized space then a messy one.
After this week of cluttered craziness (and not actually being all that productive) I am thinking that there might be something to this. Thanks mom!

What do you do to stay organized? 

What do your time management/planner/tracker systems look like?


Have a wonderful weekend!

Five Random Things: Organization Day

Smelling the flowers (and other fauna!) in Kaua'i

I thought I would share a few more pictures with you from my time in Kaua'i!
These ones feature the incredible flowers and fauna that exist on the Garden Island.

{me, stopping to smell the flowers in Hawaii}

One of the things I loved most about my time in Kaua'i was all of the fresh produce available. They have many "Sunshine Markets" all over the island that feature locally grown produce and food. We
picked up pineapple, papayas, apple bananas (a smaller, sweeter variation of the large bananas I find in the stores), cold coconuts, avocado, tomatoes, and kale.
Every morning, Nate and I would eat for breakfast the sweetest, most delicious pineapple we'd ever had.

From afar, the fruits of these trees looked to me like pineapples. I made the mistake of asking a local how they get the pineapples down and was reminded that pineapples grown in the ground and not in trees. He told me that they nickname these trees and their fruits, "tourist pineapples".
Apparently I am not the only one who's made the mistake! 

We woke up every morning to a whole cacophony of bird songs, including from a rooster and a gaggle of geese (not the quietest, sweetest singing birds out there).
Although we had many beautiful birds visit our lanai (porch/deck place) during our pineapple breakfasts, none of them were native species. We learned that native birds were less abundant below 1,000 feet of sea level and that most species had migrated further up into the mountains.
Chickens are one non-native bird that is extremely abundant on the island of Kaua'i and they roamed free everywhere we went. We were told that the chicken population on Kaua'i exploded after Hurricane 'Iniki in 1992 allowed for a whole bunch of caged, domestic chickens to escape.
With no real predator on the island, chickens have flourished and they all over the place (like the one in the picture above, just hanging out at the beach!)

We also saw some incredible trees, including one that grows it's roots from it's branches and starts a whole new trunk once the root hits the ground (I don't know if this actually what happens, but that is what it looks like is happening). We also were introduced to a tiny, ground cover plant called "Hilo" that when you gently touch it's leaves, they curl in on themselves! After a little bit, they return to their shape once again. Talk about plants sensing your presence among them!
 I probably looked like a crazy person bent over touching these tiny leaves and squealing with delight!

Then, of course, there was the quintessential palm tree, stirring memories of tropical breezes and romantic silhouettes at sunset....

ah, sunset.
In the presence of such beauty and grace, it's no wonder that Hawaiians have such a strong sense of the "Aloha Spirit" or "the joyful (oha) sharing (alo) of life energy (ha)".

Smelling the flowers (and other fauna!) in Kaua'i

Home from Hawaii

{colorful flowers and palm trees in Kaua'i}

We returned home yesterday from our honeymoon on the Hawaiian island of Kaua'i.

it was

(big, deep, sigh)

BEAUTIFUL.

Here are some pictures from our trip!

{Night lights of Waikiki, Oahu}

 We flew into Honolulu and stayed our first night in the high energy, fast pace Waikiki before flying out to the oldest island of the Hawaiian chain, Kaua'i.

{Rainbow over Hanalei Bay in Kaua'i}

We saw at least one rainbow every day!

{Rain on Pu'u Poa beach in Princeville, Kaua'i}

Rainbows form because of, well, rain! So it also rained every day on the North Shore of Kaua'i.

Usually it was just a gentle, passing, misting and refreshing rain.

{Sandy, golden Po'ipu Beach}

Sandy, golden beach= sandy, golden me 

(probably more sandy then golden thanks to gobs of sunscreen!)

{surfer riding waves at Po'ipu beach}

I surfed on waves of bliss, perhaps, but no real ones. 

Not this time. 

{Kalalau Valley on the Na Pali Coast, from the Pu'u o Kila lookout}

Evidence of the presence of Grace abounding in our natural world...

{Nate and I at Pu'u Poa beach}

Island Love.

{view of Na Pali coastal waters from the KalalauTrail}

We hiked in for a short day hike to Hanakapi'ai Beach. If I ever go back, I'd like to hike the whole thing The 22 miles round trip trail requires a camping permit and it would be totally worth it! Next time...

{Hanakapi'ai Beach, Na Pali Coast}

On the hike, we ate our lunch under hanging cliffs and on large, black pumice rocks inhabited by a ferrel cat. This got us out of the steady rain clinging to the mountains. It was a very muddy, slick trail and we were soaked through, but that really is what made it so fun. 

{Bali Hai view, back in Princeville, Kaua'i}

Watching the sunset on Kaua'i is a big event for us and everyone else visiting Kaua'i! 

There were always a lot of people gathered outside to watch the sun melt into the ocean.

 We were able to walk to a place where we could see the sun set over whats called Bali Ha'i. Remember the song Bali Ha'i in the musical South Pacific? Parts of that movie were filmed on the 

North Shore of Kaua'i!

{sunset over Bali Ha'i at Pu'u Poa Beach}

Big,

deep,

sigh

of contentment.

Home from Hawaii