I'm Learning How to Take Care of Myself

Learning how to take care of ourselves is actually an aspect of learning to love ourselves.  We often feel guilty about paying attention to our own wellbeing. We don't think about how this benefits everyone. However, our culture, with all its demands on our time and energy makes self care a challenge.  

I once heard a teacher talking about meditation to new students.  He said, "It's good to meditate about a half hour every day, but if you're really busy, meditate for one hour."   We all laughed, because, although he surprised us with his conclusion, we knew he was right.  Rather than taking time from our other activities, meditation, yoga and similar practices give us more energy and focus and allow us  to handle our responsibilities and demands in an economical way.  These practices lift the confusion that we can experience when we are stressed;  they clear the mind and make our efforts more productive, our decision making more natural and intuitive.  A lot of energy and time are wasted when we are stressed and confused.  I found this especially true while taking care of my daughter when she was young.  Because I meditated before she got up in the morning, I was able to be more available to her instead of being focused on my own unmet needs.  

Of course there are many other ways of taking care of ourselves:  diet, exercise, positive thinking, vacations, creative time, reading, taking courses, to name a few.  I wonder what our feline friend in red is learning about taking care of himself.  Any ideas?

Learning to Love Myself

I'm taking a tip from my cat Matisse, whom you see above in his blue period, and I'm learning to love myself.....again. I practice this, but it doesn't seem to stick for very long. It's easy to forget, when I get caught up in the tasks and responsibilities of everyday life, that I need to love myself even while doing all those seemingly ordinary things. And it can sound pretty silly at times, the idea that I need to practice loving myself. After all, who am I to think it's okay to love myself? Or to even think about it. Nobody told me to do that when I was growing up.  In fact, it was discouraged. Loving myself would make me become conceited, spoiled, and a snob with a swelled head and a big ego. Our culture tells us these things.  Unfortunately, I listened to the discouraging voices that had made a home in my head and I learned to doubt and berate myself whenever the opportunity arose.  

I know better now, but it's hard to change thought patterns that are very entrenched in the mind. Awareness is the key.  It is most easily developed through practices such as meditation, contemplation, prayer, yoga, or reading spiritual works. Through awareness, or being the Witness, it is possible to become an observer of the thoughts in the mind that are not beneficial to our happiness or growth as a human and spiritual being. This very witnessing of the mind is what can change negative habitual thinking into a more positive and uplifting experience.  It is a process, and not accomplished overnight, but the practice can create a transformation in every aspect of our lives. With the positive change in our thoughts comes a positive change in our feeling.  Our positive feeling has the capacity to hold love more fully than negative feeling.  The kind of love that I am talking about is not that which we get from circumstances outside of ourselves.  It comes welling up freely from within. 

  

I'm having a great time learning how to use layers in Photoshop Elements to help me create photos that tell more of a story. I shoot a lot of photographs of family, vacations, and especially nature, and I sometimes like to integrate these photos into my artwork. I've used Photoshop for a few years but had never been able to figure out the layers part. I bought the book Digital Expressions by Susan Tuttle a couple of months ago and decided to take her on-line course, Digital Layers. I'm in the middle of the course now and I'm loving it.

                                                                    Maine Houses by Cindy Silverstein

I did this painting of Maine Houses a few years ago and I wanted to add some more interest. I used a couple of artistic filters to add some age to the buildings and then a layer using a photo of some flowers that I had taken. I cannot give details of proceedures I'm learning in class, but I guarantee that Susan can take the mystery out of Layers for you! She offers several on-line classes in Photoshop on a regular basis.

Here Today, Gone Today!

A few days ago, I posted this painting on my blog and wrote a wonderful tutorial in great detail on how it was created. Well, my mistake was going back into the post to make a few small changes. And what do you know, POOF, in one absentminded click, the entire post was gone. Not being someone who favors writing all that much, I found this quite discouraging. I've never kept a journal as so many artists do, or a sketchbook like all my teachers told me to do. I always just preferred getting right to my next project. Kind of like people who don't do a gauge swatch before knitting a nice sweater that turns out to be a beach cover-up for a rhino. I wasn't born with blogger genes.



Anyway, my cute little "everything's coming up kittens" painting/collage shown above was created using: for the background, acrylic paints mixed with matte medium as a glaze over a layer of torn paper text; fabric for the flower, ground, kitten, and moon; cut paper for the stem and leaves; the line work was achieved by using a dimensional paint (such as Scribbles) from a squeeze bottle. I brushed a bit of acrylic paint over the leaves and stem. For the lettering I used one of those liquid white pens that you have to shake. But I had to go over the lettering again because it came out too light. That was scary, because it had to be perfectly aligned with the first rendition. It worked out well, but now I'm experimenting with various white gel pens that I purchased from Jet Pens on the Internet. The ink must be waterproof so that when you seal the painting with an acrylic varnish, it will not dissolve, and it must adhere to acrylic paint. I'll let you know what I find.



Please ask questions about any aspect of my blog, including more detailed explanations of techniques and materials, in the comments section or email me. Just click on my profile picture for a link to email.

Pink Polka Dot Dreams

Who could be more happy with himself than this royal cat? Pleased with his polka dots, and glowing in his orange suit, he poses proudly against a bejeweled turquoise sky.

I guess you've noticed a recent cat fixation. I do have two adorable roundish sort of cats that inspire my artwork, but I promise to show more people, plants and animals of a different order. But for now please endure one more cute kitty.

This picture is a detail of a much larger painting, but I love the simplicity of this little corner, not to mention the adorable character depicted. I used a stretched canvas, Arches watercolor paper for the cat body, acrylic paint, and dimensional paint for the outlining and stars.

The cat's body was painted pink, then covered with circle stickers and painted over with orange. The circles act as a resist, and when peeled off, reveal polka dots. The cat stands out dramatically from the background because the orange and blue are complimentary colors (opposites on the color wheel). The blue I use most frequently is pthalo blue. I love the intensity of it. I do tone it down with the addition of white and perhaps some pthalo green to make that gorgeous turquoise.

My Etsy Store is Open

My new store on Etsy.com is now open for business. You may purchase prints of some of the artwork you have seen in these pages. I will continually be adding more prints, note cards and greeting cards, big buttons, and jewelry so stay posted. Click on the links at the top right side of this blog to go straight to the shop. Many thanks for your continued viewing of these pages.

"LOVE" acrylic and collage 9" x 12"

I've been working on a series of paintings for the last week. This is one of my favorites. It was created with a foundation layer of gesso and torn paper to create the texture that you see. I concentrated on using a different color palette from my usual dark blue night skies. This time I used Golden acrylics as opposed to my usual Liquitex acrylics. The colors and their combinations are very different from any I've used before. To achieve a unified look for the painting I used only a few colors and mixed them together to create compatible colors. This way even though the colors are bold and bright, they are not gaudy and they don't clash with one another because they're made of the same "stuff".

The Fiddler and his friends wait.

This most recent painting is waiting for its story, the words that make it come to life. I'm sure they will soon arrive. They are percolating beneath the level of consciousness and will soon bubble up.