nanowrimo obsessed

national novel writing month is imminent ... and i have become a bit obsessive ... i follow blog and article threads across the internet to glean every morsel of information out there ... heaven forbid i miss the most important tip ... the one that's going to get me through 50K words (or more!) in a mere 29 days (it's really 30 days, but i hope to have at least one day off) .... 

but ... i shall take a break from my obsessive novel thoughts to show you ... well ... to show you the beautiful journal i'm using right now .... um .... to take notes in for my novel ... ha .....you, yourself should dash off to the nanowrimo site and sign yourself up for some novel writing .. i could use the company! .... it will also explain that in 30 days i won't be DONE with my novel ... just done with my first draft ... or so they say ....
here is another journal .... not beaded and lush like the one above .... it is a plain brown rapper kind of thing .... but it is for a journaling event ... i'll send in back in when i'm done .... to be in a show ... and eventually in a gallery library ....

and they gave me a topic ... yellow submarine ....and here's my first page below .... i think, given the impending novel writing, that i am not going to make this extraordinarily artsy or collagey ... rather ... it will be doodliscious ... more of a sketch book and words ... still artsy ... but with some sharpie love going strong .... 

and, lest you think, i've given up on family life all together (girl.beck. artist has this fear) ... here is our halloweeniness on our porch ... we still need to carve pumpkins ... but this was a fun start for the kids ....

this is my favorite one .... 

so ... what have you got going on in your part of the world? have you carved pumpkins?

coulda, shoulda, woulda...

i should be blogging every day because i am SOOOOO behind ... i just downloaded 35 photos that i COULD be posting here one at a time and writing lovely, informative prose for you .... but instead, i'm hoarding them in my camera .... 

here's the first one .... my kitchen wall ... the only white wall in my whole house ... kept white for the sole purpose of displaying art ... (soul purpose seems like appropriate spelling too)

those painted chairs are some of my favorite things in my whole house .... at dinner i always try to sit in a green one ... my kids don't know that! ... i don't let them pick and choose where to sit based on color ... ha ..... and lately while i've been working on my outline for my novel (eep!), i have been sitting in a sunshine yellow chair ... it seems like the good cheer should be helpful .... 

can you tell i painted those chairs to go with my art?

the next pic .... three 12 inch square canvases .... did them last week (or the one before that?) at allison's ..... nice shot of my doodle clogs too .... 

 the trouble is, now that i have these tree pics ... i don't know what to do with them ... or how to finish them ... for now, they look like they were painted by one of my kids .... oh well ... they felt nice while i was doing them .. maybe they were just about the process and not the product ... and i can just paint over them and reuse the canvases ... we'll see .... 

but ... three tree canvases wasn't enough .... i did a larger one too .... 

also incomplete ... and i don't know how to finish it ....

but, i'm skipping out on these paintings and switching to christmas paintings ... i think i've struck on what i'm going to paint for my pals ... and maybe teachers .... and i need to get going on that, to make sure it really gets done ... particularly since november is being taken up with writing a novel (can you tell i'm a bit obsessed with that?) ... but, before we can move onto christmas paintings, we have to get on with the joy that is october: 

little e.beck. artist was having trouble getting the pumpkin from the garage to the front porch ... but she ended up being quite clever .... 

i have pumpkin pictures, journal pictures, journal entries.... all sorts of things to blog about tomorrow ... oh ... and pottery tomorrow ... so blog hop yourself back over to see ..... or drop me a comment and let me know what to do with all those trees .... 

book .... book ... book ....

book book book book book book book ... 

i just finished a book (love the one your with)

i want to write a book (nanowrimo.com)

and i've just seen a book that has my art in it .... 

the crafter's devotional is a substantial book .. hardback and fat ... full full full of artsy goodness ... there's nothing quite like the thrill of seeing your art in a book .... other people are going to be looking at it too!! rah .... 

so ... bookbookbook ... what are you reading writing and doing?

NaNoWriMo

hooray, i got the journal in the mail ... the one that i mentioned in my last teeny tiny blog post .... the sketchbook project  .....

the interesting thing is that i got it in the mail and it is about a tenth of the size of the  journals i usually work in ... not size, dimension small ... but number of pages small .... which is really truly great for me ... cause it is due in december ... and it is much more doable with fewer pages... especially because,  before even starting this journal project? i found another project ... that i have signed up for ... and even started doing the prep work for .... i've either lost my mind or will lose my mind .... i'll letcha know! 

be forewarned ... blogging might be light! unless i really can do this and post snips of my writing on the blog .... wish me luck ... november 1 is just around the corner ... eek!

coolness ...

who wants to do this groovy thing with me???

go here ... read about it ... sign up ... k? i did....

um.... huh?

so ... a picture is worth a thousand words ... 

here's the pic ... 

any questions?

i'm wearing orange shoes ...

today is an orange shoe day .... i love wearing orange shoes ... it makes a bad day good ... and a good day better .... an ordinary day just a little less ordinary .... 

that said, i've got a small afternoon sh

ow

 ... my things have been delivered and set up ... with the help of mr.e.beck.artist and little.e.beck.artist ..... so hopefully the show will be full of orange shoed goodness .... 

here are the paintings i mentioned on yesterday's blog ....they've dried and i photo'd them after church today ... just prior to delivering and setting them up .....

i believe the pears are my favorite ... but i'm always most partial to my pear paintings .... 

art sales have been slow ... i don't have high expectations for today ... but hopefully will sell some ... i'd most like to get some commissions ... i like letting someone else think up what i'm going to paint! what are you doing this afternoon?

quick post on a busy day ....

i have a small show tomorrow .... 

i've just finished this painting ... and three others ... all wet at this very moment ... so no great photo ... just an in situ studio shot .... watching paint dry, as it were ....

tomorrow i should have four good pics for you ... and maybe shots of the show as well ... 

hope you are having a lovely weekend .... i am .... my pal dana's birthday is today, so we have a night out planned ... i bought her battery operated slippers (among other things) for here birthday .... just what every girl needs ... what do your slippers look like? are you even a slipper sort? 

the mental health aspects of being an artist ...

my pal allison and i frequently talk about the business bits of art ... you know, the ______part ..... fill in the blank with hard, boring, tedious, uninspiring, unartsy, difficult ... you get the idea .... 

in our discussions we frequently end laughingly saying we'll never be too famous or too succesful since we're just soccer moms ... me literally, her figuratively (her kids didn't pick that particular demographic for extracurriculars).... we aren't young enough or old enough to be artistically unique or interesting ..... we aren't edgy or urban or rural or uneducated  or genius....... we aren't impoverished or disabled or far from our native lands.... we don't battle any profound mental health issues .... not profound ... perhaps petite .... not certain on that!! 

anyway ... we are ordinary... gloriously ordinary ..... i'm happy with ordinary .... i paint, i enjoy it, i sell enough to keep me painting happily .... i used to worry that i'd die a little old lady with a zillion paintings in my basement ... paintings that nobody wanted .... i've now sold enough to not be fretful about that anymore .... even with the recession and a definitive downturn in my selling, i'm pretty sure that i won't die a hermit painter with paintings no one has ever seen (thank you flickr!) 

i say all this to you as a preface to this ....my favorite artist had poverty and mental illness working in his favor ....  i am thrilled beyond compare that i got an email today from a local museum ... fernbank ..... and they sent me information about a new imax ... now, i love imax movies to begin with .... but an imax on an artist!! a favorite artist of mine!! ... here's a link to my favorite book about him .... i love irving stone ... my favorite book by him is the agony and ecstasy about michelangelo ..... but that's a whole 'nother blog bit .... here's another book that i've read dozens of times about this artist .... or this one .... it's my favorite series for kids actually .... and this i've read most recently .... it's more serious than any other books i've read on him ..... i've read a couple other fictionalized stories of this artist ... i always like them ... but will spare you more links!! 

anyway .... imax anyone? surely i won't have to go by myself! .... if you aren't here ... is there a groovy imax there, where you are?