confucius' irish blessing

  here are two mandalas i made .... the above, playing with color and design....below, just design .... these two were for the joy of coloring and drawing .... as opposed to some of the others i have shown you that are to a daily prompt ....are you more of a confucius person or an irish blessing sort?

be strong.

i did this painting this summer .... a commission ... and it is now hanging in the sophie's middle school ... a donor from last year's renovation didn't want a room dedication, but wanted this bible verse put up in the school. i think that is an awesome idea, right? and then that bible verse seems especially good for 8th graders setting out on their way ....

liesel's flower

after my lengthy sabbatical, i have much to catch up with here ... and actually can't and won't catch it all up ... i'll just do some art highlights that i want to be chronicled .... my friend liesel wanted a big pink flower. this is a 2 foot square canvas ..... i wrote some happy things on the background .... and then big pink flower it is! .... i'm guessing i did this in august-ish .... sorry to have kept it from you for so long! ha.  are there any words that pop out at you right when you look at it? i see emma ... and i see one potato two potato .... i think i see the potatos cause i know they are there and think the sentiment is funny in this context .... and emma .... i think i see that because of the hefty negative space under it .... like i left a gap so emma would stand up and be noticed ... but it wasn't intentional ... and i'm not even sure it's what i see first. i'd guess most people would read the top line first .... cause, well, cause it's reading and you start at the top left generally speaking!
so there you go....
i've done a number of these painting where instead of using collage elements in the background i've done this, using my own writing .... i like it ... but it does make me miss the collage bits ....

family

the mandala word for day 6 was through ... the things we are passing through on our journey .... i guess it could be chaos or mayhem or grief or upheavel or job loss or ... any number of hard words ... but none of those words are mine..... i think this "season" of my life is family ... or parenting ..... i'm going THROUGH the family stage .....life, even though my kids are quite grown(teens, near teen), still revolves around my family, my children, their schedules, their needs, their problems. i actually don't have any problems that are ALL my own ....or not that i can think of at this moment ... oh, i thought of one ... but it's a sports injury (and i'm sparing you the details right here. you're welcome.) .... all of my metaphysical problems are ones that belong to someone else ... and i just take them up to share the burden ....   so .... i'm going through this parenting season .... and it is quite the circuitous route, right?

box of joy

so .... for this month i am working on a mandala course ...

i'm meant to do one a day, following a theme, instead, i've done two and sometimes three a day ...one to theme, one just following the whims of my doodles.... so on my coffee table now, i have an art box (formerly a clementine box) of joy .... all the things i need to keep my mandala practice on course are in there....

i gathered up some art books that i have (one on doodling, two on lettering, i might should add more), my 8x12 journal (70 pages), an old ruler, a new flexi ruler (super coolio), a green template circle maker, a compass, a protractor (i have a mental block on those, which is which? compass? protractor?) a prismacolor 24 pack of colored pencils, a dozen fine point sharpies, a dozen extra fine sharpies, and some extra pencils and erasers .... little.e.beck.artist has started keeping her journal in my box too .... what can be better than side by side coloring ....

 it is an interesting thing to me that by reorganizing something you already have, it seems better or more useful. i haven't looked at these books lately .... but now they are awesome all over again. i have sharpies, but just by moving some permanently to a box on my coffee table they become much used.  with a little thought, or a mandala prompt, the ordinary becomes extraordinary. love that.

following directions. or not.

if i had to grade this mandala on execution, i'd give it an A ... however, if i had to give a grade based on following directions? i'm pretty sure i get an F .... cause... well.... i didn't follow directions ... luckily, i am not being graded on any portion .... and in fact, i can rationalize away the fact that i did not follow directions. you see, the word was chaos. does this look like chaos to you? no, me neither.

so i was going with what i thought the norm was ... what's life? straight and narrow and color between the lines? so that's what is in the middle ... straight and narrow and color and lines and just so .... and then the rest? more real life, less norm? reality? the reality of my closet, my thought processes, my children's rooms, my art studio, my to do list is that chaos is just a little bit different that the straight and narrow and color between the lines.  real life chaos is the unpredictable, the not so tidy and colored between the lines. sure, war is chaos, but in my life, so is the laundry room and dinner time and rushing out the door after breakfast.... but MY chaos doesn't bother me. it's just not quite coloring between the lines. it is me. it is more free form and unexpected and this way and that way .... the chaos is important. it's life. i like my chaos and all those happy doodles that are outside the lines.

four mandalas ... cause i have far more mandalas than days ....

 four mandalas. only one is for a mandala workshop word ... prayer. the others were just for the joy of exploring the circle, the doodle, the contemplative doodling, the search for a quote to go.

whooooooo

i have a doodle book .... by jenny doh... craft a doodle .... it has an owl page ... so now so do i..... have an owl page. which is your favorite? i think i like the top most one best.

yes

this was my first mandala .... november 1st ... my new habit begun ..... look how many circles and arcs in this ??...... i circled it up for sure ..... i think if you checked my last 800and something blog posts, you'd say my shape is a square. 90% of my canvases are squares. i totally made that up. 75% of my canvases are squares. well... i made that up too. LOADS of my art is done on a square. i like squares. my mandala could be done on a square ... in a square journal ... but i didn't take the time to find a square journal ... which now i'm happy about, because i have room under each mandala to put a quote. so now that's part of my process ... mandala making and quote searching. so, in the time i've been away from my blog, i've fallen for the circle. but i have a commissioned painting to work on ... and that will be a square. if i can just make the time to do it in between my circles.

mandala: play

the mandala topic was play .... my first inclination was to play with my new supplies ... new color pencils ... new compass... new protractor ... new circle template ..... so i filled my circle with circles long before i ever thought about playing .... and then i decided to fill in my circles with play .... so ... let's play outside in the sunshine ....

mandala ... and balance

for the month of november, i am doing art every day ... different than nanowrimo a couple years ago where i wrote every day in my quest for a novel in 30 days ... but that was 50K words in thirty days ... so thirty pictures doesn't seem too hard. i have joined an online mandala course to keep me on track ... i get a lovely prompt emailed to me every day .... this is the sixth of november, so i've now followed six prompts ... but i've actually completed 14 mandalas.... above is my favorite thus far. the prompt was balance .. balance ... something i strive for, try for, hope for, want .... not sure i've had it lately. not sure it's super possible with teenagers in the house ....but, still working on it.  part of working on balance is art every day .... keeping in touch with the inner artist who is just THRILLED to buy a new set of pencils and markers, a fresh journal, a compass .... ah! the joy of a compass! who knew? i had forgotten how much i loved one.... middle school and high school had some compass joy for me! so .. here's to compass joy ... and refinding my blogging self.

bio

ok ... my one year sabbatical from blogging is over a wee bit early ... ok?

here's my artist bio that i have just updated ....

Elizabeth Beck is a mixed media artist who is intrigued by the secrets that can be hidden in collage work.   Elizabeth does colorful and exuberant art for the sheer joy of it and wants her work to reflect that happiness. She likes to explore the quirky, using interesting bits of ephemera, like maps, dictionary pages and bingo cards, to make traditional compositions.  Elizabeth loves Mona Lisa, Diet Coke, reading, quotes, alphabets, fonts, type, orange shoes, dictionaries, maps, the beach, reality TV, road trips, museums, messy paint days, Sunday School, kale, cookies, good friends, tennis, her husband Andy, and her sweet children, Drew, Julia, and Sophie Sunshine. Elizabeth lives in Atlanta with her husband, Andy, three growing-up-too-fast children, and a little dog that is supposed to be white but is usually more of a dirty beige. Contact at e.beck.artist@mac.com.  

mostly i just added kale, cookies and tennis.... the important stuff.