Personality Testing

I have not wanted to get into personality issues, nor personal situations on my blog, which I see as a haven from day to day life. However, I have been doing some of those personality tests on the internet that I found quite insightful, so I thought i'd mention a few here. I just took the Color test (makes sense for an artist, right?). Here are the results (they were pretty right on, actually): Woops, I lost the results of this one . . . I'll keep looking . . .

A little while back I took another one, which Identified me as a "Benevolent Creator": Sorry you'll have to cut and paste this one. The report is pretty interesting, at least to me! Mouse over the chart thing and it will tell you what each color represents. More detail can be found following the link.
http://www.personaldna.com/report.php?k=dmXflpClTeYKxan-HO-CDAAD-6a2c&u=ad899e3a0427

Benevolent Creator

Oh, and I am a "Dreaming Soul":

You Are a Dreaming Soul

Your vivid emotions and imagination takes you away from this world So much so that you tend to live in your head most of the time You have great dreams and ambitions that could be the envy of all... But for you, following through with your dreams is a bit difficult You are charming, endearing, and people tend to love you. Forgiving and tolerant, you see the world through rose colored glasses. Underneath it all, you have a ton of passion that you hide from others. Always hopeful, you tend to expect positive outcomes in your life. Souls you are most compatible with: Newborn Soul, Prophet Soul, and Traveler Soul

What Kind of Soul Are You?

What color flower are you?

You Are a Purple Flower

A purple flower tends to represent success, grace, and elegance. At times, you are faithful like a violet. And other times, you represent luxury, like a wisteria. And more than you wish, you find yourself heartbroken like a lilac.

What Does Your Favourite Colour Say About You?

What Your Favorite Color Green Says About You:

Balanced --- Relaxed --- Flexible Compassionate --- Philosophical --- Humble Loyal --- Inventive --- Unique

What Does Your Favorite Color Say About You?

Pink Hydrangeas

I have been away from home a lot this past week, so haven't posted anything. To keep this blog moving, I thought I would post these pictures I took today of a wonderful hydrangea I pass on my way to the train each morning. I hadn't noticed the tiny blue dots in the center of each bloom before--they are so sweet! A truly beautiful flower!

EDM #124 and Artwords #58: Yellow and Center

The center is not yellow, but the flower is, and they both work wonderfully for the two topics of the week, "Draw something yellow" for the EDM group, and do something on the topic "Center" for the Artwords group.
This is a watercolor based on my Flickr friend Sarah's fine photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/96136248@N00/527631402/

My Blogger Award List

OK, here goes, to those inspirational artist-bloggers who I find set me thinking most wonderfully!
The multi-talented fabric/book/paper artist and wonderful mom, Molly Jean Henson:
http://creativelifeandtimes.blogspot.com/
The amazing Jana Bouc, artist and watercolor teacher from San Francisco:
http://janabouc.wordpress.com/
The irrespressible, high-energy, do-so-much Amy Cowen, founder of the Creative Mom Podcast and an amazing blogger, too:
http://www.creativemompodcast.com/tt/
The very creative writer, photographer and artist, Karen Harvey Cox:
Her blog: http://karenharveycox.blogspot.com/
Her children's writings: http://karenharveycox.wordpress.com/
And last but not least, the very talented artist Valerie Millett who also gets great kudos for being an exemplary single mom!:
http://kidxpress.blogspot.com/
So there are my five inspirational ladies who certainly get you thinking, now let me see what I have to do about getting ahold of them, since they might not even know that I have a blog, or that they have won this great award!
I've only been hanging around Blogland for a couple of months, and certainly don't promote myself, so how would they know??!

Dear ladies, for the rules (very simple!!) see my previous post. Congratulations!!

Thinking Blogger Award

Wow! My good friend Mariana Musa has just awarded me a "Thinking Blogger" award! Incredible!

Here is Mariana's explanation:

"I won a Thinking Blogger award from one of my favourite illustrators, Emila Yusof! Thank you Emila! And I now have to pass it on to five other bloggers whom I consider worthy of receiving it ... but there are too many out there whom I consider amazing bloggers, artists and 'thinkers! It was NOT easy, but I've managed to pick five from the many who inspire me ..."

But of course in my case I won the award from the wonderful Mariana!

And the rules:

"The participation rules are simple:
1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think, 2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme, 3. Optional: Proudly display the 'Thinking Blogger Award' with a link to the post that you wrote."

OK, maybe you're wondering who the other four artists are that Mariana chose, so here they are:

"I found Andrea Joseph's sketchblog long before I joined EDM and had it marked as a favourite because of her lovely illustrations ... truly inspiring and gorgeous work there!
Joan Yoshioka is a wonderful and immensely talented artist who occasionally also posts very helpful progress reports on some of her beautiful works.
France Belleville never ceases to amaze me with her skill, especially where linework and crosshatching are concerned. Her drawings of cars are the best I've seen yet, never mind her portraits and also, now, her amazing dog drawings!
Kathleen York is not only a wonderful artist but now, I hope, a friend too! I love the delicacy of her touch, the explorations in her sketches and her latest very successful foray into colour.
Laura Taylor Mark is hugely creative in so many ways I don't know where to begin! Her work is delicate, colourful, all quite lovely."

Now, I have to think about who to give an award to. I'm wondering if I can give it to someone who already has one, since I regularly visit Laura's and Andrea's blogs and I think they make me think! :~) And Joan and France are also Flickr contacts of mine who I love. I'm not a big blog-reader, though, there's only so much time in the day, you know??

Oh, and I should have provided this link to Mariana's blog!! Please see her wonderful work: http://www.mrana.typepad.com/bitbybit/

Dream Vision in Color

I finally watercolored this last night. It gives me a nice feeling.

Here's what I said on Flickr:

"Here is the color version of my dream vision from last Thursday morning. I have had some good input on possible meanings, and I'm thinking the figure does represent me, and I'm not sure of quite which way to go, but it is not the grass (the circumstances) holding me back, but rather some lack of mine. And that's something I have to work on . . . . "

I have to mention that my dear friend Laura looked up some dream interpretations, and found that grass can indicate success. So that's hopeful! Thanks, Laura!

Dream/Vision/Mind Picture ?

I woke up this morning with this picture in my mind. I know I was awake when I saw it, but I had only just woken up. So maybe it was the tail end of a dream? I saw the picture pretty vividly, so I wanted to get it down. I started drawing at the train stop this morning, worked on it some more on the subway ride (since I had a great train sketch to do--see my Flickr photostream for that drawing), then finished the linework up at lunchtime. I plan to watercolor it to match the colors I saw, which were green for the grass and red for the dress and brown for the hair.

What do you think it could mean? I wondered if it was supposed to be me, but I'm not sure . . . she doesn't have glasses and her hair is longer . . .

Shade Dwelling Finished

This morning before leaving for work I put what I think are the finishing touches on this watercolor. I enjoyed doing this, but it took much longer than most of the things I have been doing lately . . .

House/shadow progress

I am making progress here, adding more color, using artistic license to liven the colors up some. I should be finished later this week and will post the final version.

Starting a house portrait

I started this watercolor today. To be more precise, I started the coloring today. I did the pencil drawing months ago! I thought I would post some progress pictures so you could see how it comes along. All the purple is wetbruch on dry paper, the sky is all wet on wet. This is not watercolor paper, however, it is heavy (80 lb.) sketchbook paper.

I was motivated by two weekly challenge assignments, EDM #122- draw something with shade as a prominent element, and Artwords #56 - Dwelling. Any and all comments are more than welcome!

Found my Pitt Pens!

I'm so glad I found my Pitt pens, I really do like them! But I'm glad I misplaced them, too, or I might never have tried to combine watercolor and ballpoint! Well yesterday and today were kind of black and white days, however, so no watercolors; last night I did this Pitt pen drawing on the train on the way home.

New step--Ballpoint Pen & Watercolor!

I have temporarily misplaced my new Pitt pens, so last night on the way home I was relegated to ballpoint pen for my subway sketches. So I thought, well, maybe I can use watercolor with the ballpoint, too! And in fact, it worked fine; I actually kind of like the effect of the blue lines with the watercolor! The ballpoint did not smear at all getting wet, unlike the Pilot Razor Point pen, which smears badly when it does . . .