Round 4 HURRAH!!!!

For the pocket of the first Round 4 Moleskine that comes my way, I have created two mandalas and a set of mini mandalas.  I am so excited for another round of the Moleskine Exchange.  YAY!

I am waiting to post a movie of the Round 3 Moleskine until I finish it. There were a lot of blank pages.

I forget whose book I'm on!

Collab w/ Ammon - he built the house, I painted it.
I made a mess. The red paint went everywhere, pages stuck together, dogs & cats living together, it was chaos. Then it ended up like this. :o)
My Moleskine Dreamcatcher
Backside of the Spiderweb. This page was also a mess which I repainted black.
Seeing through the dream to the moon...
The moon! Collage piece made by painting a piece of paper through the dreamcatcher.  
And a green moon for Ellen to play with. Been so busy this last two weeks... moved into a real genuine private art studio! Yaaay! I have a table to work on! No more kitchen floor!

PS - This is Balookey's Book! 

Stephanie In Andrea's Book

Collab piece with Ammon

Acrylic and pen mandala with quote from Paulo Cohelo quote: "A search always starts with beginner's luck and ends with the Test of The Conqueror."

Fierce warrior goddesses.

This is a collab piece for Ellen :o) the purple tape is because I accidentally ripped the page when the pain on the other side was wet. Oops!

Finished with Mike's Book

Acrylic, Pitt Brush pens, more acrylic, Micron pen in Mike's book.





Neocolor II crayons


Cool transfer.....

Working in Mike's Book while on Vacation in Findley Lake, NY

Collaborative piece with Ammon.



Found a glue stick in my OTR art bag so I decided to try a collage.



Collaged piece



Close up of collage work.



Another close-up.



Unsure if this one is finished yet....

In Roma's book - now with Ellen.

This top piece is a collaborative piece with Ammon. All of the rest are my own. This book should now be with Ellen.

1st Works in Roma's Book

I wasted no time starting in Roma's book. Acrylic, collage & white gel pen. The image is over 50 years old - from an old scrapbook filled with movie stars that I bought at a junk shop many moons ago, I've been wanting to do something with the images for a long time. Do you know who she is? I do, but only from the name that was on the photo. This isn't someone I would instantly recognize.

In Mary's Book

Okay everybody. I am still a little clogged in the nose but that didn't stop me from makin' art in Mary's book.



This was my collab piece with Ammon. Ammon has a very different artistic style than me and I was somewhat at a loss on how to expand on these pieces. Looking at them for a while, these three faces reminded me of the older women I'd see roaming the mall I used to work at in the late 80's- so I turned Ammon's sketches into cartoons of these women. But even then, it wasn't enough. I realized that I needed to tell some short anecdotes on what I could remember about these women.



Playing with my new brayer!Acrylic paint, black gesso & a white gel pen. And the green grass grew all around all around, and the green grass grew all around.

Finished with Ammon's Book

Finished with Ammon's book and wish I had more to work on. The piece above was black gesso, acrylic paint, white gel pen and Sharpie paint pen.



A collaboration piece with Ammon. "Authenticity means taking risks to remain true to who you really are." (I made that up as it seemed relevant to me at the time. Colored pencil, gesso & gel pen.



Vintage flexi Parker fountain pen filled with Herbin Violette Pensee ink, colored pencils and other inks.



Collaboration piece for Ellen.



As previously shown, created with various markers.

Will be mailing soon, then eagerly awaiting the next.

A Mole arrived & I got straight to work!

Amidst the hoopla surrounding my 1st ever iPhone yesterday, (I think I must have played with it for like 10 hours...) I stopped at my PO Box and found Ammon's Mole- Remind me to take a picture of the envelope it came in.

Yaaaaaay!

So today, I got right to work and created this mandala with Pitt Brush pens and a Tombow Japanese brush pen from JetPens. I also started working on what I thought was my collaborative piece (A sketch of a man) but after I worked on it I happened to find another piece that looked a bit more like a collab piece than the one I was working on. I know that we actually each do 2 half (finish one and start another) pieces in each book, but when you start a book, wouldn't you only do 1? Did I screw up?




Me playing with the Hipstamatic app.

Biffybeans: Last page in my book, collaboration for Ellen

Well... here goes nothing. Finished my last page in my own book. A collaboration piece left for Ellen. I am trying to decide whether or not to add any decoration to the cover but I will be shipping to Ellen soon. I am still a bit blown away at the prospect of letting this book go and the way in which it will be returned to me in a year's time. With all of the work I've been doing pertaining to personal growth, it just seems like the most perfect exercise at the most perfect time. It also falls into the category of, "If you love something, set it free..."

Biffybeans: Third and Fourth in My Own Book

99.99% of the time I create art without thinking. This means that something started can end up as something else - which is what happened on both of these pieces. When I tried to add some Zinc White acrylic over a Neocolor II mandala, they all smeared.... (Which is how the background tint evolved.) But I didn't care. I grabbed a brush & some black gesso & painted over it and then added white gel pen doodles. 1st layer black gesso, then I pasted in some pretty wrapping paper, tried to do Neocolor mandala in similar colors, white paint, black gesso, then white gel pen. The End.



This girl started out in colored pencil. (You can still see some of it.) I felt like I was "pushing" when I created her. (To me, "pushing" means creating art when I'm not fully present and I usually make a mess.) I filled the background with craft paint, then eventually obscured what I'd started with. The message seemed appropriate. Kind of like the old, "You gotta break some eggs if you want to make an omlette."

1 more piece before I'm ready to ship and it's a collaborative piece for Ellen. When I bought this Folio, I didn't realize there was an actual "Sketchbook" version with 160g paper. I bought a blank journal... which means plenty of pages for people to always work on the right hand side of the page if they choose.

Biffybeans: 1st and 2nd pieces in her own book

My 1st entry in my own book. Black Bob Ross Acrylic Gesso (which isn't very black) and Colleen colored pencils. Big mandala.



2nd entry in my own book. Artist grade watercolors, Liquitex Black Gesso & white Uniball gel pen. The woman on the left seems to be pointing to the left coast.....  another hint to go and visit Portland OR?

When I was making these pieces, it suddenly dawned on my that when I send this book off, I won't see it again for a whole year. Sure, I'll see some of the art online, but to think that it is going to travel the states through the hands of 12 different people... that is just too cool for school. Oh, and not to mention that I get to leave my mark in 11 other books! What fun!

Biffybeans: New to The Exchange.

Hi everyone - I'm a new kid on the block.

I write, (blogs & books) make art, (mixed media) teach workshops, (mandalas for personal growth) and play music. (Hand percussion & shekere)

I've made quite a few pieces of mandala art over the last 4 years.1500ish? (Yes... Obsessive, yeah...I know.) Have used many different kinds of media & have been known to mix a few together. Maybe I will put a few mandalas in your books...  We'll see. ;o)

Many of you know me from my blog, Spiritual Evolution of the Bean where I share my art, do lots of product reviews, (writing & art supplies) and talk about life, the universe & everything.

I also write the Rhodia Drive blog for Exaclair,
have a new Etsy Shop(original art)
have a channel on YouYube,
a fan page on Facebook,
loads of pictures on Flickr,
send out the occasional Tweet,
and sell my art prints on Imagekind.

Happy to be a part of this project!