The Summer of 2012 I vowed to let my creative self out of it’s shell.  To help me do this, I signed up for Mindy Lacefield’s “Paint Your Story” E-Course.  Little did I know what was in store for me.

Mindy had us start out building libraries with Pinterest.  We made boards of

artists who inspire us,

artwork that grabs us,

Colors we love,

Doodles and scribbles,

Shapes and symbols that catch our attention,

I even made a board called “faces”!  Wayyyyyy too fun.  And addicting.

Using these Pinterest boards as our libraries, we began our artwork.

We started out drawing lots of faces using Mindy’s techniques.  Here are some of my attempts:

Drawing faces in Paint Your Story E-Workshop with Mindy Lacefield

drawing more faces. . .

Finally. . . first attempts at painting faces using oil pastels. . .

(Pretty brutal. . . that’s me crying because of how hard this is.)

Working on backgrounds now. . .we used our Pinterest boards to provide ideas for our backgrounds.

Backgrounds are really addicting!  You put down splashes of color, at symbols, squiggles and doodles and wala!  Backgrounds!

One more. . . I can’t stop making backgrounds.  . .

Now, the scary part. Adding a face onto a background.  My fear – mess up a beautiful background with a crappy face.  But, I’ve learned that there are no errors.  If you don’t like something, you just paint over it and try something else.

Here’s my first one. . .

Here’s my second. . .

Here’s another that is teacher related. . .

And, this one, I made for the cover of an art journal that will hold all my journaling from my stay at the cabin. . .

My painted faces are evolving.  There is no stopping me now.

I can not believe what Mindy has has helped me do as an artist.  Thank you, Mindy, from my heart and soul. 🙂