Leanne Shawler, Artist

I wasn't quite sure if she was done after yesterday's painting session but I realized that there was one more layer of prayer to be added. So I quickly fired off a request for words to be added and did a last live session on Facebook -- and attempted it over on Instagram as well. Here's the video from the Facebook Live (I failed to save the Instagram Live one from a slightly different angle). And apologies for the muted sound, I was talking facing away from the iPhone so I didn't realize I needed to speak up a wee bit more. The words are: hope, safe, calm, mercy, presence, healing, joy, peace, thankful, breath, grace, community, beloved, remember, adapt, rooted, together And here she is all finished, pending final drying time and then covering in varnish. Close up details of the marks made by the rosemary "paintbrush":

I attended Flora Bowley's "Brave Intuitive Botanicals" class on Wednesday and we did some writing. In my case, that a sprig of rosemary was writing to me.  The timer was up before the letter was finished, but even so, her words are words you need to hear also, so I've done a bit of editing and put it in poem form below. I want you to know you are resilient.    Even through drought I have survived, you will survive too.  You are enough. Stay grounded,  be rooted in love. Shelter the birds, those who need you.  Keep safe by staying put.  I am full of fragrance that you love.  Your sweet medicine is useful and nourishes others.  I want you to know that all will be well, even through cataclysm and loss.  All will be well.  And you are loved. Love, Rosemary And as a graphic, using the page where I did a blind contour drawing of the rosemary sprig.

Where I sing snippets of various Ave Maria tunes learned while I do the repetitive act that is meditative and prayerful (interspersed with chatting with my one viewer), but aside from the opening summary, you'll miss all that unless you can find it on my Facebook feed. I also forgot to readjust the camera when I went back to work on the other wing. Sorry about that! And here's where we are at now:

Although the second painting session I had the camera rotated so that I was sideways the whole time, but I was able to fix that. Here's the sped up version below. And then I did another session the following day. This video is also sped-up because it turns out I hardly do any talking during these things. (The black bar is because the Facebook Live records it so that there are black bars on either side, so I zoomed in for a closer look.) I kept going after that, and here's where we are at now. I took it into the Procreate app as somebody spotted something which should have been obvious to me. As I couldn't unsee it, I needed to fix the issue.  I've resolved that now and see my way forward with this mock-up: This mockup will guide my process, the wings (that you can barely see in the image above as I'm still learning how to use Procreate on my iPad) will be quite different. And I need to keep working on her face and neck first, but I think I will d...

And after I was done, had some more prayers! So here's the progress thus far (before I add the two new prayers): Not sure what will happen next, beyond the hypothetical I mention in the video. I've had a couple of more prayers to add since I went live and will go add those.

During this time of lockdowns and social distancing, I’ve felt this need to do something to help. Monday, I felt the call to let you all in on this. But let me start from the beginning, so you can understand my request. Last week, as COVID-19 ramped up in the United States, I remembered that I’d seen a painting in the Accademia or maybe it was Scuola Grande di Rocco (or maybe both) where the artist had created the painting as an act of devotion. I am pretty sure it was Tintoretto, but I have a vague memory of seeing also seeing a Tiepolo. At the time, I thought little about it and moved on to the next painting. But, now I remember it.  And I thought, what if I created a painting as an act of prayer to spare us from this current plague? I’ve entered into this very slowly and meditatively. First, the idea, then the next day, an idea of how to begin. I reset my little altar in my studio (a figurine of Mary, a candle, feather, shells, gemstones and seedpods), took the ...

This was the first time I had finished an icon on my own. I wanted to experiment with using Golden fluid acrylics as opposed to the recommended Jo Sonja paints as well as using a Claybord instead of a more traditional (and expensive) icon board. I started at the beginning of 2015, so I was very focused on using what I had and being able to write an icon. Which is why I used the blue tracing paper I had rather than getting proper carbon paper. The blue marks melted into the paint, so no worries there. The background went down gorgeously in many many layers. My first attempt at mixing the hair color turned out red and it was looking really streaky although is only two layers worth. I decided to fix that later. My concern with the Golden paints is that they are shiny. The parchment mix with the Titanium White shows just how shiny they can be. Would it stand out as super-shiny against the other not so shiny colors? Sankir, the shadow color down. I just love sankir ...

The plan was to redesign this blog and reboot it with its new focus. Funny thing is, the pieces started fitting together differently. I woke up in the wee hours of the morning in the week before Christmas with an a-ha. What I was planning wasn't exactly what God was planning. I knew that there was something more, something different, but I couldn't quite figure it out. Honestly, I still don't have it figured out. But I have another part of it... which requires consultation with the usual suspects and some more working out. So in the meantime, I did promise I'd be back this week, so here is a painting I finished recently. It's the last assigned painting assignment from the La Sirena class from  Suzi Blu that I took last year. She extended the critique time to May of this year, and I swore that I would finish this class before the year's end. However, it didn't quite come out as I planned. It was supposed to be head-to-toe figures with a good-sized ...