My new tabletop easel arrived! I bought the same style that my “Layer Love” instructor, Julie Prichard, uses to paint. A lot of the techniques used in her class require gravity, and working on the plain counter just wouldn’t do. It also lets me work on canvases, art journals, AND loose pages, since it’s not an open easel. Sweet! Isn’t it pretty? *Now* I’m ready to get started!

Another obsession of mine is crows. There’s something about them that I just love to watch, whether they are on the ground, in a tree, or in flight. The picture below shows when my love for them began. We were visiting London, circa 1983, when we happened upon this crow in a park. I’m so happy that my mother caught this moment on film. I was so proud of myself for getting so close to him. He didn’t flinch as I got closer. He was watching me, waiting for me to feed him, I’m sure. I thought if he wasn’t scared, I wasn’t going to be scared either. And so it began…

One of my favourite poems to teach in my English classes is “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe. It has everything a poem should: lost love, an unstable main character, and a misunderstood element that makes everything else fall apart. I love watching my students figure out that the narrator is falling deeper and deeper into insanity solely based on his own fear. Plus, it’s nicely written too. The word “nevermore” is key, which is why I used it in my most recent art journal page. It says everything, by leaving it open for interpretation.

My love for all things crow can’t be shown all at once, since there are too many more future posts and journal pages to fill. So, I will leave my favourite movie (The Crow), our mutual love for all things shiny, and my crow superstitions for another time.

Sometimes you have to lose perspective to appreciate the things that you have in life. What you are suppose to learn or understand isn’t always clear until you have experienced that particular situation. In my life, I have been smacked in the face with reality too many times to count. I try to prepare myself for the potential problems but I should have learned to expect the unexpected by now. I am also trying to learn to let go, to trust that things can work out. It amazes me when seemingly impossible events come together that create solutions that didn’t exist before. Is is just a coincidence or could there be other forces at work?

I worked with lots of different layers for this page. Layers always bothered me before because if I liked what I had done, I never wanted to cover it up. Now, I realize that it’s a part of the process and to achieve the look that I *really* want, I will have to cover up bits and pieces of the previous layers.

I’m so excited that my Portfolio oil pastels finally arrived. I really like my Caran d’Ache pastels, but they have nothing on Portfolio for what I want to use them. They are oil pastels whearas the Caran d’Ache are more like crayons (because they’re wax, duh). They spread so smoothly and the colours are so clear and bright. Dina Wakley was so right when she said that the Portfolio pastels are the best way to go. I can’t wait to use them again!