Fear and the humble sparrow

I have nothing new to share, but thought I could at least dig something up from the past, 1995 that is.  I found this buried in the rubble, of what is supposed to be my studio, but is mostly just piles, heaps, and mountains of junk (re:  untapped art supplies).  My hubby complains, and rightly so I suppose, because I have a great number of sketchbooks all with just one or two pages started.  Which brings me to my main topic, fear.  Lately I have been trying to conquer FEAR and possibly complete an entire sketchbook or finish a darn painting, but I'm finding that simply declaring myself "brave" has not shut up that pesky inner-critic.  The ideas and drawings flow effortlessly but as soon as I pick up a brush....the door SLAMS shut.  I'm not good enough.  I am trying to heed the great philosopher Dory and "Just keep swimming", but DANG its hard!  So how do you keep going?


Note:  I want to add that I drew these by looking at a fieldguide or something, I wish I could credit the source but it was 16 years ago and I don't remember

April Showers Bring May Flowers

This is a little project I started many months ago and then abandoned.  I zig zagged on the fabric strips and outlined a robin in free motion machine stitch.  I think the tension was wrong and I was unhappy with the  robin so the project was tossed aside.  Then a few days ago I saw cute little free motion daisies on

Garden Clippings lovely blog, and decided to give it another try.   I dug it out of the great heap of abandoned projects and started adding free motion flowers and raindrops.  I couldn't resist adding some little French knot flowers as well.  Do they make it a little too busy?  Last I painted in the robin outline.  In retrospect I think I should have painted the bird first and stitched around him, but overall I'm happy with the results.  He is my cheerful reminder that spring will really arrive.  Hope you have signs of spring in your little corner of the world.