Happy New Year! We get pretty mild winters here but it is so dark all the time and I felt like painting a comforting image of my cat sleeping in a window on a wintry snowy day.
January 2023
Trayvalle Forest
This is my first completed painting using my new drawing pen tablet that my friends bought me for my birthday. Here I post progress pics for your curiosity. It took me six hours to finish. This is a painting of Trayvalle Forest which exists in the world of Tionodese. You will be able to see more art like this as well as a wonderful fantasy story on tionodese.art soon!
End of Summer
I’m experiencing that strange feeling of grief with the season changing even though Autumn is my favorite season. Pictures of children returning to school makes me feel things I haven’t felt in a long time. I bought pumpkin spice protein shakes (LOL) which I add to my coffee for a pumpkin spice latte. But the end of summer brings my birthday and I have lots of reasons to celebrate! I will be having my on the road driving lessons that week too! I am nervous and excited. I keep reminding myself that I had fun driving with Jane around the parking lot, so I should have fun when I am getting my lessons. Just my thoughts for today. Happy hump day everyone!
colored pencil drawing of a bird
2022
A lot has happened in a year. I have worked hard to become a registered certified Peer Recovery Support Specialist and have been very busy in the start of my new career. However, I am back! Primarily to focus on creating my autobiography, The Cliffs of Depression, which will be here in graphic novel form. I am also working on the fantasy graphic novel, Trayvalle Tales, which I am bringing to you digitally as well and I hope you will also read it at tionodese.art
Hello 2021
It has been a long minute since I have posted on here. I think I will start adding all of my artwork so that it can be like a gallery. It snowed here so I thought I would share a painting I did many years ago called The Royal Family. It is a painting of Emperor Penguins.
Great Home
First painting I have ready for my solo show this summer. Acrylic on canvas.
Happy Mother’s Day
Even if your heart is broken like mine, I hope happiness finds you today. And know that they are always with you in spirit and in this way I mean their energy is still alive around you.
Sunflowers were my mother’s favorite.
Hello Again
I decided I will still post on this blog for now because it posts to my Twitter and Facebook and Google plus. I like that! If you want to take a road trip or you’re in the D.C. area I’m participating in a two day art show celebrating mental health awareness. I hope to see you there!
What the World Needs Now
I’m a big fan of love. I love love! I appreciate the romantic kind (although I’m not interested in that for myself anymore) and love to see people fall in love and celebrate their love and be partners who bring out the best in each other. It’s truly a beautiful thing. I also cherish friendship love which is the same thing pretty much anyway, but with slightly different rules. I love all my friends with all my heart and I don’t know where I’d be without them. I love other people’s friends as well. On social media, it’s pretty easy to get to know other people’s friends a little without ever even talking to them directly. I also think of family as friends. Some parents say they aren’t their kids friends but I think that’s wrong. We respect our friends (or at least we should and we should also respect our children). It is too often that we hear that children should respect their parents but we don’t hear that parents need to respect their kids. That is a mistake in love. The best love involves respect. I also think the love of nature is essential because it helps to keep the world healthy and beautiful. Unfortunately right now there is too much love of money and that has a negative effect on nature and in turn everyone on the planet. We must counteract this with calls to action, voting, volunteering and donating to organizations that fight the good fight. There also seems to be a love of guns and gun ownership and tragically we saw (and some of us experienced) the horrifying side effect of that. My thoughts go out to all those who lost someone today in Florida…and also to all those affected by war or other gun violence around the globe. We need to try to love peace more! We need to try to love solving problems in nonviolent ways. It is the only way to stop the madness. I think the greatest form of love is compassion. When you can empathize and sympathize with another and treat them kindly. It is not easy to be compassionate nor to forgive, but these two things are ingredients to the greatest form of love. It is the love that is taught all through history in every culture. The golden rule love.
What does the world need?
LOVE
when does it need it?
NOW
Black & White
Digitally colored drawing of a swan either with a black swan or looking at its shadow self. I think sometime I will scan in the drawings and post them (they are without color, just black & white and maybe some grays). I was thinking about black & white and how easy it is for people to fall into the trap of thinking in those terms instead of giving value to all the shades in between. Gray can give an image some depth. When we look at things deeper it is easier to be compassionate instead of judging others. It is no easy task. It is especially difficult to think compassionately about those who exhibit hateful qualities. Some people just don’t deserve compassion but compassion is not about deserving or not deserving. Compassion is a gift you give to another by choice. I don’t always choose to be compassionate but it is the ideal for me. In order to do this I have to think of all angles and thank goodness I have good friends who help me to do that when I get stuck in anger. But I have to admit that I certainly do not love everyone and I am very disappointed in human beings in general because they have all this intelligence but instead they choose to think and speak and act in black & white creating a stark view of the world. I want to remind them that the world is so much more colorful than that! I just wish they would listen.
Rainy Day Musings 