PURGE ON!

Whew! Finally tackled my art paper stash. Still a good bit left, but at least these drawers can open and shut without getting hung up on stuff now.

While I was working on my piles of paper, I decided I might as well scour these bookshelves for art supplies that I never use. Managed to fill a whole basket with them. I'm thinking my artsy Wimberley friends and I could all meet up at the coffee shop one day soon, each bringing the art supplies we never use anymore, and we could have a swapfest! Oooooor, maybe someone who lost all their supplies in the flood (Susan Callon?) would like to look through them.

Much as it pained me, I even broke down and sent the boot box and six packs you saw up top to the recycling bin. They've been taking up space on my art table for over a year now. If I haven't used them in an art project by now, odds are, I never will. Got my table cleared off just in time, 'cause lookie what finally showed up in the mail yesterday. Woohoo!

First lesson? Couch doodling! Just pick a subject, grab your sketchbook, and sit there doodling anything you can think of that has to do with that topic. You can use these images later as a springboard for other projects. Since I love painting little girls, I started with hairstyles, features and outfits inspired by some Mary Engelbreit paper dolls I found when cleaning out those drawers.

A nice addition to others already in my sketchbook, inspired by favorite artists like Lindsay Ostrom and Cori Dantini.

I really should've finished my purging before this book arrived. It's going to be terribly, terribly hard to tear myself away from it, in order to tackle one of the most difficult categories of all -- photographs!