When life gets crazy, I collage

The past nine months have been kinda crazy for my extended family medically speaking. Biopsies, cancer diagnosis, myasthenia gravis, feeding tubes, hospice care, heart transplant, infection, DNR, DNR repeal, DNR again, more biopsies, no cancer but abnormal cells, autoimmune responses, vitreous detachment, and on and on.

This week my grandfather-in-law finally passed away. He was a dearly loved man and left behind an amazing legacy of love and family. We are all taking comfort in the fact that he is no longer in pain and was fully ready for things to end. That being said, is is just hard and sad right now.

As we run around trying to get ready for the 10 hour drive that awaits us, I stepped away to have a little time in my studio to collage. It is what I do when I need to work with my hands and engage color but am a little bit of a mess inside.

What do these textures look like next to each other? How does this color relate to that one? This is my favorite kind of therapy. 

Prints of these and others are available here in my shop. 

What are your favorite creative coping mechanisms? Would love to hear your stories!

Toddler art takeover

The best way to know my kiddos are feeling better is when the oldest asks, " Mom, can we make acrylic skins?" For those of you who have never made them, Jane Davies does a great tutorial here! 

I toyed with the idea of working on the dining table, but I kinda like the idea of the kids creating in my studio. While it is really easy to fit one of them in there, but it can get kinda tricky with all three. I had two blank canvases that I adhered pieces of wax paper to (wax paper was the substrate for the skins. Note: see update at end of post before trying this yourself!) using artist tape and a third to a basic drawing board. The kids picked green and blue for their first colors, and then I let them go at it!!

A good 20-30 minutes of work time is usually all they need! I've found that limiting their color palette greatly increases the kids happiness with the final product!

I'm planning on doing some live Periscope video tutorials this weekend talking about ways to make art with your kids. My handle is @rachelloewens if you want to join in on the conversation!!

Urgent update!! Do NOT use wax paper for a substrate when making a skin. They won't come off!! Agh!! I haven't told my daughter this devastating news because I am pretty sure there will be tears. Think I will go back to using sheet protectors or my gelli plate because they are a safe bet. Much apologies to anyone who tried this with the wax paper!!

In the kitchen: comfort food for crummy colds

The Lowens Haus got hit with a round of colds this week. The drippy nose, constant cough sometimes accompanied by a fever, up several times during the night kind of colds. Bleh. 

I'm sure it won't come as a big shock that I haven't been painting much. I just don't work very well when I'm sleep deprived. There would have been a time where seeing my unfinished work just sitting there would have left me restless, but I've started to enjoy just going into my studio to look at my work, the tubes of paint lying where I left them last and my houseplants bathed in nice northern light.

The weather is just cool enough that a bowl of warm soup still sounds like the best thing after a day of using copious amounts of hand sanitizer.  For this meal I made 

Curried Lentil Soup by the Nourished Kitchen (skip the pre-soak and cook lentils in soup)

Balsamic Maple Roasted Brussels Sprouts (hold the bacon to make this meal vegan)

with roasted craisins and sunflower seeds to top it off.

I had originally planned on recording on Periscope for my first time on Saturday but think that will be just too much for me. Fingers crossed that everyone gets better this weekend!!

If you want to go ahead and follow me in anticipation of my fist broadcast my handle is @rachelloewens. 

Hope you all have a great weekend!

Surviving #snomahog

Snomahog? Yes, snomahog! The Mayor of Omaha accidentally dubbed our most recent blizzard after some sort of snow/ city in Nebraska/ porcine creature. Really. I'm not clever enough to make this sort of thing up!

Anyway, my kiddos informed me last week that they were done with snow. All being to young for school, the prospect of a snow day held little appeal. That is until I mentioned that Daddy would stay home all day, that they could stay in their jammies and could pick out new art supplies at Dick Blick to keep them busy during our confinement. Instant attitude improvement!

Now while my kiddos were super pumped about their creative enterprises, I was not so excited. You may recall that I am working on this massive garter stitch blanket and should, therefore, be thrilled at the prospect of being snowed in with knitting to be done. However, I accidentally spilled hot sugar (like 300 F hot sugar) down my hand. I'm not really in any pain, but the bandages make knitting super awkward! 

I am still able to draw so I've been making some patterns on tissue paper for future collages and been playing around  with two-tone pen and ink designs in my sketchbook, too. 

Hope all of you that were snowed in, too had as much fun as we did!!

A little crayon therapy

We spent Independence Day at my husband's grandparents house in Langdon, ND. This quiet little town is the perfect escape for our little ones who are not big fans of fireworks. Also, my Grandparents-in-law are just wonderful people. They've set a great example to the family of how Christians should live and love people, warts and all!

It was really hard to say goodbye to them on this trip because Grandpa's second round of cancer is finally catching up with him, and we don't expect to see him again on this side of eternity. We are filled with a mix of grief for our up-coming loss but also a hope-filled peace that he will soon no longer have to feel the effects of this disease. 

This up and down of emotions has just made me just not want to work on anything I've got "in process" for the moment. I knew that I just needed to work on something so I was thankful that Jane Davies posted this showing her latest pieces using crayons. Given the ages of my children I'm sure you can imaging how many crayons I have!!

I ended up using a combination of crayons, oil pastels and watercolor. The pastels and crayons work as a resist for the watercolor which can created some interesting pooling of color.

The older I get the more I appreciate these times to just experiment and play. They help keep my creative energy up and any negative inner criticism down. Using cheaper materials also takes off the pressure to create masterpieces each time I'm in my studio!

Speaking of tough critics, my four-year-old told me that she thinks I did really well on these pieces. She is not known for holding back negative reviews of my work so positive comments are always appreciated! :-)

Science notebook success!!

When I was a youngster I loved to hike. I lived in a house surrounded by trees so I spent as much time outside as I did in. As I got older and had some health issues (more on that subject at a later time), hiking was no longer an activity that I could enjoy. 

Thankfully this summer has been quite the turn-around for me. I'm feeling better than I have in a long while, and we are starting to make a Sunday hike part of our weekly routine. My kiddos have been all up for it until lately when a dead baby animal sighting and a drastic increase of mosquitoes have threatened to derail this exercise. 

I knew that if I gave my kiddos some sort of activity to do while we hike we would be fine, but what can you "do" with a 4yo and 3yo while you hike? My solution was to make a science notebook where they could mark off each time they saw something on the trail.

I made a list of the most common things we see and showed them how to make a tick mark each time they saw the item listed. Knowing my children as I do, I knew that this would last no more than five minutes, but I hoped that it would at least kinda redeem hiking in their little minds. 

As predicted, they lost interest in making little marks, but instead drew a line or scribble each time they saw something of note. Ants, butterflies, squirrels, wild turkeys and bird sightings were all meticulously recorded on this page. 

So not only did we get through our Sunday/Father's Day adventure, but now I have an activity to try for our upcoming 10+ hour road trip!

Memorial weekend making

My goal to have most of the living room painted was sort-of met. The brush that I was using for edging broke so I still have some touch-ups to do and an entire wall still needs a second coat. Thankfully said wall is behind a sofa, bookcase and artwork so no one could tell!

Friday night was spent watching Dr. Who on the porch by the fire. My kind of date!

The Grammy's took turn watching the kiddos so I had plenty of time to clean the house and prep food for Monday night. 

We make foil-pack dinners on the fire so most of my work is chopping all the veggies!

All week long it looked as though it would rain, but thankfully the storm did not roll in until after the evening was over. Each year I try to prepare only enough food for the night so I won't have to deal with leftovers and each year I fail. Guess what? This year was no exception!

We don't usually each meat but we had quite a bit left so I made a huge batch of beef curry which easily used up ALL the leftovers! 

And here's a little peek into what I was sketching on the porch!

Weekly update

 I would love to post some sort of "in my studio" weekly update, but this has been one of those weeks where I'm not sure if I really have much to post. My 11m son decided that his afternoon nap should be optional for a few days so that meant no painting for Mama!

Today he figured that a nap was a good idea so I was able to catch up on laundry and write this post.

Those of you who follow me on Instagram would have seen this post. I drew some flowers with Tulip paint on a transparency sheet with the hopes of making an acrylic skin by covering it with gel medium and then peeling it off. 

Unfortunately, I used the matte medium instead of the gloss so it was a little more opaque than I would have preferred. I've made some more with gloss, and they look much better. Hope to finish this piece up sometime this week and get back to my other starts. 

Sunday was nice because I was able to churn out this sketch while all three of my kiddos enjoyed their post-church naps (Sunday school wipes out my very social yet introverted children.).

And once they woke up, we all headed to a local single track park for little picnic.

We found this nice little spot to enjoy our PB & J's and carrots before the mosquitos started to drive us crazy. The little ones enjoyed saying, "hi" to all the cyclists that passed us by (none of whom probably every saw people picnicking there). :-)