Diving into the Rest of My Life & Kelly Rae Roberts

Diving into the Rest of My Life  11"x14" wooden board

I've been subscribing to Kelly Rae Unscripted for the past few months. Kelly Rae Roberts is a wonderful mixed media artist, and a lovely person. Her art is a soul-full collage/painting mix of angels or little ladies with great, deep quotes that makes you smile and feel good when you see it. In the Unscripted weekly video she creates a piece of art, all the while chatting about life and things. She is joined most times by her sidekick and office manager, Nicole and her dog Lulu. It is not a painting lesson but more of a "let's hang and create together and be art buddies" kind of experience. During the video I am working right along side her. I made the above piece while my art buddy, Kelly Rae, worked on hers. You can find Kelly Rae at http://www.kellyraeroberts.com.

Queen of My Heart  5"x7" flat canvas

Another little piece I did is called "Queen of my Heart". It is a birthday present for my granddaughter, who just turned 26 years old. This is her in the first grade celebrating her birthday at school. She was queen for a day. It is one of my favorite pictures of her. When I go to the mainland next week I will see her and the family. Can't wait to give it to her. I love sharing art!







The inspiration for Diving into the Rest of My Life came when I was driving to the beach one morning and thinking about retiring. This piece of a quote rolled through my mind, "diving into the rest of my life" and I knew I wanted to use it in my art. Also being inspired by Kelly Rae, I knew I would make a collage and use it on that. So below is the collage part. I put in pictures and words for all the things I want to be doing once I retire.

Diving into the Rest of My Life Collage

Lots of art making, writing, (I'm finishing up 2 books at the present moment: Swims: Adventures with Hawaiian Spinners and Hawaiian Spinner Dolphins. My goal is to finish and publish both by end of 2017, when I retire. I am really close.) photography, sailing, (Norman, my husband, dreams of sailing to all the surf spots in the Pacific Ocean.) surfing, traveling, and living and loving life! I had a lot of fun doing the collage.

Using a black sharpie, I drew the girl diving and waves, bubbles and sun. Then I gessoed over most of it. I got this technique (collage, black sharpie drawing and gesso) from a wonderful and free tutorial for kids on the Internet. I have searched for it but can't find it yet, and don't remember the artist's name. When I find it I will credit her. I put a little too much gesso and covered up more than I really wanted but by the time I figured that out it was already dry. So, I sanded it with fine grit sandpaper and was able to subtly uncover stuff. I added some color, sanded some more and stamped my phrase and words in the bubbles.

Even though you can't really see the collage anymore, I know what's underneath and love looking at my vision of my future each morning when I roll out of bed.