Hey! It's Solve it Sunday and I thought I'd give you a bit of a challenge by using a picture that doesn't have an identifiable image. If using an abstract piece weren't enough to make it interesting, I've also selected a Tetris style cut. Don't worry though, if it has you tearing your hair out, you can reselect your own cut and difficulty level. Don't forget to come back and post your time in the comments!

Solve it Sunday

Today was a good day. I sold 5 paintings and a few prints at the Artisan Market, so naturally I'm thrilled! I'm not any less tired though and I have a busy week ahead of me with several deadlines looming, so today's puzzle is an older piece. Francesca is one of my favourite nudes and looking at her makes me want to get back into painting them, so I just might have to do a few!

Solve it Sunday

It's been a crazy week, so I am spending this evening catching up with old friends in chat, enjoying some time with my hubby and playing with my new mobile phone. Today's puzzle is a charoal and graphite drawing that I sold this afternoon. I'm guessing this one will be a tricky one to solve because it's monochromatic! Muwahahahaha!

Solve it Sunday and October Giveaway

Every month I do a prize draw and this month, I am GIVING away this 5 x 7 inch ORIGINAL painting! This giveaway is open worldwide and you have until 9PM GMT on 10/31/09 to enter.
The winner will be selected at random and will have 72 hours to respond or a new winner will be chosen. I will announce the winner on my blog, but if you would like to make sure you don’t miss out, leave a valid email address in your post and I will notify you personally as well. Thanks for entering and good luck!

Required for Entry: Visit my Etsy shop then leave a comment here, telling me what your favorite piece is.

Extra Entries: It’s easy to get extra entries (see below), but please make sure you do the required entry first, as well as leave a separate comment for each entry.

• Suggest a name for this painting (1 extra entry)
• Follow my blog publicly (1 extra entry)
• Become a fan of JolieArt on Facebook and leave your FB name here (1 extra entry)
• Add JolieArt to your Etsy favorites and leave your username here (1 extra entry)
• Start a thread in the Etsy Promotions forum about my giveaway and link back to this post. Leave the link to the forum post here. (1 extra entry)
• Subscribe to my blog feed via email and leave your email address here (1 extra entry) .
• Blog about this giveaway and link back to it. Leave the link to your blog post here, so I know where to find it. (1 extra entry)
• Make a purchase at JolieArt and leave your username here (5 extra entries)
• Refer a friend from Facebook, MySpace, Bebo or anywhere else and ask them to leave your name in their comment. (1 entry for your friend, plus an extra entry for you!)
• Mention this giveaway in your Youtube video and tell me where to find it. (1 extra entry)
• Follow JolieArt on Twitter and tweet this message "RT@JolieArt giveaway. WIN her gorgeous original painting! Details here: http://bit.ly/i3gCz". Please leave a link to your tweet in your comment. (you can tweet this up to once per day and get 1 extra entry each time!)
  

Here she is for a bit of Solve it Sunday puzzle fun!

Solve it Sunday

My student, Emma has been painting with me since she was about 4 years old (she's 8 now) and is enthusiastic about art each and every time I see her. We recently looked through her gigantic portfolio of art and boy, is it impressive! She has a body of work to rival any professional artist of 30 years. I hear she is working on a new piece and I can't wait to see it!

Today's puzzle is an impressionist style painting created by Emma when she just under 7 years old and it's one of my favorites. The view is of Belfast Lough, sketched, then painted while looking out of the window from her mum's 2nd floor office window. I always encourage Emma to take liberties while painting...after all, it is her painting and her imagination, so it can be anything she wants it to be, right? In this painting, I particularly love how she chose to include the train, but made it a shade of blue, so that it didn't detract from the sea she had so carefully painted. It was just such a well-thought out, mature creative decision and I think a very good one too! I wish I had taken a reference photo, so you could see her subject matter in real life. You can see more of Emma's work on my flickr.


Enjoy!

Solve it Sunday

Today was a great day! For at least the 4th or 5th day in a row, the sun was shining, which is a rare occurence in Ireland. Sales were great at The Artisan Market and to top it off, two of the nicest guys bought one of my floral originals and one of my favorite prints. They moved here from the USA a few years ago, and as it turns out, one of them grew up only 30 minutes from my hometown. Talk about a coincidence! Given the size of the USA, it's a real shocker to run into someone from my area when we are halfway around the world. Thomas and Gustavo are major art enthusiasts, are so friendly and funny and were just great to chat to. Today's puzzle is the floral painting they chose. Enjoy!

Solve it Sunday

This is Nicolette. I just listed her on Etsy, but really, really wasn't sure that I wanted to! She is one of my new favorites, but since I can't keep them all, I decided I will be happy if someone loves her as much as I do. Enjoy the puzzle and don't forget that you can change its difficulty level if you like.

Solve it Sunday

It was a week ago today that I committed to my new blog format and I must say, I'm pretty darn proud of myself! I have stuck to it and posted everyday and hopefully had a few interesting things to say along the way. I thought it would be really hard committing to blogging everyday, but it has actually been easier, because with a focused plan there has been none of the typcial 'What should I write about today?' dilemmas.

This week's puzzle is a painting that I have just listed on Etsy. You may have seen her recently when I posted new work, but not like this! Have fun!

New Direction

My blog is heading in a new direction...well, not a new direction maybe...just a bit more focused. Each day of the week will be devoted to a specific theme, so that you know what to expect and when to have a look for what interests you most. I will put the theme in the tags, so that you can find all of the posts with that theme easily.

• Solve it Sunday: Each Sunday I will post a piece of my work as a puzzle, so that you can start your week with a bit of fun.
• Art Market Monday: Each Monday I will tell you where to find my new work, what to expect to see coming up on Etsy, where you can find my work in person and introduce a SPECIAL OFFER for the following week.
• Talk Art Tuesday: Each Tuesday, I will post something art related up for discussion or inspiration. It might be a technique video I find on Youtube or a technique of my own that I want to share. It could be a link to an art exhibition that is interesting or controversial...basically anything art related that I feel like talking about.
• Work in Progress Wednesday: Each Tuesday I will post photos of what I have been working on, as well as tell you how I'm feeling about its progress, ask for critiques, etc.
• Thumbs Up Thursday: Each Thursday I will post a link to something/someone that I have discovered and think is fantastic. It may be another visual artist, a musician, a useful website, etc.
• Fresh Off the Easel Friday: Each Friday I will post my just completed work.
  
• Simply Saturday: Saturdays will be more casual. I'll post anything that I didn't have time or room for the rest of the week, or that doesn't fit in those categories. Also, I do a monthly giveaway for my offline mailing list and am now going to add my online contacts to that. You will find info about that here. I'll be posting info on how to enter for my next giveaway this Saturday.
  

I hope you will like my new blog format. If there is anything else you would like to see, I'm always open to comments/suggestions. Here is my first puzzle...I have posted it as 48 pieces, but for those of you who really like a challenge, you can change it up to 240 pieces.