Febuary 16th. 2008 • ©Lisa Rivas
The theory that "Onion Domes" are like "two hands clasped in prayer" or "a flame burning towards heaven." Either way, they beautifully express in a fine way a natural spiritual attitude of reverence.
Febuary 22nd. 2008 • ©Lisa Rivas
A dandelion has a composite flower head consisting of many tiny ray-flowers called florets...
...and this flower head can change into the well known "white gossamer" seed-ball overnight.
In botanical terms it would be a "multiple fruit" since each floret produces a single fruit or seed.
Also each seed has it's own tiny built-in parachute to fly far and near...
Febuary 29th. 2008 • ©Lisa Rivas
A leap, a jump or Jeté, preceded by a grand battement or high kick, in which a dancer leaps from one leg and lands on the other. It is most often done forward and usually involves doing a "full leg splits in mid-air."
March 7th. 2008 • ©Lisa Rivas
A mandala depicting a layout of an "english garden" and a Pear Tree!
March 28th. 2008 • ©Lisa Rivas
Illustration Friday's topic this week is: HOMAGE
I originally painted this piece shortly after my mother passed away a few years ago, it was to acknowledge and honor her.
She came from Boston, Massachusetts but lived most of her life in Caracas, Venezuela. She had an amazing mind, incredible memory and was patient with grace. It is her that helps me make some of those smart decisions in life.
I tried to captivate her presence from that other world surrounded by the lush and energetic flora and life of the tropics where she lived.
Coincidentally, her anniversary is coming up very soon...
April 4th. 2008 • ©Lisa Rivas
Use energy wisely.
Keep the earth a safe haven.
SAVE the EARTH for there is only 1.
Save our natural resources for the generations to come.
April 11th. 2008 • ©Lisa Rivas
The showy Parrot Tulips were flayed apart by the slashing rain;
and they "failed" to stand up and hold their ground.
Their frail petals and stems seem to be pleading for mercy and seeking help...
April 19th. 2008 • ©Lisa Rivas
In primitive times before procreation, the world was abundant only in energy, gases
and "primordial mud"...
...then these particles where blown together into shapes and lit with colors...
April 28th. 2008 • ©Lisa Rivas
“Age imprints more "wrinkles" in the mind than it does on the face.”
Michel de Montaigne (french philosopher - writer 1533-1592)
May 6th. 2008 • ©Lisa Rivas
I had been working on a new image "for seed",
but it got so complex and convoluted that it started to choke!
Creativity can not be rushed nor forced, it needs to evolve...
and...
I need a breath of fresh air...
May 10th. 2008 • ©Lisa Rivas
What is a soul?
It's like "electricity" we don't really know what it is,
but it's a force that can light a room. Ray Charles
May 16th. 2008 • ©Lisa Rivas
Port of Guanta, Estado Anzoategui, VENEZUELA
I lived here for a few weeks a little more than a couple of decades ago.
It was wide open and amazing...
May 27th. 2008 • ©Lisa Rivas
Guatemalan children tell their worries to dolls and place them under their pillows.
According to legend, the dolls take their worries away.
May 30th. 2008 • ©Lisa Rivas
This small budding flower with it's soft petals and waving statens,
is like a baby reaching it's arms to be loved.
A "new baby" is like the beginning of all things, hopes and a dream of possibilities. Eda J. Le Shan
A baby is an angel whose wings decrease as his legs increase. Author Unknown
June 6th. 2008 • ©Lisa Rivas
In the shadows "Angels" await to remind us about the light...
“A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words.”
Blessed are those who give without remembering. And blessed are those who take without forgetting. Bernard Meltzer
June 13th. 2008 • ©Lisa Rivas
“An attempt at visualizing the "Fourth Dimension":
Take a point, stretch it into a line, curl it into a circle, twist it into a sphere,
and punch through the sphere.” Albert Einstein
June 20th. 2008 • ©Lisa Rivas
We are not cisterns made for hoarding, we are channels made for sharing.
Billy Graham
If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.
J.R.R. Tolkien
June 27th. 2008 • ©Lisa Rivas
These birds are furiously eager in their "fierce competition" for water at this oasis.
Fierce extremes in their continuances will not feed themselves.
William Shakespeare
July 4th. 2008 • ©Lisa Rivas
So our situation is not tasting as sweet...
Sour, sweet, bitter, pungent, all must be tasted. Chinese proverb
I suppose any note, no matter how sour,
sounds like a song if you hold onto it long enough.
Dewitt Bodeen
July 18th. 2008 • ©Lisa Rivas
Earth provides "enough" to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed. Mahatma Gandhi
I exist as I am, that is enough. Walt Whitman
July 25th. 2008 • ©Lisa Rivas
Empty coffee cans can be very functional after the fact. Use them to mix paint, store items. I keep my varnishing brushes suspended in solvent with the lid holding the brush. Here you can see some of my supplies and tools.
Many of my paintings were painted on the floor since they were of a very large format and I could move and visualize better.
If you hear a voice within you say ‘you cannot paint,’ then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced. Vincent Van Gogh
August 1st. 2008 • ©Lisa Rivas
They huffed and puffed! Then Poof! This is what occurred...
Don't let your dreams go up in smoke - practice fire safety. Author Unknown
Fire and gunpowder do not sleep together. Proverb
August 8th. 2008 • ©Lisa Rivas
It's not the towering sail, but the unseen wind that moves the ship
Proverb
Thought is the wind, knowledge the sail, and mankind the vessel.
August Hare
August 15th. 2008 • ©Lisa Rivas
Detachment involves present-moment living - living in the here and now.
We allow life to happen instead of forcing and trying to control it.
We relinquish regrets over the past and fears about the future.
We make the most of each day.
Melody Beattie
An old thing becomes new if you detach it from what usually surrounds it.
Robert Bresson
August 22nd. 2008 • ©Lisa Rivas
Marriage must constantly fight against a monster which devours everything: "ROUTINE" Honore de Balzac
“A child reminds us that playtime is an essential part of our daily routine.”
Chains do not hold a marriage together. It is threads, hundreds of tiny threads which sew people together through the years. Simone Signoret
August 29th. 2008 • ©Lisa Rivas
She glances at the photo,
and the pilot light of memory flickers in her eyes.
Frank Deford
They taught me how to imagine, and how to dream.
They gave me wonderful memories, and left footprints on my heart.
Jacquie McTaggart
September 5th. 2008 • ©Lisa Rivas
• Things you do not use or love.
• Things that are untidy or disorganized.
• Too many things in too small of a place.
• Anything unfinished.
Each morning see some task begin, each evening sees it close.
Something attempted, something done.
Has earned a night’s repose. Henry Longfellow
It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another.
But above all, try something. Franklin Delano Roosevelt
September 12th. 2008 • ©Lisa Rivas
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent. John Donne
The optimist lives on the peninsula of infinite possibilities;
the pessimist is stranded on the island of perpetual indecision.
William Arthur Ward
September 19th. 2008 • ©Lisa Rivas
The worst cliques are those which consist of one man.
George Bernard Shaw • Irish literary Critic, Playwright and Essayist • 1925 Nobel Prize for Literature • 1856-1950
Clique • A narrow circle of persons associated by common interests or for the accomplishment of a common purpose.
September 26th. 2008 • ©Lisa Rivas
I believe in a packed Heaven and an empty Hell. Patricia Buckley
When a man is wrapped up in himself he makes a pretty small package. John Ruskin
October 3rd. 2008 • ©Lisa Rivas
Though dreams can be deceiving, like faces are to hearts,
they serve for sweet relieving, when fantasy and reality lie too far apart. Fiona Apple
A wise woman puts a grain of sugar into everything she says to a man,
and takes a grain of salt with everything he says to her. Helen Rowland
October 10th. 2008 • ©Lisa Rivas
There is geometry in the humming of the strings,
there is music in the spacing of the spheres.
Pythagoras (c. 550 bc)
Not on one strand are all life's jewels strung.
William Morris
Freedom is for honest people.
No man who is not himself honest can be free.
He is his own trap.
L. Ron Hubbard
October 17th. 2008 • ©Lisa Rivas
Punctuality is the art of guessing how late the other fellow is going to be.
Unknown
Sometimes we stare so long at a door that is closing that we see too late the one that is open.
Alexander Graham Bell
October 25th. 2008 • ©Lisa Rivas
What breaks in a moment may take years to repair.
Swedish Proverb
October 31st. 2008 • ©Lisa Rivas
Absence of occupation is not rest;
"a mind quite vacant" is a mind in distress!
William Cowper
If you leave the smallest corner of your head vacant for a moment,
other people's opinions will rush in from all quarters. George Bernard Shaw
November 9th. 2008 • ©Lisa Rivas
A wise old owl sat in an oak;
The more he saw the less he spoke;
The less he spoke the more he heard;
Why aren't we like that wise old bird?
Edward Hersey Richards (b. 1874)
Never mistake knowledge for wisdom.
One helps you make a living; the other helps you make a life.
Sandra Carey
November 14th. 2008 • ©Lisa Rivas
I don't pretend to have all the answers.
But the questions are certainly worth thinking about...
Arthur C. Clarke
In a vague allusion, the west light,
the sketched hills foresees man on his three paths:
to be born, to remain, to disintegrate...
November 21st. 2008 • ©Lisa Rivas
Opinion has caused more trouble on this little earth than plagues or earthquakes.
Voltaire (1694 - 1778)
I think we consider too much the good luck of the early bird
and not enough the bad luck of the early worm.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
There is no such thing as public opinion. There is only published opinion. Winston Churchill
November 28th. 2008 • ©Lisa Rivas
The "balloon" seems to stand still in the air,
while the "earth" flies past underneath.
Alberto Santos Dumont (early pioneer of aviation)
The higher we soar, the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly. Friedrich Nietzsche
December 5th. 2008 • ©Lisa Rivas
Baseball is similar to an island of activity amidst a sea of statistics.
Author Unknown
According to the World Resources Institute, more than 80 percent of the Earth’s natural forests already have been destroyed.
DID YOU KNOW? An area of forest equal to 50 baseball fields is lost every minute!
Much of the vitality in a friendship lies in the honoring of differences,
not simply in the enjoyment of similarities. James Fredericks
December 12th. 2008 • ©Lisa Rivas
The "Frogget" children choir
were nicely humming away,
at the social of Georgianna Day.
When the "goldfish" heard
this great wonderful classic,
they all joined in to the music.
The musical turned rambunctious!
and totally out of hand,
thus splashing and wetting
the whole "Frogget" band!
December 12th. 2008 • ©Lisa Rivas
The fish in the water are silent,
the animals on the earth are noisy,
the bird in the air are singing.
But man has in him the silence of the sea,
the noise of the earth and the music of the air.
Rabindranath Tagore
Some people hear their own "inner voices" with great clearness.
And they live by what they hear.
Such people become crazy... or they become legend.
Jim Harrison (American author)
Her voice was like "the voice" the stars had when they sang together.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Nothing makes us so lonely as our secrets. Paul Tournier
Nature hides her secrets because of her essential loftiness,
but not by means of ruse. Albert Einstein
Love this year!
Another fresh new year is here!
Another year to live!
To banish worry, doubt, and fear,
To love and laugh and give!
This bright new year is given me
To live each day with zest!
To daily grow and try to be,
My highest and my best!
I have the opportunity
Once more to right some wrongs,
To pray for peace, to plant a tree,
And sing more joyful songs!
William Arthur Ward
• • • • • • • • • ♥ • • • • • • • • •
She said she usually cried at least once each day not because she was sad,
but because the world was so beautiful and life was so short.
A reader and friend asks: What is a "Pie Bird"?
Pie Birds date back to quaint Victorian times and are used when baking pies, to prevent the pie filling from boiling over into your oven.
Made of ceramic, these bird-shaped devices act as a clever vent, allowing the steam created from the fruit or other filling to escape from inside the pie.
They also support the pastry crust in the center of the pie so it does not sink in the middle.
The moon's an arrant thief,
and her "pale fire" she snatches from the sun.
William Shakespeare
• 30" x 30", digital illustration • Lisa Rivas © 2009
• print on ricepaper, rhinestones and mounted on canvas
• limited edition
Over hill, over dale,
Thorough bush, thorough brier,
Over park,
Over pale,
Thorough flood, thorough fire,
I do wander everywhere.
William Shakespeare
• "Rain" (detail) • 30" x 30", digital illustration • Lisa Rivas © 2009
• print on ricepaper, rhinestones and mounted on canvas
• limited edition
Creating a new theory is not like
destroying an old barn and erecting
a skyscraper in its place.
It is rather like climbing a mountain,
gaining new and wider views,
discovering unexpected connections
between our starting points
and its rich environment.
But the point from which we started out
still exists and can be seen,
although it appears smaller
and forms a tiny part of our broad view
gained by the mastery of the obstacles
on our adventurous way up.
Albert Einstein
^...★...^...★...^...★...^...★...^
After climbing a great hill,
one only finds that there are many more hills to climb.
Nelson Mandela
