Listening with the Artist's Eye



Sit, Rest, Work
Active Listening through Watercolor

 What captures your attention? What do you want to get into your consciousness?

I am driven to find optimism, hope, opportunity, enthusiasm and inspiration for living my daily life fully engaged.

I discovered by observing my responses to the quotes, blessing and poems sent by others I believe every action results in an equal and opposite reaction. If the message sent is worthy of paying attention to, I'm driven to do something with the message to get it to seep into my bones.

How this translates to the artist in me is everything that captures my attention is worthy of an artistic response to improve my listening to, and acting on, the message.

I'm compelled to do watercolor studies of poems, quotes, affirmations or blessings sent to me by others. These responsorals give real meaning to the term active listening.

In response to the motivating or uplifting messages sent, I respond by translating the essence of the messages into visually appealing as well as verbally-meaningful Q'ART--or quote art-- and send them back to friends and family.



Sometimes 3 Months of Experience Trumps 30 Years of Experience




"What Would Life Be
 If We Had No Courage to Attempt Anything?"
Vincent Van Gogh

Remember Typewriters?

  I wrote my first few books and magazine articles on a typewriter. At the time my good friend and colleague, Karen King said,

"Your forte is speaking and communicating to a live audience-- I don't think you'll be able to capture that in the written word."

That was the only thing I worried about back then: Could I translate the power of the spoken word into written words and elicit action from the reader?

I didn't have to think twice about how or where to put my thoughts to paper. There were no personal computers, internet sites, FAX machines, or e-mail; No cell phones, smart phones, scanners, or digital cameras; No blogs, on-line courses, webinars, video conferencing, or learning management systems; No social networking--no Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn; No Kindles, Amazon or e-books. I used the tools available to me at the time: pen, paper, typewriter and snail mail aka 'The Mail'.

When Does 3 Months of Experience Trump 30 Years?
In the 30 plus years I've worked in the training and development field, I've honed my speaking, facilitation, writing and program development skills. Those 30+ years of experience count for a lot. I am a skilled communicator, motivator and leader. I conduct meaningful and engaging workshops. But this is not enough.

In today's technologically-based world, sometimes 3 months of experience trumps 30 years of experience. This isn't to say 30 years of experience in the workplace isn't important. It means it's just as important to stay current learning and applying new technologies.

Overwhelmed by the Speed of Change? Discover What Motivates You to Keep Up

Rather than becoming overwhelmed by the speed at which things are changing, pledge to maintain a passion for life-long learning and to continually seek out your current motivators for stepping into the next phase of technology. Then take the next step.

Me? I'm motivated to learn how to use the latest technology by two things: 1) my need to communicate with and influence others and 2) my desire to find new ways to play with and showcase my art.

So what motivates you? What's one step you can take to move toward something you want to do better? I started Lightarted Living so I could play with the technology and communicate with you. What do you want yourself to do NOW? How can you play to learn and change?

Motto: Small Daily Decisions Over a Lifetime Add Up!

Felted Life Change Purses--Why? Because I felt like it!

Felted Life Change Purse
with Affirmation Hearts

Learning and changing is best done in a relaxed state of flow...and I can think of no better way to put myself in that state than by focusing on creating art.

In my latest creations I  blended the watercolored affirmation hearts with hand-felted change purses to create LIFE CHANGE purses.

These hands & hearts-on creative activities help me stay focused and uplifted, and provide me the motivation to practice my computer skills-- scanning, blogging, linking, editing...always looking for the next little skill to practice.

Thanks to son, Sean, I acquired a high quality webcam, headset and microphone we use to Skype, another easy to use and FREE communication tool.  I put the new system to work as I practiced narrating my felted life change purse powerpoint slideshow.

I invite you to join me in a quest for engaging in life-long learning by finding what gives you that relaxed state of flow and letting that be what motivates you to take the next step.

Motto in play: small daily decisions over a lifetime add up!

Lightarted Sue

Success! Stepping over invisible barriers to taking action

Lightarted Designs Original

I've been on a quest for pushing buttons and practicing additional computer skills to highlight my art and increase my professional skills.

This Lightarted Designs original was scanned in as a jpeg. It needs to be cropped, but I'm happy I figured out  if I give the command from the computer devices and printers (right click) instead of from the printer/scanner I can scan as a jpeg instead of a pdf document.

My goal is to work through something I love (art) to motivate me to continue to 'just click buttons', run experiments and figure out how to make the computer my ultimate art project.

Lightarted Sue

Show, Don't Tell (Yourself)

Show, Don't Tell Yourself you can apply technology. Today I'm starting my blog and learning how to do things by pushing buttons and showing myself how it works. The biggest belief barrier is always found at the first step.

Step over the invisible barriers to taking action

Barriers to blogging

1st blog

Logging on

Need to be perfect or profound

Failure to push the button and start

Oh Lighten Up!

Begin Simply, and Simply Begin

If you don't like what you post you can delete it.