If Only I Were a Child Prodigy

Today, the crazy old lady I work with showed me a video of a child prodigy artist named Akiane. She is AMAZING. She started painting when she was only six, and she is completely self taught. Her paintings are all spiritual, which is interesting since her mother was an atheist. She started painting pictures of heaven and Jesus and told her mom that they were from visions and that Jesus IS real. She had never been taught anything about religion or heaven since her mother was an atheist, so it's interesting that these images would come to her. She has full, hour long time-lapsed videos of her creating her paintings from start to finish. It's amazing. She really is an inspiration. Plus, she sells her original paintings for $5,000-$3,000,000 so that helps. I would HIGHLY recommend going to her website  by clicking HERE and looking through her gallery. It shows her paintings by the age she was when she made them and it is incredible. Here are some of my favorites:

This is a painting of Jesus entitled Prince of Peace. It takes my breath away. A little boy who came back from a coma looked through many pictures of Jesus and said none of them looked like him. When he saw this painting, he immediately recognized him as Jesus and said this is what he looks like. I heard that from the crazy lady so who knows if it's true or not, but it's a good story. 

This poem, entitled Prince of Peace, was written to go along with this painting of Jesus. 

Perhaps I wanted to catch it
perhaps not

But one morning
an eagle dropped a diamond

And right then
with my faulty brush
full of my own hair
I wanted to paint

I wanted to paint the wings-
Too late - they flew away
I wanted to paint a flower
Too late - it withered

That night the rain
was running after me
Each drop of rain
showed God's face
His face was everywhere
On homes and on me

I wrung out the love
to make the red

I wrung out the stumps
to make the brown

I wrung out the trust
to make the pink

I wrung out my own eyes
to make the blue

I wrung out the seaweed
to make the green

I wrung out the nightly pain
to make the black

I wrung out my grandmother's hair
to make the gray

I wrung out my visions
to make the violet

I wrung out the truth
to make the white

Today I want to paint God's face
IT'S NOT TOO LATE !

This photo doesn't do the painting justice but it's the best one I could find. This is called Forbidden Fruit. The description Akiane gives for this painting was beautiful. Read it below. 

...One morning I woke up earlier than usual, and right away I decided to paint, but I could not find any canvas in my studio. My family was still asleep, so quietly, still in my pajamas, I searched my art closets and found one small canvas that I'd worked on a few years ago, but later gessoed it in black.

After my prayer I began painting a young woman's portrait. next to a branch of fruit. Suddenly I felt God say, blend all the races, because this is Eve, the mother of all mankind.

Right then and there, I understood the meaning:
The tree of the knowledge of good and evil is full of forbidden fruit: red for the knowledge of evil, the green for the knowledge of good. It was created to be tempting, fragrant and easy to be picked. Although the fruit resembles the grapes, it was not.

At first, Eve thinks that she will gain wisdom by biting into the fruit of knowledge, but unexpectedly she finds the deception as the red blood of suffering drips from the green fruit. The knowledge of good and evil is simply too much to understand and experience for a human, and now Eve is looking up to God for forgiveness and help...

This is her self-portrait called Co-Creation

This is a portrait of Mary and baby Jesus.

I painted Mary in a silky blue robe surrounded by a background palette of cerulean, cobalt and Persian blue. This is how I interpreted the vision of baby Jesus and his beautiful young mother. The robe connects both of them as if there were one.

Mary is the symbol of love, warmth, affection, tenderness and devotion. Her story is the story of love and faith.

Mary with her tender love embraced Jesus at birth, embraced him on the Cross and embraced him on his resurrection. That is why the lower hand in a shadow is her witnessing the crucifixion, and the upper hand in light is her witnessing both the birth and the resurrection.

The quality of pictures on her website are a lot better than the ones I downloaded off Google Images so I would recommend going to her website to look at them. She has more portraits, landscapes, poems, etc. and they aren't all obviously religious. GO CHECK IT OUT. You won't regret it. 

Drawing With the Moon

Have you ever read the book "Happy Birthday, Moon"? 

If you haven't, you're missing out. That book is one of my all time favorite children's books. I loved it when I was little and I still love it. There is something about being outside on a summer night, perfect temperature with a slight breeze, looking up at the stars and staring at the moon. 

It is the most relaxing thing in the entire world for me. Hearing the wind in the trees and staring out at the huge, open sky. Priceless. Tonight, I thought I would try and get some pictures of some fireworks over the valley and I ended up drawing with the moon and the city lights. 

I tried signing my name using the moon but it was a lot harder than I thought it would be. This is the closest I got:

That last picture reminds me of another children's book called "Sam and the Firefly". Another classic. 

I could've stayed there all night taking pictures but some sketchy guys were coming down the mountain so I decided to leave so my body didn't end up in a ditch. That's one thing that sucks about being a girl.....you can't be out in the wilderness by yourself late at night. Sounds weird but I like being out in the wilderness by myself at night lol. Stupid sketchy men. Anyway, hopefully more awesome pictures to come soon :) 

Take Me Out to the Ball Game

I am in LOVE with Spanish Fork. After growing up there for 9 years, I can't wait for more. I spent about 4 hours there today and loved it. My sister Tara played her softball game and I took a bunch of pictures while I watched the game with Britt and her adorable baby. Then we went and ate at Barry's, which was a super cute little restaurant. Then Tara and I went down memory lane and went to all the places we used to go to all the time when we lived there. It was awesome. I love it there. I took about 250 pictures and put them all on Facebook, but here are some of my favorites. I accidentally had the time stamp setting on when I took a bunch of these and didn't realize it until halfway through the day so some of these have stupid time and date stamps, but I was able to crop some of them out. 

The Country Side of Me

I have always loved the idea of living out in the country. Big open fields. Cute, run down barns. Horses everywhere. Not to mention country boys lol. Obviously the country has it's downsides, but I think living near the country would be nice. As long as there were still enough things to do close by of course. I love concerts and shopping so you can't be too deep in the country lol. 


I grew up in Spanish Fork, Utah. For those of you who don't know, Spanish Fork is a small town compared to most other cities in Utah (and it is not just the place where they have the Hare Krishna Festival of Colors lol). I love it. And of course, it was where I grew up so I have tons of memories there. One of my favorite memories was going to the baseball/softball park and playing, and watching my sisters play, softball. In Spanish Fork, softball is a pretty big deal. Almost everyone there plays it, or knows someone who plays it, including me and three of my sisters at one point or another. 


There's something about summer nights that make me happy, and watching softball on summer nights makes me even happier. Even though we don't live in Spanish Fork anymore my sister Tara still drives down there to play softball on the adult city league with some of her friends who still live there. 

I am super stoked because she has decided to play again this summer, so I get to watch her play at least one more year :). I'm glad because it gives me an excuse to head back down to there and spend more summer nights watching softball. Plus she's super good at it and I like to watch her dominate the other teams.


I am planning on taking some pics of my "hometown" when I go down there again. I don't know what exactly people are supposed to consider their hometown, but I lived in Spanish Fork for 9 straight years and did most of my growing up there, so I consider it my hometown. Anyway, keep an eye out for those pictures, hopefully they turn out good. 

Here is Rascal Flatts' song Summer Nights. It got stuck in my head while I was writing this.

Making Kodak Moments

Life is about experiences. Life is nothing without doing amazing things and creating memories. Lately I have really been wanting to play tennis, since I haven't played in so long, and it reminded me of one of my favorite days. I don't remember how old I was, maybe 14 or so. My sister Brittany was about 16 I guess. We really wanted to play tennis but it was pouring rain. So we did what any teenagers would do. We found some of our crappiest tennis balls, grabbed our rackets, and went to the tennis court anyway. I don't think I have ever had more fun playing tennis than I did that day with Britt in the pouring rain. In fact, I have a lot of really good memories of playing tennis with Britt.

I remember one time when I was about 16 or something, it was really late at night. It had been snowing for a long time but it had finally stopped. My sisters and I decided to walk to Nielsen's Grove park in Orem, which was about a five minute walk from our house. When we got there, the entire park was covered in deep, untouched snow. Needless to say, it didn't stay that way for very long. We played in the snow until we couldn't feel anything anymore and then trudged back home. I loved that night. 

I guess what I'm learning from all these memories that are coming back to me is that my sisters are awesome and I should hang out with them more, even if they are old and married now lol. 

Amy, Leann, Me

Brittany, Me

Tara, Me

Me, Tara, Amy

Cat, Me

 

 Very crappy picture of me and Cat

 

Sadly, I don't have any pictures of me and Holly but she is hilarious. Don't think I forgot about her.

Anyways, enjoy

A Trip to Saudi Arabia and India

So before you get all excited for me, I have not and will not be going to Saudi Arabia or India any time soon. The title of this post simply describes my latest art project. 

I'm in an Illustration class and our first assignment was to take a nursery rhyme and give it our own twist. After brainstorming a ton of different ideas, I eventually settled on Jack Be Nimble as an Aladdin-type character. 

The colors are weird cause of the lighting and everything looks smaller but you get the idea.

We had to only use black and white shapes, not lines, so it was kinda difficult figuring out how to get everything across.

I made it with India ink and bristol paper. Voila. Enjoy.

Papa Bear, Mama Bear, and Baby Bear

For years and years I have wanted a gigantic teddy bear. My little sister Amy got one from her boyfriend for her birthday or something and I was super jealous. Today, fate intervened. Look what I found while wandering around Costco:

Mine is the one on the left. His name is Snuggleupagus.

Amy's is the one on the right and his name is Fernando. They are now BFF. 

Tonight we made them have dance battles, fighting battles, run on the treadmill, etc. It was great fun. Click here to see a video of part of it.

I think you're never too old to have a stuffed animal (if you're a girl. that part is very important). 

The only rule is, the older you get, the bigger the stuffed animal needs to be. Hence, the teddy bear that comes up to my shoulders. 

I didn't want to sit around and wait for someone to buy it for me, so I got it myself. 

Best decision I've made in a while :)

Look, it's Papa Bear, Mama Bear, Baby Bear, and Goldilocks

I Don't Have a Time Machine, So These Markers Will Have to Do

You know how they say the grass is always greener on the other side? Well it's true. When you're little, you just want to grow up. When you grow up, you just want to go back to being little. I was recently going through a box of my old stuff and it was bringing back lots of memories. Lately it has felt like my childhood was a lot better than what I've got going on right now. 

Since I was feeling all nostalgic and wanting to go back to being a little kid, I went to the store and bought washable markers, colored pencils, a gigantic superhero coloring book, and some mac and cheese.

I colored this awesome Iron Man

The colors in the photo are way off but you get the point. 

Sometimes it's nice to take off all the pressure I put on myself about having to be all creative and progressive and be the best artist,

and just COLOR :)