Well I suppose most artists know about primary colours and knocking back and secondary colours and so on ... but do we know the theory part or do we just find out by trial and error? That probably depends on how formal our art education has been and which medium we originally work in. In oils and acrylics for example colour can be layered over others if we don't quite achieve the right effect, whereas in watercolour it is necessary to estimate the effect before applying the paint.

I have noticed that increasingly our female members here are becoming centenarians ... now I am professionally curious.

My job is about enabling older people to remain independently at home rather than having to move to a care home when they do not wish to - and it is important that we consider their lives holistically and make sure they have opportunities to express themselves and to enjoy their leisure ... so here is my question:

Has Queeky found the magic ingredient that gives older ladies a new lease of life? if so I need to share it with all my service users ...

Thank you to all three entrants ... and to those who planned to enter but ran out of time ... we would have loved to see your entries and hope that you will go on to add many musically inspired pictures to this group in the future. I am not sure we could have coped with more entries - choosing between these was stressful enough ... so here are the results:

There is still time for you to submit your entry in this contest - which closes at noon GMT on 24 January.

There are three entries so far:

Sara8903
http://www.queeky.com/gallery/image/music-inspired-contest?1149966155=1
http://www.queeky.com/gallery/image/music-contest-2-lady-pasta?1953728772=1

Bluerain
http://www.queeky.com/gallery/image/reflection-15
http://www.queeky.com/gallery/image/over-looking

Demian09
http://www.queeky.com/gallery/image/bonsai-1?286014984=1
http://www.queeky.com/gallery/image/the-storm-2

I painted my carved gourds recently and thinking afresh about them encouraged me to go exploring ... now Peru is rather a long way to travel in winter so I travelled virtually instead and here are a couple of links to artisans carving gourds from around the world ...

This is rather long and not great quality but it is talking about gourd carving in the Huancayo area where mine came from ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfL7zRWssdc&feature=related

There has been a lot in the blogs recently about music and how it influences our art but there didn't seem to be anywhere on Queeky to celebrate that common theme other than posting our pictures individually. In Selinadie's blog we discussed a contest to do this but we also thought it would be good to create a permanent Music Inspired Gallery - so the contest is running through the new Group Art Inspired by Music

RULES:

I think everyone is starting to know I have a thing about trees - not in the tree-hugger sense - in the sense of how do I draw trees that look like trees and not lollipops? I have been having a quick mooch in search of some tips and advice and found these, which might be of interest and/or help to others:

Evergreen trees - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98wRP8vrPxA&feature=player_embedded

Deciduous trees - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOp3PDU2EV8

A branch - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caY2WYBECGE&feature=related

Not sure how clear these are - I had a really clear view of the moon as it was eclipsed but the lighting was very difficult to get good metering, especially with the snow on the ground. Could have done with my tripod really but I hadn't thought to organise it last night (Dohhh).

I have been having some problems with my original avatar so I decided to treat myself to a new one. I wanted to make it myself and it had to represent something important or of interest to me ... well I love the night sky so here goes ...

So December does not have a blue moon (but November did); however there are lots of exciting astronomical goings on in the night sky around now.

So I painted the picture for my Christmas Card several months ago ... and at the start of this month I uploaded a jpeg to my online photographic print provider. Yes I can sit here printing them out but the volumes I want a more cost effectively printed and cut by someone else ... and anyway the printer was out of ink!