Showing posts with label drawing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label drawing. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Helping Out My Artist Child


I had some of my art supplies sent over from the house that I was living in to my new apartment in Salt Lake City, Utah. Then I had to arrange my art supplies with my graduate school gear in an apartment that is not all that big, but big enough.
I love this place, but it was missing something. I also was missing something in my life. After doing the assignment with the hands for one of my graduate school classes, it dawned on me that I was missing a key element in my life. ART! My artist child was neglected for way too long.
Now that I have some of my art supplies, I can create art. Even if the creations are just doodling as I am taking notes in class, at least I am creating and satisfying that drive to create.
My next goal is to arrange my little basement so that I can bring over the rest of my art supplies. Then when I need some bits and pieces to go in or on an art project, I can simply go downstairs and gather what I need.
Now go create!

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

January 2010 Art Journal Project



I have ventured into yet another project. Milliande of Milliande Art Community for Women has started an art journal project in which we, those that wish to join in on the fun, will do a daily entry (with prompts) into our art journal for January. It is to start the year off with art. You can read more about it here and watch Milliande's fun videos of her doing her pages. It has been a challenge, but a exciting one to say the least. I am a day or two behind but that is okay, because there are to be no worries in this project. Anyway, here are photos of the pages I have done so far.

First and Second day: I made the Journal, which is a Teesha Moore 16 page journal  made out of a 22"x30" piece of watercolor paper. It is a fun and easy way to make a journal. After I got the journal together I pre-painted all the pages using  artist's acrylics in blue, red, green and some black to make the pages different shades of purple. Once the paint was dry I created the cover. There is a whole bunch of stuff going on in this layout, stamps, ink, embossing powder, collage, stickers....and so on.

Third day:  We were to add a large circle to our layout. I took photos with my cell phone camera while I was outside having coffee and reading. The photo on this page is of the sun and printed with my new Polaroid Pogo printer. I added a bit of white on the first few days work over the dark purple. The star is cut from a Christmas card and has glitter on it but the scanner does not pick up that very well.

Fourth day: This is a layout using a Pogo print of my cup of coffee. The challenge for that day was to add a checkerboard pattern to the layout. I cut a square from a styrofoam meat tray and then used silver metallic paint on the stamp. The stamp was used around the edges of the fourth, fifth and sixth day pages as well.

Fifth day: The assignment was to add a piece of old calendar or journal page. I just made a new journal page and wrote a bit about my day then I did some collage work on the page. 
Sixth day: Draw a tree was the task of the day. I drew three winter trees using pastel pencils. It took me a couple of days to finish this page because I wanted to find a quote from Thoreau's Walden. I just knew there would be a good quote in one of his chapters based in the winter. Here is the kicker. I did not just want to read the chapters, I wanted to read them while I sat outside. I live in Utah, Northern Utah where the high for those days that I sat outside was only 29 degrees. On one of the days there was a slight breeze, very slight but enough to make that 29 degrees feel a lot colder and because we live on the bench of a mountain there is still snow in our yard. At least the sun was not blocked by clouds like it usually is. Despite the cold though, I did manage to find my quote: Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads. I wrote the quote on a piece of plastic, added a bit of gold beads and then used my heating tool to shrink the plastic a little. The page also has some vanilla inked 'snowflakes' with clear embossing done on them. The snowflake stamp was made out of a cork from a wine bottle (thank you, Gretchen;-).

Seventh day: Add a smile to your page. Well, I added three cute little smiles to my page. The photos are of my youngest son and my two grandsons and their funny little smiles;-)

Eighth day: Journal about our word or phrase for the year. I want to be creative every day, not just in art but in my writing as well. Thus far I have been doing very well at creating art and writing daily. Of course, it is only day twelve of the new year, but they say it only takes a few weeks to create a habit. If I continue at this rate my Create Daily creed will be a habit. Not just an "Ah, do I have to do it again!?" type habit, but a habit that I enjoy and I do enjoy it.

Well, that is all the days I have scanned into the computer. There will be more soon, I promise! For now, I wish that you all have a word or a phrase that will carry you through this year and perhaps beyond and that it is a joy.

Now go create something!

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

EDM #230 Draw a Map

It has been awhile since I have drawn an EDM challenge. Drawing a map sounded fun and yet I had a hard time wondering what place I should draw a map of. It has been a long time since I have gone anywhere exciting. In fact, I really only go to the Doctor's office, maybe Walmart or on a rare occasion to Salt Lake City to an art store or a book store. Mostly I stay home for weeks at a time. Sounds boring, but when you suffer from anxiety going places is a chore. I am getting better at getting out of the house. I have the right medication now and so it is a little easier. However, I do not like to shop and I do not drive, therefore I only go to a few places and neighbors. When I thought about this it dawned on me that I should draw a map of my house.
I did not want to just draw a simple map of my home because that would be boring, so I drew a map of my home and how I travel about it daily.
With colored Sharpies in hand I drew my house and the stuff in it (to a point;-). Once I laid that out I drew the steps I take through out the day. (click on the photo to enlarge it)
Wow! I did not know that I wandered around the house so much every day, but I do.
Now about my drawing and why it does not look exactly like my house. Well, honestly I do not know why it came out so not like my house. The rooms are in the right places, but the hallway is straight. Oh well, I guess that would be what they call artistic license;-)
I drew a pencil layout of my house the way it really is, only the drawing is way off scale, but you get the general idea as to how the house is suppose to look. I hope you enjoyed My Daily Walk.

Have a very Happy and Creative day!

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Celebration! Happy 1st Birthday!

My blog is 1 year old today and I have finished my website, so I want to celebrate by giving away a gift. Please enter a comment in order to have your name put into a hat. I will have my son draw a name this Saturday, May 16. The winner will receive a 5x7 matted photo chosen from the photography section on my website. The winner will pick the photo. Good Luck to you all!


I cannot believe it has been a year already. My blog got off to a slow start, but after I joined a fantastic group of artists (Everyday Matters Yahoo group) my blog began to take on a shape that I am proud of. I have been working more at my art and that makes me happy.
I have not drawn much lately but I have been working on taking more photos. Another activity I have been working hard at is getting my website built and uploaded. It is finally done and online! I will tweak it and add more art work to it, but for now it is done. You can see it at:
Now I am off to work on more portraits, photography and writing. Oh, and I am back to schooling my boys. My 9 yo ds has just started year 4 and so that takes a bit of time, but well worth it.
Do not forget to leave a comment so you can be entered in the drawing.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Working on the Computer

I have been playing around on the computer all week. Scanning in photos of my daughter that I took of her a few years ago. She loves to wear vintage clothes and posing for the camera. After scanning the negatives I had to do some touch ups. It is hard to have a clean environment when one has animals and kids in the house. No matter how hard I tried there was always dust spots on the photos. However, we live in a time where photo programs have a cloning tool. I love the cloning tool. All the photos turned out pretty great and what matters is that my daughter is happy with them.

My other computer project was to create more kaleidoscope pictures with my tulip photos. These are the photos that were taken last year because the tulips in our yard have just budded out and will be blooming soon. I will be out there taking their little photos. Not sure if I will do anymore kaleidoscopes because I created over thirteen this week. They did turn out really well and were quite fun to do. Many of them contained hearts which was strange or perhaps part of the kaleidoscope effect. I uploaded them to Walmart Photo 1hr and then pasted them in my journal.

My journal has gone through another phase. It now contains more than just drawing. To be honest I am secretly trying to fill it up so that I can say that I filled an art journal and then it will be okay for me to order a new fancy Moleskine or a Hand*Book journal. Anyway, I pasted the photos of my kaleidoscopes and copies of work I have done outside of the journal. After pasting it all in then I go back and explain what is going on in the photos plus my feelings about them. During the week when I journal I will write in the leftover areas of the page. I will have to scan a page or two so that you can see what I am talking about.

I made this page for an Artist Date challenge on Milliande's ning page. The page was also made it as a 'Photo of the Day', which was a nice surprise.

That is pretty much what I have been doing lately instead of drawing in my journal I am working/playing on the computer.

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Journal Pages & EDM 215


Spring came for a few days but now has left for who knows how long. One week we have warm sun and then the next we have cold and more snow. I am ready for spring to come and stay for awhile. In Utah the weather can change quickly. One of the sayings we have is "wait 5 min's. and the weather will change!" I have gone camping at the end of June and be caught in a snow storm and needing coats and the heater turned on. Okay, it was at an elevation of over 9000 ft. but still it is a crazy thing to be in a snow storm in summer.


This is my EDM 215 drawing, 'Draw your thumb'. It is actually my first drawing of my hand not sure what is wrong with the picture other than my wrist is too fat for the size of my hand. All in all I had fun drawing it. (I do have Reubenesque hands and body;-) more to love I suppose)




Wednesday, March 11, 2009

New Project

I have noticed that many of the artists on EDM have their own challenges that they have set up for themselves. One is taking a photo everyday others are drawing certain items like lemons or doing fancy doodles. This to me sounds like an excellent idea. I started thinking about a personal artistic challenge today wondering what it is I would like to do a lot of. Then it came to me that I had already started a challenge a couple of weeks ago and that is to draw portraits from photographs.
The first photo I started with is one of my youngest grandson, August (or Auggie Doggie as I love to him, after the old cartoon of Auggie Doggie and Daddy Doggie;-) Anyway, the drawing is still in progress, because after working on getting the detail of the lips and eyes I realized that I needed an eraser that was pointed and small. I did not have one and the closest art supply store is 35 miles away and I did not want to go all that way for an eraser. I went online and ordered a bunch of Prismacolor pencils, paper, the pencil erasers and a couple of cloth portfolios that were on clearance. The shipping was less than $6 for over 7lbs of material. The only problem with ordering online is waiting for the shipment to come to my door. Hopefully the material will be here on Friday as the tracking information claims. Until then I can only work on the larger areas of the next portrait to do which is of my other grandson, Gabriel or Gabe as Nana calls him;-)
I will post the final projects as they get done. Now off to have fun I go! Have a creative day!!!