Playing in My Studio

Wow! My summer vacation is almost over. We fabulous teachers report back to school on August 6th. It will be two weeks before the kiddos come back. There is much to be done and learned before that happens. I am excited and looking forward to another group of wonderful second graders. Yay!

I have had an interesting and most productive vacation. First, I managed to take and pass the Praxis II test which allowed me to apply and receive my Level 2 teaching license. Thank goodness that is over.

Second, I started exercising again. I see a tiny bit of improvement. What I figure is if I do the exercises every day then sooner or later something will happen. That is it on that.

Another bit I did was go on some mini vacations. One to a resort town and the other camping. Both were fun.

Finally, maybe not finally because there were other activities that I did, but I just want to get to the art. I started a fun project using 3x5 index cards. The plan is to draw, paint, collage, etc., on one card daily. At first, it was difficult for me to figure out what to create on them. Those beginning cards are not so great, but hey they do show my progress. I have used a lot of my pens and paints so far on these little cards. Yes, the paper is horrible for some techniques, but still exciting to see what happens. I also write what material was used in the creating of the art piece on the back of the card. That way when I come back to them and wonder what was used to create it the information will be on the back of the card. The project was started on June 18th and as of today, there are 44 cards. Some of the cards I have used in my art journal that was also started this summer. That journal is fun and unique, but that is for another post. Probably when I get more done in it.

Another art project I did was to create in an art journal that I have had for a couple years now. It is a journal that I play in, so it does not matter if there are mistakes. There is no such thing as a mistake if you learn from it and yes, I learned from the mess-ups.

To help jump-start my art heart I watched some artists on YouTube. One such artist is James Burke. He creates wonderful non-realistic drawings of women (mostly). One of his videos shows what he does when he gets new art materials such as paint and markers. He makes swatch dolls or buildings. I loved the idea and because my studio contains so many markers, paints and various types of pens, I decided to create swatch dolls and buildings. Wow! What fun it has been and very freeing. I have discovered fun pens that have been hiding in my stash. Creating these swatches has helped me so much. I can feel the artist child in me screaming with a joyful noise.

The ladies in the picture above were created one day just for fun similar to Mr. Burke. I added my own twist. They are done with artist markers and other pens in the above-mentioned art journal. The journal is filling up with some fun and very colorful drawings. Yay!

Okay, these are just some of the activities I have done during my vacation. It is so nice having a studio again. I have missed it and my artist child is extremely happy.

Be well, Be happy, my friends.

Getting Ready for Vacation

I realize that many go shopping for clothes to wear on vacation. Well, not me! As soon as my husband and I decided to go to Oregon on vacation this summer I started thinking about what journal and art supplies should I take. Okay, I did think about clothes and if it was necessary for me to buy new ones. Maybe a new t-shirt or two and perhaps flip-flops to wear on the beach. Other than that I think that what I will wear is pretty much taken care of. Now back to what journal and art supplies should I take.
After searching Amazon.com and checking out the Michael's Arts and Craft store near me for journals I finally found one. I ordered the TreeLine List book from Amazon.com and it arrived a couple of days ago.

The company, Action Publishing has several styles to pick from. It took me a few days to decide on this one. These journals are very different from others that I was considering. The paper is cream colored with both lines and a grid layout. The left side page has the grid and the lines are on the right side. The covers are chipboard made from recycled material. There is much more about them and I will let you go and check it out.

The journal that I got measures 4.25 x 11 inches and has a tree theme. To help gauge the size of the journal I took a picture of it next to a piece of 8.5 x 11 inch cardstock. Why would I get such a strange size for a travel journal? Well, because it is different and will make me change the way I create in it. The size of postcards will be a challenge for me as will other bits of ephemera. I will manage somehow to get them in.
I also ordered film for my instant camera. Yes, instant as in the old fashion Polaroid type film, only these are small.
 The pictures are about 2 x 3 inches and just barely fit on the page of this journal. That is okay, because barely is better than not at all. If I turn the camera sideways then the photos will be printed in the portrait layout. In this layout they will fit on the page. I will take pictures both ways and all will be fine. I do not plan on taking my DSLR on this trip. I want to focus on little photos and most importantly drawing and writing about what I see. If I take my big camera then it is likely that it will be the main focus of my art. Another bit is that I want to have my photos in the journal within minutes of taking them, not when I get home and get around to having prints made. I do not have a lot of spare time at this point in my life to focus on making prints and putting them in my journal later. Most likely I will not get around to doing that. This is why I wish to use my instant camera and getting those photos glued down in my journal quickly. Honestly, the photos do come out quite nice. I am looking forward to adding more drawings in this journal and not as many photos.
Now to pair down or use a better way of transporting my drawing/painting materials. This has always been an issue for me. What should I take and if this pen or paint is left home what will I do if it is needed? I have a difficult time leaving a lot home, because I never know what my mood will be as far as which medium to use. So I take a lot. I do limit it to a small backpack, but still the way it is stored in the pack is annoying to me. I had been using various pencil cases, and although these are good at keeping the stuff safe it is not good for on the quick creations. I have to rummage around in the pack trying to find the bag that holds the medium that I am looking for. It just takes up too much time to do that. Doing a bit of research on Amazon.com I came across a solution. I found these roll-up pencil/pen cases. There are a lot of different styles and sizes to choose from, and yes it took me some time to choose a couple.

        I ended up buying these two. One holds 36 pencils/pens and the other 48. I got them with the intention of putting my Tombow markers in the 48 slotted one and my drawing pencils and pens in the 36 slotted purple one. The problem with this plan was that the Tombows did not fit very well in either one. They caused them to be very difficult to roll up. The Tombows also caused the purple case to come un-stitched, which I had to fix. So for now I have my Tombows in a pencil bag and I am still rearranging my drawing pencils and pens in the roll up cases. Not sure if I will be using both or just the one that holds 48. I have time to figure it out.
Before I wrap up this post I wanted to show the title page of the book. The page is not complete, but it is a least started. I will add more and perhaps take another photo of it when it is done. For now I think that this post is long enough. When we return from our trip I will post some photos and chat about how I did or did not like the journal.
Be well and be happy my friends. Ciao!

Drawings~36th World Wide SketchCrawl-July 14 and Creating Art with my Son-July 19

 Last weekend I participated in the 36th World Wide Sketch Crawl with other artists at SketchCrawl.com.  I had just finished my first semester in graduate school and needed to treat myself to something. Instead of food as a treat, I took myself on and Artist Date.
I posted a notice on the SketchCrawl.com forum inviting other artists in my area to meet me at a local library to draw and then travel on to another spot to create. That was the whole point of the activity. Gather some friends and go out and sketch together. At the end of the time agreed upon the group is to meet at a local coffee shop or whatever to share their thoughts and drawings.
I posted a time and place to meet and then waited to see if anyone wanted to get together. People read the post, but no one posted that they would meet me there. Well, I decided that I would still show up and hope that someone else would also.

1st drawing~Sugar beet sculpture

2nd drawing-Fireplace inside of library

3rd drawing~Emigration Creek

I arrived at the library a little after 9 am and started to draw the Sugar beet sculpture that sits in front of the library. No one showed up, but at that moment I realized that it did not matter to me if anyone would. What I wanted was to draw, to add art back into my life. Yes, it would have been nice to have an artist friend to share with, but it did not happen. However, I really was not alone, because all over the world there were artists sketching, painting and so forth at the same time that I was. They have shared their artwork on the forum and I will also. It was a great day and I enjoyed every minute of it.

4th drawing~Annie, my dog hanging out by the creek

 July 19, 2012~ Creating Art with my Son

My son and I created these drawings of a Purple Coneflower that was found near us.
We both created our works of art using Prismacolor drawing pencils and paper that my daughter makes. (Walk Through Water Creative Arts) 
Once again it had been a long time since I had used colored pencils, but the flower turned out great, but not as well as my son's drawing. I like his better. He had not done any creative work for a long time either. I really do not know why we ignored our Artist child for so long. We will not be letting that happen any longer. The Artist child in us needs to be given more opportunities to create. We will create and have a lot of fun doing our creations together. Here all along I thought that I did not have anyone to go out and about to draw with. My drawing companion was right there in my son and I should have had him go on the sketch crawl with me. Now I know better and we shall go and create.

Teesha Moore Style

Happy first of December!

Yesterday I finished a collage in the style of Teesha Moore and boy was it fun. This style of collage work takes a bit of time, but the results are fun. I do not think that I will attempt another full collage in this style, but I will probably end of using some of its elements.
I love looking at other artists work because it inspires me to keep creating. So many artists have found their "voice" in certain forms of art. I know what my photographer's voice is, however I am still searching my style in my other art forms. It may take me a bit of time to find it, that is okay because searching for it is half the fun.

What I am planning on doing for this month is to create some gifts for family and friends. This time of year is always tight when it comes to money so I make gifts. I believe that my neighbors love their hand created gifts as do my family members. I do not make everyone in my family something, it is usually my two adult daughters. I will not tell you what the gifts will be because they read my blog from time to time. It is hard to make gifts for my boys, but at the same time it is easy to buy them what they want if we have the money. Creating something for others is always a fun and exciting time for me and I look forward to creating this years gifts. I will post them after Christmas for y'all to see. In the mean time have fun with your creating and Happy Holidays!

It Has Been Too Long!

What Have I Been Doing? Well, for one thing I have been neglecting my blog. It has been too long between posts, I am truly sorry for that. I promise not to go so long between posts.

Now as to what I have been up to for the last couple of months. All the normal mom/teacher/wife stuff and my new job as bill collector for my doctor, which has taken some time to sort out the files of who owes what. As far as my art goes I joined another class on the Yahoo group Artists of the Round Table. The book we are following this time is Artists' Journals and Sketchbooks by Lynne Perrella. We are on lesson 4 now which is to create ATC cards that are journal prompts. I will be working on them today and/or tomorrow, but for now I will share some of my completed lesson projects. There will be a lot of photos to look at because of the amount of work I have done lately. Just wanted to warn you. I hope you enjoy them.

Lesson 1: We had to create a journal. I made mine out of black poster board and other various materials. The baby journal is a piece of embossed cardstock with various papers in it. It was fun creating these two journals.

Lesson 2: Take one image and do a different treatment eight times. The first image is the one I used and instead of photocopying the image I used my inkjet. One must always remember to use fixative on inkjet images otherwise the ink will run! I learned that lesson on the version that is on silver. I had forgotten to use fixative and when I glued the image down it made the ink turn green. I pulled off the image from the background and used a marker to add more green. Lesson learned! Some of the images I tweaked in Print Shop Pro X instead of straight printing. You know me I am a computer artist as well as all the other types, so I had to change the image a bit.

Lesson 3: We had to search through Perrella's book and find a page layout that we really liked and create our own version of it. I chose the page in which an artist made a journal just for her Haiku and poetry. I began the project by finding an image in a magazine and then writing a Haiku for it. After writing the Haiku I did the page similar to the inspiration piece in the book. Lots of stamping and inking went on. I used a piece of cardboard as the background and that is why it soaked up the ink even though I had painted the board first with a brown glaze. Oh well, it was a lot of fun creating the page. The page fits in the middle part of the journal I made (see above) and a bit of the page sticks out. The next pages I make outside of the journal will need to be on thinner paper, otherwise they will not all fit. I plan on putting some kind of fiber on the upper edge and not in the same place as the Haiku page. I think it will look cool with the many strings and such hanging out the top.

Well, now you know about some of the activities I have been doing the last little while, okay, long while. I will add my ATCs to my blog ASAP. I hope your days are creative, fun and full of joy!

Sunday Afternoon Creations

I have been taking a break from drawing for quite some time now and I miss it. Today my hubby took the boys to the movies and I was left home alone (well, not completely alone, I had my animal babies with me) and it was a day of good health, so I did some creating.

I turned the music up and got busy having some creative fun. The first creation was an experiment on making clear embossing powder crack. I learned the trick the other day at a friends house. She has card making classes once a month and it is always fun. Apparently she was going to do the crackle technique with some other stuff, I cannot remember what it was. She called around to the various craft stores but no one had it. However, one of the stores a store employee told her that the technique would work with several layers of clear embossing powder. We tried it and it worked out just great. It does not crack as much as the other stuff but still it did crack. (I will give directions at the end of this post). I was so excited about the technique, I just had to try it again. I used a bit of watercolor paper and made it almost the size of an ATC. It worked so well that I now have a new technique to try in my art journals and other works of art. The best part of my day with friends is being out of the house and creating with like minded and fun women. We were of different ages, two grandmothers (me being one of them, young grandmas of course;-) and two young mothers. We got to chat and create, a great day!

The other piece of art work I did today was a colored pencil ATC drawing of a rose. I had taken several very gorgeous photos of my neighbors beautiful roses a few weeks ago and decided to draw some of them. This red rose is my favorite photo (I will put the original on my nature blog). The colors that the camera capture were wild red and very bright. I did not have all the right pencils but enough to do a red rose. This drawing did not come out the same as the original, which is okay with me. I used another piece of the same watercolor paper as I did with the crackle piece above. It is roughly the size of an ATC, close enough for me. After I finished the drawing I antiqued the edges with a bit of black ink. It took layers and layers to get the rose to where I could say that it was done. In order to do any more of the roses that I took photos of I will need to buy more pencils. I did like drawing on the watercolor paper and will probably do a series of these beauties on the same paper and similar torn edges. So much fun, so few pencils! ;-)

I loved having my day alone and not freaking out because I was alone (taking a Valium always helps;-) No excuses anymore, I will create without pain or through the pain, which ever I will not let it get to me. Create, Create, Create!!! I will use the gifts that the Lord has given me. I hope you can, too! Have fun.....

(The technique for the crackle process is to do your stamping or what have you then use Versamark clear ink and clear embossing powder. Do the heating as usual and then let cool. Repeat the process at least four times. After it is done put the piece in the freezer and leave it there for a bit. Take it out and bend it the way you want the cracks to go. I had to put the piece back into the freezer several times to get it to crack. After I was happy with it I used black ink to antique it. It turned out rather well. Next time I may do a couple more layers and/or try my gold embossing powder with some of the clear. It is all good, because it is more play time for me.)

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!

My Newest ATC/ACEO Drawings

I am so excited about working in this small form (2.5 in x 3.5 in) that I went online and found free photos to use. I know what you are going to say, "but, aren't you a photographer?" The answer is yes I am and I have a lot of photos to draw from but what happened was that I was not in the physical frame to go downstairs to my studio to find a photo to use (and the other part was that I was being lazy;-) My goal for this month is to organize my photos into groups of 'to draw' and 'to sell', etc.

I am enjoying being an artist again and seeing how my skills develop. Some day I wish to sell my art, but for now I am having fun creating it.

I created the horse, my first horse by the way, using graphite pencils in 2&3b. As I look at the horse I drew it seems a bit off. I think that it is the nose, it may be too short. Once again, practice makes perfect. (I downloaded the photos from this site: http://freeartisticphotos.com/?cat=3 )

I created the sunflower using Prismacolor colored pencils. For some reason the scan makes it look duller than the original. Both drawings were done on Bristol paper. (I got the flower photo from this site: http://freeartisticphotos.com/?cat=6 )


I am off to create another masterpiece ;-) and will of course share it here with all who stop by my little blog.

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)

Journal Title Pages and That Annoying Critic

On the EDM email list we had a discussion about beginning a new journal and how hard that was. Is it the blank page that scares us or is it our inner critic that is nagging us? I think it is that nagging critic telling us that we are not good enough to fill those beautiful empty pages. It is very difficult to quiet that critic and nearly all artists have one. Some artists are good at keeping that critic quiet and some cannot. At times my critic is yelling at me telling me that I am not good at all and that I should just give it up. I am getting better at letting my Muse help me to shut that critic up.

The first thing I do with a new journal is to create a title page. At times the title pages are very involved and at other times it is just simple writing. Some journals have two or more title pages. One at the beginning and then another in the middle. This happens when I change my mind or add a new direction of the journal. The top two middle layouts above are in one journal. I like doing fancy layouts using different media to create the page.

It is still difficult at times to start a new journal and I know that as soon as I buy my Moleskine (may have spelled that wrong;-) that critic is going to be yelling at me and telling me that I am no good and to leave that pretty new journal alone. I am going to yell back and just start drawing and writing in my Moly! Because by then I will have filled a drawing journal and my Muse will be helping me.

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!!!