The remains of the tea and coupons de réduction à l'interieur

The left page does not have rhyme or reason. It is about my new addiction.I used a filter back with used tea leaves, flowers and rose budsalso from the teas, the paper cup the tea came in, wrapping paper and cutoputs from the tea catalog.

The right page - I wanted to work around the stickers; other than that I went with the flow...and I found out that there are sale coupons inside! Funny how things work sometimes ...

Known for being tough all over

This is the first page in the new journal. Not a layout I normally use, but I had on hand some scraps I wanted to use. The dragon is from some chinese papers I bought from Chinatown; I don't remember where the words come from, the black and white paper were from an advertisement and the image was an "orphan". I wanted to use it elsewhere, but it just did not fit. I thought I fit here...

Tout a fait obsessionnel - Self portrait with pear and people

The other evening, I picked up An illustrated life. I felt guilty because I did not sketch anything in a while. Danny says somewhere that he once gave himself the challange of drawing a self-portrait a day for a month. I decided to try my variation - a portrait a day for one day!

I used on the left over pages from the printing exercise. I outlined the pear and the two figures, then I sketched the face. I used the stabilo pen with zinc white - and here I think I made a mistake because I lost most of the backgound colors.But all in all, I like the result...

New journal

I am proud to introduce .... my new journal!

I had the cover ready for a while. It is made on cardboard - I don't remember where I found it, but it was already folded as a cover, spine included. I covered it with walpaper. I covered the spine with some scraps of leather and I added some beads, then I realized that this beaded look was not for me and I gave up on it. I made two signatures out of older journal pages that had no home. A third signature was made from pages reclaimed from old envelopes and left over papers. Voila ...

Fabric roses and necklace

The idea for these came from Alisa Burke.
She has few tutorials on her site. I had to try, I could not help it...

Of hypothermia in May

Saturdays are sacred - runningwise I mean. Long run day. Yesterday's plan was 20 km, which to be honest felt like a walk in the park after last week's 35 km. So I happily showed up - usual time and place. It was clouded,  cool and windy. I wore a jacket. Half an hour into the run, it started raining. Cats and dogs. The wind picked up too. After a while, the jacket was soaking wet, I could not feel my legs and my hands were frozen. I don't remember ever been so cold since I started running. I kept thinking how ridiculous it is to suffer of hypothermia in May. I suppose that no good things go unpunished, right? We had great weather in April, it was time to pay the price. But I should have known better and check the weather forecast. Usually, the weather in Ottawa at the end of May it hot. I am sure I can use the memory of yesterday's run to mitigate the effects of the heat at around .. say km 35 with 7 more to go. After all, a marathon is a mind game, is it not?

As for art making this weekend, nothing to show I am afraid. I signed up few days ago for Carla Sonheim's online class. I downloaded the files; the exercises are fun. Some of them could be used as a starting point for abstract compositions. Need to explore more ... when I am not sure ... some day...

Recovering...

...after Saturday's long run (35 km). The gods had mercy on us and the weather cooperated. The forecast called for a hot, sunny day; instead it was cloudy, cool and breezy. Yesterday, however, it was hot and sticky, very bad for long runs. We have to hope the gods will be with us (me) at the race too ...

So what's one to do after subjecting one's legs to such a treatment? Well ... paint of course!

A while back, I made a collage on an 8x8 canvass. I was not happy with the result, so I sanded the paper and gessoed over. I started looking at the shapes, waiting to "see" something. Since the paper was painted in reds and greens, I decided to look for flowers and I found a garden.

I wanted to push some of the flowers in the background to give a bit of depth, so I applied two layers of matte medium and created some texture, applied a nickel azo gold glaze (turned out to be too dark) and then made the mistake to brush some white. The idea was to wipe it off, which I did, but white is very stubborn. It did veil part of the painting, but it muted the colors too much. Alcohol did not help remove the white because of the layers of matte medium (they started peeling). Here is what happened:

The yellowish tone is part because I took the picture at night under artificial light. The thing is, I did not achieve what I wanted and I am not sure I like it enough to keep it. The jury is still out on this one...

I also bought Steven Aimone's Expressive drawing.  
I hesitate for a while, after all I have enough books to last me till retirement considering the limited amount of time I can dedicate to this activity. But I bought it because it discusses composition among other things.

These are the first automatic drawings I made:

I like them. The bottom one suggested a city landscape reflected in a body of water and the top one, a circus.
But this is just me....I am sure others see something different... isn't that the beauty of it all?

I also "found" her on one of the papers left over from the printing exercise:

When I "find" faces like this, it is always a surprise. When I paint "normal" faces, there is no surprise as they all end up looking the same and a lot like other painted faces out there.

And then it was the end ...of the weekend.