Birdie

I did not have too much time, so I tried a quick bird sketch from a magazine. Cute-ish...I think...just not me, I guess.

Illustration Friday - surrender

I came up with a kinda funny idea for this topic. Not too original, I admit. And the execution leaves a lot to be desired... but it was fun all the same.

Remains of the day - pages

Putting together these pages took forever, I must say. At some point, the floor was entirely covered in scraps. It would be nice if I could figure out how to do it faster. Here are the pages partwayt through the process and the two signatures.

Picasso Dogs

I had some time the other day and I played again with Picasso's dogs exercise from Carla's book. I am still trying to get a hang of the pan pastels. I have to name these creatures, they could become part of a story one day ...

Crusade nr. 47 - Evidence

When I read the topic of this month's crusade I almost cried. Seriously! I had no evidence of Christmas past. I made my own wrapping paper from newspaper pages, paint and stamps. Made my own gift tags too. But take pictures? Nope...that I did not.

I made all my tree decoration though. You can see them here. Hope that counts ...

But then I thought ...must do something. So I took some candy wrappers left over from the chocolate spree and sewn them to a piece of cardboard. This in no way indicates that this is the only chocolate I had! I then applied two coats of absorbent ground. I never used it before and I wanted to test different mediums to see what happens. This is the end result - evidence of my Christmas chocolate over indulgence. The creature is based on one of the exercises in Carla Sonheim's book.

 I used charcoal, pen, watercolors, pan pastels (I cannot figure how to use those properly no matter what) and watercolor ink.

Remains of the day - cover

I finally signed up for Mary Ann's class. I wanted to sign up last year, but I did not have a sawing machine. Now that I have Lili, I decided it was time to act.

I got started on the cover. I used a page from a catalog and scraps of fabric. I made a mistake and I saw the scraps directly on the paper instead of putting the scraps together, then sawing to the paper. I did not want to make a slipcover because I am sort of bad measuring stuff and I am pretty sure the slipcover would have been to small or something.

  

See what I mean? It's got all wholes on the back so I glued pattern paper over.

Illustration Friday - dusty

Dusty made me think about the mule trip I took down the Grand Canyon 3 years ago. I was wearing a white sun shirt which turned dest-red by the time I got to the bottom of the Canyon. There was no way I could do draw that. I figured the next best thing about a desert are cacti.

 

Flowering pear cacti - watercolor, color pencil.

Life drawing session

I finally made it! I wanted to to a life drawing session for a long time, but things kept getting in the way. This time, I found a drawing buddy and off I went to this gallery. I did not know what to expect and I decided to follow the instructions from Kimon Nicolaides - gesture drawings and conture drawings. It was a lesson in humility I suppose as my drawings turned out terrible - I still have some 9900 hours of practice before mastering this skill. Enough for two lifetimes I suppose. Recycled papers and pencil

Expressive drawing practice

It's been a while since I worked on the exercises from Steven Aimone's book...I finally finihsed the chapter on shapes.

This exercise is about static shapes (circle, square, triangle), directional shapes (rectangle, elipsis, elongated triangle) and a combination of both (chosing shapes from both groups for a total of three). I wrote my answers to the questions from the book on each page, easier to remember this way.

The next exercise was a still life. I setup a simple still life and I had to look at it in terms of shapes and draw these shapes. This is the still life:

And these are five shape sketches - I used different pens and pencils for each:

The last exercise was a drawing made using a combination of shapes and lines.

Illustration Friday - chicken

 

Collage and watercolor.

Pomegranate

 

The supermarket had pomegranate on sale and I decided to buy a model for my sketching session. I used both hands - the right hand for the top drawings and the left hand for the bottom ones. I can't say I notice a significant difference. I wanted to go back and add some highlights around the seeds, but in the meantime I ate the model ...

Sweater redux

I bought a few wool sweaters at the Salvation Army and felted them in the washing machine. Now, I am looking for inspiration to turn them into something else. In the meantime, I made myself a pair of slippers, leg warmers and a jeweled hat.

For the slippers, I used the pattern from here. I cut the sleeves from another sweater and felted them by hand.

For the hat, I used the instructions from here. I bought a bag of "jewels" from the DollarStore, glued them with the glue gun and voilà!

Meet Lili

I got her for Christmas. So far, we are getting along just fine and I hope it stays that way! I will try to incorporate some sawing in my journals and maybe embark on some easy sawing projects.

Self portraits

Continuing my left hand experiments, I decided to try self portraits from photos. They are not as bad as I thought, except of course for the lack of resemblance. The right one is stabilo pen and acrylic.

The elephant on the page

I wanted to paint a face. Just a face, nothing else. I decided to prep the background by gluing paper scraps. In the end, it came out to this:

The only thing I like is the green elephant in the corner. Or maybe it is a gigantic genetically engineered bug ...I think that it will make a good background for something else.

Three sisters

Here, I wanted to practice painting on fabric using my left hand and different mediums. So I painted three faces using acrylic paints, Shiva paintsticks and watercolor crayons. I like the acrylic face the most. The three older women on the left page look like three birds perched on a branch. Maybe one day I will write a story about them. Not sure what the story is yet.

Blue Poppy

This postcard is from the Butchart Gardens. I was not too sure how to proceed with the page, so I tried drawing a face with my left hand.

oops ...I see now that something got glued to her face. Serendipity I guess.

Doodle journal page

I am not sure why I still attempt flowery doodles when I know I don't usually like the results. This time was no different. Here is how the doodle page looked like:

Since I was not too fond of it, I gessoed over and then I had "visions" again. The page turned into this:

 

The first page makes me think about camping under a palm tree on a night with full moon. On the second page, I "saw" birds. One of them is falling on its nose. Hah ...

Happy New Year...

... to all of you and thank you for stopping by. It is customary this time of the year to divulge the resolutions. I won't. That is because I do not have any. I stopped doing this a while ago. Having a long list of failed resolutions was not something to look forward to. For example, when I started this blog, I was convinced my art skills would improve dramatically, I would find my "style" and I would spend a good chunk of my time making good art. I am still a long shot from this. When I started running, my goal was to loose 30 lb. I only lost 15. Better then nothing, I know. It turned out I love chocolate more. I wanted to have a travel journal for every trip and that did not work out regardless how much I tried. My writing improved only a teeny tiny bit. You get the idea ... So no more resolutions, I decided. One day at a time...