An Oldie

This is an animated gif I did for someone... oh, 7 or 8 years ago now. I no longer remember the in-joke that spawned it, but I vividly remember it as the first time that one of my own creations made me snort milk out of my nose.

Book: The First

Two pages from the third and fourth "chapter", and the inside back cover which isn't exactly done yet, but my muse hasn't told me what else to do with it yet.

Book: The First

Here's the front cover and some pages from the second "chapter".

Sadly, I have not had much time to myself lately. A lot of family obligations and weirdness, plus of course the holidays coming up.The one thing I'm making time for just to keep myself slightly sane is making a book with my good friend Patti!
I have always loved books, especially antique and esoteric looking volumes, and now thanks to Patti I can make my own and have them as wild and weird as I want.
We'll be stitching the "signatures" together this weekend and I'm really excited to see how it looks all properly bound! I'm especially pleased with my covers, even though they're not done yet. I can't scan them in because they're slightly too large for my scanner so I'll have to get photos of them later.
Here's a few pages that I've done a *bit* of work on.

Bad Ojas

So many different mediums to this piece, I can't even remember everything I used!

This is from a tidbit of novel that a friend of mine let me read. Not too pretty, is it? I think my next work will have to be puppies and kitties and pink roses to make up for how ugly Bad Ojas is.

Art Dump v. 2.0

This piece is on Arches paper with Liquitex light modeling paste, watered down acrylic paints and Prismacolor pencils. Seriously, you have GOT to try this paste, it's absolutely fantastic stuff to work with.



















This one came from the generic goddess/loa portrait in the post below, which was itself a happy accident. The base is sepia acrylic ink brushed on the edges, with the drawing lightly coloured with the Prismacolor pencils, then another wash of ink over the whole page this time. Before it dried, I took a damp paper towel and washed the ink off the figures. After it all dried I went back over with the pencils and outlined in brown ink.

















These are playful journal pages inspired from my latest visit to Jazzgoil's magical studio.

Art Dump

I've been starting something new as soon as I've finished a piece and gotten WAY behind in scanning!
Plus, none of it really pops as much on the computer as it does "for real". This is mainly because I haven't got the photographic talent and my scanner isn't fabulous.
One day I'll get a yen for the digital again but not soon, I think. Getting my hands dirty is far too fun at the moment I just wish I could show it to better effect

Something quick and simple

Just playing with .005 pens.

Alien Bug?

I don't even know what to title this, really. "Alien Bug" works as well as anything.
This is the result of using my lovely modeling paste on a big sheet of Arches hot-pressed paper, globbing paint all over it, mixing in some chalk and then finding patterns in it.
Somehow this creature came out of it!
The mind is a strange landscape.

Catching up

I've been going nuts with the art journal, and kept meaning to post what I've been working on, but by the time I'd let things dry, I'd been hit with a new inspiration (or new medium to try out) and was already back at it.
I'll start with the newest page and the newest medium: a light modeling paste from Liquitex which I LOVE! I love it so much. I cannot believe I spent so much time trying to get the smoothest base I could find when I could have been making my own textures! This is the best invention since Arches hot-pressed paper. Which, by the way, I will be trying the paste on at some point, because the little journal is starting to feel too little. I think the next journal will be the 8.5" x 11".


The one before Anxiety: Schrodinger Koi

A spread where I was really playing around with printed papers, gloss medium and plain ol' white glue.



















I have a few more, but they're not feeling "done" yet. I find myself going back and forth a lot, and even page one is not quite to the point I'm hoping for. I love being able to go back and change and fix or even to paint over it all and start anew. I am so in love with mixed mediums right now it's dopey.

Scarlotto Idiotum Ballare

Otherwise known as The Red Boogy Fool.

This is completely inspired by the spread I did for Pattio, below.

I used some really cool printed tissue paper that I picked up from The Papery downtown and parts of a paper napkin I kept from the Lavender Tea at my aunt and uncle's church for the backgrounds, along with some acrylic ink on a fan brush. The Red Boogy is done with acrylic paints, gloss medium, some pencil crayons and acrylic ink with the dipping pen for the outline. The lettering is just white gel pen again.

I'm thinking of making more critters like this... lord knows I have some imagination to spare. But of course, every time I think I've found "THE THING" that I like to do, my brain seizes up and points me somewhere completely different.

Friendship

This is a spread I did in one of Pattio's amazing art books. I took her beautiful painted background and, as I've been advised to do, had a HECK of a lot of fun with it! ;-)
I used an acrylic ink, with a paintbrush for the border and a dipping pen for the lettering and outlines; acrylic paints for the base colours; pencil crayons for shading (and just experimenting to see what they'd do on top of the paints' textures) and finally a white gel pen for the inscription to "Peggy Sue".

What a hugely fun project for my weekend!!

I have been glued to my new art journal this evening. Not literally, thankfully!














None of these are finished yet, but I like the stage they're at currently and wanted to share.


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I found all of these wonderfully cathartic to paint/touch/draw.

The Music Tree and Weekend Art-ing

This was done in my regular sketchbook using just the Prismacolor pencils and some really lovely sepia acrylic ink with dipping pen for the outlines.

Normally I would have taken it out of the book and scanned it, but the paper is just slightly too large to fit my scanner. I took a photo of it instead, and am not too terribly pleased... I don't think the photo does justice to the deep layering that these pencils are capable of. However, it's better than having to crop most of it out to make it fit!

Next time I'll try to remember to leave enough white space around my drawing that cropping won't matter.

Funny, it used to be that I struggled to fill up a whole page but now I struggle to stay within it!

I had the most wonderful time with Pattio yesterday, hanging out at her fabulous new studio and drooling over her art journals. What a talented lady! She let me dabble in the wide variety of mediums she has on-hand and I got to start my first journal. I'm still working on it, but I'll share once it's done. My afternoon over there was SO inspiring. If you're reading this, Patti, THANKS AGAIN! It was so wonderful to spend hours talking and doing and sharing everything ART.

I can't wait to carve out some space in my own house and give myself more room for more art.

Altered Clothes Pin Swap

This was such a FUN project! I haven't done anything like this in more years than I can remember.
A huge thanks to Patti G for setting this swap up, and to the rest of the ArtfulInspirations ladies for... well, being inspirations. ;-)

Cairn Park Visit

I took the family to Cairn Park on Sunday to enjoy some of the sunshine before we went back to grey skies for the rest of the week. Naturally we took the camera along!

Pretty sketchy

My lovely and patient daughter sat for me last night. She's an old hand at being a reference model for me and has become very good at it.
This is how all of my pieces start out. Plain old pencil and paper. It's how the original "fairy in sweats" got started, and this is my attempt to update her.
I think I'm going to try to spread my own wings with this one and not just go with the "safe" and comfortable method I'm used to. An experiment! We'll see how it turns out.