Portrait Practice

One of the forums I frequent has an ongoing thread where folks post photos of themselves for portrait practice. I grabbed a couple and went crazy with my Pitt pen and watercolours.

Artist Trading Cards

I've never really played with these before, and had no clue how much fun they were! I started them on Sunday while art-ing with Barb and Patti. There's something so energizing being around other artists all doing their thing. I came away really inspired, as always.

New book covers

I was doodling on some old French book pages and this un-trustworthy looking fellow appeared. He reminds me of the Darryl character from The Witches of Eastwick, hence the quotation. Always be careful what you wish for! This is the back of the creature cover.

This is where Ms. Memory ended up and I'm quite, quite pleased with it, actually. The scan doesn't do it justice. The other side is just a small sheet of the paper... I might add more to that later, but right now the paper itself is enough. :)

So I guess the covers for Book: The Second are pretty much finished (for now at least). The paper that Patti and I made keeps amazing me, and I came to the conclusion that there really was no "best spot"... the whole sheet had awesome patterns! I can't wait to see what she did with it.

Ms. A. Memory

Inspired yet again by my good friend Patti, I drew a face on a bit of german bible page and it just went from there. The base is a old book page that Patti gave me. As soon as she gave it to me, I knew I wanted to do something different with it! It's very different paper, and I just couldn't decide how I'd cut it up and integrate it. Thus, it never did get cut up at all and was instead stained with raw umber ink. You'd probably have to click on this and see it up close, but the paper texture is pretty neato. Thanks again, Patti! :D

Short sketches and paste painting

Thursday night the kiddo and I went with friends to a poetry and spoken-word-art open mic night at a cafe downtown. I didn't really know what to expect, but we both enjoyed ourselves immensely, and I got to practice my fast sketching skills, which are reeeeeally rusty! Hey Patti and Barb, you would get a kick out of it! Solstice Cafe on Thursday nights.


Friday and Saturday I was laid up with a pinched nerve in my neck. There was no art or anything much other than laying down and taking pain meds. Today I felt so much better I managed to paint some in my journal. This started with modeling paste, and before it was dry I stuck torn up bits of paper towel that I'd used to mop up purple and blue paint a week or so ago into the paste and let it dry there.
I used acrylics over top and just played.

Doesn't always work out the way I want it to

I'm in such a foul mood right now I have no idea how I really feel about this piece. It's supposed to be the cover for a new journal for me, which I am badly in need of. My other two are rapidly running out of space. At the moment I don't like it... but I don't like ANYthing at the moment, so I won't cover it up tonight. We'll see how I feel about it in the morning.

The top paper, by the way, I made with my good friend Pattio at her studio on Sunday. It started life as plain brown paper.

From the journal

No title for this one, really. I was playing with old book pages, acrylic inks and paint and my favourite permapaque pens.