Out Walking

Ah, today was a gloriously sunny, warm day. Just a tad of breeze, enough to carry so many wonderful scents (and a few less wonderful) to my nose. Mistress took me for a nice long walk. She tired out long before I was ready to quit but I have to cut her some slack as she only has two legs to my four!

We walked to a park where just a couple of kids were playing and through a housing area where we saw rabbits. No, I did not chase them. I am more dignified than that - at least while in the city! We saw a lady walking towards us and Mistress got excited. She said it was someone whose blog she reads and from whom she'd love to take a class on making books. Her name is Roz Stendahl I found out. She seems to like dogs well enough but I'm not sure she liked my pink hair coloring. (I'm not always sure I do either as I don't see any others this color although Mistress says there are a few). It was wonderful and when we got home we sat out back and I watched Mistress try to take photos (first she had to find some new batteries and then play with the focus thing a lot). Anyhow, I thought I would paint the lady we met in my journal since Mistress seemed to think it was a big deal. Hope you all have as wonderful a day as I did.

Having Fun - Mitzi

Hi everyone. Mitzi here. We are having a good time so far. As I mentioned before, the weeds surprised me. We get them in Arizona in the spring but never so big and tall! Tena has been weeding pathways through them for her kids but we dogs sure appreciate it too since we have to make several trips out there everyday. I drew a few of the weeds that are growing but I don't really know what the names are for them. One is just some kind of grass. I know because that's what it tasted like when I tried it.

A German Chocolate cake was waiting for Mistress when we arrived. I got a chewy bone of some sort. I get lots of doggy treats here but not as much of table food as I get at home. Change is good I keep telling myself.

Everyone has gone off to Disneyland now so Mistress and I are taking good care of my new friends Buddy and Lolli, the rabbits (they are fun to watch and so much fatter than the bunnies running around my yard at home), the cats and the birds. This house holds more animals than at home. It even has 4 children but like I said, they've gone to Disneyland. I'm trying hard to do a good job. I bark if anyone comes to the door. You never know who could be there so I want to make sure Mistress is warned. She'd rather I barked just once but I like to give a bit of warning so she just has to get over that nonsense and let me protect her the best I can.

I wonder what else we'll be doing while we are here. I hear she'll take me for a walk to see more than just this neighborhood. Stay tuned.

Mitzi's Trip - Day One

It was a beautiful day for a trip. The sun was shining and it was warm. I jumped in the car as Mistress was loading it. I sure didn't want to be left behind! I worried most of the way that she didn't bring any food for me so when we got to Tena's house the first thing I looked for was my bag of food. I was so relieved when I found it.

It was a great trip; we only hit a few slowdown spots on W210. Some nasty old guy honked at us when we had to brake suddenly when everyone in front of us stopped suddenly. He should have seen that Mistress had no choice but to stop fast. That part of the trip made me nervous. I enjoyed the bits of Sausage McMuffin Mistress saved for me and I enjoyed getting out at the McDonald's in Barstow to walk on the newly watered grass and get a drink from the bowl of water she brought for me.

Then I saw, and I haven't drawn it in my journal yet, a bridge going over the freeway with lots of little trees on it. I thought how my boyfriend, Pierre would love to walk across it stopping at each one of those trees as the boys like so much to do. I'll have to draw that to show him when I get home but first I was so surprised at the weeds growing taller than me in Tena's yard from all the rain they've had! I am busy drawing them right now. I'm sure I'll have lots more to tell you soon but right now it's time to visit with Buddy and Lolli-pup!

Mistress says to say hello to everyone and thanks you all for the good wishes for a safe trip.

I'm ready - Or Not!

I have my new journals ready for my trip and classes. I have one for Laure's upcoming class (The Imaginary Trip To The Garden where there is still openings available). It has the butterfly on it. I have the blank white journal for Mitzi the pink poodle to decorate and write in for Roz's International Fake Journal Month

and I have one with a bird on the front filled with 90# paper, both hot and cold-pressed to see if I like working on it. This should cover me for my whole trip and more.

The reason for the second picture showing the bottom edges of the journals is to show you what happens when you don't want to waste the cardboard so cut it where it will barely fit. The journal with the butterfly barely fits in the cover. It saved me a lot of wasted cardboard but I will not do this again. I'll probably have worn or dirty pages later because I tried to save a few cents. The journal on the right is much better and I will do it like this from now on. Sometimes it doesn't pay to skimp.

I also have a large bag full of my art supplies, some knitting and I even have my suitcase almost filled with clothes. Still have to pack up my computer but I am waiting till the last minute for that. So I am almost ready but I always hate leaving home and most of my pets even though I'll enjoy the trip. So I am almost ready but not quite!

Fake Journal Month for 2011 and A New Class

It's time for Roz's International Fake Journal Month again.  You can find out all the info by clicking on the button (I can't seem to remember what the clickable pictures are on the sidebar) of the blue dog on pink background over at the top of my sidebar or you can just go here.  Just be sure to scroll down and maybe even go to previous posts to read the whole thing.  There is a description at the top of the blog but if you want to join in do read the whole thing.

I am going to be Mitzi, a pink, standard poodle who happens to be very unusual in that she can do art but hey, my family insists I live in lala land and if that's true then I get to decide what dogs can or cannot do in my world.  I decided that although I prefer toy poodles, I do not want to keep my nose to the ground for a month.  I want to be able to see what's on the table at least!  So stay tuned and we'll see how this goes.

I'm going to be in California for most of the month and I am also going to be taking Laure Ferlita's newest class "An Imaginary Trip To The Garden" so I believe Mitzi will be seeing lots of interesting stuff.  I think Laure still has some open slots too so why don't you join me in both the Fake Journal Month AND Laure's new class?

Odds and Ends

 I've finished this house picture I've worked on at times over the last two years.  I started it before I began using watercolor.  It's in my moleskine journal and I used watercolor pencils which work in that book unlike watercolor.  This is purely imaginary; a fun escape when I wasn't feeling so cheerful. 

The bluish faced creature is me!  This was done as an exercise suggested in the group The Sketchbook Challenge.    This is a blind contour drawing done in white crayon on white paper so you can't see it even if you peek.  I stood in front of a mirror and drew what I saw, then painted over it all with aqua.  The outline showed up but I went back and wiped out as much blue in the face as possible and added more realistic colors.  One person who saw it on flickr

said it looked like I was looking up from under some water

which I think fits.  My eye got a little off to the side and it's

not any great piece but it was fun and I plan to try it again.

The next piece is a bookmark I made after the bigger picture that looks similar.  I did these in Jane Lafazio's style with the bigger one made for a class of hers I am currently taking at Joggles.  This is ink without using pencil first and then adding watercolor.  I got the pink too dark on the large picture so really went lighter on the bookmark.  It looks better.  I'm having fun in this class and if you are wanting a beginner's course in watercolor journaling this might be the ticket for you.  It's fun even if you aren't a total beginner.

Hope you all have a great weekend!

The Sun is Out Again!

Nope, I didn't match the title to the picture again. Today is finally sunny after a week of clouds and finally rain. I loved the rain but hated the week of cloudiness. We got enough to water our trees so I am happy. That means water for the well too.

I didn't do anything spectacular to the rest of this page. I really just wanted to let my pear shine. You can see the blotches I mentioned in my earlier post behind the flowers I stamped on the page. Now that I look at it online I'm thinking the white is a bit bright. Maybe I'll go back in and try something else or maybe that will wait for another day. I'm pretty happy overall and ready to do a new page. Hope you are having a sunny day too!

Rainy Day!

This pear has nothing to do with the title. I just wanted to show it as I am happy with how it turned out. It's done in an old journal I made for a class so the page had white spatters on it and in another spot some really ugly bleedthroughs. First I drew a graphite pencil sketch and then used colored pencil to color it in. I made the pear in response to a green challenge and now have the challenge of finishing my journal page to work around the ugly spots or to incorporate them.

Mostly I just want to shout out "it's raining, it's raining"! Not a deluge by any means but over 1/4 inch to be sure and maybe 1/2 inch. That's a big deal for us here in the desert. Of course it also means all the little weeds are going to grow and then make stickers that attach to my dogs, gets transferred to the carpet and maybe my bed or bathrobe and that part is no fun at all but still, it's raining!

Ireland

Wow, was this an exhilarating trip! We went all over Ireland visiting so many types of places from cities to the countryside to the seashore. Ireland is a land of many beautiful sights.

I've shown almost all the pages I painted for this class. These are the final versions after corrections or enhancements were made after the gentle critiquing from Laure was done. I still need to come up with a cover and I am not showing one for which we didn't have permission to share our work with anyone outside of the classroom. (I guess that means if you want to know what it was, you'll just have to take the class and remember that is with Imaginary Trips with Laure Ferlita as the tour guide).

If you are wanting to paint flowers, keep an eye on Imaginary Trips as I do believe there is going to be a class for that soon.

A Few of My Recent Pages

 These are some recent pages in my journals.  They each stretched me a little.  To start with, my cat was drawn in colored pencil on red paper.  That meant getting my whitish cat to show up and I did that.  I didn't get the blue comforter to look as much like a comforter as I should have but after working so hard on the cat I was getting tired of it not coming out as I would have liked.  What is wrong?  To start with, she looks like she is colored in with a white pencil.  She doesn't look like she has fur.  I did okay I think on her face and it does look like my cat so I am happy about all that.  Also, I did this live with my cat turning her head this way and that and finally shifting even her body position so I feel good that I got her down as well as I did.  When I look back in years to come I am hoping to see that I have improved on her over time!

The next page was done with a pre-done background of a red dry brushed corner added to the page.  It took me a long time to figure out what to fill the page with.  I ended up doing my canary as he sat on his perch.  This was another live drawing but I probably will try for a photo next time.  He doesn't like me to stay so close and I can't see him if I'm not!  Reading glasses only make it worse.  I am happy with him but not his beak.  I didn't really get his whole face right but I have plenty of time to try again.  He was done with watercolor and a waterbrush.  I added a bit of penwork to finish him off as he seemed to need a little something after I added the background.

Next up comes my plastic, thermal, iced tea glass.  I decided to try out my new Pentel Pocket Brush Pen which I have heard such good things about.  Many of the people whose sketching I enjoy use these pens.  It actually is a fountain pen with a brush instead of a nib.  It was harder to draw with this pen over a pencil or regular pen than I was expecting.  The ink wasn't running strongly yet and I thought that was the way it worked but later found it started flowing very well.  Then I learned that I was going to need some practice to learn to control the thick and thin lines this brush can make.  Lastly I learned that on my multi-media paper at least, the ink does not dry very quickly and smeared when I went back in with watercolor.  So...

...I took another page to do some practicing!  I tried to see how it would do with comma and S strokes like I'd use in Folk Art painting.  I doodles little pictures quickly and just some lines, a couple of letters in calligraphic style and just tried to get used to the way this brush works.  I'm thinking if I can learn to control it, I will like how it can make the various lines and marks. 

At any rate, this is some of what I have been working on.  I have been taking a few classes, some better than others.  My favorite again, is the Imaginary Trip to Ireland with tour guide Laure Ferlita.  I'll be posting a few of the pictures later on. 

So what have you been working on?

Playing Around

I was playing around by first adding some leftover paint to the pages by sliding a credit card with the gold paint down the page and then later adding blue circles. On another day I stamped a red checkerboard pattern in pigment ink and then worried it wouldn't dry so I embossed it with clear embossing powder.

So far, so good but now what? I left the pages open for a couple of days and then saw a post on Carol Sloan's blog
that gave me the finishing idea. I used her tutorial to make my dialog boxes and then filled them with quotes I'd been saving. All but one of the boxes that is. That tiny box got filled in when I realized I had done all the quotes upside down on the pages! I have a tendency to do this upside down trick in many of my journals. I guess I get caught up in what I am doing and stop paying attention to anything beyond the page! So the tiny box made note of my error and now the page is finished.

I really like the idea of doodling an area that can be filled with something later on. Thanks Carol for the idea.

Rain, Rain, Don't Go Away!

We had rain late last night and most of today. We had a LOT of rain for our desert area. I am so happy. I had to make a journal page to commemorate it even! The goats hate rain so they hide out in their shed all day. Mary Muffin kept poking her head out to see if it had quit yet. I thought painting their pen with the out-of-focus mountains in the background would be a good way to remember a very rainy day so that's just what I did. Hope you got rain too if you've been wanting some.

Ficus carica - Say What?

A while back I read a neat post on Jacqueline Newbold's blog Art in My Heart, Jacqueline Newbold titled Watercolor Vignettes from Ponet; a Peek inside my Watercolor Journal.  You can find it on the sidebar (I couldn't copy the post address itself).  Anyhow, she showed how to precolor the background.  I did it but I made one big block of color and then didn't quite know what to do with it.  Until the other day that is, when I wanted to draw my poor, new fig tree. 

I got the fig tree for my birthday back in November from my son.  It is a plant that will only grow about 3 feet and can live and produce fruit indoors.  That's important because the animals will kill the tree outdoors and/or steal all the fruit.  I got it potted and placed it in a sunny window - right at cat level!  I had no idea my cat would chew on all the leaves.  I didn't think the tree would survive but it finally sent out some new leaves and I wanted to draw it to commemorate the occasion (by the way, the plant is in another window now on a tall stool the cat can't share).  I remembered this page and thought I'd give the sketching and overpainting a try.  I am real happy with how it turned out.  The paper is not my favorite but I have it in one of my sketchbooks so need to use it up.  It soaks up moisture like a sponge and doesn't warp but it doesn't always allow for detail to show either so some penwork helped out a lot here. 

If the idea of an indoor fruiting fig sounds good to you the link to buying one of your own is here.  It was under $20 when I got it, not a bad deal.

Happy Valentines Day and Painting in Public - Sort of!

My daughter and her family came to visit on the ninth so as to be here for Grandpa's birthday on the 10th. He only found out they were coming on the ninth. That didn't give me much time to get ready but I did the best I could. That means the sheets were washed, bathrooms cleaned and the vacuuming done. Then baking commenced but all I got done was caramel corn (4 batches), Chex snack mix (4 recipes) and shortbread cookies. The dusting didn't get done and no one seemed to mind.

We celebrated the birthday all weekend playing darts (in the garage out of the cold wind) and lots of Trivial Pursuit. They have a new version out and it was one of the birthday gifts.

On Sunday my husband took everyone bowling. I don't bowl since it hurts my wrist and fingers but I did take the time to do some live sketching. A bowling alley is public but it wasn't busy and no one walked by me to even know I was doing any painting or drawing. Still, I was ready for onlookers and I did do the sketching. I enjoyed myself and everyone else did too except for the youngest grandchild who was coming down with a bug.
I'm happy with what I did but I can see I am still sticking to just using mid-values (I'm really trying to work on that Laure)! My family was pretty impressed that I did these in just under an hour right there at the bowling alley.

And I'm a bit late in the day but Happy Valentine's Day everyone! These are valentine hearts my middle granddaughter and I made. Everyone else was out playing darts and after just one heart we went and joined them. We had fun doing them. This morning we all had heart-shaped waffles with strawberries and whipped cream and then everyone left for home. We had two wonderful celebrations together this year!

Wall Decorating

I have been busy painting a wall in my bedroom/craftroom. I moved the bookcases that you can see here to another wall and that left a brown and yellow wall - ugly! It took me months to get to it but I finally went and bought the paint and did it.

First, I used the paint that is on my furniture for a sample so I could match it at the store. Knowing it was a large area to be done, I lightened the sample a bit so it would read right. Well, I didn't lighten it enough and after getting it on the wall I had to lighten up some of the paint and recoat it. Then I added the squiggly pink lines one at a time till I finally covered the wall in a diamond pattern. I finished by adding blue paint to the top edges where the wallboard had a frame already and painted some really sloppy green leaves on the blue strips to match what I had done on the furniture. I either need new brushes or get back to practicing strokework but overall it turned out. This wall took me four days to do - painting those lines is hard on the wrist. As you can see it matches the furniture I painted several years ago. I think my room is done now. Well, until I need to rearrange my art supplies again anyhow!