Winter Scene from Dabs

Hi everyone. I just wanted to share a postcard I received today from Dabs. She is an artist, blogger and half of a truck-driving team. She and her husband live in their truck so they can save up to retire in Alaska (no winters like that for me!) and while they rest between loads she paints and draws. Dabs blog is Postcards From the Road and I hope you'll take the time to visit and see what she's up to. Thanks so much Dabs. This postcard is just enough winter for me although I will say we saw some snowflakes as we drove to town a week ago - we had to look carefully though, lol.

Lookin' Up

I made this page today for all my friends and myself - for anyone who's been down and needing a reminder that springtime, whether mood related, weather related or health related, WILL come again. Hope it brightens your day a little bit! I made this in an older journal that I made with business envelopes (you know, from when we had bills come in paper form to the house?) in a spiral binding. I don't recommend this paper even though it is recycling as it is lousy to work on. Once done with this journal I won't make another! But in the meantime, I occasionally make a page and today was one of those times. I used liquid acrylic for the background, cut-out daisies from a magazine (I don't get those anymore either although I am waiting for the mags to come up with an android version so I can get them on my Xoom), and marking pens for the decoration. I goofed and used a green pen that wasn't drying for the leaves. It turned out to be a pigment ink so I got out my clear embossing powder and took care of that problem. Happy Sunday everyone!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day everyone. Hope you all have a great day with someone you love!

My hubby and I made each other a valentine this year unbeknownst to each other. He says I walked in on him as he was working on mine (for which he has to use Windows XP version to access his old card generating program) and he startled me by walking in on me as I worked on mine but my back was to him so he didn't see what I was doing. He is taking me to lunch today to a Chinese buffet. I didn't take a picture but the mountains around us got a dusting of snow last night while we got a little rain. Hopefully we got a quarter inch as my birdbath shows a little water in the bottom of it. We need it as we haven't had rain since November I think! Sorry I didn't take the "how I did it" pics of my project. I simply forgot as I got into it. I started by pulling papers out of the drawer and then making some heart templates. THEN I came up with what I was going to make; it was not pre-planned. I am a bit too chaotic to do something planned out from the beginning, lol!

Getting Unstuck

Sorry I've seemed to disappear from blogland!  I got a bit down and wasn't doing much blog checking, art or anything at all really.  Oh, I wasted a lot of time playing silly internet games where you really don't win but you can keep playing without thinking much and figure it is passing for living but finally you realize with the help of some friends that you really aren't living at all and it's time to wake up and smell the coffee! 

So here is what I have done since my last post.  Yes, it was a while ago and this is a pretty poor showing of items.  I haven't even finished the Christmas page yet!  I used real Christmas scraps for the background and added the annual family pic in front of the Christmas tree but have not added any titles, lists or commentary.  Hopefully I'll feel like adding some soon.

A couple of weeks ago I got tired of chewing on my nails till they hurt so I went out and bought some new, fun polishes.  First I wore the green and now I am wearing the pink.  It really helps to keep me from chewing as the polish smooths the rough edges and feels silky and I don't want to chew the polish!  I did have fun making the page and started to feel the funk I was in lessen a bit.

Now, the next two pics are the making of my husband's birthday card.  I don't usually like the cards for sale and time is running out so I finally grabbed my paints and brushes and got busy.  He loves pie over cake any day so he will be getting a cherry pie on his birthday and I figured why not put one on his card too?  So I did.  Boy was I rusty.  I have blooms starting up because I didn't wait long enough for the "pie tin" to dry before doing the shadow and I had to hurry and blot the "cherries" as they were bleeding out into the crust.  I set it aside to dry and went over it all again with the final result in the last picture here.  Art requires constant practice if you want to keep your skills up, that's for sure!

Speaking of skills and practice, Laure Ferlita of Imaginary Trips fame is starting up this years schedule of classes with a visit to the beach.  It starts soon so if you want to join in hurry and sign up!

Merry Christmas

I am with all my family in California for Christmas as usual.  I hope you are right where you need to be and I hope you have a wonderful day,  This is the tree at my daughter's house. 

This is my first post using an android app so hopefully my pic is right side up!

First Snowfall

Hi everyone. As my mother used to say (I think she made it up) "Hello Mr. Rabbit, your tail is mighty white. Yes, by golly, it snowed last night". And it did! Only a dusting and it'll be gone soon but it was great to wake up to. The temp here is 38 degrees so it's not going to stay long. I know for you easterners it isn't worth noting but this could be all we get this year!

Catching Up for Now

My husband had an appointment at the VA dental office. It is in Prescott AZ, about 80 miles away so I packed candy and journal stuff to go along with me while I waited for him. The first picture is what I did while I waited. It's in the style of Alisa Burke who offers an ongoing class here.

I made a little travel palette to go in my journal in my purse. It takes up no room. In fact it sits inside my journal. It's made by cutting a piece of Sheer Heaven, a special plastic which can be used multiple ways as you can see here. I made it per the instructions found here. It worked really well as you can see.

And these are my latest pictures from Jane Davenport's class SuppliesMe. I plan on signing up for her next class!

Question For You

Hi everyone. First, this is a picture I made for Jane Davenport's class Supplies Me
. I enjoyed drawing this as she represents my granddaughter who is really skinny like this, loves purple and is taking ballet. (Her mother told me in LB's saturday class they were told to kick their legs behind them and try to reach the back of their head. When she saw LB she exclaimed "OMG (long version), she's really doing it"! And my LB said she kicked her head pretty hard with her right leg but only touched it lightly with her left. Now can you do that? I can't even kick past knee-height!

The second thing and the point of this post is a question. Do you have an Ipad or an Android tablet? I am looking at these and have read that on the Android tablets some of the web sites come up in cellphone version rather than a PC version and some find that annoying. Since I don't get sites on my cellphone I don't know how annoying that would be so I am hoping someone can tell me! If you have an Ipad, do the sites come up regular version or cellular version on it? Maybe this is the real reason people love the Ipad over the Android tablets?

Happy Sunday

I'm taking a class with Jane Davenport from Australia. The second picture here is my interpretation of her in a teaching video she made from Bali. She's teaching how to use various tools from colored pencil to watercolors and markers. We are also learning how to draw faces and some basic figures. I'm learning quite a bit. The other picture here is one of my lessons in putting it together in my journal.

The picture of Jane was done with regular graphite pencil on a gesso covered puzzle page in a re-purposed journal. I went over the pencil with watercolor pencils and then water.

The girl with kite was done with no drawing for the background. I just took gouache (opaque watercolor) and started in. Then I drew the girl on a separate piece of paper, colored it in with colored pencil, cut her out and glued her on the page. I'm really happy with her and my whole page!

I hope these pictures add some color to your day. Hope you have a great Fall Sunday!

If you are interested in Jane's classes check out this link: http://www.janedavenport.com/workshops/ . You'll learn a lot and have fun too. This is the beginning workshop; she's planning more to help us with drawing people!

Yuck!

Okay, I've been told not to say bad things about my work at least not unless I am willing to say something good. I am trying a new way of working with colored pencils where you layer colors and then rub pretty hard with another pencil to even out all the colors. I didn't use the best paper for this. I used drawing paper and so I will try again on bristol or in my Moleskine (cream paper version). I was feeling like pink and red when I drew my 11th self portrait so I rather overdid them. And then I ended up plastering my hair to my head as if I'd been out in a driving rain! My granddaughter on the left in their picture actually looks somewhat like her but the one on the right does not. I have lots of practice ahead of me.

I almost didn't even post these. I waited several days but then gave in to my principle of showing you all my projects even if they aren't ones that make me happy. I said I would share my 30 portraits so I will! Let's hope the next one is better. Two steps forward, one step back. That's me. I guess that leaves me firmly in the human race - no demigod business for me!

Imaginary Trip to Italy

I have taken another Imaginary Trip with Laure Ferlita. We had a blast touring Italy. You could have fun too, taking these trips. I always learn something new. Sometimes I learn new things about the places we are "visiting" and I always learn more about painting with watercolor. There is an autumn trip coming up soon. Why don't you join me?

Sambo and another Portrait

Still keeping busy with artstuff. I had put the background to Sambo in ahead of time. It's acrylic so watercolor wouldn't work well and I didn't feel like using gouache or collage so I used the Tombow pen to draw my little black poodle-chihuahua mix. I like how he turned out. I guess I could have drawn him larger but it's okay this way. At least I got him down before he moved! Getting faster with my sketching and that's a good thing when you try to get an animal down without using a photo.

The other is portrait number 9. I'm really slow at doing these. The challenge was to do one every day during the month of August but I've changed it to doing 30 no matter how long it takes! I'm pretty happy with this one although once again, it doesn't look like me or the other portraits! My eyes are too big but at least I got the head shape better. And the nose is better too! Wish it looked like me though!

Everyone ready for fall to come? I've had enough of this summer between snakes and the heat. I think everyone has had lots of heat this year and many of you got Irened too. I hope all of you did okay through her rage up the East Coast.

Mojave Green and Some More Self-Portraits

Oh, we had some excitement around our house this morning. Not good excitement either. I looked out about 15 minutes after I'd let two of our remaining dogs outside and this is what I saw. At first I couldn't believe I was seeing what I was so I called my husband over and he confirmed it. Another snake! This is a Mojave Green rattler which has two kinds of toxins, one for the muscles and one for the nervous system so the vaccines and antivenoms don't work well if a dog gets bit. Very, very dangerous. This one had 7 rattle buds so it was quite mature. At least we got this one before it got another of our dogs!

The other pictures are part of my ongoing self-portrait series with Violette
. I am not happy with my monkey face at all. My face needed to be out as far as the hair edges and then hair added beyond that. It would have made a lot of difference. Also, I think I have to watch the angle at which I hold a handheld mirror as it changed perspective on me and not for the better! Ah well, it's a learning process.

The second, blue and orange picture was done in ball point pen with watercolor added. I was trying to stay cool yesterday which I can as long as I stay indoors with the air-conditioning but it was 108 degrees outside. The official temp is never as high as we seem to get but we have three thermometers outside that all say the same thing. They are two different brands and in three areas of the yard so can they all be wrong? I think not. These were portraits nos. 7 and 8. I am quite a bit behind but that's okay with me. It's the journey, not the speed that counts here.

Hope you have happy events in your day!

Portrait Number 4 and a Journal Page

Portrait number four was done without looking at a reference. I just felt bad and drew that. I think it comes across! Hope you all felt better today than I did.

The birdbath is my sister's. She's moving to Japan to live with her son since she just can't make it in California on Social Security and a part-time job. She's only taking small items with her and although she loved this birdbath, it's too heavy to ship so I drew it. I wish I'd left the writing off so I could make a print for her. When I get refreshed on PSElements I might erase the lettering and print it out.

More Self-Portraits

I've been visiting my sister who is leaving to live in Japan and went to my son's pot party (we all took clay pots to welcome him into his new home) so I got a bit behind but I'll keep working at these. Here are nos. 2 and 3 with neither being good and both worse than day 1. I guess you could call me a glutton for punishment but I really am hoping to learn something from doing these.

Now off to catch up a bit with my newest Imaginary Trip with Laure Ferlita which is a trip to Italy! Ciao!