ESPADRILLES

ART JOURNAL

Watercolor Pencils

Practicing some sketching today.  This is another page created from a magazine photo inspiration...

This page was a challenge...the hardest part are the straps on each of these shoes.  Having the inspiration photo...I can't recommend this enough.  I find it's training my eyes to really look at the shadows, angles, negative space, etc. etc.

I sketched them first, and then used my watercolor pencils and, lastly, a paint brush to go over all of the colored pencil work.  The paper in this book is not for watercolor and I did not gesso it...not sure why.  It might have been better if I had put the gesso down first.  All in all, happy with the results.  

A close-up of one of the shoes... Just have to keep practicing my art.  Before you recycle your magazines, see if there are some photos that speak to you and give them a try in your journal.  

Blue and more BLUE!!!!

Another great find on my trip

to Barnes & Noble today

I love going to bookstores.  I didn't really have anything in mind today....I just wanted to wander and look and touch....after all...the feel of different papers is really sublime.  At least to me it is.  

Before I left the house, I sat out on my deck reading the latest issue of House Beautiful that had just arrived.  The July issue.  Sometimes, I find the designs too modern and cold for my taste;  this issue I loved.  The first house featured is a charming home in Charleston, SC.  Then there's a studio apt in Manhattan (525 sq. ft....for some that's a nice closet).  The resident is a 27 yr old male designer.  I would just like to know how a guy that young could already have acquired what he has and I can only think that he is an "old soul".

There are other sweet designs in the magazine which I won't go into detail on here.  One thing I do often wonder, however, is when they give you the sources for the fabrics, lamps, whatever....they rarely tell you "who painted that amazing painting that hangs over the sofa!"  Why is that!  

Another thing...I love seeing books stacked here and there in these designs.  I have books stacked here and there in my living room and they are a true reflection of who I am and what I like.  When visiting someone's abode for the first time...don't you kind of like to look at the book jackets to see what they've collected?  One last note on the designs...I think that designers tend to put too many chotskies all over the place. Perhaps everyone inside the pages of House Beautiful has someone who dusts frequently.....otherwise that would make me crazy.

So the BLUE book above I spotted today and low and behold....it's from House Beautiful!  350 ways to decorate with blue!! Wonderful photographs inside.  The book is 5 x 7.  Sweet.  It's my 2nd "blue" book this year...the other I blogged about fairly recently...from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.  While I'm on the subject of books whose title are just a color..one word...I also have a RED book that I bought quite a few years ago.  It has no jacket, just the word RED embossed in the cover.  

It has an unusual assembly of photographs...people, art, fashion.  It says it was translated from the French.  So I have two BLUE books and one RED....I wonder if there's a YELLOW somewhere?  This new BLUE book I'll save for later this afternoon, sipping a glass of wine on my deck and enjoying this beautiful summer day....

BEACH BABE - The Hat

Art Journal

Acrylics with some glass bead gel

From an inspiration page from a magazine:

Love her beach look.  I adore stripes (have a Pinterest board by that name!)

Here she is early in the development:

I cropped the photos when they were in my iPhone and here they're not....not sure why, but maybe will figure it out later....At any rate....still having fun using an inspiration page and then putting my interpretation on the opposite page.

If I hadn't already glued the photo on the page, I probably would have done the hat across the two pages...making it even larger, and then just the top of her cleavage.  I do like the pop of red for her straps.  And I decided to use a deeper shade of blue-green behind her so that she would stand out more.   I really like doing these magazine inspiration pages in my journal.

Oh to be able to wear that suit!

Maryland is for CRABS.....

Art Journal

Memories of 4th of July

at the Delaware-MD shore....

It's not my usual red, white & blue that I would normally do today, but there is an essence of those colors here.  I recently acquired the crab napkin.  First I used my Gelli plate (the red-orange colors) and then I glued the crab on top.  I filled in around the edges with the blue and some yellow ochre.  And I stamped a couple of more crabs unto the page.  This page was a quickie, but I like it.

I haven't had those crabs for several years but they are the best...you have to go there and eat them.  The Fenwick Crab House is the place we normally went for the crabs....it's a messy job to eat them, but that's part of the experience.  And you need a cold pitcher of beer as the crabs have a lot of Chesapeake Bay Seasoning on them and that has a bit of a kick to it.  On your way back to your beach house....it's a stop at the Dairy Queen for a chocolate dip vanilla cone.  It doesn't get any better than that....Happy 4th!

Mystele is so fun to watch.....