Red, White & Blue Journal - EGGS

Red, White & Blue Eggs

When else would I be doing this except Easter weekend!

It's Easter Weekend.....

This photo of Easter eggs is from the International Business Times...they are gorgeous.  I hard-boiled some eggs yesterday that I'm going to color today....not this calibre for sure but it will be fun. 

John O'Donohue

John O'Donohue was a wonderful Irish poet and philosopher who died at age 52, but he left some wonderful pearls of wisdom and I'm going to share one with you...an Easter treat.

For Equilibrium, A Blessing 

"Like the joy of the sea coming home to shore,

May the relief of laughter rinse through your soul.

As the wind loves to call things to dance,

May your gravity be lightened by grace.

Like the dignity of moonlight restoring the earth,

May your thoughts incline with reverence and respect.

As water takes whatever shape it is in,

So free may you be about who you become.

As silence smiles on the other side of what's said,

May your sense of irony bring perspective.

As time remains free of all that it frames,

May your mind stay clear of all it names.

May your prayer of listening deepen enough to hear in the depths the laughter of god."

HAPPY EASTER

Playing with Art....No Agenda

Wasn't ready to put my paints away for the week, so I started playing this afternoon...nothing in mind....and this is what came out.   My question is....should I write words inside the colorful spaces....or just let it go....for now, I'm just letting it go....

Altered Book Class - Egypt

Left Page

Right Page

The Jewel of the Nile

Between my Word Journal with Papyrus and the class today, I've covered Egypt!  We used light molding paste to create the Nile and had some fun collage pieces to glue to the pages.

Red, White & Blue Journal

SPRING BREAK

I haven't added anything to my Red, White & Blue journal for awhile and while my son was off enjoying "Spring Break", I did a couple of pencil sketches in the journal and today decided to paint them....the grown son on the left....and the younger version....a time for exploration....Tom would have had a large grin on his face and his neck is too long and and and...have to practice faces....

Word Journal - Papyrus

I chose the word papyrus for my word journal/altered book this week.  I used some brown grocery bag paper for the background of the two pages and I folded over the "pyramid" pages to make a pocket on the right that contains a mini book and the one on the left opens to reveal a picture underneath.
The pyramids are gold paint, and there is a little paper bead I made, securing the pocket.

Above is the left page. Across the very bottom which you can't see, is the word papyrus, repeated all of the way across....sorry about that! The images are from a book I got at our local library book fair last year for $2....a hardbound book printed in 1948 entitled The Book of Costume, Vol. I.  Wish I had Vol. II as well!

Above is the right hand page with the little book removed from the pocket. The little twig attached on the right is from my yard...I thought it looked like a writing implement. This is a notecard from The Metropolitan Museum of Art.  I added pages to the inside...it opens to reveal....

  There you have

PAPYRUS

5 Minute Parking

...and the moon up above and a thing called Love....

These pages don't require any other words. 

ALTERED BOOK WORKSHOP

Le Cirque

Yesterday was one of those days where I just couldn't get it together at the workshop....I cut a couple of the pieces of paper incorrectly and that threw me off....so I went through some of the exercises and then decided to bring all of the pieces home to construct.  Above is the result.  The right page with the ringmaster is an accordion book....I'll show you....

And more....

 On this one I made an envelope and used small brads;  I was going to put the two tickets in it...but you wouldn't see them, so on the page above, I just added them there.  This isn't  quite the way we learned it in the class, but it all came together.

Strathmore Workshop - Stencils, Spray

 I haven't had much time to do art this weekend but today I finally put some paint in a spray bottle and got a couple of stencils out...messy, I must say!  I had no plan for these pages...just using techniques...the spray, stencils, rubber stamps and letters....and this is how they came out. There is some bronze metallic on the pear leaves, but it's hard to tell in the photo.  I think I may tweak it a little bit more....

 I added some gold polka dots to the "me" and there is now gold around the stenciled letters and here and there...just not a great photo...It hasn't won me over, but it's OK.

Strathmore Workshop II -Start Where You Are

I started the 2nd workshop from the Strathmore Visual Journal series over the weekend.  It's called Start Where You Are by Linda Blinn.  I find her instruction really easy to follow.  So the pictures I'm showing are from a lesson about graduated pages...cutting the pages so they are not all the same to add interest to the book.  
The first 2 pages are the normal size....

These flowers are done with stencils, background with water soluble crayons, charcoal pencil for shadow and collage.

The next 2 pages....

The page on the left is an inch narrower than the previous page.  The page on the right is 2 inches narrower....

The next pages...

As you can see, the "tree" page is very narrow.  The pages on the left are "connected" by the colors and patterns chosen to make interesting edges...

And the last two pages....

 I decided the tree page would flip from summer to fall...and the bird page is actually a napkin.  

As I was doing these pages, I started thinking about a very old song (so how do I know that song....) at any rate..."Let me tell you 'bout the birds and the bees and the flowers and the trees....etc. etc.  

When I flip the next page over, the bird page, I'll be back to two normal size pages and I think on these it would be fun to illustrate another stanza in the song....maybe a scene at a drive in movie....I don't know....will have to see what develops...

Let me tell you 'bout the birds and the bees

And the flowers and the trees

And the moon up above

And a thing called "Love" 

The Birthday Boy

Today is my son, Tom's, 23rd Birthday. He was born on a Thursday afternoon. This fun photo of him in his pj's taken maybe 17 years ago, really expresses the confident, happy young man he's turned out to be. This will be the first birthday in his 23 years that I won't see him on his special day....because he's enjoying a wonderful, tropical vacation...best known as "Spring Break" ...with many of his friends. I slipped a birthday card into his luggage, but missing will be the special balloon I always buy...probably more for me than for him...but it's a tradition. I know he's having the time of his life...HAPPY BIRTHDAY, TOM!!!

Word Journal Book Cover

This is the front and back cover of the book I am altering for my word journal.  As you can see, the name of the book is Time Expired...haven't thought about how I might alter that, but I've added lots of words to the cover itself...which started out as just a plain royal blue.  When you're not sure what project you want to work on, you can always revert to your word journal to do an illustration...just pick any word you like and have fun!

Where Does Inspiration Come From?

I would say from all of your senses....sight, sound, taste, smell, touch....so I've been working on some pages in my Word Journal.  This word journal has turned into something different than my original concept of ...carefully chosen words.  The word featured in the art below is not a special word by any means (what makes a word "special" anyway?)  but for whatever reason, it's ended up in the book.  The word is QUEEN.  Maybe it's interesting to me because it's associated with so many different things, the obvious being royalty.  And a queen is....female.   She's at the top of her game whether it's in chess or the local beehive.  My siblings nicknamed me "Queenie" when we were growing up.  I was born in May so...the May Queen.  So, here are my "queen" pages....

 

A queen is....a goddess or a thing personified as a female and having supremacy.

A queen is....the wife or widow of a king

A queen is....a female monarch

A queen is....the fertile fully developed female of social bees

A queen is....the most privileged piece of each color in a set of chessmen.

A queen is....you can fill this in....

 

I ran into some technical difficulty when I was doing the page with the key on it...I had saved a movie ticket stub from a couple of years ago from The Queen...to put on the journal page and it was part of the "dress" I created.  Well, in my eagerness to complete the page, I was using my heat gun on it and got too close and it burned the ticket and you couldn't read the words The Queen...lost treasure.  And then I had to recreate that part of the page without tearing it.  So, I present to you the QUEEN.

Art Cabinet Update

I have to say that this cabinet is my favorite piece of furniture in my house.  It's nothing grand...it wasn't expensive (consignment shop!).  It was someone's old dining room cabinet from decades ago.  And I think I gave it a new lease on life.

The light is very bright from the snow coming in the windows, so it's hard to see the details.  However, I decided to take the old handles and knobs that came with the cabinet and paint them black.  They were a tired, old brass....at least that's what they looked like.  I also added a bit of gold down the piece of wood where the doors meet on the bottom.  I wanted each section of the cabinet to have some gold.  And I added a small black star at the top...again to make the cabinet have some uniformity.  I added some more gold to the dentil molding on the top so it shows more (although you can't really see any of the gold in this photo).  I still have touch-ups to do but I really love it and it's working just great in my art room.  My sister had suggested that I add a harlequin pattern on the sides...rather ambitious...but I haven't ruled it out (did I ever mention I'm not good in math?) because once I finish the cabinet, I want to seal it so it preserves the painting I've done on it.  At least that's my thought at this moment in time.  If you go back numerous postings, you can see how the cabinet looked when I brought it home. 

Altered Book Class - Paris

It was nice to venture out yesterday....a sunny day with no new snow.  But it was cold!  At class this month we did a couple of pages in our altered books on Paris.  We learned how to make the fan on the right hand page and our instructor had all kinds of "Paris" themed objects to use to decorate the pages.  The fun thing about this is that we all had similar objects to choose from... but everybody's pages looked different and unique...and that's why it's fun.

The Word is...CHAMELEON

I decided to add another word to my word journal this weekend..Chameleon.  It has a nice sound to it....and it means...."a small lizard whose skin changes color...especially according to its surroundings....and here are the pages...(still working on them)

 Isn't that a great lizard??  I found him on a National Geographic site.  And the page of "grasses" in front of him flips open....not sure what I am going to add there, possibly another lizard.  I should be doing more drawing of the illustrations rather than printing photos from the internet....this lizard almost looks like he's laughing....at what?

FACES

I wasn't going to blog about this drawing because I don't like it, but I think you can learn from your mistakes.  Unless you're very accomplished in drawing faces and see all of the nuances....it's very difficult to capture the "spirit" of the face...the soul.  So this drawing I drew without looking at a face and...she has no soul. She is just flat.  Colorful, but flat.

So, I need to go back to photos of faces...fashion magazines are a great resource...and really look at the face I am drawing...in order to give it life.  The picture below you've seen before on my blog, but look at the difference as to when you pay attention to detail...there is a "light" behind her eyes...almost wistful....  So...practice, practice practice....

The Word is "Crayon"

Crayon may not seem like a special word to be added to a "word journal"; we just take the word for granted and don't really think about it...but a definite visual image comes to mind when we hear that word....the box of Crayola Crayons in particular.  And there is nothing like the smell of a new box of crayons.  The next best thing...is the names they give them like wisteria and asparagus and indigo and mauvelous...got to love them!

I've always loved to color...whether it was coloring books at an early age or those "paint by number" kits (do they still make those??) or whatever was available.

When I was a senior in high school, I had appendicitis and landed in the hospital.  So, while I was there...I colored in coloring books to pass the time, and everyone who came to visit me, while we were chatting, had to color a page in my book and sign it.  I kept that coloring book for years...wish I still had it now.

Euphoria didn't happen.....

 

I decided to work in my word journal today and I chose the word....EUPHORIA.  Funny thing about that...euphoria didn't work for me today...wasn't feeling it.  But these two pages developed in the journal.  There is no "word" featured here, I just created storage pockets for the various words and phrases that I cut out of magazines to use in collage work.  This dual purpose altered book is working out OK...special words and word storage....I won't give up on finding ....euphoria...another time....

p.s.  The Good Things business card is from a store in Idaho where I used to ship some of my painted bird houses for sale quite awhile ago....loved their card....even more amazed that I could find it!

Ground Hog Day

This is the worst weather I've ever experienced living here in the northeast and I've lived here since 1974....I'm a wreck!  My gutters are jammed with ice and on the back bedroom side of the house, water is leaking in the bedroom windows and bathroom too, downstairs to the first floor bath...right down to the basement.  It's a nightmare.  I have buckets here and there and towels and plastic bags.....

So, in my attempts to distract myself (it's not working), I journaled a winter page and a "sunny" page (encouraged by my sister) and here they are.  

On the "sunnier" page, I have the lyrics to the Beatle tune...Good Day, Sunshine...thank you John, Paul, George & and Ringo.... once upon a time.
I used parts of a paper napkin on the sunny page.

Altered Book Class Resumed

 

 Silhouette Art

The monthly Altered Book class resumed on Saturday after a 2 month hiatus during the holiday season.  For this class, the technique is silhouette art....you can sort of see the 3-D effect.  I didn't complete the piece in class, because there were all of these little pieces of seaweed and a tiny mermaid to be cut out to "layer" in the framed part...my scissors just weren't small enough to handle those cuts so I created my little seascape inside the frame.  It's not quite as 3-D as the one done in class, but I get the idea.  And, of course, I had to jazz it up...the seahorse is looking pretty good and I have lots of beaded glass gel in this to give the water some sparkle.

More Journaling Using My Recycled Art

I did the left side page last night...I took some of the elements from the page  on the right and elsewhere to create the page.  I'm still not happy with the page on the right so...still thinking about what to do to it.

And today I dug a tunnel from my driveway over to the far side of the house to make sure the oil delivery guy could get to the pipe...but it turned out to be great fun for Boomer because the yard has been too deep for him.  Now he has a racearena.  I didn't take photos of that but check out these icicles....I have since knocked them down out front ....but every  now and then...I hear one fall out back...and the mailboxes at the end of the driveway.....

Y' all Come!

And It's Only January.....