Where did summer go?

Wow!  It has happened once again!  Time has sped up and flown by! I can feel fall already and nature's harvest is becoming more apparent.

These wild grapes are ready for picking!!!  I will be heading out shortly to do just that!  I am in a jam making mood.   I am itching to get out there and get started.

I have been enjoying using Instagram lately!  I just love some of the fabulous photographs that people post there.  Amazing really!!

Here is a quick sketch that I water coloured overtime the Sharpie pen marks.  It has been such a long time since I have been able to find the time to put my pen to paper that I was just so thrilled to have done this very small drawing.  I can be negative about all of the mistakes that are clearly visible but I can't beat myself up too much since I am so very "out of practice"!

I was leafing through a Vogue magazine and found this model with an intriguing face!  Of course, this isn't the exact replica of her face since I drew this free hand because I just wanted to get some marks down on the page but I was happy never-the-less!  I have touched it up a bit more to darken the hair and the jacket.  I can't hide most of the unwanted marks so there is not much point even going there at all.

I had a watercolour paint set for quite some time that I had never used.  I got it out and was happy with most of the colour.  Not to thrilled about the skin tone but I will have to work on my painting skills as well as the drawing.  Regardless, I had fun!!

So off I go now to get my supplies together and get canning!!

Experiment in digital art

The pace this summer has been brisk!  I think that I have missed way too much summer this year; it feels like it has passed by me in a blur. The nature of time is marching by me and before I am aware days and weeks have past and summer is technically almost over.  At lease for all those people who need to abide by that calendar; parents with kids and all that.  This week was the first anniversary of my fathers death, so that kept me down a bit!  Really though, it is because I worked too much overtime this year; my greed got the best of me so I will just have to face the fact that it was my choice.

Also this week, I got some very nice comments from my fellow postcard swappers! I just think that it is so awesome that these small works of art can make there way to like individuals all over the world.  I mean I got mail from Singapore and New Zealand; how cool is that!!! Definitely the power of the internet and of course I have to give a shout out to snail mail!

Earlier this summer I tried my hand at distressing some paper pages from National Geographic using Citrasolv (only available State side).  It was fun to do; slapping the solvent/degreaser on the page and viola; you never can tell what the results might be.  It all depends on the colour of the ink on the page and the amount of degreaser that is applied.

 I found a new app and I was able to piece some of these pages together ....

I like how I was able to "collage" these different pages into a whole.  There was even an area to add comments as show above.  I put it in the centre of the image for ease of placement.  I really like how the Citrasolv moves the ink around on the page and as in the case of the two pages on top the solvent left puddles of ink leaving some cool looking marks and circular shapes.

For the above page on the left, it seems that I didn't add enough solvent but I do like the way it left some of the image.  The face page had the symbol of Route 66 on it and it left a mirror image on this page after it dried.  I thought that it looked kind of cool too.  I don't think that any of these pages have anything to do with each other; I just added them together because they had a similar colour palette.

I definitely will have to play around some more with it.  I'm not sure how I got turned on to using the PicFrame app but I saw a YouTube video.  I would love to watch it again because I have forgotten some of the tutorial but as you can see I have the basics down pat.

I used some of the left over paper pieces in some of the postcards I made for the last swap.  I might just have to investigate this some more for the next one!!