Attempting

Trying to add a post on my iPhone! and I did it, well I added the picture!  I created this piece as part of the Index Card a Day FB group!  It was an experiment gone awry!  The waves and the scribble lines were done with gesso and I rubbed dioxin purple acrylic paint on with a baby wipe.  I thought that I could get the gesso to act more like a resist but it didn't happen.  Possibly I picked the wrong pigment and might try this one again.


Instead of throwing the card out I decided to act stuff to make is presentable.  I cut out the butterfly images from an end roll of wrapping paper.  Then doodles all over the card with gel pens.  I used glitter, neon, and soufflé Sakura pens. I like this card now, it was fun!
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Experimentation

I have been doing art, honestly I have! I have slowed down on my productivity in my sketchbook but I joined up with Tammy Garcia over at Daisy Yellow Art to do the ICAD or Index Card a Day.  This has been fun.  I'm not really the best at it but so far I have enjoyed posting on to the Facebook group.

This is the card that got the most comments as it was a complete experiment that I saw in an art journalling magazine and thought that I would try it.  It is quite a multi-media piece even though it is on a cheapie dollar store index card.

I slapped on some soft gel to the vintage dictionary page, let it dry for a minute or so and then tore it off.  I really like the distressed look!  Since there was so much of the page that didn't distress I thought I would do another technique overtop of it.  I used the soft gel medium once again and applied it to a magazine page that had a picture of a rose on it.  I didn't like the way the image "transferred" and think that if I do this again I will use regular gel medium since the soft gel is quite a bit wetter and likely too wet for the magazine page.  I couldn't leave well enough alone so I then used my Uniball pen to outline the image.  Then I coloured in the image with my new Pebeo watercolours that I bought at the Junction in Toronto.

I don't know if you can really notice it much but at the bottom of the card where I show what paints I used I had attempted to distress some sheet music but without success!

Then I thought that I'd best push myself away from this although.  So there is my card for that day!

Not all Green is Good

Try as I might not everything in my sketchbook is great.  I don't think it is suppose to be but I do try.  I really liked the page I titled The Taste of Red and I tried a green one (at the suggestion that by a fellow student in my virtual classroom at Sketchbook Skool).  I'm just not loving it.  I did it several days ago but wasn't going to post it.

I just can't seem to get the greens just right or that right that appeals to my eye.  I found the green to "olive" or brownish or then it was too blue.  Agh!  Should get some better watercolours.

It has been cold today at 3C and it wasn't until almost 5 p.m. that the sun finally shone.  I went outside for a minute and actually saw some purple so I grabbed my phone and got a shot.

Finally some pretty spring colour out there!  This has been an awful spring after a horrible winter.  I am just so thankful that I have been keeping busy with art.

I am finally getting close to finishing up my postcards for the iHanna postcard swap  Unfortunately, I am late but I expect that I will have them all out in the mail this week.

Wishing and hoping and two days early!

Some days I am running behind and then today I find out I am ahead of myself!  I thought the new Strathmore workshop was up.  Ugh, it is not until Monday.  So I will content myself with posting here and then get cracking at the postcards that I am making for the iHanna Postcard swap that I joined.  I have to get them done since it is a fact....I am once again "late" getting them done and mailed out!

Here are a few more drawings from my sketchbook.  As I said, I am making an attempt to keep at it!  I love the notion of it so I just need to buckle down and do it.  I haven't finished the one I started for today so here are a few from days past.

Kiddie toothpaste

Need to work on the tube again but it makes me chuckle nevertheless.  I am using a children's toothpaste - well - I am +8 years - so it should be okay?  Ha! Ha!  It had fun trying to get the notion across of "bristle" and the handle is a bit wonky but it is all about "the making" or rather the drawing. It is about the act of putting pen to paper.  I did it.  I filled a page with a drawing and I did my journalling in it later. 

I used the sticker from the bananas and added it to the top of the page in my Moley.  I had some difficulties that day with the banana but the paint helped.  I know we call recognize the fruit shape so that is a good thing but I was trying to capture the ripeness.  I like my bananas well past what many other people do.  I have any green parts but as you can see there was some.  However, it had "dots" on it so I ate it anyway.

I love the sound the spoon makes when I stir my coffee in my new mug!  Cheers!  It is Saturday morning and never enough coffee.  

This is similar to Danny Gregorys' video "The Art of Breakfast".  If you haven't seen it yet head over to Youtube to find and watch it.  It is amazing.  This was my breakfast that day.  

I got to go and finish some more of my postcards now.  The weather report has somewhat shifted and there might be a spot of sunshine later.  I want to be ready and head outdoors to enjoy it! 

I'm a "Sketchbook Skool" student!

I am so happy to be taking part in "Sketchbook Skool" co-founded by Danny Gregory!  I have one of his books and had glanced through it many times but had never actually had done anything about it.  I simply admired the drawings and wished that I could too.  The only way to become a better artist is to actually make art and working in a sketchbook is a "safe" way to do that.  It is my book and I can choose who sees what is inside.

 I am trying to work in my sketchbook more than once a week.  In fact, I have been exceptionally good for me that is....I started my Moleskine sketchbook on October 23, 2012.  Yup, and I only had a few pages with anything on it other than a few pages with fruit and veggies stickers.

I have signed up for Sketchbook Skool Semester 2 so that I will continue to try and complete this sketchbook and buy a proper watercolour one and yes complete it.  I love the concept of an illustrated journal so that there are some cool creative pages that my grand-daughter can look at and read.  She can read about "who" I am as a person and not just as a grandmother!

I think that is important...knowing more about a person that what they represent on the outside.  I never knew my grandmother; mostly due to the fact that we lived out of the country and out of the province for most of my live prior to her death.  I do have some fond memories of her but not really all that many.

I am hoping that I will create some different memories between Anju and myself.  I am hoping that she can become an "illustrated journal" type of gal as well when she gets older.

So here is one picture that I did as homework for Jane LaFazio's class.

At first I wasn't all that happy with the results but I got positive feedback from my fellow students. So, I am happy enough when I consider that I am a beginner!



Then I had a very bad thing happen; I lost my camera off the trunk of my car.  I drove all the way to Orillia before I realized that my camera was missing.  I drove back home right then and there and it was gone.  I had hoped that it had fallen off in our lane way but that didn't happen.

 So, I was pretty bummed out for a day and I stayed home to work on the "The Taste of Red" as my homework when there was a knock on the side door.  It was my next door neighbour; he lives on the farm in the house just north of us.  He had my camera bag in his hand!  It is a bit banged up but everything works!  I am so thrilled that his daughter figured that it was my camera.  I do have my name and address on a piece of cardboard in the bag so really it should have been fairly easy.  Regardless, I am so happy that I don't need to go out and spend lots of money on replacing it.  I guess I have better karma than what I thought or maybe I do have the luck of the Irish.

To celebrate our reunion I did this sketch of my camera.  It is a bit wonky but it is the first time that I have ever drawn a camera.  I need practice, practice, practice!!  However, I am still happy that I just dove in an actually completed another page in my book.

Do You Have a Blog?

I was asked via e-mail by a friend from Australia if I had a blog.  I have replied to her e-mail but I didn't mention this blog.  Okay so I do have a blog but seemingly I am not a blogger with any sort of stamina.  I find Instagram, Flickr and Facebook quick and easy (well that is a bit of a fib).  However, I can surf through these platforms on my phone; it isn't so easy posting to blogger using a hand-held device.  So, I just kind of got out of the habit.

Anyway, this post is for you Carol!  I just participated in a postcard swap with Hanna Andersson from and we were to post our blog addresses.  Felt a bit weird submitting my blog address after I checked some of the blogs of the swappers that sent me cards - they are avid bloggers.  As I have said, me…not so much.

It seems strange but I retired from work in May of this year and I should have loads of time to put into this blog.  Not true!  It is a conscious decision on my part to not blog really.  I tell everyone that I am as busy as I have always been and finding the time to blog just doesn't make it to the horizon.

So, I have been doing some different artistic endeavours and I think that I will pick up the gauntlet and give this thing another whirl.

I took an on-line experimental art course (if I could figure out how to put her badge/icon/thingie here I would but I don't find blogger easy) that I thoroughly enjoyed.  She is a fab artist from the UK and her name is Amelia Critchlow.  I now have a cool new mixed media avatar that I can use.

This is the first pencil selfie I have ever done and I enjoyed the process.  I especially like the hair although this was not required for that segment of the course.  I love the colour purple and so just started cutting shapes from a magazine.  Although I don't have purple hair, I added the grey shapes to indicate that I do have them.  I like the effect.  It is more representative of what my messy curly hair looks like in real life so I much prefer this to a Bitstrips cartoon!  I added some Derwent Inktense to cheeks and lips to add a bit more colour.

Thank you card!

I couldn't believe it when a few days ago I received a letter in the mail and was the very happy recipient of a thank you piece of art.  The sender was the recipient of my 4 X 6 postcard exchange that I did through the Sketchbook Project.  How nice was that!!!  Her is Rachel's watercolour and graphite postcard drawing!  Isn't it lovely!!

I am very happy with my progress on my postcards for the swap.  I have finally completed the blue prototype and have to just find some creative lettering that I like to add my message to the front.

I would like to find more washi tape around but decided to use what I have although I don't really think it "goes" that well.  But really it will have to do as it is all that I have on hand in this colour and I might as well use it up.

The one thing that I learned from finishing this one is that I have to move the beads up more.  I ended up having to cover the ones at the end with the washi tape.  Bummer!  That is the reason that I do a prototype.  I am just not a very good designer/planner in my head; I have to use my hands and make one to find the flaws or make any changes that I think would look better.

I also decided that I didn't like putting the beads in the flower centres because there really wasn't enough symmetry for me.  I decided to move them to in-between the hand stitched crochet cotton which makes a clear and clean line.

With the photo above, I just wanted to show that I painted a piece of cheap paper with the peach colour in the ribbon and then stitched the beads on.  The soft gel was used as an adhesive and the ribbon attached to the postcard.  Then the washi tape was added for the final touch before the writing.