Another Birthday and Inchies

Today is my brother Mike's birthday. He is now officially one year older than I am. I must remember to call him later. I'm not sure he is an early riser and don't know if he works today, but will catch him some time.

I have finally cut apart my doodle into inchies. The theme is black and white and I had to keep reminding myself of that as I wanted to put a spot of color into each one. Sorry, the picture is a bit blurry. I think they turned out pretty well.  What do you think? Would you be happy to get one of these in your mail?

I had such plans for the day:

- walk the treadmill

- do the laundry

- put on loud music and clean house

- go through Spring clothes and see what fits

- do some art

- whatever

BUT, just got a call from my daughter. She doesn't have anyone to watch the baby or get the first grader off the bus, so my plans will have to be put aside. Of course, watching that little one is mostly a joy, so after the initial disappointment all was fine. And the first grader will be riding a bus to my house instead of being dropped off at her house, which would mean that I would have had to pack up the baby and drive in to meet her.

I will be able to walk the treadmill before she arrives and can certainly do the laundry while she is here. She will probably want to help and it will be fun, but it limits what I can do because I like to have her help, but some jobs just become WAY too complicated.

The hubster is getting on the treadmill right now, so I will go get a bit to eat so that when he is done I can do my workout.

Better go! I hope to see you tomorrow.

xoxo

Zentangles and Inchies

I have been mentally working on ideas for an inchie swap and finally sat down in the living room last evening and drew a zentangle on a 6 x 6 Strathmore Bristol smooth artist paper. My idea was to make a large zentangle and then cut it into 1" x 1" pieces. Here is what I have come up with on the 6 x 6 page:

I like it overall, but still feel that I am not very good at this and that I need more variety. There is something very satisfying about this whole thing, though. Parts of it I absolutely love and parts not so much. At any rate, it is what it is and I think I am getting better each time I try one and that is surely the whole point.

My idea is to cut it into 1 x 1 pieces and then choose the most interesting 9 to use for the swap. As a visual aid, I opened this file in Photoshop and then chose 1" x 1" squares in two ways. In the picture below, the 6 inchies above the black line were separated from the first inch along the left side of the 6 x 6. The 9 below the black line where chosen by setting the marquee tool to 1" x 1" and then selectively cutting out parts that I found interesting.

My question is this, would this be a legitimate way to generate inchies in a black and white theme? Would you be happy to get something like this as your part of a swap?

Personally, I think I like the 6 at the top that were generated by just cutting along the left edge. I am almost certain that is what I will do, but would really appreciate some input.

On another topic, I finished by two page spread for the collaborated book swap and will get them in the post today. I actually remembered to take pictures and will share them after they are received at the other end.

And I did a bit more work on my bird adding a bit of green around him to the background using a sea sponge and a couple different colors. I am calling him done (at least for now). I am almost certain I am going to keep the background and redo the bird. I am thinking I could just put a watered layer of gesso on him and start fresh with the colors. I want to tone down the blue and maybe do just a bit of reshaping of the body and tail feathers. I think I may also need something in the upper left for interest.

Well, my friend Nancy is due at 10 and we are going on an outing, so I think I'd better get around. I hope to see you again tomorrow.

xoxo

Inchies and More

I have never made inchies before and was a bit intimidated by the size of them. How was I going to draw on such a small "canvas"?

For this project the theme is text background. That was easy; I made the text background on a larger piece and then cut it into inchie size. I finally got up the nerve to draw on each one. I am not displeased with the result, except I think I will go over the colored pencil either with marker or wet watercolor pencil to make them "pop" more.




I also finished up an ATC exchange project whose theme is four letter words. This was fun and no pressure.




For both of these projects I still need to finish the backs before putting them in the mail. Meanwhile, I am still adding to my EDM journal, but desperately need to figure out either how to shade to give them a 3-D quality or get out the watercolors to add some depth to them. I am finally beginning to think I can reasonably draw the outline of things, now I really need to make the leap to making them look more real with shading or color.

Today is going to be quite busy. I am spending the morning with an art friend working at her house and then I am picking the kindergartner up from school and taking her to ballet class.

I won't get an opportunity to spend time in my art room today, but tomorrow I am planning to spend more time on the face for my Faces class (there is a new video due today) and maybe start a new one.

That's it for now. See you tomorrow.

Bye!

Birds Singing, Warmish Breeze Blowing

It is April and the weather is really beginning to feel good. The furnace is turned off for the day time hours and the screened porch is open to the house. The hubster has taken the two little girls to the park, so I am taking this opportunity to blog.

Beginning this week, we were only going to have the girls all day on Tuesdays, but then their Dad had surgery yesterday and so we have had them most of this week. I don't yet know how the recovery from his procedure is to progress, so don't know when my schedule will improve.

Meanwhile, the mail person drove into the driveway to hand deliver some larger parcels. Two of them were for me. One was the lovely journal I won from Rice at the Voodoo Cafe. If you haven't yet subscribed to her blog, you really should.




The other was the paper painting I purchased from Elizabeth St. Hilaire Nelson. If you are not familiar with this artist, you owe it to yourself to go take a look.



I did get a chance for a little while to work in my art room and began pasting torn text papers to 140 # watercolor paper in preparation for the 9 inchies I am making for a swap. I have never made inchies before and thought this would be the way to get text onto all of them before they were cut so small. It looks like I need to reglue some of the corners of the torn pieces before cutting them. I then put strips of masking tape on it in random places and brushed a green wash over all.



For now, the library just called to say that some of the books that I had ordered through the state wide library, MelCat, had arrived. I think I'd better finish reading "The Power of One" so that I can begin reading "The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox".

Also, I should list the books I read during the month of March:

Fire and Ice by Julie Garwood
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by Wrobleski
Letting Go by Pamela Morin
Shelter Me by Juliette Fay

So far, I have read 14 books in 3 months, so I am still ahead of the average to achieve 50 books read this year.

See you later.

Bye!