I’ve been lazy – in black and white AND in color!!!

No excuses – no reasons – but also, no inspiration, which is CRAZY since the world around me has been so pretty lately!  Outside and in, colorful flowers and leaves all around, and I’ve been looking at furniture and paints so lots of color inside as well.  But nothing has been coming from my hand to the pages.

And I really have no excuses!  Summer of Color, the on line group I’ve participated in for the past two summers is gearing up – and so many colorful ideas from my on-line friends! I gave myself permission to go back and look at some of my favorite pages from the past two years of participation.  From the first year -

and from last year.

I was really pleased with both of these, and most of the others, so hope that taking this look back gets me jump started again to be creative.  I’ve just had too many ideas running around, maybe, so I can’t seem to stop and get one of them down.  Today, I cleaned up the art table in hopes that just clearing out a space might clear out my mind.

I have classes coming up this month, too.  I’m taking a quick trip to S Cal for some mixed media classes, will take an on line stamp carving class (maybe I’ll finally get that stamp carved!) and an art journaling class from local mixed media artist Teesha Moore, so lots to look forward to.  I’m just feeling a little down about the current dry spell.  I thought by giving myself a goal – like the Shades of Gray small journal – that it would give me the impetus to really keep on task.  Sadly, not so much.

I want to have nice things to share with you here – I want to take the time to learn new things but also have them turn out nicely.  Sometimes, I think that those two things don’t always work nicely with each other, so since I examine everything I do, it seems, I’m going to see whether the pressure of turning out really good stuff suitable for all ages stops me from just goofing to simply learn how colors work together or whether certain mediums work with each other.

I’ll let you know how it goes…..and hopefully have at least one new thing to share with you soon because THIS really needs to be finished!

Seeing things in Black and White when the world is full of color

I am really trying to stay with the discipline of my black and white journal, though as I’ve shared here, longing to play with color.  But I started this exercise to explore shadows, and to learn how to remember to shade the sides opposite of the light….all things that flow a bit more naturally now when dealing with colorful items.  So as I work my way through I wonder, have I learned everything I need to know?  Do I have more experience in focusing on the shades and shadows to help me be a better artist when I begin again to work with colors?

I’m not sure – but I know that I’ve explored some areas that I’d not spent enough time on in the past – that the looks that I like are very dimensional, and I have started to gain some of that dimension in my work, but still feel like I’m not yet where I want to be.  And again, it all comes down to practice, and spending time immersed in the work, something I haven’t done physically or mentally of late.  I have some classes coming up in the next few months, and perhaps the beginning of Summer of Color coming as well, things that will force me, in a good way, to spend some time once again at the art table.

I look forward to the discipline. And I look forward to the time spent working on my art, with the hope of having some new and interesting things to share with you here.

Can anyone say “Spring Fever?”

Or maybe schizophrenia.  So I’ve not darkened your email boxes lately with lots of new and inspiring works. Shame on me – that whole focus thing is a good mantra, but doesn’t always keep me on track!  It’s hard here in the Pac NW when the sun comes out – we never know how long it might stay, and of course, all the weeds have been growing like CRAZY in all our rain, so if we don’t get out now and address their advances, we’ll never see our gardens!  But no excuses – time to get back to the art table.

I’ve been looking to other places for inspiration – decorating magazines, old and new, and looking to add some new blogs to my reading list since I feel like I’ve been in a bit of a rut.  It’s not like I don’t want to finish the black and white journal, but I’m finding it SO HARD to stay in that neutral palette when there is so much of Spring color around.  And I must admit to two very intense weeks at work beating the creativity out of me so that by the time I’ve gotten home recently, the poor right side of my brain has just wanted to read a good book, thank you very much!  So today, time to evaluate where I want to go.

This is what the art table looks like today -

- so you can see why the term “schizophrenia” comes to mind.  So many competing directions!  It’s a colored art journal – no wait, it’s a piece on artists hard board – no, wait, it’s a new drawing.  You get the picture.  Sometimes all the different directions provides lots of fodder for inspiration – not so this week.  I’m addressing the mess and trying to decide which new idea I want to take on first.

Because that’s the main problem – during the time I don’t spend working on art, there are all sorts of new ideas coming in that spark ideas for me to execute.  Not all of them come out the way I want, but that’s what journals are for, right?  Anyway, right now I have to decide which one to pursue, and which ones to put on the back burner so I can make some sense of at least one thing.  Think maybe a list is in order today, too.

How about you – what are you working on this weekend?  How do you stay focused and finish what you started?  All insights are appreciated!!!

Black and White on the home stretch

On the other side of the middle.  At the beginning of the end.  However you look at it, I’m moving toward completion of the Black and White and Shades of gray journey I started back in February.

I thought I would have been done sooner.  I thought I might have a stamp completed.  I thought I might have more portraits drawn.  When I first started, I thought I’d breeze through this exercise, learn a lot and then move on my way to many more projects.  So far, projects have not been flowing like sparks from my fingertips.  But I think I am a bit more comfortable with some work than I was before I started.  But I still have a lot of life that gets in the way of my art.  Not all of it bad, mind you – we’ve had some GREAT Spring weather and I’ve taken advantage of it.  But I’ve not always been focused on art creation.

Thanks for hanging out with me on this journey.   I find that it has been easier for me to stick with the original thought knowing that there are people out in the world who are watching and waiting – it helps hold me to my original declaration of what I was going to do.  Without you out there, I may have abandoned this project long ago.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the journey along with me!  I’ve enjoyed having you along….and I look forward to sharing what is happening in the colorful art journal I made a few weeks ago and shared here….focus, focus, focus…..

Starting to think about transition

I’ve been honest with you all here, that I’m thinking of making the big change by retiring from the paying gig this year.  It’s starting to seem more real, and I think that I might even have a date for sometime this summer!  It is exciting to think about, and also a bit scary.  Let’s face it – the money is good and even though my psyche is tuckered out pretty much most days, the money helps keep me in art supplies!  But I don’t always have the time to use them, so clearly, time for a change!

This past weekend I started to internalize the idea – I’m really going to have time to do art as much as I want and still keep dust bunnies at bay!  Earlier this year, in order to keep the inspiration going, I signed up for some classes at CREATE California – I’m so excited to be taking a class from Pam Carriker in person, as well as Joanne Sharp who will be teaching a lettering class, which I’m really looking forward to, since I just need more “tools” for my journals.

Then, I got a blog notice from Teesha Moore, the wonderful journaler and artist extraordinaire who, lucky for me, lives near Seattle.  She is going to be teaching a 4-evening class this summer – and I got in!  The more exciting thing about that news is that, if I actually follow through, I will be RETIRED before the end of the class.  So late night journaling, and not having to get up in the morning for work, could really be in my future!    Teesha does some amazing work – I’ve attached the link to her art journal page – and you can find her in this month’s Stampington’s Art Journal magazine.  He work is very different from what I normally do, but I’m so looking forward to working with some color and craziness and maybe I’ll have a way to incorporate some of her style into what I do.

I’ve not completed my black and white journal yet, but I got re-inspired this evening after being away from it for a bit, so hopefully I will have more pages to share with you.  I have two nice larger panels completed with colored backgrounds because I just could not stand the lack of color – they have things to say, but I have not yet decided on the spokesperson – spokes bird?   I’m having trouble deciding how to finish them, and whether they are meant to have their say or whether they need a more involved drawing having the say….hopefully, the muses will come back inside and let me know soon!

Hope you are having a very inventive and happy 1st day of April!!!

Repeating elements -repeating colors

As you all know, I’m a self taught artist.  Didn’t take any art classes in school – well, except for that graphics class I took in college to complete my advertising degree, and I don’t think that counts!  So I’m always learning artistic tenets as I move through this crazy art exploration.

One of the things I’ve learned is to repeat elements – somewhere in a piece – and repeating color.  It’s especially true when you are working on a mixed media piece that often has so much going on.  I’m not sure whether the eye needs to rest somewhere – or whether it just looks good.  But if I pay attention to those ideas, to repeat both, I seem to like my pieces better, so my less than academic approach seems to be useful.

I find that it is also true in decorating.  I’ve been looking at more decorating blogs and color ideas out there in the web universe and it seems to hold true there, too.  See a certain aqua used in one part of the room, say, on the wall, and your certain to also find it somewhere in that pillow covering.  Or in the case of the House of Smith’s living room makeover, the aqua in the mason jars on the table picks up the aqua on one of the paintings in their plate rail.

Besides working on art this weekend and being sure to repeat my elements in my black and white journal, I’m working on changing up my decorating elements and looking at my final vignettes with this design element in mind.  Spring makes me think of birds and eggs – not that I ever leave those elements much, but pretty aqua colors seem to abound from now, when we thing of Robin’s eggs, through summer, when we think of the aqua water and things like aqua Mexican glasses for icy beverages.  In that vein, I found a really fun site, House of Turquoise and really liked this bedroom – doesn’t it seem relaxing?

Yes, as you can tell, I REALLY need to be working in color again.  But the black and white journal has a page started with repeated elements, and I’m convinced that it is helping me a bit with placement and shading, so I will carry on.  But I need to finish it soon – Spring and all it’s fresh colors is calling!!!

Idea vs Execution – it’s still a crapshoot!

You know how you have one of those days, you have all sorts of ideas and just can’t quite wait to get them all down on paper when you get home?  Well, I have very few of those days!  I find myself looking at my white pages and wondering – where will this go?  That used to freak me out, but not anymore because often, I have some really good ideas that strike me as I spend time sitting amongst my arty things.

I thought moving forward, past the middle and on into the back half of the black and white and shades of gray journal would feel really good.  So far, it has felt a little less good than I had hoped.  I thought there were fewer pages than there are, which should be the GOOD news, right?  Who wants to finish having so much fun?  But I really was thinking I had two pages fewer of ideas I needed to come up with!

One of the things I’ve been doing more as I’ve worked my way through this process is to think about making tools that I can use in my art.  You know, the usual – finding the right size bottle cap to use as a stamp, that kind of thing.  I read a bit about using masks and had just brought home a piece of plastic that had been a cover of a work report that was being recycled and I thought – I could make a mask!  So I made the letters to spell “art”, thinking those would probably be useful in a number of pieces I might do in the future.

I used them with some inktense blocks and liquid graphite on a journal page because I’ve been missing color:

It was kind of fun – hard to get the hang of how to hold them so they didn’t move but could still “mask” part of the page, but I liked how they turned out.  These would be good –  I just needed to not lose these see-though letters in the piles of papers!!!

As I stared at my waiting page, I knew I did not want to use my letters as a mask – I wanted more white space.  And then I thought, well, shoot, I could draw around them and fill in the letters!  Duh.  Sometimes it pays to be smarter than the tools.

I’ve been using this tour into the black and white realm as a way to explore my art, but also explore my life a bit as well.  I love writing a blog, but I’m not sure that there are a lot of folks that want to read what I write.  It’s almost my therapy – my way to make sense of things that don’t always make sense but lets face it, not everyone always wants to go along on someone else’s tour!  But I like having conversations with you all and sharing some of my learning along the way.

What I learned today is that sometimes the ideas in one’s head don’t always come out in the execution as they were in the visions.  There are parts of these pages I like, and some parts that don’t resonate as well.  But one of the things I’ve learned is that if I don’t get it down on paper sometime, it will always sit up there in my head, and not leave any room for any new ideas, so all of them have to come out.  And the good thing about a journal is that the pages can be turned, and there are always more blank pages waiting for my next ideas to come.

Carving isn’t for the faint of heart

If you’ve been following along, you know that I’ve been spending time in a black and white and shades of gray journal.  I’ve used stamps designed by other folks, but I really wanted to complete a stamp of one of my lady drawings to incorporate in this book, and thought that as I was moving through doing the art, I could also be carving away, and by the end, have something to add.

I don’t know how much experience you have with lino carvings, but it is scary.  I felt pretty confident starting, but rightly so, decided to try to carve a smaller version of my echinacea from last year in the soft carve product that is so easy to do, before I let loose on the linoleum block.  While I’m glad I did, I also realized that there is so much to pay attention to!!!  Now I’m not sure I have the skills to follow through without maybe some professional help first!!!  It’s scary – trying to think about the negative spaces so that there is something to print from is more important when you are going for a face than a flower somehow.

I’m convinced that I can do this if I pay attention – she says confidently.  I’ve given myself permission to finish up the black and gray journal without having an imprint from my own stamp because if I didn’t, I would maybe never move on to working in color!  And so you know, any helpful hints are appreciated!

In case you want some help – or someone else in the room with you when you carve, you can always turn to you-tube.  I didn’t find a lot of helpful videos, but this one is kind of fun, just because she is fun to listen to, and the music in the background isn’t heavy metal, as so many I found were!!!

Cutting video

 

Make it work – more than just for fashion!

I’ve been working in black and white and shades of gray for a few weeks now, and it’s been fun and I have gotten a bit better at shading and knowing where my light comes from – but I’ve really been craving color.  Thought maybe what I needed was to make the same journal as I’d done for my gray studies and do some color.

I found a good sale on Fabriano hot press watercolor paper, the kind that many mixed medial artists use for their handmade journals, so I picked up a good stash. I’m going to CREATE in Southern California in May, and know I will need at least one sheet for a Pam Carriker class I will take down there.  I pondered starting with a white book and journaling and coloring on each page – and also using Pam’s idea to make the colorful pages first by painting all over the piece of paper first, before it becomes a book.  Thought maybe that would be a good idea, and help me keep a theme and color pattern.

Don’t get me wrong – I like what I’ve done in my art journals so far, but the color palettes are all over the place.  I so admire the journal artists who seem to carry a color theme from one end of the journal to the other, and I craved that discipline for my next journal. So, I started, using Pam’s book as a guide.

You’d think after all the buying I’ve done that I would have every tool possible to make the journal page that I wanted.  But still, no – don’t have enough dauber bottles, can’t find a paint canon, not sure where to find alcohol ink in a spray version and there is no derivan graphite ink anywhere in town!  So I did my best – some of which worked well, some not so much.  Note to future journalers – straight alcohol in a spray bottle really does not accomplish the same “coffee stained look” when sprayed into a circle of paint as evidently alcohol ink can.

In the end, I kind of enjoyed that I had to use corrugated cardboard to make some lines that might have been better accomplished by using a roller that had been pre-carved, and the paint that I mixed up and applied with a  water filled paint brush actually worked as good as it would have from a dauber bottle.  But I run the risk of it drying before I can use it again on the other side of the paper so I gotta go!

Something Gray this way comes….

As I have been working on my shades of gray journal, I have been craving color I’ve found, but I’ve not taken the time to do any color work.  But I thought I at least needed a change of scenery and I hadn’t drawn anything for a bit.  So – I sat down for a couple of nights and drew.  And then looked – and decided it was legitimate to share the drawing with you here, since indeed, when one works with graphite drawing pencils, the work comes out in gray!

I thought that the date was too good to pass up – and I needed to complete something so that I could use the date!  I also am thinking and looking at my drawings to figure out if there is a way I can use them more creatively.  Draw them – let them be in their original journals – and then set them free in another medium or by taking their “picture” and capturing them in different ways.  It’s sometimes easy to have the drawings be so precious that I don’t want to ruin them by doing anything more.  But it could sometimes be interesting in changing them up and giving them different personalities and I’m hoping that I can do that for Ms. 3/13/13.   She may want some color, too, so I’ll set her free maybe somewhere sunny – who knows?

Have a great art-filled weekend, whatever you do!