ArtiphyTheHeart

Row "C"...

...For Crowabout and Saturday Surprise

 

Creative Vitamins...

Kelly Kilmer was in Phoenix over the weekend, and being with Kelly is like taking vitamins!  She refreshes and energizes my creative spirit like nobody else.  Yesterday was extra special, because my daughter, Amy, worked right along side of us and I hope she'll share on her blog what she did in the workshop.

Process...

"Row C" is an approx. 6"X9" layered acrylic underpainting collaged with transparencies, images and decorative tape.  I never rush to finish a piece.  This one needed something more, so it came home with me unfinished.  Picture it without the dress, "row c", and "face the facts!".  Things don't often resolve themselves so easily or so quickly, but when I set this down on my worktable next to the sheet of Crowabout images for this week, "face the facts!" and the dress found an immediate home.  "Row C", which is undeniably the most important, did not reveal itself until I found it hiding in the words "crow" and 'bar".  

Books...

We make books with Kelly.  All different, and all wonderful.   We aim for beautiful, meaningful, and unexpected.  At least I do.  

I've spent years layering acrylics on two-page spreads of art journal after art journal.  Occasionally, and lately often, I've had people inquiring to buy a print, or an original page.  Prints work.  Original pages are two pieces of art, since there's another piece on the back.  These don't work as anything but prints. 

This has been a dilemma.  Especially when I've wanted to put one on my own wall.  But as much as I work in studio, I thrive on being able to work everywhere, and I love working in books, and I love art journaling.  Something of the inspiration of the place where I'm working goes onto the pages.  More places per page often equals more depth to a piece.  

I take books with me everywhere so I can work anywhere.  I wouldn't take a canvas, or a watercolor, or a sketch outside of a sketchbook with me in my bag.  I feel comfortable getting a book out of my bag to work on in public.  I would not feel so comfortable pulling out a canvas of the same shape and size.  People tend to leave you alone when you're working in a book.  Few people exercise the same respect for your privacy when you're working on a single piece out in the open, and I hate the exposure of having people who are not artists themselves peering over my shoulder while I work.

Solutions...

Last night the dilemma solved itself.  I had actually solved it by accident yesterday afternoon, but I didn't realize it until late last night.  Without thinking, I had done two things differently yesterday.  First, I didn't paint two-page spreads.  I have no idea why, except that I wanted less paint on my brush than usual so I could make thinner layers, and this worked better doing one page at a time rather than on two.  Also, I think that I didn't want to be distracted by the color on one side when painting the next page, so without consciously thinking about it, I flipped each page when finished and worked on right sides only.  

In the car on the way home, I took a look at the book.  The few pages I had begun to collage were all upside down.  I might have gotten around this problem, but the book cover was done and bound, and it had a definite right side up.  I toyed with the idea of deconstructing it, but I love the binding and the stitching on the spine.  Then I got home and set the open book on the table next to the Crowabout sheet, and I really wanted to work on the face-up page, flat.  I didn't allow myself to think or cringe.  I just picked up an xacto and sliced out the page.  Suddenly, a whole new world opened up.  Surgically removing a page made this book a very flexible idea, and potentially, a far more interesting work of art! 

Ideas...

Now there are so many ideas flooding into my head that I can't turn off the light bulbs:  Continue painting one side of the pages.  Continue taking the book(s) with me wherever I go.  It's still an art journal and a sketch book, but whenever something wants to be a stand alone piece, I can slice it out.  I gave myself permission simply by doing it.  And I can add more pages...duh!  I've been adding pages and stuff to books for years.  The difference is that before, I planned it that way.  Now it's going to happen when it's natural to do so!  I used to rip pages out of sketchbooks all the time in college, tape in new pages or parts of pages, and never gave it a second thought.  But I hadn't bound those sketchbooks myself.  The books themselves weren't works of art, I bought them at the college book store.  Something inside me had always treated my handbound books as if that made a difference.  Guess what?  It doesn't!  Is this liberating, or what!  I love art!  It's the only spot in my life where making mistakes so often make things better.

Now I'm off to:

Work in the wonderful book that shifted my vision

Make everyone a (very) late lunch

Do some long-overdue blog maintenance

Enjoy the much cooler, almost springtime weather, and

Continue reading a really great book--a library discard that I was going to use in artwork until I started reading it and discovered a great old author!  (...which brings me to a pet peeve about the indiscriminate way some libraries toss out their books, but I won't go into that now...)

Have a great day, Everyone!

Butterflies And Ham...

..."Springtime Brunch or Lunch in Seconds"

For Crowabout and Crazy Amigo...

This may stay a collage, or may end up as an art journal page.  The verdict isn't in yet.  At any rate, you'll probably have to click to enlarge if you want to read the fine print.  

Busy-busy now!  I'm behind schedule on projects, but catching-up slowly but surely.  Right now I'm:

Sipping tea

Reading "Holy Fools" by Joanne Harris,

Looking forward to a late night with acrylic paint,

A glass of red wine, and

Hoping for gentle rain and crashing thunder

Have a great day, Everyone!

Pear

...For Inspire Me Thursday

Time has been in short supply this month, but I couldn't resist taking an hour to make a quick digital sketch for Inspire Me Thursday's "Pear" theme.  It's high time I got back to drawing and painting!  You'll be seeing more digital paintings from me in the near future, as I've started scanning a backlog of my line drawings and am playing with color.  

 I'm ready for the weekend!  Right now I'm

Listening to Amy play my favorite piece of music, Chopin's Waltz in C Sharp Minor, Op. 64

Sipping an icy cold glass of Chardonnay

Finishing Joanne Harris (author of Chocolat) first book, The Evil Seed

Then off to watch an episode or two of Dr. Who, and 

Call it a night!

Before I go, a big "Thank You" the Quayside Publishing Group for gifting me with Timothy O'Donnell's new book, Sketchbook, Conceptual Drawings From the World's most Influential Designers.  To say this book is fabulous would be a huge understatement!  This is a must have for anyone who considers him/herself an artist, or who loves a true behind the scenes peek into artists' raw sketchbooks and notes.  I won this book in a drawing on Craftside.  If you haven't been there, you owe it to yourself to stop by.  There are daily reviews of books and products, usually with a sample project or two, worked up from any of a number of various and sundry publications, complete with instructions.  And from time to time, you'll find a video tutorial.  While you're there, don't forget to sign up for the free e-newsletter!

Have a great day, Everyone!

A Change Of Pace For Me...

...Cute and Constructed

 

The Book...

This pair of 4X4s is part of a set of 38!  Am I crazy?  You all know how I hate mass-producing things, and I always swear that this one will be the last!  But I couldn't resist getting involved in this project, since it will be part of a book of lock and key themed pages for an art group I belong to.  There are 38 of us participating in this project, and each of our pages will be bound into a book of 4X4s, hence the little bit of room on the left side of the page.

Guilty Pleasures...

So what does one keep under lock and key?  A diary?  Secrets?  Skellies in the closet?  How about our guilty pleasures?  Cake is something that took me years to acquire a taste for.  When I was a little girl going to birthday parties, and there were tons of them, I remember asking for "Just the ice cream, please".  After the birth of my son I found myself eating cake, and enjoying it!  Funny how our tastes can change.  And now with a trillion gourmet bakeries in this city, including Sprinkles of Beverly Hills, cupcakes really have become my guilty pleasure. 

4X4s...

These are two of several color palettes I've used in making the pages for our book.  I chose to scan these two, since upon reflection it occurred to me that they could as easily double as baby shower invites, which is the current Cardvaarks theme.  And they are 4X4s, which makes them perfect for Theme Thursday, too.   

Other stuff I've been up to...

Listening to deep tracks on Sirius XM

Watching episodes of Manhattan, Arizona on Hulu

Reading Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast Novels; Finishing Titus Groan and beginning Gormenghast

No longer fighting Adobe for my Photoshop upgrade--letting the professionals handle it

Painting, journaling, collage-ing, binding and glueing

Looking forward to a collaborative project with 5 of my favorite artists

Needing more sleep and more exercise, but in this heat, merely existing is an accomplishment, and

Now to get something icy to sip while I cut some book boards...

Have a great day, Everyone!

Collage...

...And A Collage of Ideas

Generally Speaking...

When you think about it, everything in life is a collage.  Even we are the collaged bits and pieces of our ancestors, with some things discarded, and others re-mixed with bits and pieces of our environment.  And since this is an on-going process, perhaps it is better to say that we are all collages in the making.

Mixed Media...  

That this mixing is such a part of us all might be the reason I connect so readily and fully with the medium.  When I tell people that I am a mixed-media artist, I'm saying that not only do I choose to work in multiple mediums, I also combine them in collage.  And I prefer to combine them in ways that are unique and meaningful, even when symbolically apparent to me alone.  

The ability to capture information from a variety of sources, retain some, discard others, and rearrange things at will is a very powerful tool for the imagination.  It gives one creative license over everything, making possible those choices that cannot always be part of everyday reality.  The potential for invention is enormous and endless.  Mixed media is a safe haven of power.  What better forum to explore, exploit, and explode.  

The Chicken or the Egg?...

Art does not so often illustrate reality as much as it prefigures it.  In retrospect, countless inventions and even entire periods of history have been accurately portrayed in the artwork which preceded them.  If you doubt this, just read Art & Physics, Parallel Visions in Space, Time & Light, by a man I would have loved to have met, the late Leonard Shlain, who died last month at age 71.  Dr. Shalin himself was a collage, and a synthesizer of ideas across multiple diciplines.  

This title may sound unapproachable, especially since in bookstores, Dr. Shlain's work is categorized as science instead of art.  But not only is it refreshingly easy to understand, it is a book which once begun, every serious artist would have a hard time putting down.  Read this book and you'll never again wonder (if you ever did) what possible purpose there is to being artistic.  In the last ten years, I have purchase two copies of this book for myself and have given it as gifts to fellow artists.

Elements...

As for my journal page above (made for A Prompt A Day), if you click to enlarge the picture, you'll see that the figure at left is really a composite of body parts and limbs.  In this case, I drew a figure, separated it into parts, cutting each apart to use the parts as a template for tracing onto alternating pieces of Swedish text and unprinted pages.  I cut and arranged the pieces into a pose, then glued them down onto backing paper before cutting out the entire figure.  Essentially, what I've made is a paper doll of the purist form, and although dolls with connected limbs are most often cut this way to be hinged for movement, I did mine this way so that I could rearrange the pieces at will to achieve a definite pose.  

I finished the doll two days before I began working with the combined photographs to create the central image for my journal page.  When the collage was almost complete, I added the doll and decided its final placement.

Mixed Media Monday...

I love challenges that give me a nudge, but do not tie me down to specifics.  What you see above is not an illustration. It is a journal page with a collage which serves as a central focal point.  But it imaginatively fits the theme this week at Mixed Media Monday which is "playful dolls", so I'm placing it there among the many other pieces of beautiful, playful and imaginative artwork that this wonderful challenge site inspires.  Like everyone else, I have no idea today what place our collective work will serve in history, if anything specifically.  But collectively, I'm glad to be connected to the zeitgeist which presently prefigures discoveries yet to be made, even if I may never live to see the fruits of this.

Right now I am...

Nibbling on veggies and cheese

Drinking tea

Watching the sun go down

Listening to a Donovan album my daughter picked up at a Tracks In Wax (used vinyl) for $1, which I never knew existed.  I thought I had collected them all over the years, but somehow, this one slipped through the cracks.

Reading Atmospheric Disturbances, an unusual little novel by Rivka Galchen, another M.D.

Have a great day, Everyone!

Why Do I Keep Rolling This Ball Uphill?...

...My "Question" For Saturday Surprise 

If the message in my journal page sounds like Greek to you, then you're on the right track.  Grab your Bullfinch, or even better, your Edith Hamilton, or if you must, then try your luck at Wikipedia (sometimes they get it right), and refresh your knowledge of the classics.  One story in particular: Sisyphus.  

If you find that it's still too difficult to read even when you click to enlarge, here's what it says:

"You know what will happen if I start talking about my most frustrating experience ever, I'll just start recalling all those other times, and before you know it, I'll remember where I am, and that I used to be the King of Corinth, and how lovely things were before I saw the eagle and I tried to help get Aegina back, but all that happened was that I succeeded in getting Zeus pissed-off which resulted in my being here with this big red ball--it never was a rock like they tell you in the stories--and this hyper little dog who keeps kicking it back down on top of me whenever I try to push it back up.  I remember my old name, but in this world they call me Barbara, and I am no longer a king, I am now a Mother."

Regardless of what you may be thinking, this is not as depressing and fatalistic as it appears on the surface.  Look for the humor.  It's in there, hiding.

Right now I'm off to:

Meet friends

Relax a little

And later tonight:

Draw a little

Watch NCIS and

Read myself to sleep

Have a great day, Everyone!

Shhhhh...Come Closer And I'll Tell You...

...A Secret!

Today's TGIF theme is "secrets", and this journal page illustrates my secret crush on all things endearingly cute!  Maybe it's only semi-secret, since every once in awhile I let it slip out, like when I'm sitting at Starbucks obviously reading a children's book, or going through stacks of cast-off library editions for children's artwork, or making gushy comments when I find something especially precious and adorable. 

And here are a few more secrets I'll reveal:

When I'm in an happy and encouraging mood, I tend to use lots of pink

When I'm low-key, I tend toward the blues and greens

I'm most productive in the late afternoon to evening hours

I love to read myself to sleep, or stay awake to finish it if a book is particularly riveting

Next to painting, hanging out at bookstores is one of my favorite pastimes

Have a great day, Everyone!

One For Lisa With Stripes And Flowers

My 2-Page Spread In Lisa's Book For Her Altered Board Book Round-Robin:

   

I'm really not a swapping artist.  "Oh yeah," you ask?  "When was the last time you were completely swap-free?"  "Well, let's see," I answer......"I think it was sometime back in 2007....just before I started blogging."  And it is true.  I don't consider myself much of a swapper simply because I like marching to the beat of my own drum and making artwork in my own way, with my own themes.  So why am I constantly involved in swaps?  Well, I love to share my work, and very basically, I am a social, artistic soul.  

Because of this, I try very hard to put together things that I think the recipient(s) might like, as opposed to just creating something out of the depths of the top of my head.  (Heh, heh, if you really knew me well, this would make sense.  Someone once said that the portion off the top of my head was as deep as any well....I'm still wondering if that was an insult or a compliment, but I do see the truth in it!) 

Joining swaps often leads me in directions that I would never go, left to my own devices.  Sometimes I find the journey tedious, but most of the time it ends up delightful!  And I always learn something new, taking away from the experience just as much as I put into it, and oftentimes, even more!

Which brings us to Lisa's book--with stripes (this week's Crazy Amigo theme) and flowers (this week's Created By Hand theme).  I saw a couple of new papers from Webster's Pages that were beautiful enough to be left alone and framed.  I collect papers, sometimes to cut-up, and other times just to use as inspiration pieces.  Then I saw the red, fuzzy and flocked woodland animals, and the storybook theme rub-ons from Cosmo Cricket.  I HAD to do something with all of these!  This may not be an original piece that sprung from the depths of the top of my head, but it is one of the most delightful journeys into collage assembly that I have ever taken!  Thank you Lisa, for giving me the opportunity to play with this stuff!  This was so much fun to do!

And because of this, and all the great journaling pages and other wonderful artwork on her beautiful blog, I am nominating Lisa Cornelius of Simple Journeys for the *Makes My Heart Smile* award!  Now there are rules attached to this award, but it wouldn't be fair to ask someone to follow rules that I'm not able to follow myself, so I'll leave it up to Lisa, whether or not she'd like to be simply honored by this, or if she'd like to actively participate.  The "rules" say: 

1. The winner of the Award places the logo on her blog.

2. She makes a link to the person who sent the award to her.

3. She nominates 10 blogs (one each day).

4. She links to these ten blogs.

5. She leaves a message on the blog of the nominees.

 

Follow the rules if you can, and if you wish, but know that I don't blog daily.  I blog without obligation (even though I don't display the button), and while I have a wonderful time bestowing and receiving awards, I cringe at bestowing obligation.  So, here it is--to honor you Lisa, and for you to pass along as you wish and as you see fit. 

 

For my own part, from time to time as I make a blog post, I'm sure I'll get back to this award.  And before the day (or at least the year 2010) is done, I will have passed it along to ten other deserving blogging artists.  In the meantime, a HUGE thank you to Rosie Rowe of Altered(T)Art And Stuff, my wonderful friend who bestowed this award upon me. 

 

Right now I'm:

 

Listening to a howling wind and thinking, "There's no place like home...

 

Painting eggs--for a swap, of course

 

Happy with myself for cleaning-up my blog a bit

 

Enjoying a few days of random blog-hopping to broaden my horizons and find a few more kindred spirits

 

Getting ready to round-up Toto and call out, "Auntie Em, Auntie Em"...this wind is LOUD!

 

I'll be back to blogging a bit more regularly soon.  It's not all wind and swaps around here...there are other things I'm up to, and lots and lots of paint is involved, so stay tuned!

 

Have a great day, Everyone!

Salt Background

 

By now I thought I'd have my entire 2009 calendar finished, but here I am, just on February!  Thanks to Saturday's Workout's "salted backgrounds" theme this week, I was inspired to do one more page.  Now there are only ten more to go!  This is something that I'd like to finish quickly though, because each 4X6 page fits into a silver frame in a rotating desktop gallery that was designed to hold photos, but since there are 6 two-sided frames, it makes a perfect calendar!  When it's finished, I'll post a pic of the whole thing, and if you're interested in seeing the January calendar, you can find it HERE.

Images are from Dover, the paper lace at the left side is done with my Martha Stewart punch, the calendar is a microsoft download and the salted background is from of a group of papers that I did over the summer.  I spread some thinned PVA over it all and sprinkled it with transparent snow glitter, and it's very shimmery in real life!

It's been a long day, so I'm off to bed early tonight!  So far, today was spent:

Working in my art journal

Reading more of "2006", which is very literate, but quite disturbing...

Steaming some delicious tamales--they're good luck for the new year!

Driving kids to and from a party -- out of town and back

Browsing shops in a tourist-y area just to kill time while waiting for kids

Sipping tea

Hoping to be over my cold before I hit the 2-week mark

Wishing vacation could last much longer...

...and realizing how many lose ends I have to tie!!  There are still three gifts that I have yet to photograph and blog from the wonderful 12 Days of Christmas swap I was in, and I have quite a few cards from friends all over the world to scan and share with my yahoo group!  If you didn't receive a Christmas card from me this year, you are in good company!  Alas, I did not get even one in the mail!!  Rotating bouts of flu in our home required that something had to give, and so the cards were tabled till next year.  But you were all remembered with warm and good wishes!  

 Have a  great day, Everyone, and Happy 2009!!

 

 

Something New

 

The Weekend Taggers challenge this week is to use part of your new stash.  I just happened to download the brand new set of Valentine's papers and images from Pink Petticoat last night, and I've used them in today's tag.  The tiny gold hearts paper, the valentine sentiments paper and even the crimson paper used to cover the chipboard letters are all part of Pink Petticoat's "just an old-fashioned girl" collection.  The ecru lace at the bottom of the tag was made with my new Martha Stewart punch, and the silk ribbon at the top isn't very old, either.

I hope your New Year has gotten off to a wonderful start!  I'm in the middle of a gazillion on-going projects.  To mention only a few, there's a 14 days of Valentines swap, and I'm making mixed-media pieces for that.  You'll have to wait to see them though, because it would ruin the surprise if I posted them now;  ...And I'm hand-binding ten more books that will serve as my 2009 art journal stash;  ...There's an altered book round-robin that I'm part of, and the theme for my book is "self-portraits", so I'll have a wonderful record of the artists who participated when my book comes back to me in June;  ...I'm half-finished with my son's Christmas scarf -- yes, I'm late, but I need to take frequent breaks when crocheting as I can feel the tinge of repetitive stress if I'm not careful;  ...And there's the valentine's throw that I'm hand-quilting, made up of 4" squares.  The more I think about it, the closer I am to deciding that this will be a table scarf for Valentines Day, but it may morph into something entirely different before its finished.  You never know;  ...And there pages and pages in my art journals that get done daily.  No matter what!;  ...And there are DT pieces for This Thursday It's All About.   You'll want to be sure to take part in the first challenge of the new year which will be on Thursday, January 8th!;  ...And all the other wonderful challenges in blog-land that provide inspiration and keep us fresh with new techniques, and the latest most wonderful artwork that our friends are posting.  So yes, it's already a good year!! 

As for the other things in life, right now I'm:

Listening to my kids laughing

Reading a newly published epic by the late Roberto Bolano

Craving enchiladas (because of the book?)

Staring at the bright green vacuum cleaner that my daughter thinks is "cute" (it isn't)

Watching old television episodes of The Rockford Files

Getting ready to make a cup of tea

Thinking about creating a new blog banner

And wishing you all an abundance of happiness, creativity and prosperity in this new year!

Have a great day, Everyone!