Mixed Media Madness

Make a whirly gig out of a water bottle?  Are you mad?     Who would figure out how to do this?      Well, I'll tell you one of my most creative friends, Vivian Choy did just that.      A couple years ago she taught us to make something similar, but she has taken it a step farther now and we wanted to try to make the new version.    We were all a bit clumsy about it, but with her clear directions and step by step instructions and a little help from our friends, we each came away with one for our gardens.    Mine is hanging on a branch of a white birch tree right  outside my studio window  - where I can see it from my work table.   it catches a little breeze there and whirls away.  Thanks Vivian for your experimentation and development of this cool idea.      It's fun to upcycle things.       Here is Vivian showing Linda how to make it.

Yupo treat

I have a pad of Yupo paper.  Have had it for years, maybe even a decade.  I have only used two sheets of it, and those were pretty recent.     I expect to start painting on it again as my friend Jean Janssen is going to teach it at the Senior Center in Sept.    That way I'll have no excuse to put it away again.      

I was checking the internet the other day and came across a little ATC in ebay.  The sweetest snowy scene, so I bought it.     I've got a bid in on another one and hope it will make it here too.    The artist Judith Bosch from New Mexico said it would be okay to post it here with the link to her ebay account in case you might want to take a peek what else she has to offer.      What I liked so much on this is the colors.    I am not a cold weather person so usually snowy scenes are mostly cool colors, and that gives me a chill.   This uses nice warm colors and the snow is so bright.     I have never seen anyone use Yupo for ATCs before.     I consider it a tiny treasure.   Thanks, Judith

30 paintings in 30 days

I just joined the challenge for Sept, to create 30 paintings in 30 days.    Here's the link to find out more about it. I think the challenge will be a good incentive to get out all the various kinds of paints I have and use them.  I might devote one week to water color, one acrylics, etc.    Hmmm...  It takes a little preplanning, but fortunately my drawing table is cleared off and ready to start something new other than sorting.      I might even do all the paintings in a new journal rather than on canvases.   I might dividie the month up by subject.    Birds for a week?   Dogs, landscapes, fish, abstracts.    Hmmmm....      Wouldn't you like to join those of us who are making this commmitment?      This bird is from the graphic fairy online.     

Journal Page

This is a page in an old journal.  
Text reads - "Would I be happier if I started dating a penguin? "    It's just one of those silly spreads based on a quote cut from a magazine. .

Art where you find it

You know once you start looking at EVERYTHING as art, it just pops out and waves at you at every turn.     Two old chairs on my deck have cracked plastic covers.   I usually have cushions on them so have not really noticed how bad they look.   But, when removing the cushions, the cracks looked so interesting I had to photograph them.   They look like cave art.

Don't you  love to come across some unexpected found art?

Last evening, the house inside had a strange peachy glow.   I don't use curtains or blinds to keep out the light because changing light is one of my pleasures.    I rushed out to the back deck to see what made the light change, and behold, this magnificent light show right overhead.     Then I checked the front windows and it was just as spectacular, but a little ominous.   Light changes so fast, I was lucky to catch these moments.     I think today I'll try painting the first one.  I didn't do any photoshop tricks here - this is just how it looked.

Mail Art - incoming

My goodness, I forgot to post some of my favorite mail art pieces that came in June and July.      The wine glass is from Maria Moesch.    I'm crazy about the combination of fabrics and paints and threads and ink.    The special lady is from  Roberta with her MailArt handcarved stamp placed strategically.    The thitd one is from Fast Eyes, whose collages are so wonderful. 

 This commercial card was from Pamela Vane who thinks I'd like the shop it is advertising.   I'd better check it out.

This little birdie is from Carroll Woods.  It is for the theme Put a Bird on it.

This last one is a commercial card from Pat, who was there when she mailed it.        Ahhhhh... 

Thanks friends.    

Art Journal Pages

 I finally took time to photograph more pages in the new journal I've been working in.   Working on this larger scale is sort of fun because it's easier to paint in it with acrylics.

These are the first pages.    Inside front cover is a little self portrait without glasses.     Then to challenge myself I made a wild 1st page.    

As you can probably tell, these two are  opposing pages..  I had cut the little doorways out of wax paper for a mask in another project, and had them just sitting around on my work table.    I liked that I could make them bend as I glued them in.  The girl in the bottle is something I created years ago for I don't even remember what project.   I love using up these old pieces.  The whole spread is based on the quote in the upper left that reads: Be not be the fourth friend of someone who had three before and lost them.     That was written by John Casper Lavater.      Very profound.   Not all the quotes I use are profound.   Some are just silliness found in odd places, like the Trader Joe's flyer.  LOL

These very dissimilar pages are two of my favs.   The tape girl was the simplest thing possible.   Yet, she has charm and life. The chicken I traced and painted then colored the head with colored pencils.      I was humming something from the Music Man while creating it, which led me to use a quote about gossip - remember the song in the music man where the girls sound like chickens cackling?   Quote by E. Watts.

The next two pages I'm showing which are not across from each other in the journal, are grouped here to show how simple a page can be, and then again, how much can be poured into a page. I've been watching Brain Games  on TV so the face here is to demonstrate how little information a brain needs to recognize a face.     A curved scrap had the shape of a cheek so it is a face with the addition of the glued in eyes and mouth.   Does it need a nose?    

The backgrounds of the pages are almost all done with scraping on craft paints with a credit card.    I'm using up old paints, and getting a good ground for whatever is going onto the pages.   I like the surface to work on much better than paste paper.     Quote by Danny Kaye.

Now, this was a cool exercise.    The scraped paints seemed to create images of horses.     I didn't want to outline them on the paint, so I inserted deli wrap over it and sketched in what I saw.    So, the deli wrap can be lifted and people can see if they see horses.   They  may see something entirely different, although one of my art pals said once she saw my sketch, that's all she could see.     

Tentacles!    Yes, it's an alien.     I thought the human form I used would be an interesting person, but then I found this quote about planets.     I figured it needed an alien, and what would be easier to do than add tentacles.

This is the final one to share tonite.   I traced the chicks and the iris, painted them in with acrylics and craft paint and found a quote to fill the space and send a message. If we do not permit the earth to produce beauty and joy, in the end it will not produce food either. 

I hope you are having some fun in your own art journals.    This spiral bound book is good because if I totally hate a page I can easily rip it out and throw it away.