Nature sketchbook

 One of my routines is to sketch something natural in a tan toned sketch book.   This one is from Strathmore. It is 80 # sized 5.5 x 8.5 inches.    A handy size to tuck into purse or art bag.      I use watercolor pencils because I like the way the colors can blend and build up layer by layer, color by color.  The exception is the white Stabilo pencil made to write on all kinds of surfaces.   It blends nicely with the other pencils and is is a stronger white than most white pencils.

 For subjects I either pick something in my garden, or at the location.  Probably on the sidewalk or growing in the parking lot.   Tomatoes were from the nursery.   The flowers below were from a friend who knew I would enjoy drawing them. 

Mountain art journal used to inspire new felt piece

With mountains being a recurring theme for me lately, I started a new art journal.       I was playing with spray inks and made masks with torn paper or deli wrap.    I used them but could not throw them away.  

So, into the mountain journal they go.  And the gelli prints too.      And now I'm looking around things I've done in the past that would fit the theme and will add them in.      

One of the reasons many of us keep art journals is to find inspiration from things we m ight otherwise have tossed away.     Like these mountains.    I probably will add text later with quotes and poetry. 





this last pic has copies of two watercolored woodsy scenes I painted years ago.  I'm going to use them for inspiration for the next felted piece I do.
   

Fall leaves

I know some parts of the country went straight from summer to winter without having a leisurely fall season.   This part of California is having late fall weather now.  Leaves are blowing everywhere, and soft rain is falling.     At the senior center the last few weeks, I pick up leaves outside our art room off the patio, and take them inside to draw them.   Most people come with paints, but it is more work to set up and pack and carry and unpack and pack again.   I find it easier and just as fulfilling to carry only my little journal and a set of colored pencils.   This group meets Monday mornings, so it's a good chance to catch up with everyone.   Lots of times there is a lot  more talking and not so much art.  

Here are a three I started there.  None are really finished, but one day I may just finish them and not pick up more leaves.   The leaf colors are just so vibrant and vivid, I can't resist picking them up as each one seems a special treasure.       

This is the most recent.    

I still have all these leaves in the back of the journal.    The colors are fading, but they are still useful as models.

I wish I knew what kind of tree they come from.    Do you recognize them?

Whizzing by

Time?    Where does it go?      the 30 day art challenge is on again and this time I'm not painting.  Too many other things to do.     Here are some of them.

these are my son Matt's awesome jet ski pants.   I hemmed them to fit better.    Quite unusal materials and such a sporty look.   

 Friday evening was Art Hop in Lodi.    We started at the gallery, bringing food and drinks.    Then we just looked at the art and visited with people.    

 Our featured artist was Leland Choy.   Frances sat down next to him and he started a portrait of her on the spot.      Leland is the husband of our friend Vivian, who was also there helping out.  It was really a fun time. 

 after we left the gallery we went to the library where the Pen Women were doing poetry readings of their work, and they were also showing their art.   Our friends Elizabeth, Caroline, Charlene and Pepe were there so we had more visiting.      Then we went to another art venue in a little shop where they were featuring the work of Patti Wallace.    You can't put ladies in a room with hats without us trying them on.   LOL    

This is yesterday's journal page spread.    Stencils, acrylics, collage and rubber stamps.    

 Thisi s one I did a few days back.   

 And the blue eyed conductor.   could it be my cowboy is disguise?   

 Here is on of the pages I did today using an image from a fashion magazine a friend brought me.     I decided it would be more fun if the model was a bird too.   

 This skeleton stenciled page is on the opposite page.   Just for fun.

At our mixed media group this week, we made victorian or grunge tags.    

This next one was my favorite  project of the week.     My stenciled windows.   My very best friend gave me some old windows that were sitting around her garden.
I stenciled them in reverse from  the back side, then sprayed the backs with paint for the green one, and mirror glass spray on the other.        the next day she picked up the mirrored one for her house.     The green on is on my fence in the back yard in a little are I've been reworking.    it's my favorite corner of the garden now.

As you can see I  may not be painting every day, but it's all art whether sewing a hem or painting a window.   

Back to faces

I've been stuck in the slow lane for a couple days, when my back went out Saturday evening after moving a heavy flower pot in the garden.   so it's been a time for a lot of sitting in the recliner with an ice pack, or walking around wincing.    If you've ever had this injury you know what it's like.       The previous elephant paintings were done during this quiet time, and now I just finished another face.  One that I had drawn in the other journal.  I just had never painted her before.     

She looks like an Amanda to me.     She is older and healther than the last time you saw her sketched.     She survived!     

Elephants - A new Kick

I was a bit tired of faces so thought I'd paint a few collected images of elephants.     I am one of those that watch the elephant documentaries.  If there was an elephant channel I'd watch it.       If you can follow this string of nearly related people, you come to one of the people that perked my interest in them.     My first husbands' first son by his second wife,  is a half brother to two of my sons - got all that?     Not really important, but he happened to run away to join a circus as a teenager and became an elephant trainer.  (side note, one of my great grandfathers ran away to join a circus! leaving behind a wife and house full of kids.)  Anyhow, to get back to my point.    One year at Christmas my so's half brother came for Christmas at son's house.   He brought a video of his performance and introduction to his elephant.      I never knew anyone who loved an elephant before, but why not?   


These are new paintings in my new art journal.








A few years ago, a group of us visited PAWS,  the elephant reserve in San Andreas, where we got to be up close to these wonderful animals, now in retirement.     You'd be amazed how they capture the love of the volunteers and how they have changed the lives of some of them.    Awesome.       

 Here are a couple of pics from our visit.

Not so Tuff...

Here's the latest portrait I painted in my journal.       This is Tuff, Rosemary and Jerry's little dog/companion.  He is such a sweetheart and a good buddy of my two girls, Nikki and Lulu.       He's also a gentleman.   When he tires of their company, he ignores them equally.    LOL  

He's a very self sufficient little fellow, plays with toys and makes up games to amuse himself.  Like dragging the bathroom mat into the living room, or dragging a sofa pillow around the house.     Or a shoe.      He doesn't chew things up, he just likes to collect them and move them about.        He gets long walks at least twice a day, rain or shine.      He may be a teensie bit spoiled.   I'm not saying.    Shhh..   He likes to greet visitors at the front door, but does not like to be picked up or held.      He also loves being groomed and struts his stuff when he is looking fine. This is his new summer hair cut.    

Julia and Bob - new portraits

Between classes I painted Julia from a n advertisement in a fashion magazine.     I love her wide mouth.     

She is in my new journal.   The former one is almost full.













At the class this week, John asked us to paint someone in our families.    I chose to paint my brother since I had already done Candis.   This is Bob.      BOB is an acronym for Best of Brothers.   Most of the students are painting grandchildren.   
 I think we are finished with the class now.

I give John a lot of credit for helping some of the artists who are basically landscape painters, get over their absolute fear of trying to paint  a face.     Some hare blossomed and are doing very well, others have struggled and probably will not continue, and others will take this and build from it.    It was well worth doing.      next week the Mayor will be there, so perhaps we will  impress him enough to get a little grant.  We hear his mother in interested in joining us.   Guess we'll have to stop talking trash about polities and polititions.    LOL  

One of the most meaningful conversations this week was about eyes.   With my own problem, and my brother's, now two more of the ladies in this group have had bad diagnosis.  About the same as mine or Bob's.    Another one had wonderful news about her cataract surgeries.    Both extremely successful and she's going without glasses except for reading.    Says she sees so much now, colors are brighter and clearer, distance vision is great.   But she sees things that she never noticed before.    Like her cleaing woman is not doing a very good job.    And she didn't know she had so many wrinkles.    LOL     hmmm... maybe that's why I though my wrinkles were looking better, - I guess I just can't see them.   LOL    Another friend had eye surgery last week and it was not successful.    In fact it did more harm than good.       You just never know.      

New portrait in journal

This is the picture we worked on at the senior center on Monday.     John brought us each a color copy and his paints to use.     we will finish it when we meet in a couple weeks.   It's really hard not to finish it off.  I'm itching to get at it, but think I'll start another one so he won't be disappointed.     LOL

On another page I did the next in my series of "waiting". This one was at the eye surgeon's office at Kaiser.

A tweak here, a touch there

Once my art journals are about full, I look for things to add that will make it  more interesting.     Paints, rubber stamps (both handcarved and commercial ones) quotes, scribbles?  Any and all of the above.    Here are some pages that have been tweaked.

This first spread just continued the colors to opposite page and using a new stencil I just cut.     

Adding a small image cut from a magazine and a quote from something else, add a bit of humor to a page devoted to facial structure.

 You have seen this page before, but now it has been tweaked with the little handcut rubber stamps, some dodts of distress stains, some washi tapes and a fish glued on finish it off.

 This very simple spread has only had commercial rubber stamps added.  

 Here's one of my cowboys with some barbed wire border drawn on, some hand cut rubber stamps, a quote and a little cut out from and old book added. Now the page deserves more than a quick glance.

I kept this one simple, it has our great grandfather's picture with the rubber stamps I cut of myself and my brother.     There is a little poem which I edited from an old Book of Knowledge. (it had been written for two brothers)

"I love you well, my brother,
And you are fond of me,
Let us be kind to one another,
as siblings ought to be.
You shall learn to play with me,
and learn to use my toys:
And then I think that we shall be
Two happy little children"

sorryit no longer rhymes. 

 The owl pages had a few tweaks.

 Painting around little sketches brings out the shapes.

 This quote was from one of the Ted Talks I watched this week.   

Another corboy?  Another barbed wire fence, and a girlfriend for him. 

 A little blue was added.    Now for just the right quote.      Hmmmm....

 Washi tape and handcut rubber stamps.  



You have probably seen enough now to let you know that tweaking can go on and on.   Maybe art journals are never really done.    I've stuffed things into filled ones.     Sometimes you come across a quote or an image that you wish you'd had when working on a page in another journal.    No use letting it go to waste - tuck it in, glue it on, or find a way to use it where it works best.       These are really only for our own amusement and growth artistically.    

If you have not made one, I urge you to do it, do it now.     Start with no expectations, just let it grow and change.   You can always rip out a page, or glue something else in.          

Children's faces

I've been trying to capture a little girl's face from a photo.   I"m having a very hard time, but I'll show you what it looks like right now.   Shelooks so sad.    I had to really turn down the corners of her mouth and darken around her eyes to give her this forlorn look.    It's actually what I was trying to capture here.    






At the senior center on Monday, John Carruthers showed us how he learned to paint faces.     Here he is with  some samples.

His process is so different than my own, but I took his workshop to see if there was something he does that would apply to what I'm doing.     

He first gave us a picture to trace, and then we ( 5 of us) marked our watercolor paper with only the eyes traced, the bottom of the nose, and a little line to mark the top of the head, the hairline, the sides of the face and the chinline.  Oh yes, and the mouth.  Then we measured to  find then other placements.     Using only a brown acrylic paint and water, we were to paint in the eyes and the lower nose with our darkest value, then tone it down to do the middle values - the shadows.    then he had us  mix a bright pink with while acrylic and apply to the face, covering the work we had already done.    Then he added some ochre, a read, and a yellow to our palettes and told us to work fast to paint as much as we could.       Here is my pic.   So now you have a happy child's face.    Those little missing teeth and small eyes were really challenging.      This is not how it looked when I finished that day.  Since then I have added touches tith colored pencils to finish her off.

It was fun working in our little group.  Some of the other artists in the room kind of kept their eyes on us to see what would be asked of us.   I think they may jsut brave it out and join us next time, as John is so patient and nurturing a teacher, they will soon get caught up in the exercise and forget they are out of their comfort zone.

Art Journals

Here are some of the new pages I finished in one of the art journals in the last few days. .  

The hen face is a rubber stamp I carved yesterday at the senior center while chatting with friends.   It helps to carve there because it forces me to look up from such close up work, and it gives my eyes a little break.

 This is a quickie portrait based on a face I traced from a Rennaisance
painting.   

 Another self portrait done in pencil and then cut into rubber stamp.  

Wouldn't I love it if this was a self portrait?   LOL   Nope, it's just a drawing in colored pencil of a  generic face. I was more interested in layering the colors in background, than the face itself.   

 This is the new Mixed Media group journal.   In it, I'm recording who attends each meeting and what the project is.    Also, I'm acturally doing the projects in the journal itself, or attaching it later.    So far, everything is in there, including the directions for each project.

I used one of my hand cut stencils for the face, over a beautiful cotton batik fabric.

 This is yet another journal, one I started this week, to try out new things and to record the directions, since I have such a hard time trying to remember how the heck I did something later on when I want to do it again.

This page was done witha paint soaked string flopped down and pressed with opposite page when journal closed.      Then the string was removed to reveal an abstract line in which to doodle.     Kind of a fun little technique.     You can see the darker pink/fuschia string lines which is the paint.   

This page was done by layering acrylic paints dragged over a collaged background - with a credit card.     I do this a lot, it's my favorite way to spread paint.       Then I used an advertisement cut out ofa man, three times, with one overlapping.     The red scribbles are just for fun.

I have not covered this one yet.      The top one has a cover I took from wall of studio.  I had painted a face on a piece of tapestry fabric found at a thift store while on an outing with art pals.     She is actually a 3/4 figure, so the bottom part is folded back under and glued at outer edges to create a nice pocket for my drawing pencils and smudger.  Also a stray post card or two seem to find their way into this pocket.   LOL

 This page was painted as I watched a video on flower painting in acrylics.     Colors a bit out of my comfort zone.    Fun exercise.

This is a drawing of a self portrait by Theophilus Brown.     He did quite a few self portraits and I'll probably draw more of them for practice.   I love this one best so it was my first choice.  

 There is no end to what can be done on a journal page.    This little sketch of people waiting at Kaiser was done early on in this journal, but I jsut decided to doodle a border.    Going back to do little changes happens all the time, expecially if I have a new pen, or technique to add.    

Here is more doodling on an earlier page.     It is so much more lively now. l  Someday it may have a face.  LOL