DD Day 20 - Painted Muslin

A small piece of plain muslin, base-painted, then stamped & over-painted. One of the pieces created in my Art Girls group today.

Some discharged fabrics

I spent the weekend at a lovely discharging workshop by Linda Thompson. She taught lots of different ways to take the color out of different kinds of fabrics. Here are a few of my results.

Day 14 DD - Bead Doll "The Gift"

Another beaded doll ... this one is a little too large to be used as a pin (a little over 5" tall), so he may be fitted to a stand so that he can stand up. Beads on a wire form. The head is an antique button.

Day 13 DD - Beaded Doll, "Dancing Diva"

I made this little doll last night with beads on wire, wrapped around a wire form. A lot of hours for such a little doll! It's about 2-1/2" tall.

I Am The Moon

The results of a quiz, "Which Tarot Card Are You?" that I picked up at Rachel Kitterman's blog. A link to the quiz is below. The result for me ("The Moon") seems appropriate, although the moon face in the illustration looks rather angry! (No the image is not mine ... it's by Stevee Postman.) Just a fun exercise.

You are the Moon card. Entering the Moon we enter
the intuitive and psychic realms. This is the
stuff dreams are made on. And like dreams the
imagery we find here may inspire us or torment
us. Understanding the moon requires looking
within. Our own bodily rhythms are echoed in
this luminary that circles the earth every
month and reflects the sun in its progress.
Listening to those rhythms may produce visions
and lead you towards insight. The Moon is a
force that has legends attached to it. It
carries with it both romance and insanity.
Moonlight reveals itself as an illusion and it
is only those willing to work with the force of
dreams that are able to withstand this
reflective light. Image from: Stevee Postman.
http://www.stevee.com/

Which Tarot Card Are You?
brought to you by

Day 13 DD - Self Portrait

After seeing Rachel Kitterman's beautiful self-portrait, I thought I'd attempt one too. Not quite what I was going for, but better than I'd hoped ... for a non-draw-er!

Day 12 DD - My Left Foot

Day 11 DD - 2 sketches

Heartburn Doll - watercolored

Fantasy Self-Portrait

Here's my "Fantasy Self Portrait", originally created for the Quilting Arts Magazine challenge. Mine wasn't selected for publication, but that doesn't change the fact that I had a lot of fun creating it.

The title is:
"Help! I'm Trapped Inside A Fat Lady!"

Day 11 DD - Heartburn Doll

Well, obviously, I drew this while fighting a bout of heartburn. Daniel Gregory encourages you to sketch with an ink pen, not a pencil, and to attempt no erasures ... just re-draw the line where you think it should be. For some reason, I'm enjoying the drawing process more with the pen than with the pencil ... maybe because it makes me feel a bit reckless! Gonzo Artist ... yeah, that's me!

Day 10 DD - Desert

I haven't drawn since I was in 5th grade, so why shouldn't my drawings look like they were made by a 5th grader? Here's my version of a desert lizard.

Day 9 DD - photo-play

The first picture shows my digital collage of 5 separate images. I attempted to meld the images well enough that the viewer can't tell where the images are added. (In case you're wondering, the separate images are: the large pink flower on the left with the tree; the little girl, the green blossom at the bottom, the rose in the little girl's hands, and the 3 roses floating in the air.)

The second picture shows the same collage, but I removed most of the color and selectively added some floral color back in. Not sure which one I like better ... the first one is certainly "prettier", but the second one is more delicate, I think.

Day 8 DD - another experiment

Here is another piece I started in Anne Eckley's workshop. Collage on paper and fabric, then machine-stitched. I didn't like the triteness of the paper hearts, until I saw how much different it looked by turning it on end, like this. Still not my favorite, but better. Finally finished stitching it today.

Day 7 DD

Here's a little project inspired by Anne Eckley, who taught a workshop on free-motion machine embroidery on papers and found objects. This is a leaf that she brought to the class that was already dried out. I glued it to some found papers and "sealed" it with heat-set plastic wrap, with an iron over parchment paper. Then today I dug it out and did some stitching, and manipulated the colors a bit in Photoshop. I like it.

Day 6 of Daily Devotions

"Keeping Watch" ... the outline of the cat says, "Mariah watches for the monster in the fax machine to come out and attack, but it never does ... so she snoozes in between fax arrivals."

Catbook

A 3" x 5" collaged hand-made accordian book, which stands up like a tiny little room divider. Painted Timtex, stitched images on fabric, beads, feathers, and mirrors. This was a lot of fun, and I finally finished it today. The colors and images make me happy.

Talisman

This is a huge talisman (almost 5" square) that I started in Larkin Van Horn's beading-on-fabric workshop almost 2 years ago, and finally finished this past year. Once I had put so much work into this "sampler", I decided I might as well get some wear out of it, and made it into a pendant. (It now has a somewhat more substantial 'chain' to hang from.)

A birthday card

A birthday card created in Photoshop, then sewn with tulle entrapping some tiny beads.

Metal play

A couple of pins or pendants made in a HAFA (Houston Area Fiber Artists) workshop, focusing on bending, distressing, and embellishing metals. (That's a typewriter key embedded in a bottle cap on the right.)

ATC's

Here are just a few of the ATC's I made during the course of Rachel Kitterman's "Daydreams and Doppelgangers" workshop. It was lots of fun, very freeing ... and I discovered that I like working in a small scale.

Book Girl

I've always loved reading, but only recently discovered hand-making books. This is one of my first ones, taught to me by my good friend Martha. This was so much fun, with its own hand-made envelope.

Photoshopping

A collage that I played with in Photoshop ... one of my favorite pictures of my Mom, when she was 11 years old.

Devoted Sisters

A small collage that I created, then reduced and made into "nametags" for Christmas gifts for my sister this year. The quote "there were never more devoted sisters" is from an old song our mother used to sing to us when we were fighting!

Some previous stuff

Now that I'm playing on the blog, thought I'd post some pictures of a few other things I've done in the past few months. These are the front and back of my first journal, done with fabrics, shredded papers, paints, and gel medium, with a few beads thrown in.

Day 5 - again

"Random Flora" ... imaginary flowers.

Day 5 of the Daily Devotions challenge

"Haunted" ... lately I seem to be fascinated with the cat/girl blend.

Day 4

"Half an Education". A sketch of half of my bookshelf in my living room. Not very inspired, I must have been tired. (That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!)

Day 3

"Empty Archway". An attempt at creating a realistic-looking archway ... not at all successful. Proportions are all wrong, but I'm determined to post something every day anyway, as a matter of self-discipline. I actually worked harder on this one, and like it less than my previous sketches. I think I concentrated too hard on the stone texture and not enough on the overall structure.

Day 2

"Girl-Cat-Girl" ... cats seem to me to be inherently female (even the boys, sorry!), and there is a blurring in my mind of their separate personality traits. This sketch is really just a mixture of a few dreams I've had lately.

Daily Devotions 365 Days ... Day 1

A little belatedly, I've signed up with the "dailydevotions365days" yahoo group, in an effort to goad myself into concentrating on art every day, even if in a very small way. I'm just glad I found this group before the year got too far along.

This first sketch was done with a fair-to-middlin' sized cat on my lap, alternately purring and biting me to get attention. I was trying to achieve the illusion of transparency in the bowl.

A Discharging Experiment

Thanks to my friends on the QuiltArt list, I gathered the courage to discharge (bleach) a rayon shirt that I really liked, but was too bright for me. I prefer wearing muted colors, so wanted to overdye it. Here's the result of the bleaching step ... before and after pictures. (Excuse the rushed ironing job!) So far, no holes in the fabric ... I did use Anti-Clor after rinsing out the bleach, followed by a thorough hot-water wash with Synthrapol. Now I just need to overdye it ... maybe a coppery color.

This is a piece of rusted cotton ... an experiment. The fabric was soaked in a vinegar-water mixture, and placed between two pieces of sheet-metal, with some washers, nails, and "thingies" from the garage. I love this effect! 

A tiny piece made spontaneously from leftover batiks, while at a Retreat with friends in Livingston, TX. I just couldn't let those gorgeous fabrics go to waste. It is named 'Migrating Batiks" because of the flying geese border. 

Another silk painting from a later Ginny Eckley workshop .. thread painted but not yet quilted in this photo. 

This was a silk painting begun in a Ginny Eckley workshop, finally quilted. 

Book It!

I picked this up from Teri Springer's blog:

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don't search around and look for the coolest book you can find. Do what's actually next to you.

"Still, at that age, few things can provoke more wonderment than a mirror."

-- from "West with the Night" by Beryl Markham

I'm also re-reading "The Last Ship" by William Brinkley.

Commit random acts of literacy! Read & Release at http://www.bookcrossing.com