Monday, October 31, 2016

The Creative Sprint is over!

Here's a bit from my past month's fun with Creative Sprint. I hope that some of you will join me in April for the next Sprint. This is a global art game that my daughter created for her and her brother's business. They have a book coming out in the spring, too. I'll be promoting that for sure. BUT Creative Sprint is a lot of fun, and I got to meet a lot of new people from around the world participating in it.
Day 29
  Day 29, I revisited a previous day where I'd made something in a box. My honey chose the day I was to revisit. This box has a poem in it by Adam Lindsay Gordon, which is a favorite of mine.

Day 27 was to be inspired by another sprinter, and I was inspired by Estafania Garcia, who did a melted crayon thing one day and another had her little boy recreate Munch's The Scream. Such fun doing this with my grandgirl.

Day 30 - award ourselves for doing the sprint. This is my trophy.  Join me next year - sign up a CreativeSprint.co
Day 27
Day 30

Tuesday, October 25, 2016

A new directions!

#147

#148

#149
 Do you ever have a happy accident that makes you so happy?

Well these cards are my happy accident.

I'd scribbled, literally made some scribbled lines on a piece of paper, using my Inktense pencils. Then I brushed on some water. The paper was not water color paper so the color didn't come up intensely. I cut the paper into two postcards and started to work the forms with a gel pen. (#147 and #148) I really like the results. A lot.

A couple days later, I got out some water color paper and tried again. While I think these are NOT as successful for some reason, I still like the process.

I'm going to continue with this "experiment" to see what else happens.
#150

Such fun!

Let me know if you've had something like this happen; What was it and what resulted from it, this happy accident.



#151
On another note, Autumn is here! It's cool out in the nice, crispy air, crunchy leaves underfoot kind of nice.  Is it autumn where you are?

Thursday, October 20, 2016

Mail Art, of course, and eMail Art, and my son

#145

#146

eMail Art
 I had some fun using color sample papers, which I haven't done in ages. It felt good to just do simple color designs.

I think I'm going to do some more of these. Reference my older work.





















And then I found some lovely autumn leaves and I scanned them to use as eMail art. I played with a dark background, a figured ground, and plain whiite which was most effective. Love autumn leaves. What about you? Do you have them in your neighborhood?

On Monday, our son's project for the VCU school of business was unveiled, as it were. He's the artist in residence there, the first such a position ever. The school is quite pleased with this and so is our son. He created one of his anamorphic portraits in the atrium using clothing donated by faculty and students. The portrait is of Maggie Walker. Quite appropriate. You can hear an interview HERE.
Anamorphic portrait

Saturday, October 15, 2016

Recent Mail Art collages - IF I can get the hang of posting on my Chrome Book!

#141

#142
Oh my dear friends, I can't believe this but I think I've got this figured out! I was just able to upload two images. Woweee.



I created the Paris one because I'm anticipating our anniversary trip to Paris in January. Yes, you read that correctly. January, where we're most likely to have weather issues. Is this crazy, or what? I'm buying travel insurance for sure.

The second piece, with the music was created this morning for my #creativesprint prompt. The prompt, to make something about one's favorite teacher.
Without a doubt, my favorite, most influential, earliest teacher was my piano teacher, Miss Rachel Marrs. She came into our home when I was a toddler to give my older sister lessons. Mom told me that I would sit by the piano during the lessons and make drawings that I'd give to Miss Marrs. I wanted to take lessons badly but was told that I had to read first, so you can bet I learned to read pretty quickly. I thought she was beautiful. She work lapel pins that were jeweled and seasonal: flowers, American flag, christmas wreath, and such. She brought a little clock with a roll up cover. AND she drove a car!!! That was a big deal, as my mother didn't drive one. Once, when I was probably about 10 or 11, Mom had me deliver some cookies to her as she lived only a few blocks away. I rode my bike over to her house and she invited me in to the living room for a few moments. Oh the thrill! She could never know the ways she influenced me.
We moved from the neighborhood when I was 16 and but I continued to take lessons from her until I was 18. I didn't realize then what a distance she had to travel to come to our home. I went off to college and we never communicated again. Later in life, I sent a letter to an address that I found for her, including some copies of old photos and current ones. I never knew if she got it, but she lives on in my memories.

The music bits are from a very old sonatina book that was my sister's before me. It's pages are yello and fragile. That is Miss Marrs handwriting.

Do you have a favorite teacher?

Sunday, October 09, 2016

Mail Art and my struggles

I'm still learning how to get photos onto this blog using Google Photos or from some cloud or wherever they are. I like this new Chrome Book but there are things that are different, that's for sure.

I've completed a full week of Creative Sprint. Are any of you, my blog readers, doing it, too? It's been fun.
This is a piece of mail art that I did for a prompt. The prompt was to be inspired by a children's song or a nursery rhyme. As usual, I had to let my mind mull this around. Then I started to look through my rubber stamps and found a tiny globe and a star. I, then, searched my stamp pads and found my gold one. FUN!
I'm thinking I need to do more like this.

Bear with me, I'll figure this out eventually and will get more images up and running.

So what's happening in your life?

How did I get into this?

I was asked when I started doing Mailart. Good question. Like many artists, I was making and mailing art without even knowing it had a name ...