Swirls

"Swirls" is one of my favorite clip art look up words. It always has interesting little pieces that I can do quite a lot with...(I really need to scan some of my destination bookmarks made for our summer reading program Novel Destinations. Add it to the list, Jeeves. Sigh, I would love a butler...especially one that washes windows and dusts.)

Swirls are also a favorite doodle and the way I draw them, they are really a self propagating species of vine...My love of swirls combined with a need to practice (and use, since I spent money on them) with the pastels started what became "Innocent Dreaming".

In fact, I had done this multicolor, softly blurred card then slapped some fixative on it and it proceeded to sit around staring at me longingly while I put together Modern Pastoral, Winter Forest, and Champagne. Occasionally I would look at it and think, well what am I going to do now? Eventually after numerous sorting through my clipping file to work on these other projects, more elements (or cut out images and a piece of swirly purple ribbon) were set aside with my swirly background.

And, eventually, I got this:

Ribbon, magazine cut outs, pastels, fixative and a thin (okay, thinner layer than I usually do...although anyone can see it is still overdone so much so that it hasn't dried completely clear-- oops (see it without the gloss on the Index Card Creation page) layer of gel medium make up this particular piece.

The lesson learned, or more precisely, the lesson underlined three times and highlight in bright yellow, is some creations take time....lots and lots of time, coming together piece by piece and walking away is just as important as sitting down and doing some work.

With my already admitted lack of patience -- It is unfortunate but true, that the length of time afford to this project to develop actually comes from my bone-deep laziness....Oops?

Cool

So randomly came across this photographer (okay so that damn msn page had it as a story) and I just love the stuff she's doing....bonus points as she is Japanese like my other new obsession, Maru:

yowayowa camerawoman diary

Bubbles

Materials for my creations tend to come from a few sources: my mom's quilting scrap pile, random ribbon, magazines, catalogs, rejects of craft projects. Champagne is one such creation.

I could once again harp on the difference between what I image creating and what the end product is but demonstrating is so much more fun....

I had a co-worker at the library punching holes in the middle of cut out flowers and I asked from the remainders...numerous tiny circles. The gel medium was still very new when I requested these scraps and I thought it would allow me to create a piece where it looked like the dots were suspended in the clear gel.

The result is Champagne:

The scan is really really bad. In reality, it's better. I swear. So I suppose I should still give a material run down: pink, white and yellow punched holes, pink and yellow marker with lots and lots of gel medium. It's really cool looking if you hold it to the light (which you can't....darn computers).

I mentally tied the tiny circles to tiny bubbles to champagne to my favorite Dorothy Parker lines from the poem Inventory:

Three be the things I shall never attain:

Envy, content and sufficient champagne.

(From there, I naturally had to send it to a friend who has joined me in killing tat least of two bottles of the stuff.)

Trees, Take 1

...And Action!

So as previously mentioned I have this obsession with trees, in particular the leafless kind and the way they look against the sky (I once had an art obsession that dealt with a disembodied hand and rail road tracks).  I have finally mailed off my first completed piece based on my little obsession.

I know it's going to a good home....(oh so corny and true).

Anyways.

For the first attempt at my leafless trees I decided to go free form. This piece establishes a baseline for later attempts, a way to measure my success in achieving my goal of the perfect leafless tree sky. I am hoping that each attempt will reflect a new medium or approach, resulting in steady improvement. (Of course this is all subjective, thus my opinion is the only one the will matter in my search for perfection)

(This is a highly amusing statement: I don't believe in perfection. I believe in timing, and things that work together and the line from the Rolling Stones song. "You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you get what you need.)

It was really kind of fun to create this piece, I got to spend time smudging pastels to create the blue sky. (I also believe more adults should finger paint.) It's a pretty simple drawing: create blue sky, draw black twisting lines that interconnect. I found myself trying to think about the way in which wind and time has shaped the tree branches. Imagining the branches trying to grow in straight line but wind and storm over time twisting and pulling it in a different direction as it grows.

There was, of course, a gluing accident. Please note the small white gap on the lower right hand side. Sometimes you come across the perfect metaphor for your life: slow down, don't rush, things take time so try to enjoy it. Otherwise you end up with splotches that don't fit with the rest of your picture.

Mistakes just have to get made sometimes, no?