New Beginnings with my Art

Watercolor I made for my Mom as a Christmas present.
IBook page where I was playing around with angles.
IBook page of images that I really liked by themselves. Love clear glass ornaments.


I made this to try out the little needle top applicator I found at the art store.
It looks more like a spider web than stained glass but it is my first try.

I was reading a blog of a woman who wrote that she has caps for her paints that allow her to make thin lines. I liked the effect so went hunting for the caps, the bottle was all they had.
I was able to make my own mixture of gel medium, water and 3 colors of acrylic paints. It worked well though holding a small bottle does not give you that sweeping arm movement that I like as when using long-handled brushes.

The little pieces of paper were from an EBay auction I recently won that had a variety of stuff.
I love getting a mix of items that other artists use that allow me to try out new things. They are like new toys for me so I was as excited as a child when they came.

I really, really need to make some time just to practice my artwork. Am thinking of finding a little sketch book and at least a couple of times a week making little design drawings in it.
By using colored pencils and markers I could add some color combinations. I am not the type to do a bunch of little drawings before I start a new painting and this gets me into trouble sometimes. I still want the spontaneity but when I get stuck in the middle I can have the designs I drew to help me along to the next level.


On the home front, we have spent the last couple of days keeping an eye on our basement.
The yard is filled with water and the creek over-flowed once again and we were all prepared for another flood. ( just had a major one 3 months ago) We really hadn't done anything to the basement since then, other than to rip out walls and tile so we weren't as worried because there wasn't much the water could hurt, except for the new furnace. Amazingly we only had huge puddles in places. The bummer was that it kept us from going to Wisconsin to celebrate Christmas with my family. We are hoping to get up there in the next couple of days and have a belated celebration with my Mom and sister.

I hope my Mom likes the painting I made for her. She lives on a lake with lots of trees in her yard and the birches are one of her favorites. I made the trees by ripping up some strips of painting tape and putting it on the paper first and then doing watercolor washes over it.
I then added some black ink to outline them.

Trying to get on canvas what I imagine in my mind, is one of the biggest struggles I have when I am creating. Sometimes there are happy surprises and I go with it. Other times I realize that I am just out of practice..... then there are times when I just want to yell argggg and grab a match!

I remember my collage teacher telling me that you should expect one out of every 10 pieces to come out like you wanted and the others are just practice. I admit to impatience. I want my pieces to look good from the beginning. I have to remind myself that the good ones are often made in steps or layers and are not the finished product. I want instant art satisfaction!!

So one of my resolutions for the new year is to practice more and with that I hope to gain some patience and with that the confidence I need to go on. There is something about the new year that gives you a nice feeling of being able to just start over fresh. I like that a lot!!

I Book Pages

People collage.

Hopper collage from when Diane and I went to the Art Museum.

Square collage.

Black and white with one color.

Circular composition assignment

Word collage.

These are some of the pages from my Inspiration book ( I book). I made these when I was taking a collage class last winter. They are fun and easy to do. The word one was fun in that I worked on making it say things. I am keeping up with adding to this book more consistently than doing other art work. I have a big box of pictures and scraps I have cut out under my desk. I like to just start pulling out ones that appeal to me at the moment and make a page.

I have been cutting pictures out of magazines for years. It is really amazing what you can learn about yourself after you have a good collection. If you study them you will start to see similarities. For instance that is how I discovered that my real favorite color is blue. I thought it was still purple which was my favorite growing up. I also like cast iron, wainscotting, brick walls inside the house and fashion drawings of women in dresses.

Will take some newer pics of more recent ones and add them at a later date. In the mean time I always keep a big glue stick and my brayer handy.

The i Book

Today was the very first snowfall of the year. It is pretty but already I miss my flowers.
I love colors and as much as I like how the white snow shows textures of the things it is covering, it just isn't as satisfying. So maybe this is what I need to get me back to painting.

My room which includes my art area is still piled up with things misplaced from our basement.
we are slowly working on it but other than dragging bins down there it is still an unusable part of the house. It is funny how you can adapt - I almost forget that it is part of the house.
Still coming out of shock I guess.

Lately I have been enjoying studying design. I went to Borders this weekend, just for some alone time. I bought a Chi tea latte (am not a coffee drinker) a blueberry muffin and grabbed an "Interior Design" magazine. I was in just the right mood to sit and really focus on each page. The great thing was that the ads that filled the front of the magazine were amazing. Not every one but many were great examples of design at it's best. I just slowly let my eyes move around each section of the page trying to absorb the details that made the whole work together so well.

I splurged and bought the magazine. I had sat there for an hour and was not even half way through it. Plus now I can tear out the pages that I really find interesting and put them in my scrapbook and write under the pic what it is I like about it. This is the same sketch book that I use to make collages in as well. It is slowly being built up into an inspiration book. I really like that I can record there ideas and themes and colors that capture my imagination. I hope to combine them all in some artwork. I will not make any promises ( to myself) as to when this will take place. Holidays coming up and I know how fast this month can fly by.

No I think I will take the pressure off of myself and just try to work on building up my i Book which is what I will call it from now on. Get it so crammed full of pages that I won't be able to help myself with wanting it to capture some of it on canvas. Yes, that is a worthy goal.