Creatures of the night

I dared to look for creatures in the below background.

I just knew they were lurking there.

On a day like to day, why not.

Just for fun.

don't miss this one.

After spotting them I just used Paynes Gray liquid acrylic to add the night around them.

Makes them pop.

Expect pop,

Sharon

Colorific ART

While participating in Mystele's on-line Gut Art class, I am trying to listen to the "why" that I do what I do. I'm not sure that it is necessary; however, while I'm feeling the freedom in my Gut Art Journal to just BE me and explore ART without my own self imposed limitations, I do hear the "why". What I'm saying is that I do make conscious choices about making marks of color.

For me, the finished facing page dictated that I should carry the color red across. I scrapped the leftover red on the page and days later came back to discover houses and roofs and there was the word "home" at the center bottom. The face also reflects the red as it should.

I finished up the page with the adjective form of color.....Colorific !

Expect colorific ART,

Sharon

Castle in the Air

Sometimes it is just plain fun to doodle and imagine while day dreaming. That's what I did when I discovered this face in the background. We daydreamed together while I dripped pearls from her pink hair and thought about her story.

When I finished, I looked up "daydream" in my thesaurus and found "Castle in the air" listed. What a perfect title for her story.

Expect daydreams,

Sharon

I Must

WORDS....10-24-2009

"While on a field trip [video style] last week, I could not help but sketch the tour director. I never meant to do more than a sketch. I was inspired to sketch Mystele because of the way her head scarf looked.

When I turned to this page and saw the irregular corner, It made me think of the scarf. While adding paper layers for the background, I found a scrap that said, "I must". I glued it to a corner and kept mulling over these words. "I must" sure sounded like a message from my gut. So, I made a photo copy of the sketch and did a gel transfer, taking advantage of the special corner. While painting this I was thinking about how Mystele made a book with this long format and how it represents her. She is giving us her "words" and so I resisted a closed mouth even though I have never painted someone talking. She is much prettier than I have represented but It was a very quick sketch. More than one field trip made me think about how much I enjoy hands. And so I included her hand from my mind's eye.

The landing of the butterfly was a serendipitous happening and represents me.

The skin tones were achieved mostly with Caran d'ache watercolor crayons.

While looking for my Words, I found I must."

Having a wonderful day! My heart sings when I get to paint.

Expect songs,

Sharon

Page Finished

Before sitting down with her this morning, I was unsure whether or not I would touch the face. I thought maybe I wanted to leave it as was and just finish up the background and journal part.

But as we were face to face, eyeball to eyeball, with paints at hand, a little voice from the gut said, "you haven't tried painting with your new tool wet-on-dry yet. That was the only excuse I needed.

So I did alter her chin, I frequently end up with a chin too long. To see what I did, scroll down to the prior post. I added detail in the eyes and nose. Then I did what I always do. I made sure that I had some of my darkest dark right next to my lightest light. Color value is one of my core elements.

Expect more tool painting,

Sharon

Morning Art

Below is the background page that I started with this morning. As I paged through my Gut Art Journal, I saw a chin line, big hair, and eye socket. I think you can see it; however, I did not sketch around it. You might recognize the bird as a napkin. Yes it is. The paint that is scraped here and there including the hair was where I cleaned my new tool while working on other pages. I really like this page and enjoyed a few minutes of morning art doing it.

Expect your wishes,

Sharon

Do This

Remember this tool?

Did you make one?

Wanna play?

Do this:

Put out six, seven or eight puddles of paint.

I did.

Allow yourself about 15 minutes.

I did.

(cause I had to be at the office because I had to report for jury duty because I went yesterday and it was today instead)

Because I had to do it. Could not Not do it.

Driven to do it.

Now, just pick some up with your new tool. I used the darkest value but not the red.

Spread it around in an oval.

Then pick up other colors and fill in.

I add the eyes first.

Remember they should be in the center of the oval.

They don't have to match.

Give her a nose and mouth.

Go not longer that 15 minutes.

I didn't.

I had to leave her like this all wet and with lots of paint texture.

When I get home, I will finish the page.

Mine already had a background but yours doesn't have to.

I have to go back to court now.

So Do this.

Expect fun,

Sharon

I Was There

There I was at the Houston Quilt Festival just this past Saturday. Demonstrating one of my techniques with Caran d'ache was fun and brought a lot of interested and curious people to the table.

I enjoyed a little shopping beforehand and could not resist this bundle of silk scraps. It instantly made me think of my "Confusion" quilt and the primary fabric that I'm using. I took a photo in the car before untwisting the bundle. It is said to be 100 yards of silk.

Sunday I was in to mood for art-on-the-couch. So after rinsing and pressing the silk I started stitching a border. I think is will be perfect.

Expect bright colors,

Sharon

New Favorite Tool

and paint color..........

Yep. It is a deconstructed foam brush. I plan to deconstruct some larger sizes too. They are very fun to scrap the paint on and then scrap it off and then use the point to scratch words and then use the flat area to smoosh the paint around. Just fun stuff. You can put several colors and smoosh them together or you can let one color dry and then add another and so on and so on and so on........................

Expect fun,

Sharon

News

I do believe I'm late with this news but I wanted to tell you that I will be at the Houston Quilt Festival this coming Saturday. If you are going to be there, you are probably already on your way.

You can find me during the last two hour shift of the day at the Cloth Paper Scissors Open Studios section of Make It University. I plan to demonstrate painting faces with Caran dAche and other water solubles on muslin.

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More news:

Shady Ladies Altered Art Workshop is a new art retreat in Texas to be held April 2010. Jeri has a great line up of teachers and I am thrilled to be one of them. I will share more about this later but you can get the scoop by clicking over to the website.

Registration is now open and I would be so thrilled for you to sign up. Wouldn't that be fun?

******************

I went on a field trip this morning (video style) and could not help but sketch the tour director. I had a gut reaction to her headscarf and ...........

so

I

sketched.

I probably won't have much art to show until next week, but you never know about me so I'm not saying I will or I won't.

Expect calmness,

Sharon

A Group of Strangers

Above is finished. As you can see, I did very little painting after finding this group of strangers in the below shot.

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Update on grandsons:

Tim is good and will be going back to school. He has missed several weeks and so that will be a challenge.

Ryan has busted out of ICU after 7 days and is in what they call a "step down unit" where there is less monitoring but more than a regular room. The epidural is out but he is still on pain meds and expects to ween down soon.

We did get to visit yesterday and I can tell you that he certainly is a little more feisty, looks better, and say he feels better.

We all appreciate so much your caring concern, prayers and thoughts. His Mom says, "keep them coming as they're working."

From the bottom of my heart, I thank you.

Expecting wellness,

Sharon

Day One

This is an "add image" experiment.

First image is url copied and pasted from Flicker and it is the Medium image 500 x 312.

Second image is from my PC and is the same image that was loaded to Flicker. Blogger resized it.

Third image is url from Flicker. It is the Large image 1024 x 638. The "original" image in Flicker is 2922 x 1820. In other words, I did not resize the scanned image before loading to Flicker nor did I resize it before loading to blogger (second image).
If you click on the last image, it will open in another window and you can see the whole image.
My blog template is a Minima Stretch which will make a difference in how large the photos can appear.


Someone ask and I don't think I gave an adequate answer or explanation.
Oh yes, most times I do resize before loading to blog or Flicker.
Expect relaxation,

Sharon

PS....edit......click on each of them to see what happens. Interesting. Ok, maybe ya'll already knew all this.

Life

Meet Ryan

Our Grandson, Ryan was born with total intestinal Hirschsprung's Disease. Monday he underwent a very serious surgery which is not new to this little fighter. He has had many. Then yesterday, due to complications he went through another surgery before which all the worse case scenarios were given. Ken and I just put a sign on the office door and left. We arrived in Austin minutes before Ryan returned to his ICU room and we were there to see him. Considering all, yesterday's surgery was encouraging. However, the next step for Ryan is transplant evaluation as soon as he is able to make the trip to Pittsburgh, PA.

If you are interested in reading Ryan's Story I'm offering this link. You can navigate to the journal entries to read updates from his Mom. Please absolutely do feel free to leave a message for Ryan, Kevin and Kristi. We would all love that.

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Meet Timothy

Wednesday evening, Timothy was admitted to Scott and White in Temple.
He had been sick for three weeks or more with flu and stomach virus symptoms.
He wasn't getting any better and continued to run high fever. Test for everything you can imagine were all negative. Except a Monday evening X-ray showed a spot on one lung which radiologist was "not comfortable" calling pneumonia. However, another strong med was prescribed. By Wednesday, when he still was not better, he was admitted.
On our way back from Austin, we stopped in to see Tim and could see for ourselves that he was much improved. Melissa just let me know that he is being discharged and doctors concluded that he indeed had "walking pneumonia" all boxed together with the flu and viruses and the new medication had resolved it and chest X-rays are good.

I am happy for a rainy weekend and will most likely escape into a little ART at some point.
Expect recovery,
Sharon

Fun Covers

Front Cover of Gut Art Book
I really really did not want to see a profile. If you have followed Mystele's art recently you will know that I was "pulling" this face from the background.

But there it was, I kept looking last night but could see nothing but this profile.

So I sketched her and put her to bed. Then this morning, she came to life.

After she was finished, I reflected on her whimsy and yes, she is a wide eyed, pink haired old lady whose had a nose job, running. She is running as fast as she can to get there.

Back Cover

I only painted what I saw. I think..........

she is looking back and has removed her mask.

What a journey this will be.

Thank you Mystele for making me do this your way.

Expecting passion,

Sharon

New Journal

This is what ART-at-the-desk looks like.

I spent ten minutes this morning at home looking for a piece of cardboard. I gave up and packed an ART-to-go bag and when I got here at the desk, found what I needed.

I am participating in two on-line classes. This is my first time to do that and I must say, I realized that part my my discombobulation of late had to do with these two classes. I was puzzled with myself to say the least. Well anyway, a new journal book is necessary to record my Gut findings and reactions and trials and tribulations. And that is why she calls it a Gut Art Book.


I love making books and journals. But wasn't in the mood for it for some reason. My problem is that I never fill them up. It seems that the process of making or at the least having a book is very necessary to the success of the class. As I was following a class assignment yesterday, I was having these Gut reactions and thinking, "oh I need to remember that, oh I like that, oh oh oh". Ah Ha........I'm suppose to have this dang book to write all this down in.

I had just the perfect book already made. Earlier this year I gathered up a stack of wallpaper border that had been within eyesight for a long long time and I bound it into a book. Never mind what the size of each piece was, I just folded it in half and in it went. And that is about as far as I got with the exception of the one page where I applied a bird napkin. As I said, I never fill them up.


You can see the cover is half of an old file folder and it is made like my junk paper journal. I am going to add the cardboard on top of the file folder for the cover. But first I'm going to paint it.

Expect it,
Sharon

PS.....I'm not for sure, but you might still be able to get in the class. Check it out with Mystele

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This morning I finished up this pretty girl. She looks like somebody I might know. She is from the weekend and I have to confess that I didn't really wish to paint this past weekend. And so I found the Lifetime movies on my big couch. I'm having a hard time getting back into that side of my brain. I guess after all the "getting organized", I need a break. I've lost some passion.

This is on 8 X 10 canvas board and I'm thinking that I want to paint bigger. But then I'm thinking a lot about backgrounds and how important they are to the composition and I'm thinking I just want to paint faces and not backgrounds. It's crazy. There is a merry-go-round in my head and I'm jumping on and off of it after going in circles round and round.

No tellin what to
Expect next,
Sharon
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