February 12, 2013

 It has been a very long time since I posted on this blog.  Time flies when you reach my advanced age, I know, but this is ridiculous.  Nevertheless, my life has taken some difficult turns since I was here last, and I haven't been very organized for awhile so I have neglected many things. 
What have I accomplished toward my creative goals in that time, you ask?   Well, I've continued to draw in my Sketchbook Challenge sketchbook(s), but I haven't posted very many of the resulting pages on Flickr.  Given  a choice, the sketching became the priority---not the showing.  
Sketching in my journals has been fun and rewarding.  It feels great.  Sketching, painting, collage, etc. are wonderful ways to center myself in a quiet place.  I've known that about myself probably forever, but the Sketchbook Challenge has given me a needed push to keep at it  regularly.  Now, more and more, I also seem to be working through old life issues that I haven't thought much about in years. I still need to make this art journalling  an absolutely required part of my day, every day, and  I haven't quite gotten there, but I'm headed in a good direction again, I think...

SKETCHBOOK CHALLENGE - April Theme

The April theme for The Sketchbook Challenge is "Branching Out---Out on a Limb," which is supposed to encourage participants to get out of our comfort zones, and try new, scary things with our sketching.  I have plenty of scary things to choose from, but do I have the courage to crawl out on that limb?   I guess time will tell.  Meanwhile, I leaned out just a little way today and made a sketch of my face for my new Facebook page.  (Yes, I finally gave up and joined Facebook, which probably means there are only about two more people on the planet who don't do it.  I still don't tweet, though.)  Anyway here's my facebook face.  

Okay it needed a lot more wrinkles, but I'm using artistic license here...........

 

Flag Book

One of my earliest creative interests was photography, and my Dad helped me learn to develop and contact print my own black and white pictures when I was still  in elementary school.  I have continued to love photography throughout my life, and my husband and I spent some happy years in the Washington, DC area exhibiting and competing as members of the award winning  Latent Image Workshop, the best camera group in the area.  I missed the group, and my wonderful darkroom, when we retired and moved out of the DC area, but digital photography, Adobe Photoshop, and computers soon provided me with the best fun of all!  I love to play with my photos on the computer, and here's a picture of some plums that I took----love those colors!  It is a good picture on its own, but it is also fun to see what other things I can make of it using my digital art tools and  skills.   This is one of the results.

I've been interested for awhile now in playing with folded books, so I used this image to try a 'flag book'.   Here it is:  Flattened out, it shows the whole picture, which is divided onto 6 'flags' which are glued to the accordian folded body of the 'book'.

 I'm making another flag book with the un-manipulated photo--not finished yet. 

Spilling Over

The March theme for the Sketchbook Challenge is "spilling over."  Here is the sketch I uploaded yesterday.  The TV coverage of the unimaginable disasters in Japan makes me spill over with tears.

And Just Two More...

The hand on the left is the original zentangle.  I inked in the background.  The one on the right has been inverted on the computer. The contrast is interesting and I can think of many posssibilities.

 

February Sketchbook Drawings Part 2

The February theme on the Sketchbook Challenge is Opposites.   The first vision that popped into my mind was Big and Small.  Here is my interpretation.  

Then I drew a lot more hands.  Here's my elderly hand:

February Sketchbook Drawings Part I

Earlier this month I saw the video on the Drawing Doodle Game posted by Diana Trout on the Sketchbook Challenge website, and it appealed to me a lot because  it sounded so relaxing.  So I tried

doodle of my own.  Here's the result:

 It is hardly riveting, but it was therapeutic and fun.

About the same time, I attended a Fiber Arts Alliance meeting where a member, Sally Fargo, shared a  ZenTangle she had reproduced on fabric, and one of the ZenTangle books.  I came home and looked at lots of ZenTangles online and then I tried some of my own.  Oops--it is like eating peanuts.  You can't do just one.  It does have a zen-like meditative component which is something I have needed in my life the past few weeks.

Here are a couple of my 'zentangles'.  Maybe I will share more of them later.