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.

Deconstructed Screen Printing on Fabric

  Another thing I tried last summer (but never found time to blog about) was deconstructed screen printing on fabric with thickened procion mx dyes.  I bought the wonderful DVD set by Kerr Grabowski.  She's a thorough teacher and the DVD tells you everything you need to know, presented with humor and lots of inspiration.  I produced less than stellar results with my first tries, but it was really, REALLY fun.  When our weather warms up again so that I can play with dyes outdoors, I am going to do some more of this!   Meanwhile here are some pix of just a few of last summer's tries.

A Pair of Pears

Here's my latest post to the sketchbook challenge.  A pair of pears to remind me how I highly prize fresh  fruit in winter.  When my mother was a little girl in the western NC mountains in the first decade of the 1900s, Santa Claus would leave one orange in the stocking of each child in her family, and it was a huge treat because they couldn't go to a store and buy fresh fruit the way that we do 100 years later.

This sketch was done with a child's set of water soluble wax pastels on a piece of watercolor paper.
I ate one of the 'models' for this sketch for lunch today. Delicious.

More Sketches

Here are numbers two and three of my sketchbook challenge.  No, they aren't perfect, but I am having a good time and loving what everyone else is putting on the Flickr group.

Free Clip Art

A great source for copyright free clip art images is Dover.  If , like me, you have no need for full books of clip art images, Dover offers free sample images on their web site, and  if you want to, you can also sign up for an email that will bring you periodic samplers of a variety of downloadable images  Cllick here to visit Dover's sampler page.

CitraSolv Image Transfer

For the first time today, I tried an image transfer onto fabric using CitraSolv.  It was SO easy.  I printed the image on regular printer paper using my (very inexpensive) black and white HP laser printer model 1018. (It uses toner, not ink.)  Then I put it--face down--on a piece of muslin.  I put a small amount of CitraSolv on a piece of paper towel and rubbed it over the back of the paper, holding the paper still.  I burnished it with a spoon, pulled the paper up, and there was my transfer.  Here is a picture of the printed fabric. No toxic fumes.  Nice clear transfer.  I'll definitely use this method again.

Journal Quilt -NatGeo/CitraSolv Background

Here's one way I am using a Citra-Solv NatGeo background---a journal quilt in progress.  I have added the word EVELYN and the photo of the young woman.  Unfinished.

2010 Review part 1

My mother had a saying:  "Better Late Than Never."
In that spirit, since I neglected my blog during 2010, I am going to go back and Show 'n Tell some of the things I was doing in 2010.
In the January-February issue of Cloth Paper Scissors magazine, there's an article on page 18 about using Citra-Solv ( a 'green' cleaner) to melt the ink on magazine pages to make great collage papers, painting surfaces, or you-name-its.  Older National Geographics are the magazine of choice, but other magazines also seem to work with varying degrees of success.  The manufacturers of Citra Solv have made a section on their website about the art and craft uses for their product.  It is here.  You can also transfer images using CitraSolv, although I have not tried this.
Here are photos of a few of my National Geo pages.  I tend to make digital photos of things like this and print them onto my fabric from the computer--sometimes after further manipulating the image in Photoshop.  I lined up the torn edges of several pages for the last two photos.  I made many more pages than these.  In the next post, above, I'm using one, printed on fabric, as background for a journal quilt I am putting together.

SKETCHBOOK CHALLENGE

I made my first page as a follower of The Sketchbook Challenge and uploaded it to the Flickr pages.  January's theme is HIGHLY PRIZED.  The drawing is of my husband of almost 54 years, and all the words describe him.  I guess I'm a little prejudiced and when he saw it he said it isn't true, but it really is, so now I guess I will need to add the word "Modest".

2011..........Beginning

It is a gray day in Western North Carolina--pouring rain, dark clouds, and fog shrouded mountains.  I got up early on this first day of the new year with the intention of finding a photo (on disk) from 1999 that my brother has wanted me to print for him 'for a coon;s age.' (For you non-native-mountaineers:  'a coon's age' means a LONG time.)  I couldn't find the disk, which is probably the reason that I never made his print in the first place.  .Frustration!
Then, while I ate my oatmeal, I thought about 2010's New Year's Resolutions, and how I had fallen short yet again!.  I was dripping negativity from every pore.  But Stay Tuned.  Here comes the part about the Visiting Ghosts of New Years Past, Present and Future, and how I had a New Years Epiphany.
I remembered that this is the day that the Sketchbook Challenge was to post their first month's topic, so I surfed on over to see what it is, and it is HIGHLY PRIZED.  Huh?  Well, I have a motley collection of stuff (mostly art supplies, cameras and computers) that I highly prize.......but, wait-----the truly highly prized ithings in my life are the people I love:  My soulmate of more than half a century (!). our two  sons, my photo-less brother, my inlaws, other family, treasured friends..........and what about the fact that although I will turn 75 (gulp) in 2011, I still have a relatively intact body and mind and an imagination and an urge to create and play.........wow    A lot to feel grateful for.....
I don't want to get all maudlin and soppy, but instead of focusing on the negative (like more resolutions that I am sure to break) all I am feeling now is GRATITUDE.  That's what I want to start my follow-along sketchbook with.  Not sure yet how to start to get it on paper, but I am going to try.