Help Me Obi Wan, You're My Only Hope!

I have an opportunity to show ONE piece in an upcoming art show in January 2014. I've narrowed it down to these candidates and there is a poll on the blog that I would greatly appreciate you voting on to help me make a decision.

1. Portrait of My Mother As A Young Woman

2. Moment of Zen

3. skull & Hat

4.Falling flowers

5. I see things that aren't there

6. Blue bunny

The Creatrix

So back in this post, I started a drawing. And I was starting to get tired of drawing the same skeleton as I've been doing for months on end, so I decided to work on that drawing during art class, especially since I never seemed to be able to carve out drawing time from my daily routine.

I penciled in the details in her cloak/robe

Penciling in-progress. I particularly like the shading that's going on. It will be lost when it's inked.

 and then inked them.

You can purchase a digital coloring page of this image from my Etsy store for $1.25.

I started coloring the piece in Photshop. 

I have a mind to reproduce this as a mural on the side of my garage. At about 6 feet wide and 4 feet tall. Stay Tuned.

Art class this fall

I took another drawing class at the NJ Arts Guild this past fall (the final class was last Thursday), and I got to stretch my creative muscles a bit. It's really nice to have a dedicated time to do nothing but draw, and to get encouragement and critiques from an actual artist, who doesn't give harsh criticism, but makes you fix things that aren't working, and offers some really good suggestions when you get stuck.

So I drew this skeleton a few times in charcoal:

And I broke out my pastels and tried some color work - which added many unexpected dimensions of complexity.

And then, I started to work on the drawing in my sketchbook from February, which will be the subject of tomorrow's blog post.

Can we get back to work now?

Bookbinding workshop: "The Art of Artists' Books"

Over the weekend, the Arts Guild of NJ held a series of one-day workshops, and I participated in one about bookbinding.  The workshop was taught by artist Lisa Conrad, who made the process very understandable, and quite frankly, easy. If you have ever done any hand-sewing, these techniques transfer the knowledge you already have working with fabrics to a new medium.

We created 4 books in different styles and techniques. We also did some printing, which I had never done before. We did a monoprint and a block print.

This picture is of the combined output of the workshop participants

The first book we made is a "section" book. A section is a collection of folio pages sewn together. A folio is one piece of paper folded in half to make 4 pages. Your typical hardbound book consists of many sections that are bound together by a spine. My section book has a colored-paper cover and my monoprint.

Next, Lisa showed us how to do Japanese Stab Binding. I see all sorts of potential for doing variants of this book. My book features my block print. I was at a loss for what to make on my prints, so I fell back on my negative-space tuxedo cat for the block print.

Then we made a couple of hard-cover accordion books. These books use basically the same overall technique of folding a long, single piece of paper, and gluing a cover on the ends. Making the book covers using decorative papers is a lot of fun and the papers available rival the fabric selections in any quilt store (and fabric is also an acceptable book covering material, so... ).

This first book is called a "flag" book. The accordion folds are small and paper "flags" are glued to either side to achieve the opposing face designs when the book is opened.

Outside of the book

Inside of the book

The last book of the day is another accordion book, with page-size folds of equal size. The class decided it would be fun for each of us to print our block prints inside everyone's book, so we all have a copy of everyone's work. The order of the prints was different in each book. This one is mine.

Accordion-book cover

The only "downside" to learning all these new techniques is that now I have an excuse to keep the smallest scrap of fabric and any and all sizes of cardboard and mat board... I'm not a hoarder - I'm an ARTIST!

Skechbook Project 2013

My Sketchbook Project sketchbook has been digitized! Check it out!

Tax Time Here

It's the time of year for filling out financial aid applications, which means our taxes need to be done and that burden falls onto me, so I"m not really doing a lot of extracurricular drawing.

However, the Sketchbook Project has scanned the right-hand pages of my sketchbook (apparently the left-hand pages will be scanned and uploaded shortly.

So you can take a look at half my book now, if you like:
http://www.sketchbookproject.com/library/11809