More mother's day fun

A friend gave me a fortune telling deck with pictures for Susan Shie (she makes amazing quilter) a few months ago and I pulled out the pictures I liked and redrew them Susan Shie amazing quilter

Luckily for mother's day I had one piece of art paper left and  a few picture scraps.  My mother loves mudcloth fabric and I found an inexpensive mudcloth like jacket that fit her perfectly. 

 Roses are still blooming.  This one right in front of one of the oldest and wildly painted homes in Little Italy.  The yellow looks amazing behind roses and you can't see the large cherubs above the gate.

Sping Journal

Journaling over lunch

Yum Yum soup with tofu from the Thai Joint.

Spring round Robin Journal

Round Robin

My round robin journal made it's way back a few weeks ago and it had quite a few pages that needed to be filled so I started filling it in.  My theme was Spring so I was happy that it came back in the Spring so I would feel inspired to create in the moment.

San Diego has had the rare treat of  rain on and off all week and I was excited to see a full sunny day today.  Since I wanted to spend time outside we drove to the mountains for a hike where we found snow. it is a short 35 minute ride outside of  downtown San Diego to a state park with high enough elevations to get snow.  I was a warm day with a bit of wind and plenty of little kids riding sleds down the mountainside.We had one doggy with soggy feet and were lucky to find an access road that was clear of snow and running water.  I think we are due for some sun this week.

Susie's journal.

The next book in the round robin is ready to go and we are all on a little break to get caught up.  The holiday season and extra projects have a way of getting stuck.  This is  Susie's book  and she wrote a lovely intro into her book and  putting together little things to get to the big picture.  I made this self portrait a year ago but I went back and improved it and am much happier with how it turned out. I found out that black Gesso is much easier to control vs. liquid acrylic paint when you have to paint a larger area.   The photograph/ illustration turns into a flip out where I made notes for my day.  Tuesday was my usual day off when I worked in retail and it has morphed into my health day where I go to the acupuncture and chiropractic and walk to the next neighborhood and get lots of exercise.  It was raining on and off that week so things were a bit wacky.  People in San Diego can't handle the rain.  The roads flood and the number of accidents on the road triple for the day. 

The second photo was of a rose I took after the rain and then I layered tracing paper over it and worked on a paper cut overlay.  It's been a while since I have cut anything this intricate but I have a new knife and it works like a dream.  It's a ceramic knife from Slice and you can hold it close to tip without hurting your finger.  Magical.

Elena's Journal

Tracing paper, marker, color copy of photograph, colored pencils

 Colored pencils, pen, art tape and colored paper

 My first love was paper -Hand drawn paper roses, rice paper, vellum envelope, ribbon, color copies of rose petal

Colored pencil and color copy of photograph

        Elena is new to art journaling and asked us to share ideas and our favorite techniques.  I love working with paper and figuring out new ways to use traditional items like tracing paper.  The roses drawn on tracing paper applied with matte medium to paper and hand colored with marker.  The roses have a bumpy quality to them to add a bit of texture.  Most of the photographs I take are of flowers so I used a close up of a rose to drawn them on paper that has a tooth grain surface.  Color copies of rose petals and a hidden message can be read on the bag.  The last page is colored pencil with a color copy of my photograph take at one of the local flower fields. I use Derwent-coloursoft pencils that blend nicely when more than one color is used but I used an erase to blend on a slightly raised surface.

Round Robin -Ann's Journal

The theme was love and trust me I had to put this down for a few weeks for fear that I would draw hearts everywhere.  The hearts were an after thought when I finally started in this journal.  I had some intense conversations with a friend this week and he's going though a growth period so I wanted to draw a man with a tree growing from his head. It morphed a bit into the tree branches with red tips and the heart formation. 

The companion page was from another conversation I had with different friend about going to an event. In essence we were both talking about ending a friendship because of a mutual friends actions.  The problem indirectly affected me and hurt a number of my friends.  We both used the word heartbreaking to describe the situation.

Round Robin -Ann's Journal

I spent 20 minutes trying to make this horizontal to no avail but I still wanted to post the second spread I made in Ann's journal for our traveling Round Robin.  I think this is one of those exercises where you turn your head sideways and see the world in a whole new way.

Lotta Jansdotter linen fabric scrap, colored pencils, sharpie marker, gold pen (uniball).  I just uploaded a new picture ta da.

Round Robin -Emily's Journal

The theme for Emily's http://www.emily-perry.com/ book is OPEN.  I was looking for a certain poet whose name I ultimately couldn't remember and stumbled upon this E. E. Cummings poem.  I am debating adding a bird but I'm not sure I can draw a tiny tiny bird. 

Wide open spaces kept running through my mind.  Photo from Big Bear enhanced with copic marker. 

Dream sequence.

Dream big-Round Robin

This months book belongs to Lisa Miller and her theme is based on a quote about dreams. I glued fabric to two pages and decided to stick with black and white with a few shades of grey thrown in. Several years ago I did a workshop on dreams for a few friends and it was a fun experience. Several thoughts were swirling around in my head. I have been having nightmares lately about going back to work. Making art is a great way to avoid sending out more resumes. When you are really good and qualified for one thing and then you look for something new it is a little bit daunting.

I volunteer at the New Children's Museum and a bunch of us got to go in yesterday and restock the supplies. One of the exhibits was involved in an accident (I know this sounds strange but you can only guess what can go wrong with kids in an open space. Gross.)

I was building these white cardboard boxes and was given the task of draw animals on four sides of the boxes. I have spent the last six months drawing animals and felt comfortable drawing in marker. I create less rules for myself when I am working on something where the audience will be children. If it looks weird just try to make the animal smile and it's all good. I can't wait to see what the kids create on the rest of the boxes.

When I came home I looked at my reference photos for sheep and the rest just came up. It's a little bit interactive since the small sheep has a movable head. If I can't sleep I meditate or make up stories till I drop off. Counting sheep would be a meditation but I need a little more to focus on to shut my brain off. The envelope on the 2nd page has a message to the universe. All the small photographs are of roads. The 3rd page is the Poe quote to close the piece.

Ohh the bees

The last panel is linen with cotton thread embroidery. A few years ago I was stung by a bee that flew off an elephant but it has dual meaning for the story. Friendship has prickly points. In the end it's hard to be a good friend but I am so grateful for the friends I do have.

This went off in the mail on the 2nd and the new book arrived on Saturday. I had a good time interpreting the theme tribes for Kathy's book. I am very lucky that our public library has a large collection of Lynda Barry books so I have been devouring those as of late. I love the way she is able to mix real concepts with graphic images. Quite a few of her stories have made me tear up because they are so heartbreaking. I would love to expand the story but it seems like a giant process that I can't take on at the moment. I'm lucky that I still have several years of journals to draw from if I need story ideas.

Round Robin- in progress

This will be a 3 page spread but I'm a bit stumped about the 3rd page so I am putting it down for a day or two and then I'll dive back in. I know I'll go back in and work on the bee sting page but it's a nice start. Now if the middle page would pop into my head I would be all set. This is Kathy's journal and the theme is tribes. I didn't want to do anything literal so I brought up the themes of friendship and the hive.

Round Robin

The first book for the round robin came this week and since Erin allowed us to do whatever we wanted in her journal the sky is the limit. I'm still on my bird kick, tip it's all about the shape of the head. Then I cut a hole which was originally a photo album type look but it was kind of boring. As luck would have it I saw something on printing with feathers. It was kind of hit and miss but I'm going to practice the technique a bit more and use it again. It was actually able to do it in Starbucks with no mess and only one brayer. They just installed bar type seating and it has a little shelf under it so I put the book on the shelf to dry. I'm debating adding color to one of the pages but happy about the way it turned out over all.

This journal belongs to the lovely Erin Kenepp who I actually met a few years ago at a Sabrina Ward Harrison weekend. The weekend was super amazing and intense and highly recommended if you ever have the chance to go. Erin's blog is located here

Round Robin -Spring

I made a few pages in my journal before sending it off.

Round Robin

I am one of 12 peple participating in a round robin hosted by Erin Kemp at www.erinkenepp.blogspot.com so this lovely journal will be going to the post office later today. I should have taken a picture of the envelope before I put the tape on it but I was in a hurry to make it water resistant. The local office supply store was out of single envelopes and then I bought the wrong size at the post office and had to go back to get a huge one and I just folded it over. Ta-da

The cover of the book is a smaller version of a big collage I did last month and the back is a piece of paper I made on the copier with the giant bag of starfish that live in the closet.

The circle card has information about the theme on the back. The theme is spring. I was going to make it the season but then that didn't make sense since 11 people have to get this journal and realistically it will not be Spring for 1/2 of it's journey. Not that it has to be Spring to think of Spring but I didn't want to be too limiting. So I opened it up to the noun and verb version of the word.

I think too much.