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Art from the "olden days"

For this weeks installment of Kids' Art on Friday (yes, I do know that it's Saturday afternoon), I've gone way back into the archives of childrens' art.  Todays "kid" art is from none other than yours truly!

I know I spent a fair amount time drawing when I was a child, but apparently not many pieces survived.   My mother didn't date the piece (that would have been her job, you know), but I'm guessing I was in second or third grade.  That would make it about 1969 or 1970.  ( Don't even think about doing the math - you can't count that high.)  I do, however, remember that we had been on a walking field trip to see the high school's homecoming parade and came back to class with the assignment to draw a picture about it.  I seem to have been quite captivated by the cheerleaders and the fire truck!

Since this was the dark ages, we must have only had crayons at our disposal.  I don't know about our art instruction, but I know that when I was teaching, I got much better art out of my students!

(The blue tint is not there IRL.  Somehow the scanner "read" it that way.)

Check out Kelly's kid art.  Hers is a little more "current" than mine!

Ethereal

But a royal pain to photograph!

I made this in a 3-D Beeswax class with Tracy Roos a couple of years ago.  It reminds me somewhat of my wedding dress (which I also made - I'll show it to you sometime).  The muslin dress itself is dipped in wax, but the tulle is not.

Speaking of the tulle, this took some real work to photograph to get it to show well (not to mention numerous shots).  Thank goodness for digital and the ability to delete.  I'm sure it could be better, but this what I got.  I'm still working on learning that fancy camera!  I actually ventured into manual mode to get this shot.  Thanks to Marilyn, who gave me some tips about shooting in manaul.

I really need to make more of these...

Signed, Sealed & Delivered

They're done.  Twenty-five little charms found their way to The Creative Underground yesterday.  The talk I keep hearing about the bracelets they will all eventually become a part of sounds truly amazing.

The "face" side of the charm is actually intended to be the back.  The other side is this collage shrunk down to 1" high.  The "face" side is coated with a couple layers of Diamond Glaze.  The "collage" side has Soft Gel Gloss Medium brushed on in both directions to resemble canvas.  Coiled wire, microbeads, seed beads, a gold Kryon pen, acrylics, tissue paper, stamps, inks and foam board were also involved in the making of these charms.

Here are a couple of sneak peaks from Kelly and Denise, two of the artists who participated in the swap.  There were twenty-four artists altogether.  Can hardly wait for the final product!

Now... there's the Alphabetica project, pieces for The Artists' Nook art show and a "faith statement" that is due tomorrow.  I'll explain that last one later.  Better get busy!

The King of His Castle

Would you want to tangle with this ferocious dragon?

This is his home.

Today's Kids' Art on Friday is brought to you by my 9-year old.

Check out Kelly's inspirational Kids' Art on Friday posting on her blog!

Happy (early) Mother's Day

Thanks, Geek Husband!

The picture isn't great since it was taken with my old camera! ;)  Now, I have no excuses - the pictures on this blog are going to have to be exceptional, aren't they?!

Averages

I had tried to post to this blog every day this week.  I was good until Tuesday.  I figure if I do three posts today, that will still average out to one a day!  (We humans can justify anything, can't we?)

ATCs have gotten the short end of the stick on my galleries, so here are some more.

Collage on a Grid and Leveraging Your Art

Leveraging your art.  I didn't come up with this concept.  Traci Bautista did.  On page 65 of Somerset Workshop, she talks about spending the day playing with paints and simply concentrating on backgrounds to be used later in other pieces.  But then she takes these backgrounds and makes color copies to even further extend their potential and her time.   

Basic concept, I know.  Not even necessarily a new one.  I know many of us collage/mixed media fanatics know our way around Kinkos (or at least know our way to Kinkos).  But now I have a name for it, and I need to do it more.

I was already doing this somewhat and didn't realize it.   This is a piece I did in a Collage on the Grid class with Bev Brazelton.  I've color copied this piece.  I've shrunk it down to ATC size.  I've cut up full-size copies into ATC size and thus gotten 10 different ATCs out of it.  I even shrunk it down to charm size and used it as the basis for my  contribution to the charm swap sponsored by The Creative Underground.  Okay, so shrinking it down to charm size was pure accident, but it sure came in handy when the charm swap rolled around!

Happy leveraging - use your art time to its fullest.

Commitments

Stretching myself.  That was the topic of one of my recent posts.  Here are the commitments I've taken on recently.

Finishing the charms for the Creative Underground bracelet swap.  (Almost done with these.)

A collaborative project based on Lynne Perella's book Alphabetica organized by Marilyn Healey.  This is my first collaborative that isn't "local"!

Providing a couple of pieces for the June Artists' Show at The Artists' Nook.  Christine is featuring artwork from her "Art Tartz" for the month of June.

My own personal goal to post to this blog daily for this week.

Do you think I'm stretching myself enough?  :)

Here's a visual image to leave you with - just a simple card.

Credits:

BasicGrey paper (unfortunately I believe it's been discontinued), Scrapworks rubons and concho (The concho is filled in with a sticker, Diamond Glaze, glitter and microbeads.)

Happy Easter

Kid's Art on Friday is a day late.  There's a good reason though.  Said kids had the day off from school on Friday, and I talked Geek Husband (who's been working waaaay too hard lately) into taking the day off.  We went to the Butterfly Pavilion.  It's not just a fun place to visit for the whole family, but it is an incredible source of wonderful photos that can be used for collage and mixed media!  I'll have to share some of those later.  After that we did the mall, dinner, etc. and just got home late.

So, here's this week's offering of Kid's Art on Friday.   It's from my seven-year-old again.  I was going to post a really neat project his brother did in school, but then he came home with this, and it was just so timely.  He says they used model paint.  I'll have to ask his teacher for the directions, because these eggs don't look like kids' work.  The colors are glossy and beautifully marbled.  Those are the kind of projects I love! 

Thanks to Kelly who plays along with me and posts her own versions of kids' art.  This weeks picture on her blog is a hoot.  You have to see it!

Happy Easter everyone!

Painted Journey Journal

Had a great time on Sunday at a Kelly Kilmer workshop at The Artists' Nook.  The class was called "Painted Journey Journal".  It was a fun and productive class.  Kelly was throwing out a new technique every 5-7 minutes, and the paint was flying.  Well, it wasn't really flying, but you know what I mean!

  This is what I created.

Here's the back.

Here's a couple of inside pages that I really like.