Illustration Friday - LOST

This week's Illustration Friday topic is LOST - once again I am cutting it as close as possible posting my picture merely a few hours before the next topic is announced.   

The other day a certain young man in this family had to write "I will feed my lizard in the morning." 50 times.  When he finished he left the finished paper on the counter by a pen - with all kinds of empty space on the back just begging for some doodling.  I was thinking about all the things I needed to do that day and used the ballpoint pen to quickly sketch some girls which inspired the caption - 

"She doodles girls while LOST in thought."

Anyhoo - after I was done I made a copy on the inkjet printer.  I layered old dictionary paper in my art journal covered with a thin layer of gesso and then tried to do a transfer with Golden Soft Gel.  It worked!!  I was so tickled - I've watched Donna Downey do this technique so many times on her Inspiration Wednesday videos but had never braved it myself - easy!! 

Got some letters from my box purchased during an excursion with Kim and then colored one girl with

 hues inspired by the current Play Date Cafe Challenge.

Linking to - Art Journal Every Day and

Paint Party Friday

CIRCLES -

How about this crazy canvas??  It is all about circles - big circles, small circles in the basics of black and white.  Not what I intended to make in the beginning but I am kinda in love with it now. 

A fairly big canvas, it is hanging in the hallway outside of our bedroom next to the office.  The circles were not made directly on the canvas.  I recently saw on Tracy Bautista's blog where she said she had made embellishments from Tulip Slick dimensional paint on butcher paper and I just had to try it out.

So I made gobs of circles - black, white and some that were a combo of both.   If you try this technique be prepared to wait a while - it took overnight for the shapes to dry.

Here is one peeled off the paper on my hand.  It reminds me of playing with Colorforms as a kid.  Do you remember those - vinyl people with clothes that you stuck onto a background to make scenes?  Anyway, the plan had been to draw leaves/foliage on the painted canvas but then I saw my sticky circles and decided to try them out.

So I just stuck them on randomly all over the place layering and overlapping at times.  If you don't like where it is you can peel it off and stick it somewhere else!  In fact, in a few months when I get tired of this look I may peel them all off and go with my first idea.

I love all the movement in what is a very simple concept!  BTW - do you want to see what was originally on this canvas?

GASP!!  How ugly is that?!! - This was purchased for our first apartment over 20 years ago and I had held onto it for sentimental reasons - I can still be sentimental knowing that it is the same canvas but reworked to something more jazzy! 

Linking to Creative Every Day, 

Artists in Blogland Show 'n Tell Saturday,

Sketchbook Challenge - July.

Shell Girl goes on holiday. . .

This is Shell Girl - her skirt is embellished with beach shells collected by my mother on their vacation to the Outer Banks last year.

She lives in our bathroom on top of a little cabinet that sits on the floor.  Shell Girl has lots of secrets since she can see how much we weigh when we hop on that scale.   Recently she went on a vacation -

to the Spirit of Summer Art Show at Blick in Evansville, IN.  There she is - look closely on the top row.  She is a petite little lady compared to many of the art pieces that were featured.

Here I am visiting her on opening night - By the way, "Bubble Boy" on her left was the People's Choice at the show.

Here Kim and I are visiting her piece in the upper right hand corner.

It was quite an adventure for my Shell Girl - especially in light of the fact that nothing that I've ever made has been seen outside the walls of this house or the posts on this blog!  She came back home this afternoon - Glad to have her back!

Illustration Friday - SUSPEND

SUSPEND is the subject for this week's Illustration Friday - please note that it is late Thursday night and I am finally posting - it has been a busy week!!  

I wanted to emphasize the idea of suspend from the angle of stopping something from happening - hence the journaling - 

"Block A may suspend the force of gravity upon Figure 1."

I was sketching my idea for this on scratch paper but then realized that I wouldn't have time to redo it so I painted right on my taped together paper!  Nice seam?!

Check out my hexagon stamp - I carved it myself!!  I'll try to post better pictures in the next couple days.  This figure person is related to the ones found in this post.

Linking to Art Journal Every Day and Paint Party Friday.

Less is More - GOLD

Hadn't made a card in a while and couldn't resist this week's Less is More Challenge to use Gold on a clean and simple card.  Back when I first started stamping several years back, heat embossing was all the rage.  To this day it packs a WOW factor for anyone seeing it for the first time and remains a favorite technique of mine although I seem to rarely use it.

It can be tricky to photograph things that are embossed because from one angle the embossed item looks dark - if you can capture the gleam your card tends to be washed out - The embossing powder I used is Old Glory from Stampin' Up! (an old bottle - not sure if they still make that color or not) - The stamped image and sentiment are my old wood mounted A Muse stamps.  The background was stamped with my handcarved chevron stamps.  

Check out my crazy fingernails!  I rarely (never) polish my nails but I saw some Sally Hanson nail stickers the other day that called out my name - they look like pen and ink drawings in my favorite colors of black and beige (remember - color scares me) - In fact, I currently have on khaki capris and a black shirt so my nails match perfectly!!  This is pretty wild for me although my rebel toes are sporting dark brown polish. Never any purple, blue or green nail polish for me!!

PDCC139 - Abstract triangles

This was a fun project - Many parts of me are very linear and geometric and this piece tickles all those parts.

The idea came from a tutorial found here that involved lots of taping and painting.  Surprisingly, only three colors of paint though - the variations in shading come from adding white to the base paint.

The quote is from Albert Einstein and was stamped with an alphabet set (Stampabilities - Vintage Type Lowercase) from Hobby Lobby.

I chose the colors based on the current Play Date Cafe challenge and the fact that there is stamped text  qualifies it for the CAS-ual Fridays Text Me challenge.   

 Linking to Paint Party Friday and Art Journal Every Day.

Illustration Friday - REFRESH

This week's Illustration Friday topic is REFRESH.  It is HOT here in Kentucky - hotter than even Florida and when we get hot we eat ice cream!  Normally, I am not a huge ice cream fan - more of a cookie girl, but

nothing beats soft serve when it is sweltering outside.  I like to push it down into the cone for the perfect bite of squishy, melty, ice creamy fabulous-ness at the end!!  Yummy!!

This is my first time drawing a cartoon - he looks pretty excited about his encounter with these frosty giants!!

Yes - I had an ice cream cone today!!  Just imagine how hot it is when you factor the heat index in!

Linking to Creative Every Day.