Leftover Paint

Hmmm, after I typed Leftover Paint, I thought that might be a good name for many things...
Leftover Paint, the rock band.
Leftover Paint, the art gallery or art store.

Sorry, I got distracted from my post.  Anyway... I wanted to paint flowers on fabric.  I put a few drops of fluid acrylic paint on my palette and did just that.  I had some paint leftover, so I watered it down and painted more fabric.

Before I sketched the flowers on fabric, I had sketched them in my sketchbook, so I used some of the leftover paint in the sketchbook. I still had leftover, so I just painted with abandon on sketchbook pages. I painted on a scrap piece of paper from where I was in my "doodling with Sumi ink" phase.

I have lots of art-parts now, just waiting for something special to happen to them.

(P.S. - Please ignore the fact that my coneflowers look more like daisies.)

Carving a Niche

I have long admired the art of Geninne Zlatkis (blog here).  I pre-ordered her new book and was surprised to receive it a month earlier than the promised date Amazon gave me.

So, now I have been carving again and am so pleased with my stamps.  I know this post sounds totally like an ad for the book, but I do like to support artists who are so generous with their ideas.  She is one of those.  I could spend hours looking at her Flickr photos (here).  Love her birds, love her carvings.  Some of her Flickr photos link to videos showing how she paints.  Like I said, I love it when artists are so sharing.

So, in my constant jumping around from project to project, carving is currently the thing occupying my time!

Drawing the Line

You have to draw the line somewhere. In this case, I've been drawing a lot of lines. All kinds of lines.

This was a fun little exercise.  I saw it in a quilting book, where the next step is to use that design for machine quilting.  That's not my plan, but I will be doing more of this in my sketchbook for sure.

(From the book Inspired to Quilt, Melanie Testa)

Nature Parts

Before I even started the first lesson of the Ode to Nature class, I had in my head the idea of a nature journal, with pages full of different ways of depicting nature - drawings, specimens, lumpy pages, notes, tags, etc... nothing is off limits.  I can see now it may be months before I can complete all the ideas I want to put in it.  But for now, all the "parts" are in progress. Like these:

This seed pod looks just like a feather.  I like the way it is all flaky and disintegrating.

Feather painted on fabric using acrylic inks, outlined with permanent black pen.

The exploring continues....

 

 

Harvest Time

I've been learning a new language related to harvesting and pollinating.  Because on Saturday, Gaye and I went to an event called ZeroLandfill.  The pollinating occurs when people in the design community drop off stuff that would normally go to the landfill.  Then the harvesting occurs when people in the arts and education community come and pick out stuff to take home and use.  It's a win-win for everyone!

I was so impressed with the set-up, because it was well organized into categories, with a sign for each room, labeled Binders, Paper, Wallcoverings, Fabric, etc.  There are a lot of flooring and carpet samples, tile, binders that used to be sample books, wallpaper sample books, etc.  I was also very soothed by the musician they had on hand!

I have to admit that everything I saw looked like a book cover to me, so I have a lot of bookbinding ahead of me!  Other things might work well in the nature book I have planned in my head.

Here are a few of the things I brought home.  I don't have pictures of Gaye's stuff but she had a lot of great metal samples.

Samples of faux slate in tag shapes. 

Flooring and veneer samples.

Fabric sample book of reptile designs (I've never seen a purple alligator or pink crocodile in person, but then I haven't been in the swamps lately!)

A couple of binders and a couple of future magazine holders.

These floor samples are labeled Sports Flooring, and are soft and rubbery.  Different thicknesses and colors.

Padded fabric samples and carpet pieces.  They already look like books to me!

I also "harvested" these seeds pods in the parking lot.  The pencil is for perspective, to show how big they were.



If you are in the Louisville Ky area, there are more harvest dates coming up the next two Saturdays.  See the Louisville Facebook page here for more information (you don't have to be on Facebook to see the info and pictures.)

I know there are other similar events around the country.  I tried to find a good link for you to find other locations, but a couple of sites had bad information.  I think the best thing to do if you are looking for one is to do an internet search on Zerolandfill ____ (insert the name of your city).

 

I found a YouTube video of an art teacher in Cleveland talking about how much it helps her classes with their limited budget.  See that here.

 

Go forth and harvest!  Did I mention everything is Free?

 

Edit:  Forgot to mention that you need to bring some tote bags for your goodies.  I brought a rolling cart which worked great - all that wood, metal, and tile gets really heavy really fast. 

 

Changing of the leaves

This is the time of year when the leaves start to turn lovely shades of red and gold.  But at my house, that's not quite what's happening...

 

It appears that my lilac leaves are turning white!

 

Also, I can't seem to stop seeing that cypress vine in my head.  I finally used the shape to make a repeat pattern for one of my class assignments, using a white Sharpie poster pen on dark paper.



Now maybe I can move to something other than the cypress vine!

Verbs

Spray.... Stand... Drip... Dry... Admire....

 



I have multiple projects going most of the time.  This is something I played with last month - still trying out spray inks!  I saw some Dylusion inks on sale and bought a couple colors, then bought a few more bottles at Stampaway when I ran across them.  They are such vibrant colors and they spray really well.  I think these are my new favorite spray inks.  (No affiliation, yada yada yada...)

The first and last pictures are done with black and blue inks.  The middle two are brown and blue.  I sprayed heavy layers and stood the journal up to let it drip.  Now these pages are just waiting for the next step (whatever that may turn out to be!)

These inks are from Dyan Reaveley, and I used her techniques.  This last one, I used a paint brush dipped in water to draw leaves - the water removes the ink from the page, leaving that part whiter.  I experimented using black and then white to outline the leaves and make vines.  Not sure which I like the most.  These pictures are really dark, but the pages in person are very bright and vibrant.  

 

To see Dyan's video, go here.

Introducing the Cypress Vine

Thanks to all the people who identified my mystery vine as the Cypress Vine!  I updated my sketchbook page, plus was finally able to grab a flower to add to the page.  (The vine was already attacking its own flower.  What a bully.)

Also, here is a class assignment from Ode to Nature (where I filled a page with leaves).