A little bit of art...

Ok, I know you are tired of looking at my ugly mug, so here's a bit of art.

I mentioned this artist in an earlier post when I drew the apple. That tutorial was on how to draw an apple, but until I get my new glasses, I have to hold stuff in my hand in order to see it. Imagine my surprise when I found out his new tutorials are on drawing the hand. Last night, just as a lark and using the tools at hand, I followed his newest Youtube tutorial and drew this pointing hand.

This is an excellent tutorial that starts out with three oval shapes and breaks the drawing down into simple shapes that anyone can draw. It is so non intimidating to draw in this way. I really didn't take that much time on it, but I did use the pause button on the video as instructed, and did some shading with a Q-tip. The pointing finger is shortened a bit too much, and the shading needs work, but all in all for a quick sketch, I'm pleased with it.

Several weeks ago, I was asked to participate in a Flickr art group called Collage Play with Crowabout. The group administrator, Nancy Baumiller, supplies an image sheet, which you download and print out and then make your collage using at least three of the suggested images. This week's images were ones that I did not immediately relate to, but after one unsuccessful attempt, I applied the "if at first you don't succeed" method and I came up with this.

It's done on a fairly large sheet, about 9 x 12, so I had lots of room to write (which is my favorite part of my style collage). The sheet had a cow, several signs (open, exit, road work ahead), an advert with Bill Cullen hawking Tenderleaf Tea, a vintage image of a boy, some fish and lots of stuff about Spam. No offense folks, but for a person who stopped eating pork about fifteen years ago, the Spam ads did nothing to encourage my creativity. But I kept looking at it and finally decided that it needed to be a cowboy collage. Having decided that, it dawned on me that I have always thought that, deep down, all guys want to be cowboys. I have lots of old Look and Life mags and took some images from a Roy Rogers ad for little boy's boots and toy guns and such.

I found an image of Sam Elliott (the hunkiest cowboy around) and some vintage images from a western wear website. All of these images lead me to draw a background of the setting sun and then I did a doodle type border frame. I glued down my images and altered them a bit, especially Mr. Bill Cullen.

Well, I could go on and on about my feelings regarding collage art, but perhaps that is a post for another day. Today, I'm staying close to the Weather channel and wondering if the snow that is in our forecast will really materialize.

So that's it for me today. Hope you are all having fun and being creative. Take care and hug the person closest to you. You'll be glad you did.

xoxo
Susan

Something Fun

Here is something I've been working on this weekend. It's unbelievable that it took me hours to figure out how to do it. Duh...copy and paste.

This is just a small sampling of the colors, shapes and styles that I have sported over the past ten years. Sorry that the first one is awful, I was holding my very, very ill fur baby. I should have found another one, as there are lots of me with this Ric Flair mullet, but you get the idea.

Anyway, hope this holds you over until I can post some art.

Kickin it old school...

Ok, I'll be honest, I really don't know if this quote really applies to this piece, but I just like the sound of it.

I used to think you had to suffer
to be Beautiful, but now???

I'm Kickin' It Old School!

The suffering could be anything from eating all your peas as a child, to suffering through many Lilt or Toni home perms. For me, I still do an occasional Velcro roller set, but no color and no perms for this chick. I still love me some war paint (lipstick and nail color) but I kicked the torture chamber heels for more comfy shoes quite a while back.

This next little beauty is along the same lines.

You know how they say

"A leopard doesn't change Her spots"...

Well, Baby I won't tell if you don't!

This little feline sweetie looks a lot scarier than I intended. I hope I don't seem superficial. "Oh listen to her, she thinks all you have to do is slap some make up on". I have always known that folks can change. Whether is something you have been delivered from, to something like gradually breaking out of a rut. We can change bad habits and move forward. Changes can be made, and you can share them with your friends, or they can be your little secret. But the next time someone tells you that "they'll never change" think of my little leopard with her jewelry and make up, and tell them they just might be surprised.

Well, that's it for today. It's raining here today, so perhaps some needlework is in my future. Hope everyone is having a great week. Take care and keep those cards and letters comin'


disclaimer: please be advised that I am a girly-girl, princess type (Baby Boomer that I am) and you will probably continue to see fashion and glamor in my collages (at least until I get some new magazines), so be prepared.

Fabulous Friday

Can you believe that it's Friday again? I know it is, because all my shows were on last night. The week has flown by, but I did get a bit of art done. I'm still into collage art. I like the whole process, from gathering up magazines, to finding images, to deciding whether to look for colors or themes. Everything about collage art is working for me right now.

This first piece wasn't going well, and I just sort of vented as I worked on it. That's where the therapeutic part comes in. I decided to post it anyway...

This next piece was fun and just fell into place...

Someone gave us a stack of Life and Look mags, dating back as far as 1952. When you have magazines that old, you are sometimes hesitant to cut into them, but when I want an image I want it then. So I clip it out. I could wait and go to the copy shop and save the magazine, but shoot...nothing lasts forever, so I am using them. Any hoo, there was this ad for a product to make silver hair beautiful, so that got me to thinking about my journey into the land of uncolored tresses. It's one of the best things I've done for myself lately. Once again I'm happy with my hair. But enough about me.

Speaking of magazine images, if you don't have a lot of magazines and certainly don't want to put a lot of money into something you are going to cut up, check out your local library.



Our's sells their back issues of magazines for .20 each. I went by today and they had lots of different kinds. Another option is catalogs that you get in the mail. I even ask my dentist for old magazines. DH gets musician catalogs and I'm looking forward to doing something funky with them.

My last picture for today is a somewhat blurry shot of a little red headed visitor we had this week. I had to use my zoom feature and take it through the screen, but you can tell what he's up to.

Not quite as busy as Stan the Beaver, but he was quite intent on his job.

So that's it for today. A bit of art, some prose and a look at our backyard buddies. Hope everyone has a great weekend. Do some art, enjoy the scenery or just curl up and watch a movie, whatever you choose...have fun.

collage art

Just a quick post today to show some of the collage work that I did this week. I think the reason I'm so attracted to collage is the fact that I get to play with fancy lettering. I would like to do one that has a lot of text, but it seems that when I leave the keyboard, my thoughts stay there.

In any event, here you have...


This is a line from the song that Girl Scouts and Campfire Girls sang. I was only a Brownie Scout, so I didn't really understand the lyrics. It's about being in a canoe with a boy and having to decide what to do. The end result being... girl, you better know how to swim.

This next one is something that just evolved as I worked on it...

The image in the lower left is from a hand carved stamp that I did several years ago. I seem to like the visual of someone thinking or speaking the quote. I always thought this was a funny ad. It's from the 60's, back when you could still hardly talk about ladies unmentionables, let alone show one on a model.

Then, last night at a loss for images to use, I started cutting up my Cuisine magazines and my fitness mags and these images just fell together...

It shows the conflict that we sometimes experience when dealing with wanting sweets, when we know we should have fruit. The meditating girl was from an ad in the Fitness mag, the cake at the top was from the food mag, and the strawberry sundae is from an old Life mag. The verbiage at the bottom that is hard to read, says torn between two lovers, which I think says it all.

Hope everyone is staying warm this weekend. We had record cold for several days, but the weather chick is promising warm weather next week, so watch out world.

That's it for today, take care and be creative.

Hello World...

The new year does that to me. I just want to say "Hello World" and twirl around and toss my hat like Mary Richards. I don't do much twirling any more ( although I used to twirl as a majorette) but I plan on doing that and lots more this year.

I've been working on solutions for storing my numerous bottles and jars of sweet smelling loveliness, that I showed you last week. I'm thinking shelves on the wall next to the dresser, but we'll see.

I do a lot of online research and love to learn new things, especially art techniques. I have been using prisma color markers and copics for several years now, but I never thought to combine them with my other favorite medium, colored pencils. There's a young guy, named Merrill Kazanjian, that does amazing art using these and many other techniques.

I particularly like his tutorial on drawing an apple. I used his ideas, but used an apple instead of a picture. I did run into one problem, I need to have my glasses changed. I wear bifocals and I need to have trifocals. I just couldn't see the apple to draw, with it just sitting on my table, so I had to hold the dang thing. Well, that meant I had to draw my hand also, so here is a life sized version of my hand and apple.

Well, that was my first art project for 2010, but I'm really wanting to do some different things this year. That brings us to my friend Shelly, who does the most wonderful collages and I am so inspired by them. I know that I'm not ready for the detail that she puts in her's, but I love studying them. Here is the link to her Flickr page, so check them out.

There's another chick that does collages that my friend Linda and I have been watching. Her name is Teesha Moore and she has a very elaborate web page and she also has lots of youtube videos to watch when you have the time.

So it was off to Michael's for some paint pens, new journals and scrapbook papers. I don't have much in the way of printed paper to work from for collages, so it will be purchased paper and copied vintage photos to start out with.

I just fell in love with the skull paper and while some folks make their own journals, I really prefer the spiral bound art papers for mine. That gives you the option of gluing pages together for thicker pages if you want. Anyway, they were BOGO at Michael's yesterday.

Saturday, DH and I went to our favorite used book store, not only to sell some books (got enough for a fancy lunch) but to check out the old craft books, which I love. Of all the things I have done in years past, I have never done needlepoint. Probably from always having cats in my lap fighting me for the yarn. In any event, I found these two fab books and had to have them.

Don't these look like fun books to have. Can hardly wait to start a needlepoint project.

So that's were I am here on the first week in January 2010. Already learned a new art technique, am chompin' at the bit to do some cutting and taping and lettering on my collages and have needlework projects climbing into my dreams at night. Combine that with keeping the dust bunnies at bay, doing laundry and making sure my hair looks marvelous at all times, I'm also going to be using this book...

So if you want to follow my journey on getting fit and transforming my life, stop in periodically at my other blog (Let's Lose Weight This Year) and check it out.

So that's it for today. I'm hyped and psyched and ready to go. Jump in with both feet and join me. You'll be glad you did. Until then,

xoxo
Susan