Love Letters

Greetings from Detroit!

Howdy, ya'll!  

It's a gorgeous Saturday morning here in Southeast Michigan, something we haven't seen in what feels like AGES!!!

It's so interesting what sunshine and longer days does for a soul, isn't it?

I feel SO much better now that the long winter is over (for the most part... the forcast is for Tuesday here in SE MI tobe 39 degrees for a high and 24 degrees for a low!)... YIKES!

 

OK, on to business... I thought I'd show you a little of the things I have been working on here lately... 

First of all, I'm taking an Oprah class from Dr. Brene Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection, here is this week's "Weekly Intention":

Here's my journal work for this week:

(I'm really struggling with not being judgemental of this... it's not something I spent a lot of time on, obviously, and now I wish I had!)

 

Here's my "Playlist", my interpretation of Dr. Stuart Brown's list of what constitutes "play", and then my list of what I like to do that is "play" to me:

This class has helped to remind me of how fulfilling it was for me to be making SOMETHING pretty much every day, and how much I enjoyed blogging and ending my posts with "Now, go make something!"... I failed to take my own advice and as a result, just haven't felt like myself... (as my dad would joke, "I'm not exactly sure WHO I felt like, but it wasn't me!")... so, though the demands of grad school are at times seemingly overwhelming, I have realized I NEED to carve out time for PLAY... even if I have to schedule it like an appointment... for my mental health and overall well being, it is as important as any doctor appointment or exercise, or frankly, for me, eating...

MY SOUL NEEDS PLAYTIME!!!

SO,  I've been drawing:

(This is a contour drawing of the top of an armoire in my bedroom)

This is done in an Evernote journal... does anyone out there understand how this is supposed to be used?  I just haven't taken the time to figure it out... I'm starting to feel old... I need a teenager to just show me once and I'll be fine!) :D

 

This is a drawing of some of the gorgeous pattern work chosen for the Sochi Olympics... I thought their graphics were just gorgeous and when I dove a little deeper, to learn more about the designs, I learned there were representations of different sub-cultures in Russia, each with their own unique artforms... and I think the designs were charming and beautiful and SO well done!!!  I just LOVED the colors and the patterns the way they were used to "brand" the Sochi Olympics!

 

 

Do you remember how beautiful and colorful the patterns were?

 

(CreditChang W. Lee/The New York Times)

What I'd give for some of the swag these kids are wearing!!!  Hmmm... maybe I need to peruse ebay and see if anyone is selling any of their Sochi Olympic garb! :D

 

A map of Russia from the official site for the clothing and Olympic swag... HOW cool is this!!!

 

These are some class notes from a workshop I took with Peter Thornton, someone I'd wanted to learn from for ages, and he is just a wonderful teacher with a wealth of knowledge and skill, self-deprecating and funny and very warm and human!  We spent a lot of time discussing and examining the concept of CoNtRaSt in our artwork and also spent a lot of time looking at, and studying the letters of Adolf Bernd, this is a link to a Google search I did of images, it is amazing!!!

 adolf bernd painted letters

Here is a beautiful example of one of Adolf Bernd's painted letters... the detail is AMAZING, all done in watercolor, the shades of which are just SO beautiful!...

 

I hope you've taken some time recently to fill up your creative well, and if you haven't, WHY NOT?!?  

I'd LOVE to hear from you if you've had the same sort of challenges and how you've done what you needed to do to take care of yourself!

THANK YOU for stopping by and taking the time to read this post, take good care!

 

Now, GO MAKE SOMETHING!!!

(And be sure to have FUN!)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Spring greeting...

Spring greetings! 

Just a quick reminder, the Brooklyn Art House' Sketchbook Project 2012 is on its way to Chicago, May 3rd, 4th & 5th!  The exhibit will be at the Newberry Library, and if you are in that neck of the woods, I hope you'll go see the exhibit... it's FREE and it should be VERY interesting!  

 

Here's a link to a VERY cook sketchbook from the 2011 project: http://www.arthousecoop.com/library/77#page-slide_1

I hope if you take a look at it you'll let me know your thoughts.  I love the addition of what I think must be screenprinting in the sketchbook... I wish I knew a printer who has scraps like the graphics printed in this sketchbook.  I would happily pay for the imperfectly printed images to use in my journals or collages.  Any ideas? (I apologize that I cannot show any images from the book, but it's not mine to access).

I hope you are enjoying spring and find yourself making SOMETHING everyday!

Handmade journals, just for fun!

I'm going to show you some photos I took of a handmade journal I made recently, using pretty much all recycled or reused paper... old ledger pages, tracing paper, pages out of nicely done paper samples, pages out of old bicycle catalogs, graph paper, old day planner pages I'd never used, some watercolor paper, and even some paper called TerraSkin (which I'll post about soon), etc... I cut all the paper by hand (why I didn't use a paper cutter is really a good question), and then followed instructions for how to glue a book binding I found on the net.  I found all sorts of great diy videos on youtube!  One I especially liked is done by Charmaine Martinez, click here to see her video.

Instructions for how to make a hard covered journal can be found at the Curiously Crafty blog.

Front cover, cut from paper sample from French Paper Co.

Back cover from same French Paper Co. sample

View of journal from above...

Close up view... page on left from bike catalog, page on right from French Paper Co. sample

graph paper on left, bike catalog page on right...

more paper cut up and ready to be assembled into a book...

I haven't started to write in this book yet, but I anticipate having fun with colored markers, metalic markers, watercolor pencils, rubber stamps, etc.  I plan to make my next journal using only high quality watercolor paper &/or the TerraSkin paper, which really isn't paper at all!

It really doesn't matter what you choose to use, if you decide to experiment and make your own customized journal, just make sure to have fun!  The possibilities are truly endless!  

Now, GO MAKE SOMETHING FUN!!!

 

Final Sketchbook Project 2012 covers, etc.

This is the final edition of the front cover of my Sketchbook Project 2012 book... I love the "Choose authenticity" arrow and I love the white strip down the right hand side that is embossed with "MADE WITH LOVE"... it's cut out of a Neenah paper give away piece from last year's XPEDX paper show.  I put a little Golden Titan Buff acrylic paint, mixed with a little bit of iridescent gold over the white so it wasn't quite so stark.

This is the back cover... I love the hand and the heart...

Here's a couple of close up sections of other pages I hadn't posted previously...

So what have you been up to that's fun and different from your usual work?  

More Sketchbook Project 2012 images...

 

Time is drawing nigh (boy, how often do you get to say "nigh"?!?) for me to put the Sketchbook 2012 project in the mail, in time for it to travel with all the other sketchbooks to various locales around the country.  I thought it might be fun to share some of the layouts with you... I hope you like them. (Keep in mind I may end up adding to some of the pages, tweaking them just a bit.) It has been a departure from my traditional "signature" style of collage, and it's really been fun.  

(BTW, clicking on the images will open them up in a larger window).  

A lot of the cut out images came from paper samples from an xpedx paper show, and were very carefully cut out (note Rocky Racoon's whiskers above left).  

Same with this page spread... the flowers on the left were cut out and applied over a very busy page that I made even busier by writing all over it, and on the page on the right.  How cute are the little bumble bee men on the top of the right hand page?

This spread is a little goofy, but it's meant to be humorous... the bike and the wording "slow your roll" were recycled from a bicycle catalog.  I prefer the spread on the right... I love the ampersand and the pink flower to the left of it.  

In this spread I love the porcupine, and trust me, he took forever to cut out!!!  Those quills are sharp! :D  

I absolutely LOVE paper and the quality of the samples from companies like Finch, Appleton, French and Domtar are superb!  Both the paper quality and the image quality are absolutely first rate in my opinion!

I love this spread... the face on the left is just so cool, with the colorful image of the world superimposed...   The flower on the right side was another of those really labor intensive cutting jobs!  

This is a bit of a silly layout... have you picked up on the repeating stripes that appear on a lot of the pages?  The stripes came from a printed catalogue from UofM's School of Public Health that was really nicely done.

more images placed in no particular place... just for fun!

The cougar images that appear here and there are from Domtar's line of papers called, appropriately so, "Cougar".  It is a gorgeous paper that takes ink just beautifully.

I really like the spread on the right page... the colors work really well together. The spread on the left made me think of the movie Babe, which is one of my all time favorites!  Babe... "a little pig goes a long way".

This is one busy spread... the two little old ladies in the bottom left are my great-grandmother and her sister... they reportedly loved nature so I put them outside! :D

next to last pages...

The back cover is on the left and the front cover is on the right. I think the  front cover in particular needs some love! Perhaps I'll have to make some sort of title for the book that mentions how much I love letters!

I hope if the traveling Sketchbook Project 2012 comes to a city near you that you'll take the time to go see the books!