Art and Soul and Journalfest

I just found out I will have a busy Fall. I will be teaching my Block Party class at Art and Soul. The classes are available for viewing now. Registration starts February 1, 2011....

And Pencil Dreams at Journalfest...registration is not up yet, I will let you know...

New Year, New Directions

I was honored to be chosen to show some work at the local theater. I have been to plays there and thought it would be fun to do large panel "people" to hang on the walls, as if they are watching the play also.
I cut some canvas into panels and made pockets for dowels on the top and bottom to hang the pieces with. Then I went to town with gesso, texture and collage. I used anaglypta wallpaper also. I did a random free hand ink drawing and picked up the panel so the ink would run in odd ways. Here are the initial panels....

and a close-up of the face.

Here are the finished panels.....

I am hooked on these, love to work large!

Happy New Year!

I have been super productive during the holidays and wanted to share some of my sketches to start out the new year. I enrolled in the "Sketchbook Project," and have been working in my book. The goal is to fill it and get it in the mail by 1/15/2011. I am not sure I will make it, but at least it has me working in it!

I am enjoying the sketching, but am not in love with the book. The pages are thin and you can see the images through the pages. I am limited to pencil, conte crayon and ink. I do like the monochromatic look though....

Home From the Holiday

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday with family in San Diego but we hit a bit of a snag on our way back home. We experienced our first snow event of the season....

Here we are...waiting to chain up.

Max looks a bit worried. What is all that white stuff?

But oh, so beautiful!

I See Faces

There is a certain comfort to me to make order out of chaos. I am thinking that is why I am so drawn to collage.We just got our shipment of fire wood for the winter. A big pile of chaos that would surely take hours to sort out. It would have been faster if I did not keep removing pieces from the pile because I saw "faces" in the wood....

Once the photos were taken for future drawing projects, we were able to finish our creation..

A thing of beauty!

Back from Journalfest

I am finally unpacked from our trip to Seattle and Port Townsend. We spent 2 days in Seattle. We ate some amazing  food - new favorites are  Flying Fish and Crow. Both meals were unforgettable. We walked everywhere and saw the Picasso exhibit at the SAM. I had to laugh when I looked at the pictures I took....a little like "wierd" Seattle.

The sprout eating gekko

This was a window display. The reflection on the glass made it ghost - like.

A haunt...

We travelled to Port Townsend with a mandatory stop at the Steamliner Diner in Bainbridge, for their famous buttermilk biscuits. Journalfest was great. I love the smaller groups, classes and relaxed atmosphere. I had Julianna Coles for the first day. She is an energetic teacher and really encouraged us to be more brave,take risks with our journal pages. Here are a couple paged I worked on...

This was a cool technique using carbon paper - do they still make it??

A warm-up

A drawing of Judy Wise drawing me....

I spent the next 2 days with Carla Sonheim. What a wonderful experience. She is so relaxed and has so much to share as a teacher. Here are a few of the pages I did....

I love the conte crayon as a drawing tool. This was a drawing made better with gesso and collage.

My "one liner" lion

My Picasso Dog - he looks a lot like my dog Max...All together a great experience, well worth the effort to attend. 

Artist Studio Tour

Working off my favorite advise - "Say YES, then figure it out..." I agreed to be on the Artist Studio tour for the Grants Pass Museum of Art next weekend (September 11-12th from 10am-4pm each day). Once I agreed, as usual, things started getting bigger than I thought. My husband graciously helped me build a path from the driveway to the studio, so folks would not have to use the stairs. I have cleaned and re-organized - realizing more of that is needed once this is over. Just when I thought I could take a breath, a reporter from the local paper asked to visit and do an interview. She also did a video, which is on the papers website. Here is the link:
http://web.thedailycourier.com/video/vidpage.html?v=090210Studios The process was pretty fun and I am once again glad that I said YES!