ffyrebird

Tsilly Tsunami

I am wading around here in an overflow of Art of Silliness 3 worksheets that I haven't posted yet.  Time to get onto the net and off of my desk..........

Watercolor on Location Class- Week 2

For Jane LaFazio's Joggles class this week we were supposed to sketch in a cafe or coffee shop.  I'm a tea drinker and was starving after a night shopping, so I decided to go to Panera instead.  I got my food right off the bat and settled into a booth to sketch it.  I wasn't even finished drawing when one of the employees, came up to me to say they were closing.  Ackkk!!  (The server was really very nice and said I could stay until I was finished, but I didn't want to be impolite and keep the staff from closing.) I slopped some paint on and gulped down my dinner.  The lettering and story were added at home.

Silly faces

Worksheet 3.23 for The Art of Silliness, make and photograph silly faces.

Silly Surrender

More from Carla Sonheim's Art of Silliness 3.  I really am NOT a doodler.  I like drawings that look like something.  I'm not really fond of posting things that look like a two year old did them.  That said, I'm posting these anyway despite my reluctance.  I think I'm just too tired and that's why I'm feeling sour instead of silly...................

 


 

Silly Birdy

More for The art of Silliness 3.  It was too cold and the snow was too deep to go anywhere for the photo for worksheet 3.16 so this is what happened:

and for worksheet 3.17 of course I saw a firebird in the puzzle!!

Silly Scribbles

Scribbling along with The Art of Silliness 3.......

Still Silly

Still plugging away at Carla's Art of Silliness workshop.  I have to admit combining this with a daily drawing, posting, replying on the web, working in exercise and all my daily Mom duties might be a bit much.

Silly Weekend

More from The Art of Silliness class.

Silliness 3.10-Exquisite Corpse Booklet

Silly mixup fun from the Art of Silliness workshop... A flip book ala The Exquisite Corpse.

 

 

  

 

Silly dots

More from The Art of Silliness 3, today connect the dots.  I was picked Squeen of the day for the Yoga Beara photos!! Yay!! It's good to be the squeen!!  <Waves royally>  LOL  ;D!!

Silly Stacked

More from The Art of Silliness 3.

Some More Silliness

  The continuing Saga of silliness.  More from Carla Sonheim's The Art of Silliness.

And my five photos for 3.7--

 
 

 

 

Weekend Silliness

My weekend contributions to Silly the Third.  What a fun group!!

 

Let the Silliness Begin!

I signed up for Carla Sonheim's The Art of Silliness 3 and it is a blast!!!!! Here are my first three silly sheets:

2010 EDinM #28

This was supposed to be for the Monthly Sketch Project, but I keep getting the dates mixed up.  I thought I had till the end of the month but it closed on the 27th, bummer.  Anyway, Chrissy took a wonderful photo that was a lot of fun to draw from and filled my slot for EDinM today.  

2010 EDinM #13 and MSP May

This is another double duty drawing.  This is for EDinM  for the 13th and also for the May challenge for the Monthly Sketch Project.  This is based on a photo submitted to the group by  Chrissy.  

Monthly Sketch Project April 2010, project #2

I had a mini-brain melt and missed the deadline for the second MSP for April, and it was to be from one of my photos, ACCKKK!! ( I really wish Typepad would figure out a way to use emoticons)  Anyway, in my fuzzy brain I thought I had till the end of the month to draw the macaws.  Big surprise when I checked in to see what was up with the Ning group and if we had to change anything about where to post to and found Mr. Linky was closed.  One of these days I'm actually going to get organized and put deadlines on my calendar, then I'll have to make reminders to check the calendar, and post-its to look at the reminders, and tie a string on my finger to remember to dig up the post-its, and........  Maybe I should just accept the fact that I'm forgetful, eh?  To make a long story short, here are the macaws---

Monthly Sketch Project April 2010, subject 2

I managed to do both subjects for this month's sketch project.  This is based on the photo sent in by  Martine.

Monthly Sketch Project April 2010

The Monthly Sketch Project for April is a photo I took at the zoo of a Japanese lantern and submitted to the group.  I wasn't so thrilled with my first attempt,

So I grabbed my brush pen and tried to go for a bit looser look,

MSP Feb. 2010

This Monthly Sketch Project is based on a photo by Ann.

Monthly Sketch Project October

I love the art challenges like the Monthly Sketch Project, because I always seem to learn something new.  This month I learned not to try to make a watercolor painting when I'm tired and it's getting time for the family to have dinner.  I rushed and am not thrilled with the result, it doesn't do justice to Ann's  lovely photo.  Oh well, some times you just have a bad day...............

Monthly Sketch Project Sept, mid-month project

To pass the time until the next main project at the Monthly Sketch Project we now have a mid-month sketch project.  Cool idea, more fun sketching!!!  This challenge was a photo of a flamingo by Chrissy.  Here is my attempt........

Monthly Sketch Project September

Virtual Sketch Date is no more, but thankfully the spirit of the challenge is living on in The Monthly Sketch Project.  September is the first Monthly sketch for the group.  Below is my try at the photo from Glamis Castle.  Thanks Jennifer for putting together this group!!

April 2009 Virtual Sketch Date

I almost didn't bother with posting this Virtual Sketch Date entry, seems we had the attack of the viruses this month.  First the flu went through the whole family, then when we got well my computer got sick!!  Many days and multiple AV scans and fixes later, I finally feel I can trust my computer enough to use it online.  Unfortunately, my computer got to feeling better after the deadline for the April VSD.  I hope it is still ok to post and link this in with the rest........ 

PS- I'm not familiar with flowers and didn't know what this was until I looked on the VSD Flickr pool and discovered that it was a rhododendron bud.  VSD, fun AND educational!!!!

March 2009 Virtual Sketch Date

Here is my entry for the March Virtual Sketch Date.  The reference photo is here.

 

TAD, looking forward to 2010

  Thing-A-Day 2009 was so much fun that I can't wait to do it agin in 2010!    Although this was my first time with TAD, it is actually year 3 of "Thing-a-day, the collective sprint that brings warmth and focus to the month of February."  I am so glad Kim Saxe mentioned this on the EDM group and I was able to join in on this years "sprint".  Thanks Kim!!

TAD 27,28

  My Thing-a-Day item for the 27th and 28th was to work on a pair of socks I am knitting from handspun.  They are toe up and after I turned the heel, I tried it on.  Ugg, too snug!  One small seven row portion of fair isle knitting right before I did the the heel had floats that were too long and didn't stretch like the rest of the sock.  I ripped back to before that section and found a new fair isle pattern to use with smaller floats. I started reknitting at the arrow and two days later I am back to where I was before.  At least the sock feels comfy now!

TAD26

  For Thing-a-Day today, I had fun playing with a little sample batt from my fiber stash.  I spun the singles on a Schacht Matchless, then wound the singles off onto a nostepinne.  Using both ends of the centerpull ball, I plied it on the Schacht. 

   

   

I wound the yarn off onto a niddy-noddy and here is the finished skein, ready to be washed and set.

 

TAD25

  My project for Thing-a-Day today has been in the works for quite a long time.  This project was my first try at spinning cotton.  It is a cotton and recycled denim fiber blend.  I spun it on a Bosworth book charkha and after I filled three spindles I wound the singles off together onto a weavers storage bobbin using a bobbin winder.  Here's a photo showing how I set it up (please ignore the current singles on the spindles as they are just things I'm sampling now on the charkha).

 When one spindle ran out of singles on it, I would break off the other two, spin each spindle full again, splice the singles on the spindles to those on the bobbin and wind off again onto the bobbin.  I repeated this cycle until I ran out  of fiber.

The singles had a lot of twist when I wound them off to the bobbin.  I let them stay on the storage bobbin for quite a while until they were 'stale' and I didn't have to fight the active twist and snarls while plying.  To ply the singles, I slipped the drive band off of the bobbin winder and put a little hand weight on its base and used it as a lazy kate.  I plyed all three singles using a folding Lendrum wheel with a plying head.Normally, I wind the yarn off into a skein, wash and set it but this time I decided to wind it off directly into a centerpull ball using a nostepinne

  

Since cotton yarn has so absolutely no stretch it is very stessful to me to  knit at a tight gauge. To avoid the stess on my hands, I thought I could knit it loosely then wash and dry it using high heat.  Being cotton, maybe the piece would shrink and tighten up the knitting and spare my hands.

Finished knitting and ready to toss in the washer and dryer.  We'll see how the shrinking experiment works.... 

 

 

 

TAD24

  Just a little quick pen and watercolor for today....

 

So long Feedburner!!

For anyone who might not be aware of it, Google has aquired Feedburner.  Now all Feeedburner feeds have to be transferred to a Google account by Feb 28.  I have been using Feedburner on this site, but I really don't want to hassle with creating a Google account and dealing with their notoriously on again, off again service, and other issues.  That means that after this post I am switching back to whatever default RSS 'thingie' Typepad has.  This means that if you are subscribed to this blog's feed you will have to resubscribe to it.  Sorry for any inconvenience, just thought I'd give you a heads up.

TAD23

  For TAD today I did just a little spinning on My Country Craftsman wheel, it had a Tencel and Merino blend on it that I am spinning into singles that I'll ply for a sockweight yarn for...Socks!

TAD 21,22

 My creative thing-a-day for this weekend was to  work on my Painter's vest.  The yarn is from Mountain Colors (I think) purchased on a long ago trip as a souvenir.  I planned and started the vest awhile ago then got sidetracked by other hobbies. 

TAD20

  I filled another bobbin with this mixed fiber bat.  The bits of silk in it and short pieces of odd fibers make it hard to spin smooth, so I'm going for a textured single with it.  The Journey wheel keeps making this whirring sound, I'll tinker with it when I change bobbins.

  

TAD19

  I was bored waiting on the kiddos to finish at the library so I started this manga and finished it at home.  I knew I couldn't do TAD without throwing in at least one manga drawing!

TAD 18

  I have a collection of stuffed animals and figures hanging out on my computer desk.  This one is a Ty beanie that I slit the back seam and stuffed a pop-bead armature into. Now he is poseable, pretty nifty...

TAD 17

  No TADs for the weekend but here is a quicky of a rose from Valentine's Day.

TAD14

 

 Posting on weekends and holidays is always a bit tricky, so here is my Valentine's Day TAD  just a little late.

  

TAD13

  A quick watercolor and watercolor pencil sketch for Thing-a-Day:

                     

TAD12

  My DD requested a butterfly sketch, so here is todays TAD:

                                                     

TAD 11

 

 Well, Thing-A-Day for me should be retitled Thing-A-Week as it's been nearly a week since I last managed to do something creative to post.  Here is my latest attempt.  I'll have another go at the "daily" thing and see if I can keep up.

                                      

 

TAD 3,4,5

  Just a quick post to catch up.  It's easier to do the Thing-a-day than to post it everywhere, so I'm behind on posting these.

TAD 3: Merino in forest colorway from Kendig Cottage being spun on my Majacraft Rose-relaxing.

TAD 4 and 5:  Just a couple of quick sketchs.

 

  

TAD2

    I played around with photoshop today to make a Thing-A-Day  image for my posts.  Uggg!!  I need a book on photoshop.  I forgot to explain Thing-A-day in my first post. It is just a challenge to do something creative everyday in February.  Besides the button, my real creative thingy for today is a couple of quick sketches done while watching the kiddos play basketball.

Thing-A-Day Feb 01

I posted this little dragon plushie to the Thing-A-Day site as my first entry.

GPP Crusade #21: Irresistible

Yes, I am still alive.  I've just been on a bit of a blog/drawing/posting vacation.  I'm back to post a GPP Crusade, late as usual.  The Crusades are just such fun that I can't resist playing and it is hard to stop and simply post.  This Crusade was wax resist.  We did crayon rubbings when I was a kid but adding the paint for a resist is just too cool.  The directions are to use thin paper and do a rubbing with a crayon, then cover the image with watery acrylic paint and wipe off.  I'm not much for acrylic paints, but I do have tons of watercolor so that is what I used in my resists.  I used sumi practice paper because it was thin and had a slight texture to it that I liked.

My first experiment was yellow crayon rubbed over a Celtic cross lawn ornament.  Kinda looks glow in the dark, eeeeesshhhh!!

  Next up was a rubbing of the wire cover to our gerbil's home.  I like the result, but I don't have a clue what I'm going to do with it.  Pardon the bad scan, it is a tad too large for the scanner bed and I couldn't get it to lay right...

 The Crusade techniques stand out from my usual drawing style in my journal and throw people when they flip through it.  I decided to make one spread explaining what they were looking at this time.  I printed the crusade button on tracing paper and collaged it in.

Its hard to tell, but this is a rose carving from the headboad of the bedroom set that my DH and I had when we first got married.  I'm a sentimental packrat, so now it lives in my DD's room and we'll probably never get rid of it.

  This is from the carving on my Majacraft Rose spinning wheel.  There wasn't enough contrast between the white crayon and tan watercolor to see the rose, so I floated in some red and green watercolor.

 I plan to use these rubbings of baskets as future backgrounds for journaling.

As always, the Crusade was a fun learning experience!!

GPP Crusade #20

I'm a little late with this crusade since most of my free time in May was eaten up by doing drawings for May Manga Mania, the Every Day in May challenge.  I did a quick little experiment with the paper casting and found it to be lots of fun.  I used an old jar topper for the shamrock and colored it with metallic powders.  The roses were on a terracotta heart diffuser and colored with pan pastel.   Here are the results: 

GPP Crusade #19

Another Crusade, another great learning experience!!  I've never tried my hand at making or using stencils so this was a great way to begin.  After going to Hobby Lobby for the stencil material, Hotmark tool, and picture glass, I sat down on the floor of my sunroom to cut stencils.  Lots of great light and I didn't have to worry about the kiddos getting near the hot cutter or it flying off my desk (I am a terrible klutz).  Cutting the stencils was easier than I thought it would be, thanks to the great instructions Michelle gave.  Wheww!! I didn't realize it would be so stinky!  The smell of burning pastic, gackk!  I should have known better.  Melting plastic gives off all sorts of noxius fumes, no wonder my asthma acted up.  Next time I'll have better ventilation or a mask.

Here are a few pics of my foray into stencil land:

After seeing Michelle's flame stencils, I just had to make a set of my own <G>.  Here are the journal pages I made with my new stencils:

Watercolor using the bottom flames stencil in the previous pic.

Watercolor and charcoal. The top flames stencil used twice, plus a firebird and tall flame stencil.

My favorite.  Watercolor on crumpled, singed masa.  When I pasted it into my journal, the stark white journal paper surrounding it was rather jarring.  I rubbed some pastel on the journal paper so it blended  better with the paste-in.

Colored pencil on pastel.  I went back and reworked almost all of the images, but this one needed the most tweaking.  I think the original's lines were too thin and needed to be made larger in the stencil for a pencil to fit into them easier.

Birds on the brain

We've been having so much fun watching the birds that I thought I might try drawing a few.  I was testing out some stamp frames in my sketchbook and they looked bare so I invited some birds to live in them.  (Credits to the book, Artist's Photo Reference Songbirds for inspiring the double cardinal pose. )  I liked the look of the bird stamps so I used tracing paper and transfered them to my journal. Then got out my trusty watercolors to give them a bit more punch.  Amazing how much inspiration and entertainment you can have for just a little birdseed.

Stamp fever

The GPP Crusade to carve a stamp has just been way too much fun.  Here is the bird stamp I carved in use in my journal. I checked out the book, Art Stamping Workshop by Gloria Page, at the library and decided to copy her postage stamp carvings.  They are addictive.  I ended up with three but I could use a dozen to serve as frames for drawings and script.

GPP Crusade #18

I've had a blast with this crusade!  I got to pretend to be a sculptress as a I carved out a few stamps for my journal, cool.

For my first try at carving a stamp, I chose an abstract design based on a sculpture that I saw in a catalog. I really don't have a place in my home for a large sculpture of a moebius flame, but it fits just fine in my journal pages <grin>.

The next stamp that I carved was a very primitive-looking little bird.  We've been having a lot of fun lately watching the birds at our backyard feeders and I think it is time that they found a page or two of their own in my journal.  I was on the phone and not paying much attention to carving the stamp so I accidentally started shaving off the lines instead of the negative area around the image. When I realized what I was doing it was too late.  I decided to just go with it and added an outline also.  Didn't test out too bad, so I trimmed the stamp into a rough bird shape and left it.

I've been wanting a few background stamps for my journal so I took a whole stamp block and carved parallel lines into.  I like the way it turned out, simple and versatile.

Finally, here  is a glimpse of my poor desk with all the carving chaos