Weekend Art and October Video

Last night, I actually worked in my art journal. Yes, I do daily art in my Seven Seas Standard journal AKA my Fauxbonichi, but my art journal is different. How? Sometimes I don't even know. 

What's more confusing is that I have several different art journals, some wire bound, others are like the one you see above. I tend to use lots of mixed media techniques in my art journal. 

And in my Fauxbonichi, I also include my daily thoughts, ideas, or general nonsense. It really is meant to be a work in progress, not really planned. 

And here are my weekend pieces from my Fauxbonichi.

The prompts were:

Tinker Lab - Stencil (I used circle stencil)

DND Challenge - Paisely (I turned my Paisely into an enso)

Let's sketch it - Favorite meme (there are so many but this is one of them)

For today, the prompts were:

Tinker Lab - Copy (I copied the ribbon and the information)

DND Challenge - handwrite "be brave"

Let's sketch it - medical (this is what I used for the theme today)

And here is my October video! Music by Alexandre Tharaud playing Bach's Goldberg Variations No. 17

Well-loved

I am really excited to be taking an online art class by Jane Davenport and Joanne Sharpe called Miss Quoted. Jane taught me how to draw faces and use color to express mood. Joanne taught me that illustrating quotes means making your words stand out. And now, they have combined to offer a new class!!

So in honor of them, my art today is about putting together what I've learned so far from them. And it fits my prompts for today which were:

Tinker Lab - Whimsy

Dawn Nicole - "Be Joyous"

Let's Sketch It - well-loved

And there is nothing more well loved than my Seven Seas Standard journal and my Platinum Carbon Pen! I've put the Daniel Smith paints in my travel palette (an old Altoid tin and empty gym tray as the paint holder). And did you know today is National Fountain Pen Day? 

I hope you have a wonderful weekend!!

More Coffee, Anyone?

Yesterday, I found a local art supply store, not a hobby store like Michael's but a real art supply store. It's not quite as big as Blick's but certainly small enough that you could look at every single item there. I have been thinking about buying artist's grade watercolors and I finally bought a few. There are so many colors to choose from but I settled on the essential kit plus quinacridone gold. I should probably have gone with quinacridone orange but maybe next time.

With these 7 colors, you can mix to produce so many different colors. Daniel Smith also provides a handy PDF to show you how.

http://www.danielsmith.com/docs_pdf/daniel-smith-watercolor-guide.pdf

I am really excited to try these but Im afraid to use them for everyday art. But how crazy is that? 

Today's daily art isn't what I had imagined at first but I'm happy with it. The prompts were:

Tinker lab - drip

Dawn Nicole - tree

Let's sketch it - cuppa 

I was imagining a tree with coffee cups overflowing with coffee but instead I decided to go with coffee beans. I was able to play with my new paints to create different Browns.

If there were coffee trees that would drop coffee into my mug, that certainly would be a tree of life because I would be unbearable without coffee. 😊

Have a creative day!

My Daily Process

Here is today's based on several challenges:

Let's Sketch It: jug

Dawn Nicole: dreamers

Tinker Lab: Boundary

And on Fauxbonichi Journaler's group, we are to journal about our Fauxbo process. Perfect for today's blog post.

As you know, I usually start with a quote. But to fulfill these prompts, I start with images and then look for the quote. For today, I started with the word jug and immediately, coffee jug came into mind. So I looked online for a reference photo and found this.

I had the word "boundary" in my mind thinking about how to incorporate it. I could use it as a metaphor because I always try to push the "boundaries" of my art abilities. But then I decided that I would place the quote inside the jug's boundary. So I looked for a quote about coffee and dreamers. By the way, that's exactly what I put in the search field.."quotes about coffee and dreamers".. There were several I liked but ultimately chose, "They call us dreamers but we're the ones who don't sleep." I love this quote because that's me when I'm really dreaming! And unless you are a coffee or tea drinker, you may not get the relationship between the jug and the quote, I decided it needed a picture of a woman drinking coffee. 

Here is the drawing without color.

A detail shots..

And I journal wherever I find space. I love these challenges because they really get me thinking about how I connect words to images.

And speaking of connecting words and images, I saw a poem by the author FE Feeley, Jr about autumn and had to illustrate it.

I drew the image you see on the right and took the image and blurred it to create the background on the left. I stitched the images together in PowerPoint and added the poem. I did share the poem with the author and he loved it. I just love connecting words and images!

And I apologize for the glare in my photos. It is actually raining here in Phoenix and I had to use the overhead light. Hope you have a great day!

Go Slow To Go Fast

Happy Tuesday, which usually means Tangle Tuesday! I'm happy to say I was able to combine several drawing challenges in one sketch! Yay me! I'm finding that coming up with an idea to combine these different daily challenges is the best part of participating in these challenges. 

I needed to merge zentangle, cornucopia and illustrate the word fast. So combining zentangle and cornucopia wasn't that difficult but in order to incorporate the word fast, I had to look for a quote that would fit. And the one you see above is what came to mind.

The quote is so true when it comes to zentangle. The "zen" part comes from repetitive motion of the strokes for each pattern. And when you slow the motion down, you get into a very relaxed state and creativity flows. My youngest likes to tangle with me but often she gets frustrated because she doesn't like the result. I tell her to slow down, enjoy the process. Yeah, that goes over well with a teenager! 

And I think the quote is true for so many different aspects of life from romance, parenting, to learning new things. 

Here is a closer look at the tangled parts.

By the way, these are all patterns found in tanglepatterns.com so you should check it out!!

Change

No matter what stage you are in life, change is difficult. I remember when my youngest transitioned from a crib to a toddler bed, she ended up sleeping on the floor by the door I think because she wanted something against her to keep her safe. Or perhaps she was aftraid to fall so she'd rather stay close to the floor. 

For me, change is mainly exciting. It's an opportunity to learn something new or to experience new things. Of course there are changes that you don't necessarily welcome, like getting old enough to become a member of AARP but what can you do? There isn't anything you can do about getting old unless there really is a fountain of yourth somewhere but you can certainly change the way you think about the change.

Today's prompts were "change" and "antique".  I think the coolest job would be to think of ways to upcycle or repurpose old things. I would love to find an old grand piano (I would do my best to see if I can get it to play first, beause , yeah, it's a grand!) and turn it into something else like a bookshelf like the one I drew or turn an upright into a desk or a cabinet. Wouldn't that be fun? Of course, I don't have the skills to do that but that has never stopped me. LOL.

And do you notice the piano music to Bach's Goldberg Variations? Bach wrote the Aria in G major and 30 variations based on the same chord and for the most part the same baseline. Talk about being stuck in a rut. But the absolute magic of these pieces is that each tells a slightly story. I wish I knew enough about music theory to really impress you about what a genius Bach was but instead, I'll let you just listen.  

I just saw this! This is not the "gold standard" of these variations. But I love Alexandre Tharaud! Unfortunately, the recording is not yet available on iTunes, but you get a glimpse of the Variations.

And if you really want to listen to the "master" play, you can listen to the Glen Gould version here. I think they are beautiful, technically superb, but I've never been a huge favorite of his playing. Blasphemous, I know!

I hope I can always build something new. How about you?

November Challenges

Happy November! Although I didn't post my Inktober challenges everyday, I did them all! If you would like to see all the entries, you can visit my Flickr site or wait for the November art video coming up soon!

This month, I'm going to participate in three challenges although I'm not pressuring myself to commit to all three everyday. The purpose of these challenges is to give you something to practice drawing and for me, it gives me a starting point for finding a quote I like. 

Here are the challenges:

This is one of my favorites as I have participated in this many times.

This is fun because it alternates drawing and hand lettering practice each day.

This one is new to me and I saw this in the Fauxbonichi Journalers group on Facebook.

As you can see, I was able to combine all three challenges in one drawing with an appropriate quote I found on the Internet.

I live in Arizona which means we don't participate in Daylight Savings. It's great not having to change clocks everywhere but I get confused about what time everywhere else is. So now, we are in the Mountain time zone. It's important to know so we don't miss any football games (at least for my boys)!

Let's get drawing!