Happy 80th Birthday to My Dad

Today is my dad's 80th birthday!  We celebrated with a big family dinner last night at Donovan's Steak and Chop House.  It was great fun though the wine bottles may have flowed a little bit too freely.  I think that dad liked the collage that I made for him, it is shown and described in my previous post.  Rainy had flown in for the celebration on Friday night and left today around 1pm.  I miss her already, but I will get to see her in 2 weeks as I am going to Olympia for my spring break.

I did managed to make a number of collages this week.  This one is titled "Deep in the Woods", it is 6" x 6", and is acrylic paint, paper, ink and ribbon on board.  I started with roughly coating the board with acrylic paint, when it was dry, I stamped a pattern on with white ink.  Once that was dry, I glued the various papers in place.  I find this one somewhat mysterious,  I like that about it.

"Wait for Me" has papers, buttons, stamps, and ink on board.  The 3 gold frames were cut from old playing cards, I am glad I found them in my stash and thought to use them in this manner.

"Calvert" has papers on board.  This collage was made strictly from magazine images.

I would like to find the time to work on a painting or two, but that won't happen this weekend as Sunday is rapidly fading away and I feel as if I need a nap.  Maybe this week....

Ending the Three Day Weekend

How I love having just one extra day added to my weekend.  This was a day for me to many things, some of which were outside of my studio.  I spent the morning make a cheesecake and mixed berry sauce for Mike's birthday which is tomorrow.  We were initially going to celebrate it today but decided to wait until tomorrow and have steaks and salad, plus cheesecake of course.

Yesterday I did put the finishing touches on another one of the drawings from Thursday night's life drawing session.  It is titled "Sara in Pink" and is 14" x 22".  I used soft pastels on charcoal paper.  The drawing was originally 22" x 25" with more negative space on the right side of the figure.  I had decided to collage some papers in this space and started with a thinner paper that was pink.  I was using matte medium as my glue, which made the paper start to wrinkle, so I pulled it off before it was dry.  Then I decided that I was going to let it dry, then iron it in place.  When I did this, the light weight paper turned orange!  Yuck.  By now it was permanently attached, the only solution was to cut it off, which is what I did.  Now my artwork is not a standard size, but having the figure just slightly off center certainly makes for a pleasing composition.

Most of the afternoon today I worked on a small, 8" x 8" collage for my dad for his 80th birthday; the celebration is next weekend.  I used old photographs, papers, stamps, an old key, and a plastic golf ball marker.  I am pleased with the finished results.  I also enjoyed going through the suitcase of old photos again.  There is a photo of the twins as babies.  I have two photos of dad with a bicycle, the larger one was taken in 1945.  Then there is the cut out of dad when he was in his 20's (I am guessing).  The picture at the bottom is another one of dad as a young man, I am not sure when it was taken.  The black and white photo in the upper left corner was taken from some pictures of a girl scout outing, I think it was in the early 1970's.  The picture of mom and dad was one I took this past Christmas of 2010.  In the background are papers from Creighton Elementary School, North High School, and the University of Arizona.  I am trying to decide if the white paper in the center is too bright....I might come in over the surface with a stamped image to lessen the brightness of the white.
I have a busy week ahead, so I am not sure what will happen to my mini collage a day project.  Wait and see I suppose.

President's Day Weekend

It has been an interesting week.  Again, I wasn't too successful with my artwork a day idea, as I only completed 2 mini collages.  This one is titled "Come With Me" and was made on 2-19-11.  It is 6" x6" and consists of papers, photos, ink, and a plastic golf ball marker on board.  I was being somewhat playful with the entire image.  Do you recognize Mike driving the bug and Rainy in the back seat?

This collage I made on 2-18-11 and it is titled "Speak to Me".  I am not so thrilled with it as the words make everything to obvious.  I used papers and ink on board.  Like all of my mini collages, it is 6" x 6".  I found the face in one of my "W" magazines, a favorite place for female images.  Perhaps it is time for me to return to my collages that have lots of different stuff all over them.

The highlight of my week was another life drawing session.  I went with Joan and Laura on Thursday night to Stu's studio again.  On Thursday nights, the idea is to work back to back poses so that you have 40 minutes on a drawing instead of the usual 20.  Sara was the model, I had drawn her once before.  I decided to work with soft pastels.  Interestingly, people have been commenting that I am a pastelists, but I am not.  I bought pastel papers at Arizona Art Supply earlier in the week and the clerk made that assumption.  Thursday night, Eric made the same statement.  I guess that I like to work with soft pastels when drawing figures, especially during short sessions because you can put the color and the image down rather quickly.  The truth is that I don't really know what I am doing when it comes to working in soft pastels.  Like most media, I am self taught and I haven't taken the time to read up on how a person should work with pastels.  Maybe this is something that I should do!  Anyways, this drawing is titled "Black Pillow with Flowers". It is soft pastel on pastel paper (Duh) and is 20" x 25".  I completed most of the drawing at the session.  This afternoon,  I reworked the background just a little bit but mostly I finished up the 2 pillows that Sara is laying on.  I am very pleased with the way this drawing turned out.  I enjoy focusing in on a part of the figure rather than portraying the entire body.  The detail of the pillows contrasts successfully with the softness of the female form.

Weekend Progress

This morning I went with my friends Joan and Laura to a life drawing session at Clarke Reidy's Studio.  It was a long pose session where we worked from the same pose all morning.  I was able to complete this oil pastel painting.  I wasn't positioned in a good place to step back and view my artwork from a distance or I might have realized where the proportions were off.  I think his hip juts out a bit too far plus his leg from the knee down should have been longer.  In spite of the problems, I had a fun morning working on art.

I also managed to finish this oil pastel painting of mom in my book.  I struggle with it.  I got her nose just right, but that was about it.  Painting older people is difficult for me.  I couldn't get the lips or the skin around them to look the way I thought it should.  The eyes are close, but not perfect. I did collage on tissue paper with strings of gold in it for mom's over shirt. It turned out perfect!  I also used metallic gold oil pastels for her necklace.  It added a nice touch.  I will do a page of dad next and am hoping that it doesn't prove as difficult.

For the rest of the afternoon, I will catch up on little things that I have to do in my studio, including my artwork/collage for the day.  Until next weekend, take care.

Mid-February

Wow!  It is hard for me to believe how quickly this month is flying by!  This past week was a busy one and I found very little time to work on my artwork a day collages.  I started off on Monday with "Thinking About It".  I copied an old photograph of my grandmother to incorporate in this one along with stamps and torn envelopes.  They were placed on a black board on which I had stamped designs.  It's not one of my favorites, but I guess that's par for the course.

On Tuesday night I went with my friend, Joan, and her friend, Laura to a life drawing session at Stu's studio.  It was at 35th Avenue and Clarendon, the drawing session was from 6:30 to 9:30 pm.  Kind of a late night for me, but I really did enjoy myself.  There were about 10 artists working.  The music being played was pretty good, so I didn't even have to pull out my i-pod and headphones.  The model was Craig; I had drawn him previously when I was taking a night class at Paradise Valley Community College.  We started with some quick gesture poses and then did a series of different 20 minute poses.  This example is a charcoal drawing on blue charcoal paper.

He did one pose in which he sat on a bicycle.  It was a very intimidating pose because of the complexity of the bicycle.  In spite of that, I felt as if I managed to capture both Craig and the bicycle fairly decently.  This one was also charcoal on blue charcoal paper.  There was another drawing I did, it was graphite pencil on Bristol board.  I didn't get it finished.  I actually plan to come back in and shatter the image into geometric shapes and the finish it with hatching and crosshatching.  It will take me a while to finish.

I did manage to complete a second 6" x 6" artwork a day collage.  For this one, I started with strips of a centennial newspaper I got from Aunt Dolores.  I then glued in a vase from an old Shell gasoline add that I got from one of my old magazines.  I added an assortment of round objects and stamped a few round circles to balance out the image.  This one, titled "Centennial", turned out quite well.

This morning, I spent about 20 minutes on another artwork a day; this one a self-portrait.  I had previously painted a 6" x 6" board with an orangish color of acrylic paint. This morning I worked with watercolor crayon to paint my self-portrait.  Stu was using this technique at the life drawing session, and I was wanting to try it out.  It was a bit more difficult to manipulate the watercolor than I thought it would be.  I enjoyed the process none the less.
Today in my studio I have prepped a couple of surfaces with collaged torn magazine pieces.  I think I am ready now to work on the page in my book featuring Mom and/or Dad.  Guess I will get to it now.