Clumsy- Illustration Friday

I searched Clumsy and found a story of an art student who tripped and ripped a Picasso. You can't help but have empathy for her. Originally I was going to try and have people with Picasso-like bodies walking around on a street with a stray ear here, stray nose there, but I don't really have those drawing skills. So I started constructing bodies out of rectangles. After I placed the five people, I began laying body components elsewhere. The idea is that any of those other pieces could be rectangle people. We are all very fragile whether we are made of right edges or not.

I'd like to try this at home with acrylic paint and fabric.

Have I mentioned that I need to learn to draw? Yeeah.

Hello Again

Part of what I love about blogs is that they can act as a file cabinet for what we've felt and what we've done over a given time. Despite my best efforts, my daily life isn't as organized as it could be. I have notebooks sprawled with notes, thumbnail sketches and lists. Inevitably, one notebook is replaced by another and soon I have a whole bookshelf full of notebooks of half formed ideas. (Sound familiar?) A blog, on the other hand, keeps it organized. Thank you Google.

So in my own personal efforts to grow as an artist (little 'a' for the time being :), I'm going to try and become more focused in my CraftAmor postings. I'm not saying the posts will be any more focused, but I'm going to try and consciously use this space to log where I am and what I'm doing be it wedding crafts, work progress, weekly challenges (I hope everyone at InspireMeThursday is OK) or fighting the long fight of learning to draw. So yes. Hello again.

Man Painting

This is a painting (drawing?) I did recently. I played around with background options in Photoshop. Another thing I'd like to try is to take stamps and stamp in words in a horizontal line behind him. Fill almost the entire space with this stamped word.

Show Cards

Show Cards

These are the cards I made for my castmates for my most recent show. The show was called "String of Pearls," and I thought about trying to use pearls as a motif but couldn't quite figure out something I liked. Instead I went with chairs. We each brought a different chair and spent the entire show on stage (even when we weren't playing any characters.)

Painting/Collage Practice

Here's something I worked on last night. I like it better on the computer than I do in real life. In real life it seems too light. I need to make it darker but I'm not exactly sure how.

I think in my next try on a different piece I will try to create texture all across the page (face and background) and then mask out the background or then hit it with more colors and texture. On this piece I painted in the face and then worked up the background texture but after adding to the background, the face looked completely mismatched with the activity going on behind it.

Also, I should say that it was great being able to use things I'd learned in Ann Baldwin's 2nd DVD ("Text and Texture in Mixed Media Collage") in a way that wasn't necessarily exactly what she was teaching. That's a big step for me. Also made me realize I need to review the individual techniques in that b/c I was having trouble remembering the different times Ann suggests using molding paste vs heavy gel gloss.

Candy Boxes (by me)

I made these as thank yous for a show I was recently in. It was called "String of Pearls" so each candy box is wearing felt pearls. These were part of crew gifts. I also made photo magnets, which are sooooo easy. I love love love them. We had someone take a picture of us holding large paper "pearls" I made out of construction paper. I had to fiddle with it a bit in Photoshop but I made the "Thank you so much!" legible and then just printed them out on somewhat expensive magnet paper. It's truly magical.

These would be great for a Mother's day, Father's day, or even Valentine's Day for friends. Dress them up as favors at a bridal shower? All sorts of box possibilities!