Dancing Art

Grandparents have the time, money, and where with all to focus on what their grand children are doing and being passionate about with their lives.  My three youngest, fondly referred to as the "car girls" all are passionate about dancing.  Not long ago, the oldest car girl's dance troupe was selected to be the " opening act" for the world famous New York City Rockettes visiting Christmas show at a local stadium.  Of couse, Mom, and girls were ecstactic!  And, as grandparents, we of course bought tickets and traveled to the city to see the accomplishment.  The opening act, and the show was wonderful, we enjoyed it greatly.
I intended to make a piece of art, really a collage, using the tickets in the process as a memorial to the activity.  The tickets for the show,  I was going to cut into the dance dress costumes to collage on the girls.  I still might, once I find them again, lol.  But, in the meantime, here is a picture of the oldest car girl in her "rockette" costume, and my art effort regarding the dance.

Rockettes are known for their height, very long legs, eye high kicks, and precision dances.

Disfunctional Painting

Every once in a while, I think to myself-I should use up some of this paint.  Most of the art I do uses minute amounts of paint, ya know?  Last year I painted on a piece of papery cardboardy stuff from a roll I bought at the YSM, and after a yard or two, I actually got some great areas of that painting that was usuable.  But, today, after the TG holiday yesterday, for some reason, I started thinking about disfunctional families and how the disfunction seems to just keep cycling itself.  I know this because my Father was an alcoholic, and I have been told his father was an alcoholic too.  And I have had two marriages, and both men are alcoholic.  And I worry so about my children, who have no qualms about tipping a few, knowing that alcoholism is/can be heritary.   Adult children get to choose their paths.
 I am glad that I have been able to change my life and to try to focus on more positive things, due to the history of disfunction.  I am so glad I am aware of and have an understanding about that, and therefore try not to contribute to it. And, I have been very aware of how grateful I am that my current alcoholic husband has been sober for many many years!
  But, anyway, today, I was thinking about how unhappy people who are involved in disfunction are.  So, thinking that, and also thinking that I needed to use up some paint, I decided to think about disfunction while I painted.  I, at first, was just going to do some wild abstracts that would represent "disfunction" but after a layer or two, deep within the smears, I could see these human figures.  As I noodled with them, these are what emerged.  A good reminder to myself to be sure I fight those disfunctional tendencies from my history!

I started with some very heavy watercolor paper then dumped out some almost useless bottles of paint at random.  I used a credit card to smear the paints around the substrate.

When I saw the figures, I used a charcoal pencil to follow what was there.  This gave the forms to the people, not exactly in proportion, but I just drew what was there. Then I used some glazes to enhance the painting.  Added some stamping, and the word.  I was rather amazed at how they turned out!

And this basket?  Well it was six tea tins so I taped them together with some lovely blue dac tape with pictures behind it.  I am not sure but it might be... oh, maybe a brush holder, or a silverware thingy for the table, or a junk collector by my chair, or.... well, maybe you have a suggestion for it's use?

Stamp Crazed!

I have been playing with different pieces of "gasket" material as bases for stamps.  HRH brought home three different types of gasket material.  Only one, the first ever carved stamp from last post, I really like.  It is about 1/4 inch thick black and carves like a dream.  A red piece is already embossed with tiny little polka dots that show up when I stamp.  It is okay, not bad to carve but a bit flimsy and is like 1/8 in thick.  The third piece was black rubber only 1/8 in thick and seems a bit doughy which made it harder to carve for me.  Today, he brought me a piece of something I have no idea what it is.  IT has fabric webbing on one side, and is about 1/4 in thick.  We are trying to decide if it is cork or leather.  It carves easily, I like that.  It does not carve edges as smoothly as the first 1/4 in piece of black rubber.  It is just fun to see what you can carve on.  I dug out all my carving tools.  I have like about 30+ knives (is that what you call them?)  I have one that I like... the rest went back into their resting place.  Then I dug another one out to make the edge on the "eye" stamp.  These are not professional looking, but I love them as they are my creations, mine all mine!  LOL

Top on red gasket, petroglyph figures

Middle left on 1/8 black gasket (one must do a face, right?), right on red gasket

Signature on black 1/4 in gasket

These are all on the leather/cork material

A frame, a pertroglyph, and of course I have to have an eye!

Now that I know what I know, I don't think I will be doing more unless I need a special "stamp" for a special reason.  I just needed to try this to see how one goes about carving stamps.  Have you done this? Any tips for me?

Carving Glyphs

Today, HRH brought me some rubber gasket sheets from his shop.  Three different types of rubber, two black and some red.  I immediately sat down, sketched this little guy, using my memory of the nine mile panel, and carved away.  I am so thrilled he turned out as well as he did.  Tomorrow, it is to the picture tub to find my 5th grade original photos of the panels, so I can carve all the picto or is it petro glyphs?  What's a few more rubber stamps, more or less, lol.

I am thinking it needs a bit of cleaning up  on the background removal, but I am happy with how it stamped!  I am so excited to get to play this way as I have had it on the back of my mind like forever.  It is so much better to use your own designs, yes?  I can see rows of this guy on a piece of fabric or on some mail art, or lurking in a collage, lol.

Rubber Stamps

I buy baskets and boxes of rubber stamps at the YSM, for a ridiculous low price.  I can't resist them if you get a dozen rubber stamps for a dollar or so.  Yowzee... it is just too good to pass up!  But now, even after I have picked through all the bargains, and passed the little cutsey or childish ones to my car girls, I have so many, it became necessary to organize and store in a manner that makes them more usable.  I do not have a perfect method, but it helping.
Earlier this last spring, I bought a giant sized book that had been given to a member of union person.  The book had about six or so pages, with hand written history on them.  The rest of the pages blank.  Each page is like the size of four regular sized notebooks.  I decided it would be good to put all my rubber stamp prints in the book so I could see which ones I actually have.  I started by sorting them catagorically, like "stars", butterflies, and such.  Then, I eventually moved to alphabetical.  I thought I would show you the book and some, just some of the pages of the book.  I put the catagorized stamps into zip lock bags, so I only have to look through a few stamps, rather than all of the stamps.

My giant book with some basic collage elements started on the cover.

All my star stamps

Lots of butter fly stamps + I see one or two dragon flies, do you?

Flower stamps of all sizes...

Oh, and some of my favorites are the leaves...

Gardening type stamps... not too much liked...

My "A" page.... astrological and alchemy stamps, animals, aliens, lol

B is for background stamps... two or three pages of these!

More backgrounds on the left... C is for cake, cats, clock...

What's this?  Doll stamp and more backgrounds... nope, that is designs!

E is for eyes...

I have a whole alphabet of pages.  Most of them have stamps on them.

I enjoyed doing the stamping and sorting and remembering the stamps I have.  

So, I continued on after the alphabet pages and a few more overflow stamps, to doing my water colours, colored pencils, gel pens, etc.  It is nice to have your very own reference book!

It still has oodles and oodles of unused pages so I will continue to add to them as I find a need.

(Really, it is just rather fun to make mindless swatches with art supplies at times, lol)

Playing With Collage Techniques

Yeah, I have been mostly just playing around with things.  These are taking some of the previous posts efforts another step.  Some, I didn't do anything further, but when I got into adding collage paper and stamps and paints... well who can stop with just a step or two?

I found three new "face" stamps at a "big lots" store... very reasonable, so wanted to play with those.  The one on the left is a face I have had for some time. I wonder where these will go next?

Adding magazine or other images and stamps.  I think these are about ready for some words of wisdom... any suggestions? You can see the face stamps and face stencils in these if you don't mind the siedways post.  

I have had this really big almost poster sized mag page forever and it happened to be on top of my stash so she became the added picture.  And the face stencils are here too.  Half of the big pic here...

Half here.  The lips are too red so I will be gessoing them down to a more acceptable color.  I really don't want them to be the focal point on the edge of the paper, do you think?

And together 

These are a wash on the top and tint practice on the bottom.

(Today, I think I will try some of these wash and gesso techniques on my so far dissappointing Highest Place collage I am working on.) Maybe I can salvage it....he he.

Backgrounds?

Over in the collage-lab group we started trying some backgrounds, playing around with gesso, and other media to see what will happen.  For substrates I used old discarded book covers or card stock.  Some of the efforts are kinda kool and others are in the better add another layer or two catagory.  I thought I would post most (some are just really too ho hum) and you all can let me know the ones you like!

Old book covers/tinted gesso

Black gesso, stamped with sponge/stamped with old reel

Corragated cardboard gesso/paint

Dryed leaf stem

Dryed botanical bits and pieces

An old needlepoint piece of fabric glued down/gesso/paint

Grain... in this case rice.  Not one I like!

More cardboard pieces

Magazine photo and preprinted iron on pattern

Old book pages

Paper canvas and paper tapes

Old page and photograph

Smooshed and scratched

Stamped and embossed wallpaper pieces

Puzzle pieces (ugh!) and masking tape

Tape pieces and scratching

Writing and smooshing

Tissue and woven brown paper sack and the last... a scan wonk!

Wallboard tape and paper doily

Now, I have a box of prepared backgrounds to collage on.  Yay!

Empathy Monster

Today, the car girls and I made empathy monsters.  Random cut outs and bits and pieces turned into lots of fun and laughs.  The bigger one here is mine, and the little one is the biggest car girl's creation.

Made from some discarded camo shorts and bits and pieces.

Made from a pre-cut doll with decorations selected by oldest car girl.

Needless to say, we had much fun playing with our little puppet creations.  I think I might make another one or two of these, as they all turn out pretty wonky and funny.  It was very good for the car girls to realize the more odd they turn out, the more fun they are.  We fell in love with the big lips on the little one.  Anyone for a big kiss? lol

Playing With Willow

Willowing has a free workshop going.  You can watch videos and do the art here:  http://willowing.ning.com/group/theheartofart
 It is an altered board book dealing with the hurts real or perceived we encounter as young children.  Here are my first two spreads in my board book.

What  would you wish for your baby self?  This uses transfers and positive thinking to change what we deal with and to make our own reality.  And it was fun to play with baby pictures.

The stamping says "acceptance" which is what I decided I most wanted as a child and want now.

A Visit With An Artist At the Guild

I finished a collage depicting Myo's  "visit with a mentor" at the Guild House.  This was a fun page to add to my board book alterations.  Click on Myo's picture on the right to see her post about the visit.

Three or four years ago, I covered a huge piece of white paper with some black acrylic swatches imitating the look of what we call here Quaking Aspens for a mountain look collage I was making for some colleagues.  I used lots of the paper but have since used more on many collages.  This is again using pieces of that paper to make the basic tree trunks.  I have loved this paper as I love the look of the Aspens which we have all over our mountains.  Right now they are very golden and beautiful in the valleys but bare on the mountains.  As you can see, my visit is with artists with owl bodies... very wise people!  They had much to say to me.

Card Sized Collages

I started collecting anything paper years ago.  If I saw something in a magazine that caught my attention, I would rip the page out and file it.  I kept candy wrappers, pictures, printed off pics from net, wrapping papers, picked up anything (and some awesome designs)  paper from YSM, etc. etc.  Well, needless to say, I have a huge collection.  I decided a few days ago to use up some of my smaller sized "stuff" by making collages.  I just went through boxes and trays of pieces I filed into that box at random, and then added the pictures to the cards at random.  I still need to add a cohesive wash of something, and finish the edges and such, but I did get through 2, yes, I said 2 boxes of my stashes.  Every litter bit helps, as they say, lol.

This one I covered with a piece of organza with strips of solid in it.  I like the visual it gives!

This one seems to speak to fashion, and perhaps a hot bath, would you say? lol