ROUND 2, Ash's book, Page 1

1st Works in Roma's Book

I wasted no time starting in Roma's book. Acrylic, collage & white gel pen. The image is over 50 years old - from an old scrapbook filled with movie stars that I bought at a junk shop many moons ago, I've been wanting to do something with the images for a long time. Do you know who she is? I do, but only from the name that was on the photo. This isn't someone I would instantly recognize.

Almost finished with Gretchen's book.

I really didn't like this piece so I worked over it. Same concept but with a different delivery. Acrylic paint with gel pen & marker.


I never really know how to work with what Ammon leaves me for our collaborative pieces. I worry that what I do may seem like I'm bastardizing it, but I'm really trying to do the best I can. I totally messed up the upper image in this piece and the only way I could figure out how to save it was to somehow turn it silly. There is an actual website called awakwardfamilyphotos.com.


Watercolor, etc.


Added some white detail to this piece.


My last piece in Gretchen's book. I wasn't originally going to color it in but something told me to wait mailing it and I'm glad I did. The right hand page I left for Ellen as a collab piece.


Colored pencil & marker.

As soon as I can find something for Gretchen's pocket I will mail her book to Ellen. Aiming for today.... 

Stephanie's book goes in the mail in the morning.

My collaboration with Ballookey, she left this photograph in Stephanie's book and I tried my luck with those highlighters again.

This last one is the partial page I am leaving as a start for Mike.

I'm glad to be shipping this book off as I also have Ballookey's round 2 book which I have a few pages to complete in. Plus, I also have Ash's round 2 book. Having three books is STRESSING ME OUT! I hope to get another in the mail before I go out of town for the 4th of July weekend.

Round 2 returns

We're on our way out the door for a trip, and my round 2 mole is here. no time to talk, but it looks delicious More later.

Lumberjack

First few in Stephanie's ROUND 3 book.

It's nice to work in Stephanie's book and not have to worry so much about bleed through. She encouraged us to no use the back pages if we didn't want to, it was freeing for me.

I usually avoid highlighters for some reason, but I wanted to do a test of all the ones I had to see if any were dried up. I enjoyed how this doodle turned out.

This dude has something wrong with his right shoulder, poor fella.

I am still working on my collab with Ballookey, hopefully I will get this shipped soon to make up some ground on how late it is.

In Ammon's book (before the marker bleed)

The mermaid is the collab with Aya (from her ghostly butterfly wing, the image is sideways). The mostly-black maker piece bled onto the pencil drawing terribly (picture was taken just before the "incident"). I couldn't think of a clever way to salvage it, so I fear it remains a pencil drawing with random green and blue blotches).

Overdue post: pages in Ellen's and Stephanie's books

Ballookey's Round Two - heading to Andrea (4 Real this time!)

I took Ballookey's round two mole' on a road trip. First it flew to Dallas Texas as I worked on "Bad Choices" and a new intexticated and driving theme titled Manslaughter or Murder. "At least the murderer knew what they were doing!" I am hoping Ballookey can mastermind the graphic letters... I worked on Possum Kingdom lake in between catching 30 white bass fish and a round of golf on the cliffs. Possum Kingdom Lake

Intexticated and Driving. Almost every vehicle I saw driving from Dallas Texas to New Orleans were texting and/or talking on a cell phone! Ignorance is not bliss.

I was going to finish this one with some water color sushi rainbow rolls all over it, but decided to let Ballookey finish it instead.

Sometimes we need a lighthouse to show us where we are. It emerged from a free drawing. I guess it could be a barber shop.

Earthy and strange. Dandelions? Roots? and Worms? Oh my...

New Orleans is cool... Rajun Cajun. Swamp Livin.

So many choices and all of them lead to?  This one inspired by Roma's and my collaboration.

St. Peters by the Lake Episcopal Church. This mole' also had three other drawings posted before. Collaboration with Mary - stairway to heaven owl and the guardian angel over the tombstone and one other.

s k y l a r k puzzle in Ballookey's

Ballookey's Round 3 Mole is coming along, although I still have a full page and a collab half-page to finish before sending it to Gretchen. The s k y l a r k puzzle (above) was the most fun of the various things I've tried in this Mole, although the collab with Mike (below) was a close second. The flowers piece was an experiment; didn't go exactly the way I'd hoped. The pink background piece still needs a foreground, which I plan to finish now while I'm in Arizona with my husband, who is going through a lot of testing at the Mayo Clinic.

(Sorry for the blurry images, taken with my iPhone in a not-so-well-lit hotel room. Also, the black borders are from a Photoshop app and not in the actual images, although I kind of like a border, especially for the Mike collab piece. Might add it now that I see it.)







Many apologies for being late in getting Ballookey's Mole finished, as well as for my absence from the blog. Between the stress of travel (this is my fourth trip in a little over three weeks) and caring for the family, I am moving slowly with the Moleskine Exchange. I do want to say, however, that having Ballookey's Mole with me along the way--working on it in hotels, hospitals, clinic waiting rooms, and planes--has been a lifesaver. The healing power of art! Sometimes I really do believe it is what saves my life.

Mike's Mole Almost ready to ship to Ammon

Hard times have hit--we had two floods. Photos, manuscripts, artwork, clothes, sleeping bags etc all got soaked. The house is chaotic with stuff spread out drying and boxed hauled up from the cellar. It will be long time before we get dug out. I had wanted to do some work on my kids books in Mike's mole, but the prep time was prohibitive.

1)Leopard. Faber-Caselle PITT astist pigment pens and PRANG metallics--the Prang pens ran out of ink, I bought more, they were a different color, I bought more--they were dry AND a different color--so I had to go with it--apologies. What do you do when the pen you start with runs out of ink in someone else's mole and you can't replace it? AK!! :-(

2)Impala, prey of the leopard--I pity them both face to face for the lifetime of the mole. One terrified and the other hungry but thwarted. Faber-Caselle PITT astist pigment pens and PRANG metallics

3)Pocket items, iPad Artrage painting print 4 x 6--I had to rescan the print because nothing was working that day!

4)pocket item #2--eagle skull. Just finished today. iPad Artrage painting print 4 x 6

5)Our living room at the house where we live--the studio house flooded too.

We are leaving for a short trip Thursday 6/16.

Click images to enlarge.

I'm back in Stephanie's book!

First up, yes, the books are a little out of order as of me. I'll sum up a bit at the end.

Page 1 & 2 in Stephanie's: I really wanted to play with hand-lettering more in this round of the Exchange because I used to really like doodling with letters, words, and phrases, but I never thought about making it the central piece of art until recently. So this is very experimental on my part. Is page two a religious flyer delivered to my door one Saturday morning? Yes. I was raised in that cult, so I took a little therapy out on that flyer and thought it went with the first quote I lettered, "You have all the weapons you need, now fight" (from Sucker Punch). I doodled a bunny because there's a cool mecha bunny in that movie, so it sort of linked the two together.

"Sometimes I believe in as many as six impossible things before breakfast" from Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland.

Don't even get me started on "Keep your head" (on the bunny's ear). Ugh. I know full well that the line from the Jefferson Airplane song is "Feed your head", but I was reading the full lyrics to see if there was more material I wanted to work with. I decided to stick with "Feed your head", which I originally planned, but the lyrics I was reading printed it incorrectly and I transcribed it without thinking. In the end, keeping one's head is good advice too.

Closeups. Originally I did four pieces that were all lines from movies, but I swapped two of them out because I thought it was nice to have some relief from all the lettering.

Completed collaboration with Molly. I didn't see that she posted a photo anywhere else and I forgot to photograph it before filling it in. She started the piece with the red shape descending from the top and the green shape reaching up to receive it from the bottom. I liked the shapes and just filled in with more, which reminded me of a dream I had once of drifting between planets, so there's a little of that too.

I included a little watercolor test sketch in Stephanie's pocket. No photo, but it was a test for the phoenix birds I did in the last book.

Lastly, the books are out of order a bit at this point. I haven't received Aya's or Molly's from Claudia. Molly sent me Ellen's and Stephanie's directly. Since I wanted to send a book on to Andrea as soon as possible, I used the material I had prepared for Molly's book in Stephanie's. Ellen's should have been next (sorry!) but in looking through the two books, the dark pieces with bold colors suited Stephanie's more, so I took the liberty of putting that one ahead. I'll try to keep making pieces however I can and when I get Molly's and Aya's, I'll make those the top priority.

In Gretchen's Book

Acrylic and colored pencil. I'm pleased with this one.



I am not pleased with this piece. I keep messing with it but I'm pretty certain I'm going to paint over it. It just looks a mess.

My collab piece with Ammon? Yeah... I made a mess of that as well. My style doesn't seem to know what to do with his style and I get to feeling all awkward trying to somehow complete what he started. I'm sure I will get over it by the time I get my own book back. 

In Mary's Book, which Should now be with Ellen

Acrylic and marker



5 Muses. Colored pencil.



Mandala and collab page for Ellen. Acrylic paint.

Collaboration with Roma in Mike's Round 3

I tried to follow suit with themes of color and shape already begun by Roma. (Click image to view larger.) It's fairly textural, which doesn't show up in the scan. See her part without mine here.
here are some details:  (Click images to view larger.)