Round 3, Let's ROLL!

Today is the first official ship day for round 3 members. So if you haven't already gotten your book in the mail, please shoot an email to the person you ship to and let them know when to expect a book from you. Communication and shipping on time are important!

That being said ... Mike, I will have my book in the mail by Friday of this week. I've got a few things to finish up.
;)

Shipped today!

I sent my moleskine off to Mary today. Here are my last two pieces:

My collab for Mary... A Dragonfly!

Why I am grateful to Hennie for Posting Ash's art

I am really so glad that Hennie posted some of Ash's art. I've posted some cool stuff I hadn't seen posted when it arrived at my doorstep. Here's why.

We only see 62% of the 144 sets of art (720 images) that are produced in each round, assuming that everyone does their committed work. 38% of the art is never seen by each of us UNLESS it is posted online. We definitely do NOT get to see it in person!

We see everything in our own books when they are returned to us. We see everything in the books of the person we mail TO as we complete our entry in their book near the end of the exchange. We see everything that is done by the person who mails to us.

However, we see only TWO SETS of the work of the person we mail to--those pictures in our own books and those in theirs. For example, in round two, I will see everything Steve does but only 10 of Mike's pix (2 sets) in person. If he fails to post, I will miss most of his work.

In this chart, the two completely green bottom rows represent the work we see in its entirety.

Want more statistics? Or more explanation of these? Let me know.

(Click image to see slightly larger. Oops, I photographed the cursor! Curses!)

(PS, Hennie, hope yr feeling better!)

Waiting Patiently

With my own book mailed out roughly two weeks ago, I wait patiently (eagerly) for a new one to arrive. In the mean time, I created the above piece and listed it on Etsy.

Sketchbook Fever: Ash Sends Anders to Heidi

On Thursday, just before I got knocked down by a nasty cold & flu bug, Anders' book popped into my mailbox. Here it is, laying within easy reach on my sick bed, near Eddie, also laying within easy reach on my sick bed :-) Ash drew these fun images & I'm posting them to share, because they lead up to a very fun "collab" effort between us. Ash had no idea how appropriate "blaaahh!" would be when this book arrived, HA! I will try to photograph my artistic response later... right now, I need a nap. Sketch, nap. Hot tea, nap. Draw, nap. Cough piteously, nap. Life becomes quite simple when we are sick.

Michelle's book done (round 2)

First off, I sort of collaborated with Mike & Mary on this page. It was nearly blank, and right next to theirs, so I tried to keep with the theme.

I haven't read the book, but I love the graphic design on the cover of Gail Carriger's Souless. The typography's reminiscent of Jamie Reid's work for the Sex Pistols, but it looks refreshed on Carriger's series of steampunk vampire novels. Anyway, I've had it stuck in my head since I saw it, and incorporated it here. All the pieces collaged together here are inkjet printed: The background starry nebula was printed on a slide-off water transfer. The edges aren't as perfect as I'd like, and I didn't think about the fact that Mike's ink might not have been waterproof, but it didn't bleed too much. You can still see his drawing clearly through the transfer in real life. The wording was printed on bumper sticker stock, and the hummingbird thing on glossy photo paper. Not shown here is that I intended for the wings to curl up a bit, and so I backed the hummingbird with really cool purple printed paper.

A pair of horses on facing pages:

I worked on these while watching The Tudors on Netflix, thus the rose in the first one. Not actually a Tudor rose, but inspired by it.


And lastly, the aforementioned rhinestone pages. I'd been thinking that I wanted to cover a page in rhinestones just for the fun of it since the beginning of the exchange. It's over-the-top, but it's fun to run your hand over the pages full of stones, and it makes for a nice surprise because of the added dimensionality. Oh, and I have a gigantic box of rhinestones salvaged when a company I used to work for closed down. I held off using the stones until the end of the exchange because I figured it'd hard to draw on the reverse.

When it came time to do the actual pages, I decided to add some artwork to them by using the water decals to transfer my digital drawings into the book, so the owl & octopus don't have anything to do with each other, I just tried to reverse the color scheme from one page to the next.

This is almost the same owl I did in Willie's book, but after I worked on the drawing a bit more in the computer and made some additions and changes.

More silliness

Hope you have FUN and LOVE!
(Sorry, I just can't help myself!!!)

First Two in Hennie's book

I guess I have to admit that this is inspired by RuPaul's Drag Race.

Generally speaking I loathe reality TV, but those drag queens are amazing.

A peep inside Michelle's book

Just this moment I finished my last Round 2 book, and just in the nick of time too! I have the weekend to finish up my work in my own book and I'll photograph both in better light.

Round three note about pocket goodies.

I was reading the comments and noticed Ballookey and Roma were chatting about pocket items. Ballookey makes a great point:

May I suggest we put the goodies in *other* people's books, though? During the last round I noticed a few people had put a cache of goodies in their own book with the intention that everyone would take one as the book went around, but it seems that people often forgot to take goodies, and the stuff tended to get mixed up with the things people added to the pocket for the book's owner. I'll go along with whatever instructions come with the book, but I just noticed that it seemed to work better to leave things in other people's books than to expect them to take them.

Don't put goodies in your books pocket for people to take, hold on to the goodies and put them into the pockets as the books come around to you. Does this make sense?

The Banjo Player (one for Willie)

I have a collection of stuff I'd made for Willie intending to put in his pocket, but his mole was too small. So it's still waiting for me to mail it to him and I am adding this to the collection. Banjo player. Look out Willie. The hold up is the poems that go with the art.

This started out as a pencil sketch which I colored with those Staedtler watercolor crayons, but there weren't enough colors so I added Portfolio watercolor oil pastels and then a touch of actual watercolors. The paper is 5 x 7, that tuppence 70 pound sketch--too light for watercolors, but I intended it as pencil sketch--it needed color.

To see some of Willie's other pocket items, click here.

One of the Poems:

Needle Park at Night

The night is darker here.

The lights are broken

like the benches, broken,

never repaired.

The landlord said, “that place

is dangerous by day; never

go there at night.

He also said, “Don’t sing

or smile, a girl alone’s not safe.

He met me at the bus, escorted me

to the safely of my rented room

until I lost my job.

He put me on the street

when I had no rent.

“What can I do?” he said.

“I have to eat.”

I

don’t

have to eat,

I’ve learned,

not every day.

After a while, the pain stops hurting

quite so much.

And needle park at night

is not a lonely place; street people

share the darkness,

tell stories

sometimes smile or even sing.

Round 3, For Gretchen's pocket

It occurred to me that the round three moles will be coming shortly too. Which reminds me, I got the ink for the printer today, so once I install it and print the ATC sized pix, I can mail my mole to Ammon. Soon.

Anyway, at lunch I made a quicky graphite sketch of hubby for Ballookey's pocket and at dinner I made another for Gretchen's pocket in round 3. This one is also 5 x 7 but done on Utrech Bristol. My husband (Keith) has very long white hair that's very curly and was wearing it out like the mane of a lion. Other than the fact that the bristol is stiffer, I could not detect a lot of difference in the quality of the paper. (Usually, I work on whatever is handy, and rarely compare results, but I am making an effort to learn what works best and what I like best, so I can make better purchasing choices in the future.

This image, and the ones in the next post, all enlarge if clicked upon.

steve's art in ballookey's book + +

Whew, sorry it's been so long since I've participated here. I finally got some work in Ballookey's book and it's ready to send out. I ended up gluing in some of my drawings/paintings after a major messed up attempt at painting on these pages, intended for drawing. So, this was the only way I could fix the situation at hand. I threw a mix CD and a Splotch Monster in your gift pocket as well Ballookey, so I hope you enjoy 'em.  Mary, I also started a drawing for you to collaborate on as well in there! It's been a lot of fun doing round 2 and I wish I could participate in 3, but new responsibilities and priorities have come my way this time around. Thanks to everyone for their wonderful art, inspiration and encouragement. Thanks especially to you Andrea, for getting the ball rolling and keeping it alive!

Happy Valentine's Day! A Bit of silliness and a note

Happy Valentine's Day!

I have been "product testing" various art supplies. I made the top image with Staedtler Karat Aquarell Crayons for fun and as a sort of test of the brand new materials. I've tested a variety of other ones and was going to post some of those too, with reviews, but haven't had time.

The bottom one is just a quickie cut and paste, using packaging from the new art supplies, looks better in person because the 3D aspects and metallic aspects don't show up in the scan.

I hope you all have a wonderful valentine's day and have lots of love in your life.

I'm having a small delay in preparing to mail my Moley which I hope will be resolved fairly quickly--I was printing some ATC sized prints of two of recent pieces for the pocket and the printer has run out of ink. I will try to get some ASAP. The yellow has run out and they look drab and have lost their sparkle.

With the help of the Goddess of Procrastination, I hope to get this issue resolved SOON! :-D

Meanwhile, the product test? I was only, with this first test, testing the solubility of the pigment. The pigments of these crayons are more soluble than wither the colored pencils or water soluble oil pastels I recently tested (but haven't had time to post. The solubility is excellent, as is the color saturation. The scan looks a little TOO saturated, but that is the fault of the scanner, not the Staedtler Crayons. (I have yet to test the pigment miscibility.)

The tin contains 12 colors, one of which is white (I know, I know), and the white is pretty useless, one white or dark colors as far I can see. I tested it on the red of the valentine (the second one).

The very pale milky color is my attempt at using the white Staedtler crayon, which I then painted with water, just as I did with the clown. As you can see, it did not work at all well. It may work better on other paper.

All images in this post enlarge with clicking.

Internet is back!

hooray! and as promised, much better images of the last 2 pieces in my book for exchange 3.






And this is the half page for Molly:

Half page for Molly

Can't wait to see what she do with it.

Pages 4 and 5 (exchange 3)

Our internet connection is down and i somehow managed to download the images to my phone. What a wierd way to blog...

Finished this tonight, and another half page, now the book is ready to move to Molly.

I'll repost the images once my internet is fixed.

Flight or Fight?

The last page of my own Moleskine deals with a theme I think about, which is Flight versus Fight energy. I am naturally Flight energy, something I've known for a long time. But lately I've been wondering why it is I always notice birds all around me. Ravens, cranes, brown birds, woodpeckers, all sorts of birds. I'm always aware of the birds around me. And then I realized, they are all about Flight energy!

So I'd like to embrace my Flight nature, even as I try to figure out when it's good to Fight back and not flee the scene.

This weekend I'll work on goodies to include in the pocket of my Moleskine, and I should be ready to ship it off by mid-month. Cheers everyone!

And now color!

Damn, this is taking A LONG time...

WIP

Don't know why, but it my mine this was a quick and easy spread...