ffyrebird

GPP Crusade #19

Another Crusade, another great learning experience!!  I've never tried my hand at making or using stencils so this was a great way to begin.  After going to Hobby Lobby for the stencil material, Hotmark tool, and picture glass, I sat down on the floor of my sunroom to cut stencils.  Lots of great light and I didn't have to worry about the kiddos getting near the hot cutter or it flying off my desk (I am a terrible klutz).  Cutting the stencils was easier than I thought it would be, thanks to the great instructions Michelle gave.  Wheww!! I didn't realize it would be so stinky!  The smell of burning pastic, gackk!  I should have known better.  Melting plastic gives off all sorts of noxius fumes, no wonder my asthma acted up.  Next time I'll have better ventilation or a mask.

Here are a few pics of my foray into stencil land:

After seeing Michelle's flame stencils, I just had to make a set of my own <G>.  Here are the journal pages I made with my new stencils:

Watercolor using the bottom flames stencil in the previous pic.

Watercolor and charcoal. The top flames stencil used twice, plus a firebird and tall flame stencil.

My favorite.  Watercolor on crumpled, singed masa.  When I pasted it into my journal, the stark white journal paper surrounding it was rather jarring.  I rubbed some pastel on the journal paper so it blended  better with the paste-in.

Colored pencil on pastel.  I went back and reworked almost all of the images, but this one needed the most tweaking.  I think the original's lines were too thin and needed to be made larger in the stencil for a pencil to fit into them easier.

My minimalist purse journaling kit

This is the bare minimum journal/sketch kit that I toss in my purse and take just about everywhere with me.  It is pretty tiny and light, just an old eyeglass case full of goodies (two permanent pens in black and brown, felt tip pen, 7B Shorty pencil, mechanical pencil, click eraser, kneaded eraser in a zip case w/ yarn tag, ruler w/ yarn tag, and a tortillion w/ yarn tag so I can find and retrieve them easily), a journal and a watercolor kit.The Holbein watercolor kit could probably fit in the back of the eyeglass case also, but I sketch more than I watercolor in public so I left it in its own little bag.  The journal I'm using now is from Derwent and just doesn't handle watercolor very well anyway.  The watercolor of the peachtree I did in it ended up feeling like the paper was going to fall apart before I was finished painting.  Bummer! 

View from my sunroom

Here is a little watercolor of the view from my sunroom window.  The little peach tree is starting to get a bit of color.  So far we have been missed by the late cold snaps that seem to have destroyed the blossoms for the last few years.  Keeping my fingers crossed, maybe we'll have a few peaches this year.

Snippets continued...

These were done following the Inktense pencil demos on E-How.  Nice way to figure out what the pencils could do.

Another weird mix- Derwent tinted charcoal pencils, stickers, and rub-ons.

Snippets from a full journal

Time to say farewell to my little green handbook journal.  It is finally full and ready to be shelved.  To celebrate I'm posting some snippets from it to the blog.  Mostly the book is full of written narrative about our trips, etc.  A good portion of the other pages are pasted in ephemera from the trips.  Nothing like a map to tell you where you've been......

                                 

A fun watercolor memory complete with ephemera.........

                                  

Another paste in and watercolor.......

                      

Sometimes there are really odd combos of paste-ins, watercolor, stickers, and rub-ons on my pages....

Memory Brush pen quickies

The first is a copy of a postcard I received from a tea company some time ago.  I liked the brushwork logo and tried to do it with a Memory Brush pen.  Not sure if I like this pen, it has a really big felt "brush" tip.  Doesn't handle anything like a brush..

The second piece is a little manga-type monster bird I found websurfing.  It was in color and the red and yellow flames on its body didn't translate into black and white brushwork very well in this drawing.  Kinda dissapointing, but it was pen practice and it kept me out of trouble...

More lazy sketching

We ate out at Zio's and while we were waiting for our food to arrive I drew this little guy from my youngest's kiddie menu.  He felt it needed some color so he helped out and added a bit of red crayon.   The same kiddo never goes anywhere without his 'bears'.  We bought him one tiny stuffed mascot bear on a keychain as a souvenir a few years ago.  Since then everywhere we go on trips, he gets a bear as a reminder.  He gets bears for birthdays, Christmas,  anything.  We've lost count of how many he has.  He plays with them like other kids do GI Joes or Barbies, they have their own dollhouse, cars, and accessories he has hoarded.  His brothers and sister knit or sculpt toys for his bears to play with.  When we go out he stuffs his pockets with bears.  I've caught him going out in cargo pants with over a dozen tiny bears crammed into his pockets.  He even takes along an oversized beanie bear to use as a pillow in the van! With all these bears hanging out with us, it was past time to do a stuffed bear sketch for him.

Lazy sketching

I've been feeling pretty blaahh lately, with a lingering sinus/headcold thing going on so it has been hard to get into the mood to make a 'real' drawing.  I've kinda taken a break and had a bit of fun playing around with Retro-style, and manga cartoons from Christopher Hart's books.  It has been worth a few laughs with the family.    

EDM# 166 Draw a fish

Here is a little ink and watercolor pair of imagikoi.  I wanted to do something along the lines of the fish on crumpled masa paper in Art Escapes by Dory Kanter.  I found what I thought was a sheet of masa in my study, drew the fish, crumpled, and painted.  I'm not so sure the paper was masa, now.  It felt very soft and limp, almost like cloth, after I crumpled it and didn't really keep the creases.  I'd like to try this again on 'crisper' paper, that way the background might turn out with more veining and texture.  Still, it was fun and fast.  A nice little paste-in for my new journal.  Thought I'd never fill the old Handbook journal. I'm thinking on posting some of the entries that I'd done in it pre-blog, just to celebrate finishing it.

EDM#59 Sign of Spring

Here is a sketch of a sign of spring, or is it?  Around here spring is such an iffy, fickle season.  We keep having late cold snaps and even snow well into what should  be spring.  They had even forecasted snow for this weekend!!  Thankfully that didn't happen, but it was still cold.

EDM#76 Flowers

I just finished hacking and slashing at the jumbled honeysuckle vine and clematis tangle in my little garden.  The vines were growing through our wooden privacy fence in places and I'd started to worry about eventual damage to the fence.  So, I lopped off the bits growing through the fence and my Dear Hubby helped put three sections of latticework in front of the fence.  I think the honeysuckle will survive the surgery, but I can't tell if the clematis vine even made it through the winter.  It is tangled up so much with the other vines that the only way to tell where it grows is to wait for it to bloom.  Still it is a lovely effect, the blue blooms among the white and gold honeysuckle.  It was even nicer when the roses, placed in pots in front of the jumble, were alive.  Tempting to go buy some more David Austin roses, so old-fashioned and fragrant!!

Bunny sketches

Bunny sketches
Originally uploaded by ffyrebird

We were suprised to see this little guy out eating in our yard last night. He actually hopped up into the tray birdfeeder and nibbled a bit. I grabbed my sketchbook and managed to get a few quick drawings before he ran off.
Ignore the funny fold line in the middle, I decided to paste the page into my journal and that is the page gutter. I don't know why I keep doing that. I'll make a drawing or sketch in my sketchbook and then decide that I want it in my journal. I have to either copy it or paste it in then. I should just start all my work in my journal and leave it there, except the sketchbook with its removable pages seems safer. I can draw random subjects and experiment and rip out what I don't like. I feel like the journal is for work that has some sort of story or meaning to me, plus it's harder to deal with drawing disasters in my hardbound journal. Weird, huh?