A friend of mine asked me to do a painting of the hula girl that I drew in my journal a while back. I’ve been working on it for a while…but finally finished it. Here it is. I painted it in acrylics. I haven’t done an acrylic painting for a long time. It wasn’t easy to get back into it. But it was definitely exciting to be doing art in a medium I don’t often use. Sometimes a change of pace can get those creative juices flowing again. (I photographed this painting with my digital camera and it came out really yellow…the background is actually almost white) Also, I am doing a project with my second graders right now based on the art of Wayne Thiebaud…

…can you see the influence? I have always loved his style. If I was a painter I would want to use color the way he does…but he seems to have mastered it…I wish I could understand how he “sees” those colors to paint them. You have to look at his work up close to really see what I am talking about. Check it out.

For the EM Challenge, we were supposed to do a drawing of our bag, purse, or wallet. I am one of those few women, I think, who just never got into the whole purse thing. I have all my important stuff like ID, SS card, credit cards, membership cards, etc. in my checkbook, which I usually carry with me all the time – in the pocket of my coat. When I go to school (NOW) I take along my bag with my journal and other journaling tools & stuff. Sometimes that bag accompanies me on trips, to classes and other excursions where I hope to be able to grab a few moments to draw or record something. I have had many purses over the years, but a bag seems to be a better fit for me. The purses I have had in recent years only last about a month or two and then I am back to not using one again. I have had my Monet bag for around 7 years. I bought it on a trip to the Art Institute of Chicago. I loved it then, and it’s been my school bag for all these years…till I started journaling. I am ready for a new bag now…this challenge has made me think that I should look for one soon. I just don’t know, right now, what I would like and I hope to find a bag that I really love.

…a day that I didn’t look forward to. We were in meetings and I had stayed up until 2:00 AM the night before (bad idea), so I wasn’t really into what we were doing. In the morning we spent like 2.5 hours watching videos about a new writing program called “6+1 trait writing.” Good information – but kind of useless for an art teacher, ya know. But it’s one of those things you just learn to deal with and when I started having a hard time focusing on the videos, I started drawing to keep myself alert. It worked, I still listened to the videos and participated in the activities. Sometimes it actually helps me to pay attention better when I am drawing or doodling.

I am not really proud of this watercolor. I did it in my moleskine and I just haven’t mastered a good watercolor in there yet. It is done from a photo of Savannah at our annual Hot Air Balloon Jubilee – a big event in our city every summer. I remember that she was so fascinated with all of the colorful balloons. We were about a hundred yards from where they were launching them. Savannah was about 6 months in this picture.What a cutie…sorry the painting isn’t that cute.

Sam bought this desk lamp at a garage sale in 1994 for $2.00. It is the coolest lamp I’ve ever seen. It sits on his workstation…illuminating the room with a soothing blue-green light. It has plastic swirled all over it. I think they were popular in the 70s…but not sure. I also think these type of lamps have a name, but I don’t know what it is. All I know is that I have been working on this drawing in my journal for like three days. It’s done with Prismacolor colored pencil and I drew it with a .02 size Pigma MICRON pen.

I didn’t really think about this until I was “inking in” my drawing…but isn’t it interesting how the cords kind of look like the swirled green plastic on the lamp? Kind of a cool coincidence…by the way, anyone want to give Sam some advice on organizing all these cords on his desk? It seriously looks like this!

NOTE: EMC stands for Everyday Matters Challenge. I have been attempting the weekly challenges presented on the Everyday Matters Yahoo discussion group. Hopefully I will be able to continue to do both this and IF (Illustration Friday). It keeps me drawing and I like the weekly challenges!

Karson loves Teletubbies. Every time we go downstairs to the playroom, he wants to watch them on the TV. Tonight I took the boys downstairs to play after dinner, and Karson went strait for the TV, pushing every button hoping that one of them would cause his much loved Teletubbies to appear on the screen. He even climbed on top of Max’s grill, stood up reaching for the power button on the TV. He couldn’t quite reach it. I ran over and put our little daredevil back on the floor. He wasn’t giving up though. He switched the tapes a couple of times. I finally tried to turn the TV on for him, but discovered it had been unplugged (probably by him) and once I plugged it in and the Teletubbies tape was rolling, he squealed with delight in unison with the sun child. I am not sure what it is about Teletubbies that kids love so much, but it remains the favorite choice of videos in our house.

Karson’s shoe-shoe – size 5

Max’s “Bad Guy” Boot – size 8

Savannah’s school shoe – size 11.5

My favorite shoe – size 9

Sam’s shoe – size 12

These are our family’s shoes. I did this illustration for the EM challenge.

Tonight I took my class into the gallery at the museum to draw. There were two exhibits. A wonderful bronze exhibit and the Jackson Area Art Show. My friend Julia has her painting in the show. She won a merit award! We are all very proud of her. Tonight I drew her painting. I was impressed with the composition, the perspective, and her use of color. She is so creative in her work and loves to do these great closeups from unusual angles. I had fun copying her painting, titled “Jena and Mickey” into my sketchbook. It really is a fabulous work…and really, this drawing does not even come close to representing its greatness!

The other day I bought film and batteries for my camera. I had pulled it out of the closet where it has been since we moved here. I spent a while reminiscing about the good old days of manual focus and Real print film. I haven’t used this camera for two years – maybe three. We bought our digital camera in 2002 and haven’t seen many prints since. We uploaded our pics to DotPhoto for a while, but it takes time to maintain the albums. We have our pictures somewhat organized in iPhoto on our home computer, but have gotten very few printed and I am so far behind on my scrapbooks, it has become an overwhelming burden that I usually don’t feel like dealing with. My sister and I actually got together this week to work on scrapbooks. We hope to make it a weekly thing. Hopefully that will help relieve some of that burden. Back on the subject of my camera…I have to say that I really enjoyed taking pictures with the old Rebel. I took 10 pictures just for the fun of it. It was weird – not being able to see how the pictures turn out right away. I know I messed one up for sure because I pushed the button down all the way when I really just wanted to check the focus. If any of them turn out, I will be excited. I really like taking pictures with no flash…and closeups are fun too. Karson was hanging around looking in my bag. He was pretty interested in it. He knew right away what to do with the lens cap – amazing, because I hadn’t even taken it off while he was looking. He also had a great time filling my camera bag with plastic spaghetti, napkins and pepper from our dining room table!

Illustration Friday Theme: “The Year of the Rooster”

My illustration for Illustration Friday does not totally fit the theme…”The year of the Rooster,” however, when I read the topic for this week, I thought of this book. Sadly little churkendoose was not even part rooster, but he DID have some confrontations with the Rooster who thought he was “too little to be much good for anything. And…mighty ugly.” I really don’t know how Sam and I acquired this book. Perhaps it may have been thrown in a box of stuff for the garage sale last summer from Sam’s dad. I don’t really know. But it had such a strange title that I was compelled to read it to find out what it was all about. It’s about tolerance of others and appreciating the uniqueness of those around us. It was published in 1946 by Wonder books. I did not conceive the illustration, but drew it from an illustration in the book. The illustrations were by Dellwyn Cunningham…the story written by Ben Ross Berenberg.