Friday, February 29, 2008

Photo Friday: Fuzzy

So if the theme this week is fuzzy, how can I NOT post a picture of my cute fuzzy kitty Bella? This photo was taken using the macro feature on my camera to capture the detail in her eyes.

Monday, February 25, 2008

Inspire me Thursday: Action Painting - Spring aka the indestructable pea!

I just came across a site called "Inspire me Thursday", and just had to take the challenge right away! The theme is action painting, a “style of painting in which paint is spontaneously dribbled, splashed or smeared onto the canvas, rather than being carefully applied.” Posted above is one of my few abstracts titled "Spring". I was doing a study in acrylics on canvas paper, decided it wasn't working and proceeded to drip and swirl some paint around until I saw a seedling sprouting and went with it. I tend to be very tight with my work and it was quite liberating!

Work in progress

What an exciting Monday morning I had today. Upon checking my email I saw that the guest judge for Monday Artday Candice Trew Camling voted me the winner for last week's theme "Getting Ready - for Peeekle Soup"! You made my day Candice, thanks again and again!

I wanted to post a picture of my current work in progress that's been eating up my time, but a fun new challenge none the less. I decided to take up stained glass, and my piece is finally coming together! After finishing the foiling process I will then begin soldering and I will post a picture of the finished product with sunlight shining through. I just couldn't wait to share!

I am mostly posting this for my friend Dawn who is forever reminding me to post something new. Dawn you are a good friend, thank you for constantly nudging me in the right direction. So you see, I'm working every spare chance I get!

Saturday, February 23, 2008

Monday Artday: Getting Ready - for some peeekle soup!

I have not yet had a chance to post on Monday Artday. So, I dug in my archives once again and decided to post this acrylic painting I did of my Polish Uncle with his trademark side stogie making Peeekle Soup. This is my Will Rafuse inspired painting of him as a chef.

And trust me, YOU WILL have to get yourself ready to eat some of his crazy concoctions. I like to have a shot of his moonshine potato vodka first.

Sketchbook Saturday: Some REALLY old stuff

This is a piece I did back when I got my first real job as a graphic designer. I had taken some pictures of myself and a co-worker that were taken at a trade show we attended and altered them for fun. I had swapped our heads on our bodies and then applied some effects in Photoshop to warp the image. Hence, his worm-like head and flames above the both of ours. I then printed the image on a cheap ink jet printer and drew outlines over it with a pen, cut them out and glued them in my sketchbook. The effect is pretty neat and I would like to use this similar method again!

Photo Friday: Art

I have a good collection of photography I have taken on this weeks topic, but I opted on choosing a series of photos that I am most proud of, instead of choosing the most artistic shot of art that I have taken.

Above is a picture of my cousin Allison, who I have painstakingly guided in her art education. Allison is a sophomore at an art magnet school and is currently majoring in sculpting. This particular piece she is sculpting was the determining piece of her major, when she was a freshman.

My Husband and I took her on vacation with us to the ocean on Memorial Day weekend as we were meeting up with other family members. Knowing we would be spending some dreaded hours in the car I had her work on her sculpture. There is always a project this poor girl is trying to finish. And vacation or not, I made her work! Any extra free time we had we took advantage of. And of course, she forgot her tools. No matter, we improvised! In the photo above, she is using a pen and I am sitting in the back seat as her hand model, and her project task was to sculpt a hand.

By the time we got back, she was almost done. I had her sit for another hour at my kitchen table before I took her home to add the final details.




And as you can see by her smiling face, she was proud of the work she had accomplished. And we only had to work on the sculpture in the car and were able to enjoy our vacation.
How is that for spending time in Memorial weekend traffic!

Monday, February 18, 2008

Free Bookmark!


This is one of many bookmarks that I have created, the above created in Photoshop with a great quote from Emile Zola to remind myself to constantly keep working. Feel free to print it out and use it as well! Looks best when printed on glossy photo paper.

Hmmmm. . . I can see this design being used for my blog header.

Sunday, February 17, 2008

Sketchbook Saturday: Portrait

I'm using up all of my resources, as I haven't had time to do anything new! This is a sketch I did about a year ago of a very dear friend.

Photo Friday: Infinity

This is the best photo I have for this week's topic "infinity". Infinite palm trees. Taken in Siesta Key, Florida.

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

IF: Choose

Choose one!

I feel like I spent the majority of time drawing the cupcakes, and rushed to complete the background. I wish I had more time to make the background more interesting! Overall, I guess I'm happy that I have a nice colorful illustration to submit this week. The drawing is done entirely in illustrator.

Oh, and if you ever want to have the best cupcakes/cake you've ever tasted in your life, go to Cake Love! They are located in Washington DC, VA, and MD. I'm only plugging Cake Love because I was inspired by Warren Brown's story of leaving his promising career as a lawyer on Capitol Hill to persue his dream of baking cakes. He is also featured on the Food Network, go Warren! I had the chance to meet and chat with him when I worked in DC and visited his cafe called "Love Cafe". Very nice guy, and he was proud to share his inspirational story.

Saturday, February 9, 2008

Sketchbook Saturday: Pigga!

This week for Sketchbook Saturday I'm not doing an exploratory sketch. It's a busy week, I have homework to do for my stained glass class and other projects to work on. I did this sketch at the American Visionary Art Museum with my cousin Allison. Allison is a sophomore at an art magnet school called Carver Center for the Arts. I have taken her under my wing, and teach her all I know and we go on museum outings and do sketches. This piggy sculpture, one of three, was bolted in the ground at the AVAM museum's front entrance. Unfortunately there are only 2 piggies now, and this one was stolen. Makes me really sad.

Photo Friday: What is that?

This is a photo I took of an orchid that reminded me of one of H.R. Giger's Aliens! Is it just me or do you see it?

Either way, I still think it's a creepy flesh toned looking orchid.

Saturday, February 2, 2008

Sketchbook Saturday: A study in exploratory sketching

Sketchbook Saturday is something my good friend Charlie Dowd made up, and invited me to play along. There are no rules, no concepts, just sketching.

Sketchbook Saturday in his words: "The “SS” will be a place for silly things that I wouldn’t want to put in my proper portfolio, but are worthy of the internet nonetheless. I encourage all of my fellow artists out there to participate in “SS” with me. It’s a great way to loosen up and do something stupid."

I think I'm going to base my SS posts on a concept I read about called exploratory sketching.

About a year ago, I read a book called "Hot Wiring Your Creative Process - Strategies for print and new media designers" by Curt Cloninger. Curt Cloninger is a contributor of a site that I would often frequent called k10k.net - the designer's lunchbox.

I highly recommend this book to any designer. It's packed with great advise. It really fueled my creative process and has lots of exercises to help push designers out of their comfort zones such as exploratory sketching. I recommend exploratory sketching to all artists to see where it takes them. Exploratory sketching a method used to generate ideas from happy accidents. It is most effective when used with raw materials like pencil, pen and paper.

There are many different methods for exploratory sketching, but this particular image that I sketched posted above was conceptualized by flipping through a dictionary and finding the first noun, and randomly finding the word goose. Then I googled goose for image references. I sketched it with a ball point pen, and added lines behind the goose to create the feel of air, wind and movement (after flipping again to find the first adj. windy). I'm pretty happy with this exploratory sketch. Of course there were many other noun and adj. combinations I did before this one. Some flopped, but some with neat results. The idea is to create results that you would otherwise not think of. I will try a different technique for my next SS post and further explain how I did it.

Friday, February 1, 2008

Photo Friday: Misty

So the theme this week is misty. It may not be the best candidate for the theme, but it was definitely a misty overcast day at the Finger Lakes in upstate New York. I like this photo because of the contrast of extreme close up to distant misty horizon.