Portland 2010

What a wonderful conference! The classes I took were really amazing, and I come home full of new techniques, some beautiful books I made, and a list of new friends.

 

My first class was with Gina Armfield, who is a great teacher. She has a few online classes that I strongly recommend: www,sweetsistergina.typepad.com

 

My evening classes confirmed that I am not interested in encaustic, and it turns out that the fumes from that stuff are very dangerous to breathe.

On the other hand, I discovered a beautiful technique for making paste paper. I thought it was going to be on how to make the paper itself, but it is not that at all. It consists of a mixture of acrylic paint and paste to dilute the paint without losing the color. The resulting papers are gloriously bright.

We stamped the papers with real leaves for our Fallen Leaves theme in Albie Smith class. We then bound our pages in an accordion book with black pages. Gorgeous!

I took a class in Wabi Sabi with Serena Barton. It was great fun and we were mostly left to our own devices. I did learn some fantastic techniques, for instance to add Titan Buff on top of the acrylic inks to mute them and give them that aged look. I made 7 paintings during the class.

I took a class with Traci Bunkers on stamping with everything that doesn’t move, and we bound our pages in a delightful book.

My last class of the week was with Albie Smith again, this time, we were making Tiny Treasures. And little jewels they did turn out to be. They fit in the palm of the hand, and they have an exposed spine with a French stitch. Watch your Christmas stockings, there will me a few of those coming up in the next few weeks.

Yes, the pages inside are also decorated. Here are some samples from the class:

 

Last, but not least, I got to spend an entire day with 3 of my internet friends whom I had never met. I have shared Round Robin journals with them and seen their art, but never their great smiling faces. They came to the conference to pick me up, then we drove through all the treasure troves in Portland, for the art addicts: Scrap, Knittnkitten, the amazing Alberta Street district, and finally a lunch at La Petite Provence. Those days are rare and so precious. Thank you ladies, I loved my day with you. It was so awesome being with you.

My much admired friend Tracy Kaufman, who’s art is outstanding.

 

 

 

Marita, who is lucky I really liked her, otherwise, I would have posted another picture, and you know what I mean. lol

And wonderful Gina, who drove us, parked, navigated, and introduced us to all manner of great places.

What a day that was! And what a fantastic week.

Now to work and create more treasures.

Breast cancer awareness digital challenge

I have posted my entry for the breast cancer awareness challenge offered by Kimmie at Digital Whispers.

Here is the original image:

And this is what I manipulated:

The crouching man is a sculpture by Kevin Petelle.
The sculpture is on top of an enlarged picture of an ovary.
The Venus with the drawers is from dalivenus.com
The hummingbird is from Dover publications.
The background fabric was gleaned last year when I was not keeping track of my sources. Humble apologies to the owner. Please contact me so I can give you credit.

I am pleased with myself

I had a few hours this afternoon, so I decided to tackle a painting that has been on my mind. It’s 48 x 30.

I must have been inspired, I really like it a lot. Sorry for tooting my own horn, but I didn’t expect what happened inside of the blue, and I’m quite thrilled with it.

 

This next little one is from yesterday. It took quite a while and went through several transformations. I think I’ll call it finished. It’s hard to photograph, because of the texture and the muted colors. I’ve included some close ups. This one is 36x30.

Back to abstract

How can I stay away from painting abstracts, I have so much fun. Thank you, Mary Stewart, for prompting me. And thank you to my gorgeous friend Eve to introduce me to Zao Wou Ki, where I was reminded that I can do what makes me happy, that lots of texture is totally ok, and if outrageous or loud is me, then so be that.

 

This one is 48x36, and yes, I did have fun!!!! As you can tell, I’m sure….

Bantock look alike mail art

I’ve been practicing making mail art, hopefully in a vague Nick Bantock fashion, although I would not even venture to imagine my puny efforts get anywhere close to his amazing art work.

So I just be me, and do my own artwork.

 

Now seeing all my images together, I detect a vague tendency toward the Cadmium Yellow Hue saturation. Hummm, maybe time to find other colors to play with…

Accordeon book

I've been taking this online class on Roses on my table and each month, she teaches a new technique.This month was this lovely accordeon book that I proceeded to make.

I am not very satisfied with my ribbons, I think they need to be smaller. Other than that, this was loads of fun. I can see making a few more on a variety of themes certainly a steampunk one in the new future.

 

 

 

 I had these marvelous images that I had gathered from a now defunct British magazine: Victoria. They now have a home.

Photoshop

I've been playing with photoshop, making 2 cards. They look relatively simple but they each have a dozen layers. Complex program indeed, but well worth the time to learn it, if you're going to use it regularly.

Next is this one: it's very versatile, because I can add anything I want on that armchair and it fits all sorts of themes. I'm sending it next for our Inspiration cards in my art group, as the theme: finding money in your pocket. I'll put a stash of dollar bills on the armchair.

Marie Antoinette goes grunge

I have worked in the Marie Antoinette Round Robin book. Elena's theme is Marie's diary when she's in prison waiting for Mr Guillotine and reminiscing.

I couldn't imagine Marie being all that chirpy so my pages ended up all grunged up.
This is the left page. It has an old book where she wrote; It's not my fault. Stop looking at me! I didn't spend all the money. It was Louis with his stupid war in America. Don't look at me like that. 

The right page is first seen through a window, all foggy.

And the window opens:

I owe the wonderful face with the outrageous make up to my friend Tracy Chapman who sent me a bunch of amazing files. Thanks Tracy. I can't go wrong with your help....

***Amendment, thank you Elena, yes, of course, I meant our own inimitable Tracy Kaufman!!!!*****

Nick Bantock ATC swap

I can't resist a Nick Bantock theme, so I entered an ATC swap with vintageATCUK, even though I really don't like ATCs. I find them too small to really be able to do a good job. But I keep trying.

Here are my 4 entries.  The first two are made with my own photos shot in India.

The next two are made with photos from National Geographic.

Creating inspiration cards

My Yahoo group is involved in creating Inspiration cards from each other. We have prompts that we can choose from, and every other week, we send a home made card to someone on the list. Since I was hosting it, I could make the rules, so I put in there that the cards could be digital, since I always have so much fun making digital montages. 

My first one is based on the theme: "this too shall pass"

This next one is based on those moments "when you lose track of time because we're involved in something"
Here's my interpretation.

Publish Post

I combined grunge and mail art, adding a postage stamp to the card after I printed it.

Nick Bantock mail art challenge

I've been making so many different styles of art, I was starting to lose focus. I've been painting large abstract canvases, I've been making smaller collages in the Nick Bantock style, I've been attending to my commitments with various Round Robins, altered books, and Fat Book pages.

I decided I would focus on the Nick Bantock style of painting, since I so adore his style and I got so much from the workshop in July on Salt Springs.

Then it occurred to me that I could kill 2 stones with one bird (intended) and fill my mailbox which is usually very empty, and start a mail art challenge. This all happened Saturday, and by Monday, the competition was up.

The complete text of the challenge is here. No fees to enter, no return of your artwork. There are prizes and all the entries will be displayed in a book. That book will be available for purchase as well. It's a chance for everyone to see their artwork in print. A win-win, I think.

Above is the piece I had created during the workshop. Now I can focus on generating more and entering them in the challenge too. ;-))

Hawaii Round Robin

I have been working ahead on this fabulous Round Robin I'm involved in. I send pages that will be tipped-in to the owners' books, so I can work as I fit it in my schedule.

The next theme I had to work on is Joy. I always find such a broad and generic theme difficult to work with. Also the artists involved are immensely talented and I am terribly intimidated by their level of expertise. I'm definitely working on lifting my game up. I'm studying the wonderful Altered 101, 102, 103, Special Effects series. Here's to hoping...

So here's what I created for Joy: what makes me really happy is a warm sunny day by the ocean. So I painted a beach using lots of gel for texture, as well as the wonderful Golden glass beads.  and alcohol inks. I hid little inside the 'sand' to show what else creates Joy.

And here are the notes in the sand. They read and represent: eccentric art, meditation, travel, being alive, books, Cirque du Soleil, sunshine on the beach.

The next theme I had to work with is Mandalas. I'm not sure how it came about, but one thought led to the other, I wanted to include something 'interesting', and all in a sudden, I'm making mandalas in fabric on top of watercolor paper, with silk fibers and free motion sewing!

Why not, I guess.

This one is a bit hard to see, since it's made of white fabric and white fibers on top of gold and white paper. The paper itself has a lot of texture, which I spray painted gold.




In this one, I've inserted silk threads, and there are 3 little glass hearts.

Portland 2010 Art and Soul retreat - Fat Book

Here I come! It's already September, which means that the next Art and Soul retreat is not that far away..

As per tradition, there is a Fat Book being created, in which I participated. The theme is still Alice in Wonderland, just like in the previous retreats. This time, it was Alice and her Friends, Weird and Wacky.

Hummmmm, what do you do with a theme like this? Create 24 pages.... I researched images in my stash and found these sources of inspiration.

Finally the mad hatter from deviantart.com started my wheel going and this is the result:

I painted them with the glorious Stewart Gill glossy paints from Artistcellar. I added a few watch parts and some Lewis Carol quotes, et voila.

I'll pick up my own book in Portland from the 10th of October. Those retreats are always amazing and I'm taking a ton of fabulous classes. Yeah, can hardly wait.