Pages 07/21/07

Day of the Dead Bamboo Beads

Sumthin' different. I've been making Frida Kahlo bamboo beads for awhile and was geting bored of making them. I think it's cool that you can tile the photo across the three beads. It opens up alot of possibilites. I put these up for auction at eBay if anyone out there is interested. :-) They are sealed and water resistant and ready to rock and roll in a cool project. These would make a neato bracelet. I haven't tried putting one together yet, but plan to. I have several sets I will play around with soon.

Pages 07/19/07

Faux Postage

I got inspired from a class I recently took with Mountain View Artist Jacqueline Ernst. We learned how to get better at sketching while travelling. The class was very laid back and Jackie was very flexible with the class schedule. She'd pretty much teach us whatever we wanted to learn or try. It was a great class, very friendly and supportive. Jackie makes faux postage. Her stamps are very intricate and reflect her past travels. I was fascinated by them and quickly sketched some in my journal.

These are the sketches which I scanned and colorized in Photoshop. I made a stamp border and added type. They aren't as detailed as Jackie's, but they're me. ;-)

I recommend a class with Jackie. Her studio is warm and cozy and her personality is infectious.
A shout out to ya Jackie. I'll be back for another workshop soon.

Pages 07/13/07

Pages 07/12/07

Peace on Earth

The size is 8"X10", painted with Watercolor and India Inks. This comes in reaction to all the chaos going on in the world. Hoping war will come to an end soon.

Pages 07/02/07

Sketchbook doodle.

Pages 06/29/07

It's been awhile since I've painted in large format. I ordered some pretty nifty Sharpie acrylic paint pens with a wide nib from Mister Art. I was pretty dubious. It worked really well on the canvas and the nib and paint held up almost until the end of my line work. It started choking right at the end and I had to go over the last bit twice to get nice coverage. Now that the painting is all drawn, I am working on adding color. The size of the painting is about 4'X4'. (The other photo is the whole painting before the color was added. Taken on my lousy camera phone.) It's pretty cool to see the artwork I've been doing so small (4"X4") translate into large format. It's pretty trippy.

Pages 06/27/07

I've been decorating bamboo tile beads and using them in crafty things. The beads are drilled in an odd place so it's rather dificult to use them. I outputted a Day of the Dead image onto clear paper and transferred it to the bead. I've sealed it with many layers of protective varnish to give it a nice sheen and to prevent it getting scratched. Then, I made various charms and attached them to a 'pleather' bracelet. I bought a bunch of these bracelets fairly inexpensively awhile ago, and didn't know what to do with them. They had big gaudy charms on them that I used in another artsy something. I never toss anything! There's always another art project you can add a 'leftover' to.

Pages 06/23/07

I recently made this collage for a swap I joined up for on the Altered Art Obsession Yahoo group. This was an open themed digital collage ATC swap. It was the first time I've really done this type of swap, which is strange because, I do digital collage every day in my job as a graphic designer. It was neat just to do a collage for myself, rather than a client. The entire collage is done in Photoshop and I've used copies of real letters from Frida to Diego. It's an interesting concept, digital collage ATCs. I'm not sure why I haven't done any in this manner before. It took me less than 1/2 an hour to put this together, while a traditional collage might take an entire evening, plus time to dry. I've uploaded this image high res, so feel free to print it and add to your ATC collection from me, to you. ;-)