Calling All Art Experts...

I spent more of Walter's Goodwill gift card this morning.  And I still have $6.00 left!

I bought a hand colored etching...

I believe it is an artist's proof.  There is no run number on it. Sorry about the three fingers in the middle of the pond.  Yup.  They're mine.

If it were one of a series of prints, it would have a 1/30 kind of number.  The first number is the number of the print and the second one is how many were printed. 

How do I know this?  I took several etching classes in college. We had to pull proofs of our prints. They were never numbered. Only prints that we did a series of printings were numbered like this.

We did however have to sign them.  Usually in pencil.

I am having trouble even deciphering this one.  I have the L. B.....Then it goes down hill from there.

I don't really care if it is a masterpiece or not.  I like it and it is already hanging on the bedroom wall.

While I was taking the frame apart and cleaning the glass and the mat, I noticed that Zar was being spied upon...

A couple of seconds after I took this photo, the bottle on top of the bookcase fell on Zar's head and at the same time, Tessie mysteriously disappeared.

I left.  I am not going to get into the middle of this.  The two of them can fight it out until I get another one made and then they are going to be sitting on either side of a row of books.  I will not have to worry then. To each his own....

Back to work. See you tomorrow.

A Little of This and That...

 I went to Goodwill this morning.  I got what I think is a very good Korean painting.  It is framed in a Picasso frame.  Those cost an arm and a leg.  It was framed in Korea... I am assuming that whoever purchased it, purchased it there and had it framed before bringing it to the US.

The painting itself is a brush painting and is stamped with the artist's seal.

This photo doesn't do it justice.  I was having trouble getting a good photo without a reflection.

Since I wanted that where I could see it, I moved a lot of other art around.

Except for the two largest paintings, the rest is all my work. I need to straighten the one on the left.

The bedroom is beginning to look like an art gallery.. Paintings on every wall...

I have decided to make three boxes for some of my favorite people/pets...

Zar gets the large box.  Tessie gets the medium and Spike gets the small one.

I have the backs cut and am ready to start working on them.  They shouldn't take long.

Between the boxes, the socks and the conservatory, I am going to be busy.  I had better get back at it. See you tomorrow!

Pencils, Pens, and Threads...

When I was little and someone wanted to keep me busy, all they had to do was give me some paper and a pencil... It still works.

While I was hanging up things in the bedroom yesterday, I thought about how my dad gave me the only present that I remember from when I was a little kid.  It was my first Ball Point Pen!  I think that was the best present that he ever gave me.  I think that I was seven at the time, but it made me feel like a grown up.  At the time, the only people that I knew that used ball point pens were grown ups!

Just give me some kind of writing implement.  Some background material to go with it.

Sometimes I just resort to copying something that Michelangelo did.  That's always fun.  I can come pretty close, but that's not the point.  The fun part is just keeping myself busy by drawing.

If you give me lots of different colors of pens, I usually resort to mandalas or some other repetitive form of work. 

Also keeps me amused but for a shorter time...

If you really want to get me out of your hair for a while, just give me some stretched linen, a few shells and some thread... That will keep me busy for days.

That's why I want to hang these things up.  I can see what kept me busy. 

Sometimes it's a short period.  Sometimes it a long period.

Makes no difference.  One way or another, you can keep me amused... Simple things for simple people.

The only thing that I did this morning that relates to Tessie and friends is made fudge...

She keeps asking, "Does all of this fudge make me look fat?" 

Just say no.  She will go away.

I, however, will be back tomorrow! See you then!

Every Day Things...

I think that the shelves on the potting bench will be held up by fancy wrought iron brackets.

That's about all that I did in mini today.

Then I got to thinking about changing the walls in the bedroom.

Since this is where I work most of the time, I decided to make it pleasant to work in. 

I have been gathering some of my paintings and sketches.  Also some things that other artists have done for me.

It's hard to see, but the black frame at the bottom left side is a quick sketch of me that a friend did when I was a freshman in college.  Just something fun.

The flamingo above it is a photo that Seth took a few years ago... I like all of his art.

The one in the black frame above the conservatory is by Roger Holt.  He was an artist based in Jerome, when I was going to college.  He passed away in 1979.  I can say that I have a painting by an artist that has had stuff in the Met in NYC, also in the UN building.  What is even more amazing is, he traded that for one of my lowly college paintings when I was about 21 years old!

There are also a lot of art prints in my collection.  If I like it I hang it! 

The thing that looks like a knot hole is just that.  I think that April brought that back from one of her hikes with Seth.

On this wall there is a bunch of French cross stitch that I did several years ago.  There are a couple of mirrors, some scissors and a framed photo of Amare when he was only a month or two old. 

I am not done yet.  I like looking at these things and I can't when they are hidden away. 

At the rate I am going, I am going to have my very own art gallery. 

It might not last, but it is fun while it's here.

Back to work.

See you tomorrow.

Back to College...

I am still going through notebooks.  You  seem to enjoy what I am doing, so I am going to spend the rest of Christmas Eve doing more of it.

I found a bunch of my old sketchbooks from ASU.  Yes.  I kept a lot of them.  Again, they are fun to look back at.

This one is an actual man that used to pose for our life drawing class.  He rode up on a bicycle every Tuesday and Thursday and sat for an hour while we drew his portrait.  I always thought that he looked like something from Michaelangelo's time.  Fun to draw...

 This one was an assignment for a Fashion Drawing class.  The model was in a magazine...

Of course we all had to take life drawing classes and yes... There were nude models... The ladies were anyway.  The guys got to cover up.  Unfair and unequal at that time... I don't know how they are now.

Anyway.  All of these sketches were done in less than a minute.  Some were 30 seconds!  That was to get you to put down on paper what you were seeing fast.

It worked.  This guy was sitting in the library staring at the floor or his shoes.  I'm not sure which. 

It took me about two minutes to put him down on paper.

This was one part of the life drawing that came in handy.  I can still do a pretty fast sketch of someone if I need to. 

Then there were the classes that were mostly lectures... That's where the doodling came in handy... If you didn't want to fall asleep, you doodled...

Please don't ask me why I was drawing snails... Maybe because the lecturer was soooo slow and boring...

Please don't ever tell my professors that I did this kind of thing.  Hey!  They were fair game.  They taught us to draw.  We drew.  I wasn't the only one that put them down on paper... Maybe a tiny, wee bit exaggerated... I really don't know if this guy had a cat... It just seemed to me that he should have one...

I have the side dishes ready for tomorrow.  All I have to do is shove them in the oven with the ham and sit down and open presents. 

April, Seth and Amare are coming over.  As are Seth's parents.  They came down from Phoenix today.  This is the family tradition.  April and Seth have a very small house and we only tried it there once... Not enough room to swing a cat, let alone open presents.

I am going  back and look through more notebooks now. 

Happy Christmas Eve!  See you tomorrow.

A new Pencil and Some Paper...

That's all it takes to make me a happy camper.  I think that it started when I was about six years old. 

My dad could draw some and he taught me what he knew...

On my seventh Christmas I got a new ball point pen from Santa. That was cool, but I couldn't erase mistakes.  I went back to the pencils and haven't stopped drawing since!

I went through some of my tablets and sketchbooks this morning... That's almost as fun as drawing new stuff... The first one had lots of ideas for bags and purses from over the years. I have only made a couple of them. Maybe after Christmas I should try a couple more.

Then I found one that had some ideas for birdhouses, feeders and wind chimes.  I really want to do some of these for the back yard and a few in mini for here and there too... I think that the Weaver's Workshop needs a birdhouse on a branch...

Almost as fun as drawing is making lists.  This one was for reorganizing my books... I did do it, but it needs doing again. It's just a good thing that I kept the list.  The letters at the side are a key to where the different books go.  W is for Workshop.  F is for family room... and so on.

Somehow, the lists always descend into doodling... It helps me think about where I am going to put things...

The bird and the faces are just thoughts running through my head at the time.

If I can't think of anything to draw, I just start doing weird designs.  I was doing Zen Tangles long before they were called that.  I have always called it doodling.  I like that word better...

I realized that the two words at the bottom of this one could mean two different things, when spoken.  That's how they got into the mix...

What is the purpose of all of this wandering?  I just want to encourage you to pick up a pencil and let it have it's way.  It may lead you to something that you didn't even know that you could do. 

Go for it!

I planted these two bowls for April and Seth and for his parents.  They all like plants so the bowl gardens should be appreciated.  They are all plants that will outgrow the bowls and have to be planted somewhere else.  Then they can plant something new inside and keep them going for years to come.

I think that I will go start moving books to their rightful places now.  Back to work. 

See you tomorrow.

Thread Tangles and Zentangles....

I have been working on the sofa. See the bottom of the back? One section done...

Incidentally, the stitches that I am using on the sofa are the same ones that I showed you in the chair tutorial. So if you are crazy enough to want to do a seven foot sofa, you have all of the information in the chair tut to do it....

After I worked on that for a while, I made the mistake of going to look at dashboard and the list of blogs that I follow.

In one of the blogs, I found an interesting bit about a technique called Zentangle. I went to this site.http://zentangle.blogspot.com/ And that was all it took....Off on a tangent I went.

The inner six year old got sidetracked. I think that it was too much chocolate mocha cake that made me do it. I have been doing things similar to this since college, but I never knew that there was a legitimate name for it.....Until now. What it is, is a form of meditation whilst doodling. They are even teaching classes in how to do it!

Next I looked at some people doing it on U Tube. After that, I went to Flickr and put in "Zentangle" and got a group with thousands of examples. http://www.flickr.com/groups/zentangle/pool/ The mind boggles!

I grabbed a pen and a sketchbook and I was off....In more ways than one...

That kept me busy until Walter arrived home from Detroit at 11:something.

These are in the order that I did them. When I took photos this morning, I could see some areas that needed a bit of fixing, but all in all, I was happy with what I did.

It's funny that you don't see the flaws until you take photos....At least I don't.

Anyway, the birthday is over and I am back to reality now.

The witches are meeting here today, so I have to go fix something to eat and clean up a bit.

Meanwhile, go look at the pretty doodles. The flickr site will keep you busy until your eyes are crossed.

I promise to put the pen and pad away and get back to work on the sofa after the witches are gone.

Do try Zentangling. It is fun and easy to do and there really aren't any rules.

See you tomorrow.

Mini Art Coming Soon.....

Since both Walter and I are confined along with Mookie for the next couple of days, I don't think I am going to get much done on the townhouse. I hate to start and then have to stop for cat sitting. At least that is my excuse and I am sticking with it.

At least, while I am sitting still, I can play with sketch pads.

I went and found some of my doodles from college. Actually I like them better than the "real" art.

We had an Aesthetics professor that encouraged drawing instead of taking notes. I saved some of those.

For some reason, I was into creepy crawlies even back then. Tessie likes some of them and they will probably get re drawn and put in her house somewhere. I started playing with one of snails a little while ago. I'm not happy with it yet, but I will keep working on it. She says I will....
This is one of my very favorites and it will probably go in the living room. Right size, right colors. Poke the photos to see them better. That is, if you are still with me and haven't ran screaming from the room yet.

I thought that I would throw in a couple of my other favorites from way back when.

This one is an oil painting that I did in one of my classes from a sketch that I did in Jerome. For those that don't know, Jerome is a "ghost town" to the north of us, up on Mingus Mountain. It was a Phelps Dodge mining town. Then it pretty much died when the mine closed. People started moving there in the 60s and it became a really neat artist's colony. I spent a lot of time up there when I was in college.

The painting is of a "cat house". I could see another view of it from above because the town is built on the side of the mountain and everything is slowly sliding down the hill. Really. Anyway, this house was turn of the century and in total ruins by the time I drew it. It was really interesting because the roof was gone in places and you could see down into it. The top floor was made up of very small, about 8' by 10' rooms...... Every lady of ill repute had her own room....If you think about it, it must not have been pleasant. I did a series of the abandoned buildings. This is the only one that I have left. It has always been my favorite.

I will show you one more before I go away and stop bothering you today. This one I did a couple of years ago. It's to show you that I can draw if I really want to. I was reading a book on Leonardo Da Vinci and this drawing caught my eye. I sat down and copied it.....NO I didn't trace it. I just channeled the man.

Unfortunately, I can't afford one of his sketches. He has always been one of my favorites. I can, however grab a pencil an imitate him. It was fun to try.

Back to cat sitting....Maybe tomorrow I will work on the house or at least some furniture. Wish me Luck!