More Springiness and Some Sewing

Soooo, this happened on the way to making a mask. I had an urge to sew like I haven't had for a long time, and the pieces I'd cut for split 9 patches on National Quilting Day were still sitting on my machine surround. The mask was going to require a change of thread and needle, and as long as the machine was still set for sewing these blocks, I decided to get to it. I arranged 5 of the half-square triangle units with light and dark squares and sewed them together. The next day I counted how many half-square triangle units were left, just 4, and after arranging them with dark squares and what was left of the light squares, I cut ten more light squares in order to complete those blocks too. Now I have a total of 13 six inch blocks, lots of dark squares left as well as some squares for making more half square triangle units. But this was enough to satisfy me for now, make me feel ok about packing it all back into its folder for another day.

As for the mask, yes I know, late to the party but I've never been much of one for jumping on bandwagons. While other sewers of all stripes have hunkered down to make masks not just for themselves and family but to donate, I just couldn't rally to the cause. I did check to see if my brothers/sils needed any but they are being well taken care of by their places of work. I've followed links, watched videos and read directions, and could see this was no quick project and would be the type of sewing I don't particularly enjoy. I also knew how much time I'd spend picking fabric and I wasn't wrong about that! I have fiddle now for parts of two days with what I thought was my preferred pandemic mask pattern and directions only to be unhappy with the fit and thinking I should have listened to my gut about some of the measurements and instructions. And I was so sure I wanted to make one with ties, but I am finding them problematic. One positive outcome was trying out these Clover Wonder Clips and liking them for holding all those layers of folds together instead of using pins. I've been giving these a wide berth but bought a small pack at the recommendation of my bookbinding teacher for holding signatures together or templates in place. They actually work better than binder clips for that.

Well, no matter that the mask with the ties isn't working out. I can just do that no sew version using an 18" square of fabric. I knew that when folded, the center tended not to have more than one layer so dug out some lightweight fusible interfacing from my clothes-sewing days and added a rectangle of it on the center. I happened to have some ponytail elastic ties, bought for quick closures for my soft journals, so I was set to fold and try it on. Well, THAT didn't work so well either. I've heard people say those hair ties are really too small and I'd have to agree. Plus I wear glasses and I was having trouble working around the end of the bows. And my small hoop earrings kept getting caught up in the elastic. And it kept slipping off one ear (I must have a Stephen Colbert-type ear issue). But even when I got everything in place and adjusted, I wasn't happy. No covering underneath the chin, a wad of fabric in the mouth area, I couldn't imagine talking to anyone while wearing it.

 

But as I often do, I'm digging in my heels. I've watched a few more videos, including one tested and recommended by friend Michele in Wisconsin, and rifled through my supplies. Not sure why I'm so hung up on the pleated ones, but I will be trying another version, and possibly taking apart the one with the ties to rework it. But in the meantime I had a lightbulb moment, remembering how pleased I've always been with the fit of my pollen mask, that I could no doubt make a pattern off of it. So that will be the next step.

 

Now for the promised Springiness. 

More trees in my neighborhood have blossomed, bringing welcome color. This one is by the Goodwill Store.

And this one is in front of the Animal Shelter Charity Shop.

But this is what I've been waiting impatiently for it to bloom for about 3 weeks now. 

I thought maybe I'd missed it all together, but each time I checked, I could see the tiny blooms coming on, getting bigger and finally this week opening up.

Another sure sign of spring - goslings! The goose poop at City Beach is a pain and several attempts have been made to remove the geese who have discovered they really don't need to fly south in winter, but there's no keeping them from returning. The positive side is how lovely it is to watch the little ones.

Japanese Stab Binding

April's Handmade Book Club taught us how to make basic stab binding books. I just managed to get the first one done under the wire so it could go in the gallery and also meet April's separate challenge that our fearless leader puts forth each month to both the private Facebook group and the public Crafting Handmade Books group.

I'd been thinking that some of my eco printed watercolor paper could be used as covers for a stab binding book, so I was pretty excited to pick a couple and get going. Fulfilling the challenge of using something in your stash at least a year old was easy. The sketch paper I chose for the signatures has been around for at least 10 years, bought after taking a drawing class and taking advantage of some sales at my local Ben Franklin. Also probably ten years in my possession is some handspun threads and yarns that I bought from my internet friend, Connie Rose. Look at those ribbons! The cotton one on the left turned out not to be strong enough but the hemp on the right was perfect.

We started with a basic 4 hole version while we learned how to deal with single, not folded, signature blocks and punching holes through it all.

I chose two mirror image prints to show on front and back and of the two, the best different print on the other side to show as the inside cover. This one will be a gift to a fellow sketcher.

I jumped to the third more involve Hemp Leaf stitch because I thought it would show off well on a second set of eco prints where I could continue using the hemp thread. Not really difficult, just more holes, more sequences to follow. Since making the sewing holes with an awl on the first one was very hard, I got brave and got out a Dremel-like electric drill I'd gotten on sale for use in the studio. It has no slow speed so it was rather exciting whizzing through the layers (yes, I tried it on a sample first). I need to find a slightly smaller drill bit, I think, for use with more standard size bookbinding thread.

This particular eco print was lovely on both sides. I dithered a lot about what kind of paper to use as I planned to keep this one for my own use. I have a thought to go back to some pencil sketching, maybe do some botanical drawings and add color with Inktense or regular colored pencils. I decided on a heavy vellum bristol recommended by my drawing teacher, another one of my Ben Franklin finds that have not been used all these years, because, unlike the lighter vellum I have, this one is supposed to take a light wash which I will need to do to activate those Inktense pencils.

The issue is that it is quite stiff which means the pages do not easily turn and stay turned. I've made several attempts at "breaking in" the pages but I suspect I'll have to clip pages to keep things flat enough to work in it.

Rather than three leaves like the front cover, the back eco print features two - still lovely.

Determined to finish this group up before the end of the weekend (because, you know, May's lesson is waiting . . .), I've worked diligently the last couple of days to finish this book with the Noble binding, which has the same corner treatment as the Hemp Leaf binding but otherwise is just a bit more interesting than the plain 4 hole binding. I may like this one the best and saved it for use on what you might recognize as one of the silk fusion "papers" I experimented with. This one was done with textile medium and folds softly back so works ok as a cover. The decorative thread or yarn which may be familiar from my "Adrift" piece where I used it for grass was just the right color green with bits of purple mixed in. It's weight and the twisted threads made it a bit difficult to work with but very worth it. I wasn't brave enough to use the drill through the silk fusion and the rice paper I chose for the signatures but if I had, I probably would have had good-size holes, especially in the cover. The silk fusion holes made with the awl just slowly closed back up. This one is for my use too, and I'm looking forward to doing some rubbings and work with wet media which it is supposed to be good for.

A Week of Pleasantries

I noted with a bit of joy the return of syringa blooms behind my place this past week. Syringa is the Idaho state flower and holds quite a few special childhood memories.

I've also been reminded that some of the trees in my development do indeed bloom. 

If I didn't know better, I'd say this was an apple tree in bloom. But I DO know better. Unless it's some mock or decorative variety that doesn't bear fruit.

I put my morning quick draw on hold while working on the Sketchbook Revival lessons in April. But I had printed out this batch of applique ideas off of the American Quilt Society 30 Days of Flowers series to use as prompts when I returned to the daily quick drawing. The prompts I'd been using had started to repeat too many from month to month, and I could feel myself losing interest. I'm still working in the sketchbook with the less than wonderful paper and getting out my cheap colored pencils to recreate each day's flower, but instead of drawing from memory as I'd been doing with the other prompts, I'm switching to studying each flower before drawing, breaking down the component parts and strategizing how to approach the shapes and the order in which to draw them. This has been enlightening, especially when I see a flower with so many parts, like the top one, that I am tempted to be overwhelmed into skipping it. But my experience with Zentangling kicks in and I can see how to proceed. Then I work in the color, striving to match the colors (which sometimes takes the blending of two) and shading light to dark where needed. These are still fairly quick to do and feel worthwhile as a daily practice, at least for this month.

A packaged arrived this week from my globe-trotting cousin who was on the last legs of a south sea island tour when ports started closing because of the virus. (No one on her small cruise ship tested positive but they still weren't allowed to debark for any planned flights home and eventually restocked at Hawaii for the unplanned cruise to San Diego - a trip extended by many days!) She often will pick up a souvenir for me if she can find something textile related. I'd seen her post about this yarn which she got in New Zealand and could only dream it might be for me. And it is! It is hand painted blend of merino wool, silk and possum fur! It has a wonderful feel and there are even instructions about how to work with the two skeins at once to even out any variations in the colors one skein to the next. Nope nope nope, no idea what I will knit out of it yet, but I am truly taken by it. And it will forever remind me of her floating around at sea for days before the captain could arrange a port of call.

The Whitlock women

Finally, I had every intention of finishing up the April bookbinding lesson last week (3 different stab stitches). But guilt is a great motivator for me, and I've been feeling guilty for quite awhile about harassing my brother for months and months to find and send the missing carousels of family slides from the larger collection he'd already delivered, and then after scanning a few, leaving them to languish for well over a year I'm thinking. The boxes sit in my studio because I've been scanning to the laptop I keep in there, and one day last week the pull was very strong to forget about bookbinding and do some scanning. The two carousels I worked on had slides from 1949 into 1953, so before I was born and when my brothers were very young. So many delightful photos including this one of my mother (right), aunt (left) and grandmother (center). Mom wrote on the slide frame that this was the first time she and her sister had been together with their mother on Mother's Day since mom had gotten married in 1938. Family was rooted in South Dakota and mom was all about family. It must have been so difficult for her to leave them behind when she and dad (and the first of 4 boys) moved to this mining region in Idaho during WWII. Her sister eventually relocated there for awhile as well, teaching in nearby schools, and she shows up in most holiday and camping pictures from here on out. Anyway, how sweet to run across this photo just days before Mother's Day.

Claud & Dot Sink with baby Mary December 1950

That strong draw to scan may not have been for my benefit though. I also ran across a photo of my parents' best friends with their newborn as they visited at Christmas in that same year. I've kept in touch with a few of the many children they had (they were Catholic), most recently one on Facebook who I'd promised long ago I'd share any photos I ran across with her family in them. I had no idea she wouldn't have a picture like this herself, but she told me that she was 13 when her mother died and that she had very few pictures of herself with her mother. She was over the moon to get this one, and especially just before Mother's Day. Sometimes you just have to follow those urges . . .

The World Is Brightening Up

I've been waiting not too patiently for some color to return outside. This time span between the freshening-of-the-landscape snows and the greening that comes with warmer weather is my least favorite, everything brown and grey and lifeless. My neighborhood in particular has little flowering landscaping so to find some color, I must to go into town. Last week I needed to visit the post office to mail my taxes, and I suspected that the garden of the building across the street would have some spring bulbs blooming in it, and I was right.

Several different colors of tulips were blooming here and there.

Even this somewhat scraggly azalea by the corner of the next building over was a welcome sight on this day of showers moving through.

And the other day I noticed how the tall cottonwood trees along part of my walk had leafed out, that bright new green that will soon turn a richer darker green. It inspired me to grab my sketchbook and watercolor kit yesterday to see if I could capture the feel in an impressionist style rather than my usual more precise inked and colored in style. This gravel road, shaded in the afternoon by those tall tall cottonwoods, skirts the dog park and leads to the human park behind it. I'd like to try this again as I didn't get that soaring feel of the trees, make the road smaller, thinner to allow for taller trees. But this was quite fun and freeing to do. And though it's still too cool to go without a jacket, being out in that fresh air was wonderful, now that the main pollen offender for me has finished doing its thing.

The Last of Sketchbook Revival Work

I've just put the finishing touches on or completed the outstanding lessons from this year's Sketchbook Revival videos. When last I showed you the above work which was the last lesson of the sessions, I noted that I'd be adding more to it (see the before version here). I did add another line of ripple between the green lines of ripple, but what you can't see is that I did it with a blue metallic gel pen. Just can't capture the sparkle in a scan. The green around the border is also metallic gel pen, a layering of the green and the blue that I had on hand so it would more closely match the blue/green background of the quotation. Then I used one of my own stamps to add the spirals in the background where I penned some ideas for kind acts. This is one of those times when I had a small aha moment as I added those extra ripple lines, I've been so stuck in my head regarding the quilting of water ripples, especially on some of the leaf cluster prints that I saw as floating on water. What I did here is nothing like I've been doing with those, and the fact that I worked two different colors with one flat and one shiny was also a new idea.

I didn't add a lot to my owl, mostly going in darkening areas with watercolor and making feather-like marks with a dark brown colored pencil (see the before picture here). Also used a prismacolor verithin colored pencil in green over the plaid lines in the vest but green over red, even though the mediums differ, did not leave me with the bright green lines I had wished. Still, I've grown to very much like my stodgy owl.

While the watercolor paints and brushes were out, I added color to my cupcake drawing, and my oh my did that get away from me on the whipped cream! My strokes turned out to be too broad and wet and before I knew it, all the white of the cream was gone, not exactly what we were to be going for. I did better on the cupcake liner which is supposed to be an exercise in painting reflective shiny surfaces. If there's a next time, I think I will just add sprinkles to the whip cream and not worry about painting in shadows on the swirls! Rather like how the cherry came out though.

Next it was time to put away the watercolor paints and work with some acrylic paint. This is that doodle sketch exercise that I had yet to paint, stencil, collage and mark. I'll be the first to admit that this kind of thing is not my forte. Plus all my acrylic paint colors are rather dark so subtle this is not. I actually worked on it other way around, but after I was done, I did the turn turn turn thing to see if it looked better in a different orientation. I decided I liked this direction slightly better than the direction I'd been working. I do see some flow to the overall picture, and started enjoying working with it more when I started adding marks to it in white gel pen and black felt pen.

One last acrylic exercise needed doing and this one went south pretty quick. I blame it somewhat on the size of my portrait sketch because we were not using brushes here but a finger to dab and spread and blend the paint. Even using my little finger, I couldn't put down small enough bits, and the toned green paint looked black when it hit the page, only lightening when I could spread it thinner. Very frustrating. Probably less so if I'd been working on a sketch twice this size. If the painting was to show my mood on the day, as the teacher said hers did, then I was in a gloomy unhappy one. Not when I started, but by the end of this, yeah, pretty much! Doing that light sketchy coloring in the background around her head and then along the bottom which took on the look of a draped blouse  was the best and redeeming part, although I have to admit, I like how the hair turned out too. See the ready to paint sketch and the teacher's sketch in two stages here.

Never one to feel comfortable wasting things, I expended some of the paint on the palette by brushing it on a piece of paper which might come in handy in future collages. Then it occurred to me that my last lesson required swaths of paint over the spread before gluing things to it. That was the one suggesting the use of gouache but the color I wanted to spread on one side was more like what I was mixing up on the brush from the leftover green, blue and white paints. So the rest of the expending was done in the sketchbook. On the other side of the spread, I did get out the gouache paints for a wide vertical stripe each of red and yellow. Once dry, I started cutting from the teacher's sheet of vintage images and arranging them around my key "portraits" of dog and lovely vintage lady painting. This was the teacher that I felt gave such a poor presentation but I did decide to stick to her general instructions of background painting and even added a bit of paper ribbon, lace and braid as she suggested. I really enjoyed putting this one together, from the beginning knowing there's be reference to the dog's ball (which I'd thought would be shown on the opposite page but ended up being an unseen lost ball that the lady could see so very far down the slope). Working on this collage was a wonderful way to end up my studies with Sketchbook Revival.

Coming Up For Air

I hope my lack of posting hasn't been a cause for concern. All is fine here, only 4 confirmed cases so far in my county, people are being relatively good about staying in and keeping their distance when they aren't. Few are feeling the need for masking up but we've had a burst of pollen affecting my breathing so I pulled out this allergy mask for my walks. Won't filter out viruses or even smoke particles but makes such a difference keeping that pollen out of my lungs.

Carla Sonheim Box Journaling

While many unaccustomed to having so much free time on their hands are searching the internet for ways to fill it, I am in my usual state with so much pending and so much free stuff cued up to watch. Since my last post I've been head down getting through the Sketchbook Revival videos - 13 days of two lessons a day from as many instructors. The late start and few days when I could only get through one of the day's videos had me concerned about getting through it all before it would disappear. Fortunately, they always tag on extra days for catch-up, and I need them! Some teachers are repeats from last year, but most are new, and I am super pleased with how my handmade sketchbook is working out. One of the repeat teachers, Carla Sonheim, started off the sessions with a look into how she uses a box journaling technique to help her set the tone for her day.

Carla, of the sidewalk cracks jump starter of last year, also showed a similar exercise, this time with putting down blobs of paint on the page, one using a spatula and one using a credit card, then assessing the blobs for images. I had no trouble spotting a dragon-like creature in the top one, mostly just tracing around darker lines or patches. The bottom one was easy too. The lines and dark areas of that blob immediately reminded me of a flower and again all I had to do was use my pen to draw over the lines to make it obvious. This is the sort of "see an accidental image" thing I instinctively find myself doing a lot. Carla's take on this is that it can help you make the next mark which would be unexpected or something you otherwise would not have thought of. I can attest to that in my study of images in hand-dyed fabrics.

There were others giving suggestions of how to get to the crux of what you want to do with your creative time and how to stay on track. I didn't think I'd be interested in Chetna Mehta's commitment worksheet and discipline chart but after watching her video, I can see how this could really get me organized and back on track again, partly because it includes all parts of your life, not just the art part. So I may be spending some time with it.

Stephanie Lee relies on Word Wisdom to do what she calls calibrating her thinking which clears the fog and helps her get to the bottom of what's true and what isn't in the story she's telling herself. She does this with a word or two or a quotation that has caught her attention and then on further thought might not be as true for her as she originally thought. This gave me the chance to tie into a quotation that's been bugging me for awhile, sussing out the parts of it that work for me and the parts I don't think are helpful.

Several of the teachers jump start themselves with fun exercises like Noah Scalin's 100 dots - just 100 dots placed randomly on a page which you connect as you start seeing shapes or images. At first I was seeing nothing, and then I seemed to be seeing nothing but hexagons. I admit, I got influenced by what he was doing with his dots which were becoming a face as I began to get the hang of the exercise. This is one of those lateral thinking exercises that while you are concentrating on the exercise at hand with no particular outcome in mind, your brain unbeknownst to you is generating random stuff that might come out later as useful, or even generate something on the page that will be useful at a later date. He has a whole slew of similar activities to get that brain thinking new ideas.

Another teacher with ideas of how to shake ideas out of a too muddle brain is Mary Beth Shaw who works with "doodle sketches" art journaling. I first heard of this basic method as a design tool from art quilter Michael James but never had much luck with it the few times I tried it. It's based on making random lines across the page, then seeing how you can use the shapes formed. In Mary Beth's version, you collage and paint and stencil in these shapes and pen over some of the lines, paying attention to color, balance, and variety. Obviously, this is one I have yet to finish but I'm game to give it a try with my acrylic paints and stencils.

I really enjoyed Tamara Laporte's Quirky Happy Houses warm-up of last year and she was back this year with Quirky Birds which she uses to help herself and her students "embrace you, quirks and all". Her quirky birds are MUCH quirkier and elaborate than mine but I just couldn't get into the way she was approaching hers. I realized fairly quickly that I was making an owl (whereas hers could not be defined as any recognizable kind), but she kept saying, embrace whatever it is about yourself that you might be embarrassed about, a part of your personality you might think you should suppress, OWN whatever it is in this drawing. As I worked through my owl, thinking about how realistic it was compared to her bird and I didn't care, that was me, lightbulb moment - this is what she was talking about. I sat back, thought, yes, you are a very stodgy bird dressed up in your vest, and a bit precise too and I think that is pretty much me these days. I have more to do on this one too, which has a combination of pencil, watercolor, colored pencil and pen being used.

Watercolor seems to be very popular and there were ample sessions to work with it. The Doodlewash guy, Charlie Shields, was back, focusing this year on doodle-painting food. He showed us how to draw and paint whipped cream (and yes, mid-stream he admitted, "Huh, I think I just showed you guys how to draw a poop emoji - sorry about that.") which can be added to any dessert, but in this case a cupcake, I need to go back in and add the watercolor.

However, on Juliet Meeks "Paint Expressive Florals" there was no underlying sketch and I just followed right along with her demo. I obviously need more practice but I at least felt I was starting to learn different ways to use the different brushes. She supplied an inspiration photo, them promptly said she'd decided not to follow it very closely, and I wish I had paid more attention to the photo than to her rendition. But of course, I can always do this again. And I found it somewhat similar to a "paint a bouquet of flowers" from last year done with acrylic paints.

I learned even more watercolor techniques with Chiara Mazzetti and was relatively pleased with my rendition of her winter landscape. She stayed pretty true to the photo of a similar winter landscape she provided and by following her step by step instruction, I learned a lot about when to wet areas first, what order makes for the best results and when using crumpled cling wrap can make for interesting texture on a painted area.

And then there's my poor sunflower. It's supposed to be an end of summer withered one, but like Juliet, Ildiko Karasay deviated from the inspiration photo she provided, and I was so busy following her on screen that it didn't sink in until too late that she had substituted black for brown and done her leaves completely different from the photo. Never mind that my loose beginning sketch of the petals came out wonky and I goofed up on the leaf shapes. Well, if nothing else, it was an interesting lesson in layering watercolor from light yellow to the darker orangier shades. There was one other flower session, using regular colored pencils and watercolor pencils but it required working with a real petal from a flower so I decided to try that later when there are some blooms to work with. Yes, I took copious notes.

I always find it interesting to see how illustrators work and this year we had two different sessions on that. Last year, Nina Rycroft showed us how to draw a dog and then alter that basic shape to put the dog in different poses and animations. This year she showed how to go from a real rabbit to different types of illustrated toy rabbits and then again, how to make slight changes to turn it and animate it. You can just see my pencil sketch on the left, following Nina's directions.

For a different approach to illustration, Melissa Lee shared "fun exercises to get you started on developing character." She walked us through how to work with different basic shapes like a rectangle, a heart and others to end up with a head with a face. She also gave some tips of how to draw bodies for those heads, using block shapes to begin and remembering basic body proportions, after which you can start altering to make thinner or fatter or shorter bodies.

But a type of illustration I got really excited about learning more about was presented by architect David Drazil. I've long drooled over the urban sketches done by architects and now know a few of there secrets. David provided warm-up exercises and tips for drawing straight lines, circles, hatching, trees and shrubs and basic body shapes in proportion. I don't like adding people to my urban sketches as a general rule, but he explained how architects will use the addition of human figures both for storytelling and to help show the scale of buildings or landscaping as in our exercise drawing of a wall. Actually, pretty useful information.

And then things got messy. Karen Stamper was back. She's the one who had me flooding my page full of glued down strips and torn pieces of papers, masking tape and washi tape and some shapes from labels with inks to create a background for sketching. I liked my backgrounds too much to sketch over them but was fascinated by the process. Now she offered a dive into creating a wild garden in black, grey and white. And the messy part was laying down graphite pencil, crushed charcoal (I used my Art Graf since I didn't have charcoal) rubbing it in with your finger, and white oil pastel (I used Paint Stix) to act as a resist. We also were to tear a rough leaf shape out of a small piece of paper to use as a stencil, placing it here and there over the page while rubbing charcoal with your finger through it to make black leaf shapes. I was lucky to have an indoor plant to steal a couple of fresh leaves off of because then we were to press those into a black ink pad and stamp the image on the page. While the leaf was covered with a piece of paper while being pressed on the pad, ink still gets on the fingers when picking it off and placing it on the page. But goodness, I was so surprise and pleased with the delicate and clear image it left. Of course with collage, nothing goes to waste, so the scrap paper placed over the leaf on the pad now had a clear white negative leaf image surrounded by smudges of black ink. Those got collaged down and veins inked on. Lastly, any additional details. leaves and vines were added in pen, and the Art Graf used to draw heavy black grass lines. I really liked how this was turning out.

But that wasn't the end. No, Karen wanted the final step to be adding slightly diluted ink over the page, not as much as in last year's exercise, but enough that I wasn't sure I wanted to do it, having that "I don't want to ruin it" feeling I often get. But I forged on and bummer, I DID feel it ruined it, or at least made it into something different that I did not like as much. I lost the stark whiteness of the collaged leaves that I had liked so much and the ink pooled around the edges so that they no longer blended seamlessly with the background. I left a few areas unpainted with ink, as it looked like she did on hers, to mimic a bit of light coming through. Her very final act was to take a stick and dip it in ink so she could draw heavier briar-like branches across the page. I have a squared-off bamboo stick I decided to try and it worked really well and added a nice finishing touch. This exercise, I decided, was all about building up layers which frankly I am not very good at, so I learned a lot by doing this and seeing it build in front of my eyes.

Also messy, this "expressive portrait play" by Melanie Rivers. If you can believe it, the undersketch is done with your non-dominant hand, following her step by step instructions (she starts with the nose, moves to the eyes and eyebrows, then down to the lips before drawing the outline of the head and adding ears, neck, shoulders and hair). Then with two colors of acrylic paint plus white, you paint in the dark and medium value areas and highlights WITH THE FINGERS of your non-dominant hand. Honestly, I didn't like finger painting as a kid, like the thought of it even less as an adult, and that particular day, I just couldn't bring myself to get out the paints and take this next step. But I'm gearing up for it because I rather like her results!

Amanda Arneill practice sheets

Joanne Sharpe bold and colorful method

There were two session on lettering, each very different, each of interest since I've wanted for a long time to be able to do some of the fancy or more interesting lettering on some of my pages. Amanda Arneill showed her method of getting a brush lettering look with a regular pen while Joanne Sharpe focused on "whimsical watercolor word art" using a paint brush for bold letters, a drop and mingle approach for using two colors together and just going for it with a waterbrush. Lots of ideas for practicing your lettering in your sketchbook from both and Amanda offered additional free lessons which I will look into.

I'm not going to mention the teacher's name for this one because it was such a lame presentation. She was using gauche instead of watercolor which is something I've wanted to learn more about how to use but she gave no instruction whatsoever, and was one of those who seemed to forget people were watching as she just worked on her spread which was supposed to be demonstrating how to fire up your art journal. Well, there was nothing very fired up about what she ended up with and very little suggestions for us students. She did provide some vintage images to download which is where I got the dog illustration. I'm not much on vintage (which she apparently is) and didn't have any vintage portraits on hand to copy how she started her spread. I have since found this vintage-ish lady which I think will work well with the dog and have been thinking how to put my own twist on what she presented in order to get an art journal page I will like. It really was just basic collaging and background painting.

So I'm guessing if you are still with me, you may be feeling as tired right now as I felt as I watched my final video with the organizer of this event, Karen Abend. Just like last year, Karen suggested we use any of the techniques or combination of techniques we'd worked with through this series to make our final page, using a quotation for inspiration. Luckily, while I was looking through my little bin of collage materials, I ran across several of these plaque quotations I'd cut from catalogs, and one just immediately conjured up an image to go with it. It too needs more work (darkening around the plaque, maybe some stamped spirals), but the quotation, in case you can't read it says, "A simple act of kindness creates an endless ripple." This is so appropriate I think for the times we are living through. Even in our locked down state, social distancing when out reality, we can still engage in simple acts of kindness. It will make all the difference in the world.

One last word. Please, no comments telling me how talented I am. I just followed instructions, step by step, as I watched the demos. I really think almost anyone would have just as good if not better results if they did the same. Now if any of this gets channeled into a good original piece, THEN you can tell me I'm talented! And if you are interested in seeing a taste of last year's lessons, this blog post will do the trick.