For One Moment - Little Snippets of my Life and Art...

Grapefruit and Cherry "Grapefruit on a Cherry Red Counter" I was demoing at Stampfest Summer in Lakeland, Florida this weekend and I had a little down time on Saturday night.   I pulled out my watercolor pencils and sketched a little scene for the ICAD Challenge on Daisy Yellow.   I'm on day #8 and the prompt was Grapefruit and Cherry. I found this little excerpt from a book, that seemed to fit perfectly!

Periodic Table No step-out photos tonight.  I decided to just take the time and enjoy the process.

Taxi Some more watercolor and sketching fun today. Drew my sketch and started laying down color. ...a little more shading. Then I used a Pitt Pen and started outlining the little details and now I have a Rickshaw "Taxi"

Owl I had a couple of busy weeks and have fallen a bit behind on my ICADs, but it's all good because I finally had a chance to play in my watercolors today. For ICAD #5 I pulled out my Winsor and Newton Watercolor Palette and some Twinkling H2Os and my little watercolor block.   I'm enjoying practicing and building my sketching and watercolor skills. I masked my little owl and tree branches and started layering watercolor washes in shades of blue for the night sky and shades of yellow for the moon. After that layer dried, I started layering in darker blues and blue black for the night sky. Then I let that dry and started with the dark greens and blue greens and giving the illusion of leaves in the moonlit night. A bit more layering of colors and it's starting to take shape. Now to let it dry so I can rub off the masking and add color to the branches and the owl. Next I peeled off the masking fluid so I can add color to the limbs...

Mailbox Had this one halfway completed for a couple of days, but got crazy busy with life...so I finally finished it up today. Now on to #5.

Map "My Town" ICAD #3  Pens, Doodle, Map  A map of just some of the things that can be found downtown on the waterfront of "My Town"

Carnival ICAD #2 Carnival I did today's card about a local hometown festival. This year marks the 113th consecutive annual celebration of GeorgeFest.  It is the longest running festival in Florida.  The theme this year was “From Sea to Shining Sea”.

Pens, Drawing and Chevrons ICAD #1  Pens, Drawing and Chevrons

I was inspired by CeeCee 's latest post to play with watercolor crayons.  I don't have any caran d'ache  watercolor crayons, so I used my Staedtler watercolor crayons. I was enjoying the process so much that I got a little carried away with the watercolor, but Hey I like it!! I really should learn to leave more white space though.   I do have to say that my carpal tunnel gave me a fit drawing all those little lines, but I pushed on through it and I have big fat flowers.   I did use  a golden Twinkling H2O's to add the metallic highlights.  You can't see it very well in the picture, but I can see it on my page and it gives just the right amount of glimmer. I'm not too keen on my lettering.  I should have just left like it was when I first wrote it and not tried to darken it.  Oh well, next time. I think I'm going to try this technique out with a few of my other mediums, like my Gelatos and Portfolios and my Twinkling H2O's t...

Grow

Welcome to the Mixing it Up loves Cottonwood Arts blog hop! This is a closed blog hop just for the members of the   Mixing it Up Every Day Face Book group so that we can get to know each other better. Having said that, if you are not in our group, please feel free to leave a comment anyway and come join us over on Face Book. We would love to get to know you better too. Sandee Setliff  Tiare Smith Woods  Martice Smith II  Tiffany Goff Smith  Anna Ely (that's ME!) Cat von Hassel-Davies Terri Sproul  Sharon D. Estes  Betty Guffey Richardson Tommy Jo Vilello Anderson Melissa Willard Edwards Donna Simmons Lueders  Jean Marmo  Tamiko McCurry  My initial background was created using blue and green Derwent Inktense Blocks  to create a wash on 140 lb watercolor paper. I used an old gift card and heavy body acrylics to scrape in green for the grass and milky white and blue for clouds in the sky.   ...

Pear Study #3 In acrylics...

Pear Studies #1 and #2 My poor, poor neglected blog.  It's been so very long and I should hang my head in shame.  My only excuse is that is has been a very busy couple of months... I know...I know...that isn't any excuse. All is fine on the home front, summer break is over  and my youngest heads back to school for her Senior year tomorrow and hopefully I won't neglect my little blog. At least I've been able to carve out some time at my art desk,  although I haven't blogged about it. This week I p ulled out my acrylics and did a couple of Pear Studies. It all started with a YouTube video that I watched by Bob Burridge on the Cheap Joe's YouTube channel on How to Paint a Pear Quick and Easy. Then Betty Franks, Mystic Tulip Mixed Media posted some Pear Studies that she had painted following his video.  She posted a couple of videos of her own explaining how she created one of her little paintings. ...after that I just had...

It's been many years since I dug out my encaustic waxes to play but lately I've been hearing them call my name.  It was a rainy day yesterday and I decided it was the perfect time to play. These are all done with encaustic wax blocks and an encaustic iron.  I've had mine for years, but I went searching the internet and found this distributor here in the United States.  http://www.encausticart.us/main.sc I don't have but about a dozen colors and some of the blocks are getting small, so I know I'll be putting together an order soon! These are done on Encaustic Card  and then sealed with and Encaustic Sealer both of which are available on their website, along with the iron I used. Sorry I didn't take any step-out pictures.  I was having so much fun I forgot until I was all finished playing.  OOPS!! I call this one Stormy Sea ahhhh....the joys of owning a cat.  I see I managed to get a cat hair in it.  Sigh... ...

Taking it back 10 Years My Handsome Fella with the Wild Hair.   Stacey - 9 Years Old

Throwback Thursday Tori - 2003 7 Years Old

Mariah 2002

1958 - Roswell, New Mexico Madelyn, Ivy and Anna

In the Heat of the Summer Had a go at acrylic finger painting today in my Art Journal today. I used the Week 14 Prompt for the Journal 52 Project  - Rain or Shine - which was to create a page about weather or your favorite season. It also meets the Week 7 prompt for The Documented Life Project which was to draw a shape and repeat it multiple times. I call this one "In the Heat of the Summer" I've had a whitish page that's just been sitting in my art journal.  I say whitish because it was a page gone wrong that I covered up with gesso.  The original color was a green Silks glaze and it wasn't quite dry when I covered it in gesso, so it tinted the gesso just a tinge of green.  I had taken different size bottle caps and twisted a bunch of circles in the wet gesso and had left it to dry. I've looked at it several time and wondered what I was going to do with it and so when I sat down at my desk today and opened my journal to that page, I decided I...