Pencil Shavings

You look Bovine

Having lots of fun with the cow print I'm making in silkscreen class.  I'm on my third layer and I have 3 more to go... 

It's still a struggle to print for me, I'm not sure I'll ever be great at it, but this is the first class I've taken since I came back to school that I have had fun in with every image that I made.

These cows are a great example of that... they are just fun and I've loved playing around to make them what I want them to be.

Even though I'm making fun images I'm still anxious for this term to be over.  I have some really fun plans for my art time once school lets out.  But, Shhhh, it's a secret.

On Being Grateful: #3 - Art Shows.

I got some really great news this week, My C3 Van Gogh digital painting is going to be in a digital art show at the Little Gallery (Little Gallery, 6th Floor, Art Parkade, University of Calgary) over the Christmas break   

My Media Arts instructor said that I have a bright future as an art forger wanted by INTERPOL .

I think that's a compliment.

I think the show starts on December 21st but I will post again when I have confirmation of the dates.

The University is really quiet during that time, but I would be really grateful if you could plan to stop by between rounds of gift shopping.

Stage 3: Fungi

In a desperate attempt to save my print I did an aquatint over the whole tree trunk to darken it, and then burnished the mushrooms up so they were lighter.

Adding in lots of hand wiping to lighten the whole open side and mushroom shapes and I came up with this.

It's still not totally what I had in mind, but it's a lot closer.  And I'm out of time to make a lot more changes to it.

I editioned this one and decided that it was good enough.  I have two more prints to create and edition in less than four weeks, so this has to be good enough.

Stage 2: Fungi

So I did a "sugar lift" and aquatint to get my bark texture.

But the print came out all wrong.  The mushrooms are falling back into the  bark and the shadows aren't working at all.

I was so frustrated.  I did print an edition of it anyway just in case I mess it up totally by trying to fix it, but this is not what I had in mind for my project.

NaNo-NaNo

A few winters ago I participated in the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) with the idea that over the month of November I would compete to write a 50,000 word first draft of a novel.  I completed the draft with a few words to spare and was happy to be done.

This year, for some absurd reason I feel like I should be trying it again.  I have no novel outline, I don’t have a vaguest idea of a plot and I certainly don’t have the time.  After all I’m a full time student and the work load for November is already looking unbelievable.  And I do have the Tiny Terrorists^TM to tend to.

So why do I have this nagging desire to start writing again?  It’s not that I’m not being creative.  I am majoring in art for god’s sake.

But there it is, I can’t deny it, I’m hungering for the feeling of keys under my fingers and worlds spinning out from my imagination.  There is something there that I can’t shake.  I really need to write and the more that I try to push it away the less I want to do of my other work. 

I know that I cannot complete the NaNoWriMo, but I am going to try and get a few creative bits out of my system before the end of the year.  After all there are some lovely writing contests to enter in the new year, and it would be great to have a short story (or two ) to fling at them. 

Meanwhile there are still several assignments waiting for my attention.

A Sound of Thunder

I have no excuse and I know it.

I haven’t written in the blog for months.

I haven’t really felt that I had anything important to tell you or to write about.  That hasn’t really changed (and way to go Kath as far as hooking the readers by telling them that you’re boring) but, I do think that I have a few things to say, and that getting back into the writing habit will hopefully help me to become a little better at a few things.

I did discover Google+ and found out that it can be enormously inspiring (that are about 76 Bajillion artists on there) but also completely time sucking, so I need to figure out when it’s OK to let the time suck happen and when it’s not.  My school work has been very intensive this term as well.  Printmaking is just lots of work.  It’s physically demanding, and everything takes time.  The other thing about it is that I can’t do the work from home, like I could last year.  I have to be in the studio working (which is probably just as well, who needs to deal with acid baths, paper racks and giant presses in your 500 sq. foot basement?)

And my media arts class (AKA PhotoShop class) is a giant time vacuum too.  I have discovered that there is nothing in art I can do on PhotoShop that I couldn’t do in a third of the time by hand.  Technology doesn’t always save us time, but it does have that marvellous undo feature.

Wouldn’t it be great to have a giant “Let me take another crack at that” button in our lives?

There are a couple of things I would take another shot at.  Not embarrassing that guy in the cafeteria 21 years ago… that was really not required, and I regret it.  Making a better choice for my vacation that one time.  But I guess really, I wouldn’t undo any of it, because like the butterfly in that Ray Bradbury story, I wouldn’t want my life to have turned out any differently.

A New School Year

I'm working on a set of self-portraits for my Relief/Intaglio Printmaking Class.  Each self-portrait will be made on the same plate as the previous one.

Here is one of my preparatory sketches.  My husband says it looks like me... I guess that is a good start.

Days Off Mean a Ton of Work!

I have been busy volunteering at the school and trying to find the house under the piles of clutter that I have everywhere.

I am quite likely a typical mom.  I have time off and I fill that time with stuff that needs to be done, instead of enjoying the spring sun on my face, or reading a good book, I find myself hip deep in dirty sheets, or cleaning out the cupboard that is full of plastic containers that don't have lids.

Today I'm washing those dirty sheets and hanging them on the clothes line in the spring sun (hey at least I'll feel it while I'm out hanging the sheets!)  then I have to run out and pick up supplies for my oldest daughter's school project, and deal with book work for our families company before figuring out dinner and taking the kids out for a bike ride (I need to teach the youngest how to stop her bike without jumping off of it.)

Meanwhile, on the weekend I worked up a tutorial for making watercolor panels to paint on (like those Aquaboards that I sometimes see in the store) with that groovy sample of Daniel Smith Watercolor ground.

If you want to see how I made it head over to my Squidoo page and check it out here. (Make Your Own Watercolor Panels )

Go aheaad and give it a try.  Making your own stuff can be so much fun!

Tap, Tap, Tap.... ahem... Is This Thing On?

I have some thoughts on the end of my first year back at University and on turning 45.

The term officialy ended for me today.  But I still need to turn in my portfolio for one class for marking.  It's not a big deal, and I really should start getting my gear out of the lockers anyway, and I need to have everything cleared out by the 29th.

The Art Department had an open house yesterday and I spent all day on my feet, either hanging pieces of art, being in a critique, or touring the open house.  When I finally sat down for dinner last night, sitting felt very strange.  I was so tired that I nearly nodded off in my salad.  Even a coffee after dinner couldn't prevent me from toddling off to bed at 8:30 and sleeping solidly through the night.

This first year of school was a lot harder than I dreamed it would be.  I knew I would have to work hard, I didn't realize how hard thought.  If I declare a studio concentration then I'll have to put in even more work (and hours at school), and I think that with the situation at home the way it looks like it will be in the fall, I may stick to a regular program for now, and wait a bit before deciding if I want to go for the studio designation or not.

I am going to miss a lot of my school friends. I hope that I'll see some of them in the fall when we go back.  Taking 3 courses a semester instead of 5 means that many of them will be off doing other things when I'm working through the required courses.  But the department is small and I'm sure I'll see them in the halls at least.

I gained five pounds this term, and probably most of it over the last month when there was a lot of pizza and chinese food on the menu.  But (hopefully) summer is on the way and more time walking and being outside will help a lot.

I turn 45 in a week and a half.  Coming back to University now was a great thing for me and my family.  I'm a lot happier, my kids are way more independant, and my husband is happy because I have something interesting to talk about at the end of the day.  Of course the housework took a big hit this year.  Lots of stuff fell behind as I made priorities.  But I would do it all again in a heartbeat... actually I will do it all again, in September.

The Coffee Sure Tastes Good This Morning

"The coffee sure tastes good this morning."

My mom says that all the time.  Today I think I know what she means. Usually in the morning I'm so busy, getting lunches, packing backpacks, getting breakfasts, locating homework that has wandered away (both mine and my kids') that I just pour the coffee into my cup and either let it go cold while I'm running around, or toss it down my throat on my way to do something else.

Today is a designated morning off for me.  I decided this last night while I was working on making postcards.  I haven't had enough time to do things that make me peaceful.  I've been really happy doing school work and being busy, but that isn't the same as being peaceful. 

My new project for school is about the noise of society and technology.  It's about how we lose our inner peace, how we lose the divine that is inside us while we are busy being busy in this noisy modern world.  (the project is due on Thursday and I'm just a stamp or two away from being done).  While I have been busy creating these two paintings that are full of visual of noise, I have felt increasingly unsettled, cranky even.

So I have put them away for today.  As close as the end of term is, I still need a day to find that peaceful space inside of me.

I have listened to the kids laughing and playing, I sent my early riser husband back to bed to fight his cold, I can hear the grunty snores of my cat, as I sip this still hot cup of coffee.  You know, the coffee tastes really good this morning.