i'm "published"!!

O...M...G...!!! i have been waiting every day for this to come and it finally arrived today in my mailbox... my march/april issue of cloth paper scissors... that has an article I WROTE in it!!! they requested a write-up for this piece after i submitted it for the artisan 2012 contest - here is the first page of it (it's not legal for me to publish any more of it - take it as a "teaser" to go buy a copy... if you ask me nicely, i'll order it wholesale for you ;) i seriously have every issue of this magazine ever made, and it is so amazing to me to be featured in it! it's been on my "dream" to-do list for the last two years "write an article for CPS" and now i finally had the honor. 

AAAAAHHHHHH!!! so crazy! :D thanks for letting me celebrate here! :)

reasons...

so... i didn't just give up. well, i kind of gave up. but it was for good reasons... i'm pregnant!!! found out on the second day of my art class, and started with "morning" sickness about a week later. i find it hard, if not impossible to be creative when i'm feeling awful. plus so exhausted. so i decided to just keep up with the info for each day of my 5-week class (the only thing besides SLEEP i could force myself to do during normally bliss-time: joey's nap). and then start over with week 1, day 1 after the class was over. 

i did end up finding time/space/non-sickyness in little bits and pieces, so here are a few things i made during the course of the class...

a journal assignment: we were supposed to draw as many "tree rings" as years of our lives. imagine my surprise when i was at 16, 17, and really thought i was almost "there", only to discover that was about HALF my life so far! i suddenly felt very old ;) so then i journaled, one line(ish) per year. later, i painted over the rings in colors corresponding to the general "mood" of my life at the time...

an assignment to find textures around the house - loved finding some of these things! and made me more aware of my world around me - more "present": an ongoing life goal for me...

another art journal assignment involving collage and paint...

step 1: collaged on the background, using interesting textures & colors (when i originally planned this spread, i had no intention of a figure in it, but then i found this one in a Butterick fashion guide from 1970 and had to use it :)

step 2: chose a color scheme and add a layer of paint. i don't usually try complementary colors, so i wanted to experiment with it in this assignment... i went with red & green! oh, and i did a little "finger" painting :)

step 3: collaged on some imagery (in this case different anatomical hearts) to be used as a base, and covered with paint for my final look.

step 4: painted... i intended these hearts to be an image of my heart and those i'm most closely connected to: my family... my husband, jason's, being on the right; joey, our 2-year-old below and between us, and the new little tiny one still connected to MY circulatory system (it was also hard to blog during this time because everything i was creating had something to do with this new little life growing inside me, and we hadn't officially widely announced it yet, so i couldn't post stuff!! so nice to feel free to do that now :)

i used a cross-section for my own heart to signify that in all this, i'm desiring to open my heart. let it be seen, give freely... 

the assignment was actually based around a journaling prompt: "i am...(color)". i looked up the meaning of the colors on a webpage misty had linked to, and immediately identified with red standing for courage and sacrifice, especially embarking on this new journey of bringing a second child into our family, and all that entails...

the piece turned out very... bright. :) and where it says "red" looks a little too superman-emblem-y to me, but it was definitely fun experimenting with color & texture!!

day 5 of the class: journaling. i think this is basically "putting it all together".
for this assignment, we journaled about what we've learned so far, and then drew, colored, and painted over it. this was the first portrait i've done without using a person or photo for reference. just made it up {intuitive, they call it}. i thought it was done when i took this first photo, but then it seemed garishly bright when i looked at it on the computer screen. so i added some white, and it turned into the piece below. i think this one looks more like me (or, at least, like a person in general), but i miss the colors of the first draft, especially in the neck area... all part of the process...!

expressive

this was a very quickly done "expressive" portrait (meaning it's not meant to be representational - not meant to look exactly like the subject in real life - it's supposed to express an emotion by the use of different marks and colors...) - i love it :) 

i started with a ten-minute sketch (with shading) using vine charcoal, and then i added color using water-soluble artist crayons. instead of wetting them with water afterwards, i just went straight over it with a layer of creamy white paint. i'll definitely be trying this set of techniques again! :)

what emotion do you see? just curious :)