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! :)

and THIS weekend...

jason took joey to sea world yesterday afternoon! and i stayed home, but wasn't feeling awful most of the time, so i got to draw... worked on some more portraits and figures, drawing from photos of people i know (mostly). before i started, i planned to have you guys see if you recognized yourselves in any of these drawings (i stole half of them from your facebook albums ;). but once i got into them, and saw how much i was butchering any resemblance to the beautiful women (and one handsome man ;) i was drawing, i decided to plead instead: DON'T see yourself in these! any apparent likeness to a known photograph is incidental and unintentional ;) i promise - you're all way cuter than i made you (these were each 10-15 minute drawings, so i guess if i'd put more time, i could've pulled it off... but i do not have that kind of patience ;)

this last one, i really don't know - i took her from the "secret museum of mankind"... her posture is totally different in the original - not all hunched-over - looks more free and strong... oh well. getting lots of good practice!

i heart unisom

i do. love unisom sleeptabs. i'm pretty much their spokeswoman. they worked like magic with my first pregnancy when i finally tried them at like 21 weeks. this time i started MUCH sooner - trying to keep up with a 2-year-old while feeling like that... was impossible. and since i knew of this magic drug... i started at like 7 weeks (i braved a whole week and a half of morning sickness without it). don't get me wrong - i'm still sick. just WAY LESS SICK than before. 

so, with my newfound ability to do (some) things (occasionally), jason graciously took joey to a museum last weekend & then to papi & nona's house (jason's parents)... so i got some "art time" all to myself!

and, as planned, i restarted my art class! reread from the beginning and rewatched Misty's videos, this time drawing along with her... so fun & relaxing!

week 1, day 1: drawing portraits & figures (these were all drawn following along with a video of Misty Mawn drawing - makes it much easier, seeing what marks go down where, when... although i am surprised how little they look like hers as a finished drawing...)

 i found portraits super-fun and addictive... and figure drawing much harder. getting all the proportions right...

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 :)

and today i drew him ;)

this class i'm taking is awesome. and insane ;) at least if you were actually expecting to complete it in the allotted 5 weeks - but she leaves it all up for a year, so there's not a huge time crunch! good thing, since the first DAY had like 8 assignments and this is the second one (draw someone you feel deeply connected to - my two-year-old, joey!)! and, yes, this is all instagram-filtered up ;)

class has begun!

first assignment is a self-portrait... i only watched a third of the videos misty posted for today, and after the first one on portrait drawing, i knew i had to stop and play with that technique before moving onto another (and hopefully finding a "favorite" way of expressing :)

 this was my first attempt (my first graphite portrait ever, i think! i did draw my face one other time a few years ago, but it was with charcoal - these are pencil). i was having a hard time seeing lights & darks so i turned off all the lights save one spotlight. this ended up complicating things, but i was glad to have the core shadows to highlights to practice with. this turned out looking NOTHING like me. i felt like it was because i started with the wrong proportions (eyes too big, too far apart, too low). so instead of using like a "universal" grid to shape my self-portrait, i made my own of my actual face (below) by placing a transparency on the bathroom mirror and drawing the grid (plus a few features) with a sharpie.

 so this second attempt at a portrait definitely turned out looking more like me. but they are both pretty angular, and the proportions still aren't quite right. but i'm going to bed, and i plan to try a more "expressive" one tomorrow (read: not a sour expression like these ones. guess i need more practice to get my emotions into the expressiveness of the portrait - cause i was super-happy when i was drawing both of these... can't you tell???  ;)