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!

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...!

sculpted

 i've never sculpted before yesterday (besides the occasional playdough veggietales character for my son ;)... watched a couple of videos from my class, and it looked super-easy... 

yeah, not so much... especially faces. 

i do love this simple little worshiper-woman...

 especially the little crown of rosetted bedecking her crown...

 but this is what she looks like today - somehow her lips disappeared, and her entire bottom half is cracked. guess i have some things to learn ;) i was hoping she'd dry by today so i could paint her... but i guess i'll be filling in cracks and letting those dry first! and making some lips?