DAISY YELLOW - ICAD 2015, WEEK 1

For the third year, I am participating in Daisy Yellow's Index-Card-A-Day (ICAD) challenge.  The challenge started June 1st and continues through July 31st, so we have 61 days of creating art.  The idea behind using index cards is that 1) they are inexpensive; 2) they are not precious; and 3) to help get you in the habit of creating some kind of art every day!  Prompts and themes are given a week at a time. There are no deadlines, no pressure--just the joy of a suggested prompt and/or theme and the freedom to create what you like.  You can go with the prompts, or not.  Of course, keeping it up every single day is difficult sometimes, and often I will do several at one time because of my hectic schedule.

You can come on over and join us .... it's not too late. Just dive in and get started!  You can always go back and catch up from this past week.  There's a linky over on the right side of the blog or you can find the group here.


This is my 2015 ICAD cover card.

Warm-ups  Prompts were: Work an analog puzzle or game, Write 3 Haiku poems, Take your Index Card(s) on an adventure, Create a Mobile ICAD station, Make a Grid, Draw/sketch/doodle something from the 1920's or '30s, Top Ten List, Imperfect Circles, Create a 6-pc Jigsaw Puzzle, Write your name of word of the year in Doodly letters.  

First  warm up prompt - Analog puzzle. I usually work an electronic Sudoku puzzle every day (brain exercising), so I just started a new one and transferred it to an Index Card and then worked it.  Messy yes.  Did it need to be perfect?  No.

Next up are my three Haiku poems.  I love Haiku, which we were to do in 5-7-5 tamber. 

Take your Index Card(s) on an adventure.  The day of this warm up, I was exhausted, so I just took my card out to the deck, with a fresh cup of coffee and a Sakura Gelly pen & my micro & bold Signo Uniball pens.  Highlights added after the coffee was gone with Cool Gray Copic marker and a pencil.

Mobile ICAD Station _ aka Traveling Art Kit

This is my traveling art kit, made with a freebie case I got from Merle Norman several years ago at Christmas time.  I have wagged this thing tons of places, road trips, and even just out to the deck. So nice to grab and go.  I always keep it stocked with:  a basic set of Sakura Gelly pens, a Bold Signo Uniball, some acrylic paint, index cards, scissors, tape, glue stick, magazine images, some found words, a few stickers & rub ons, some assorted ephemera, 3 different paint brushes (a liner, a #4 round and a flat), a 1 ounce container of water; some gesso in a pill bottle, my Koi Field watercolor set (with waterbrush), and some assorted size cuts of watercolor paper and a pencil bag with colored pencils. Tucked in the inside pockets I have some small stamps and a couple of mini stamp pads in black and a dark brown. I glued an envelope to the lid where I keep many small, flat items.  My journal will slip right in for longer road trips and things.  And I can add to it or decrease items as I need to do so.

Make a Grid.  I love making grids. I use them a lot to document my art supplies (paint, markers, etc). This time, I just went grid crazy a little bit while watching television with the hubs over a couple of evenings.  Watercolor, and Copic markers (which I had never documented these color families)

Draw or sketch something from the 20's or 30's. This prompt I found a bit difficult, since I cannot draw.  Also, I do not recommend you draw or select colors while trying not to wake the husband in the near-dark of the bedroom. You can get some very random/odd colors digging into a dark pencil bag that way. But I gave it a shot doing an image and some shapes from the 1920's and 30's.

    

 Top Ten List.  I am a copious list maker by nature.  Some may call it obsessive-compulsive disorder, but as I age, I find that I must have these lists to stay on top of what I need to accomplish and not forget what I am supposed to be doing.  I even have redundant lists of lists.  Ok.  So I am OCD.  But this Top Ten List was just for fun.  We were challenged to use different instruments/media for each item on the list, which I accomplished.

Next up was Imperfect Circles.  I love drawing circles, stamping circles, stenciling circles.  I find them to be very relaxing, no matter how you do them.  Both of these are done with pan watercolor.

Six-Piece Jigsaw Puzzle.  We were challenged to create a 6-piece jigsaw puzzle out of multiple index cards and then put it back together. (this one is not quite finished) :-(

And the last "official" warm up exercise was to write your name or word of the year in doodly letters. I actually did two, one on an index card, and the other as a tip-in for my journal.  Micro and Bold Signo Uniball pens and pan watercolor with #4 round brush

I did a few others, just for fun, and not in response to any prompt.

You know this is my favorite!

Memorial Day - and poor spelling or brain phart!

Erased words as a test on graphite

ICAD WEEK ONE

I always create a cover card for each week of the ICAD challenge. I can grab it when I am on the go and have a handy reference when out and about. It also serves to make a great weekly "divider" during the 61 days of this challenge.  While I write the prompt and media on the back of each ICAD created, it is nice to refer back to what the theme and prompts were for the week.

#1 - Chevrons

I used inexpensive lightweight spackling for the "texture paste" through a chevron stencil on this card.  You can buy a half pint of the stuff at the big blue box store for under $2.00 as opposed to the very expensive artists' modeling or texture paste. Works great. Dries fast. Mixed with color wonderfully and takes inks superbly.  This was created with Dylusions Ink Sprays in Funky Fuschia, London Blue and Bubblegum pink.  I actually dabbed on the Bubblegum pink onto that top chevron and it soaked up the color quickly, and spread quite nicely onto the dry spackling.  I just used the bottle end of the squirter thing.

#2 - CARNIVAL

My favorite memory of fairs and carnivals as a child was the cotton candy.  I didn't have much time as you can see by the simplistic nature of this card, but hey! we're not making museum quality art here. We're having fun and creating!  Watercolor.

#3 - DRAW A MAP

I love pre-printed maps, but I really don't like drawing maps.  Tammy Garcia (Daisy Yellow) must love maps because we always have at least one in our prompts. LOL.  My map is the Road to Discovery and is creativity-process based.  My road is filled with lots of coffee breaks, alternate plans, switchbacks, failed efforts, procrastination and finally to success! Watercolor, Prismacolor Pencils, Spectrum Noir markers and Micro Signo Uniball pen.

#4 - MAIL BOX - I love my rural mail carrier and sadly she is moving away at the end of June. The good Lord only knows where my mail will end up while they find her replacement. I have already begged the postmaster to give us someone really great like Jodie!  Prismacolor pencils, Micro Signo Uniball pen.

#5 OWL -  I find owls fascinating. There are so many kinds. This is the rarest of them all, the ever-elusive brown Texas Owl-cat.  hahaha.  Micro & Bold Signo Uniball pens, pan watercolors.

#6 - TAXI - Many moons ago, I visited New York City on several occasions and was always fascinated by the sheer volume of taxis available there.  Hardly anyone drives their own vehicles in Manhattan.  Here in north Texas, finding a taxi is like finding teeth on a chicken...impossible!  I like to use these kind of opportunities to practice my mediocre-at-best drawing skills. But if you don't practice, you don't get better, right?

#7 - PERIODIC TABLE - I thought creating a periodic table would be easy.  But regular periodic table of elements are soooooo boring, and way to science-y for me.  So I made one up!  Prismacolor pencils and Micro signo Uniball pen

So that's it for the start of ICAD.  I'm looking forward to the ensuing weeks and carving out at least a few minutes out of every day to create something, play with some of my supplies, experiment and just have a little fun.  Consider joining us at Daisy Yellow.  You will probably see many people you know there!

As always, I'm keepin' it artful!

~~Betty
aka Arty Auntie

ARTFUL JOURNEYS - WEEK #21

Wow! Memorial Day is here already.  The jump starter to summer, vacations, heat, swimming, family reunions, gatherings and all the fun stuff we cram into a few short months. But this weekend amidst all the food and fun, we need to stop and remember those who have gone before us and made the ultimate sacrifice for us and for our country.  I give thanks to them and remember them in my prayers. Nearly every generation of my family has served, and now the younger ones are following. From the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, WWI, Korea and WWII, my family has proudly served, and continues to do so. We had no one in the immediate family serving in Vietnam, but we are grateful to those who did and made those sacrifices.



Meet my handsome great nephew, Joseph, who is in the Navy, currently stationed  in South Carolina.  We are so very proud of him and the commitment he has made.  He was home on leave this week and present today (Saturday 5/23) for his sister's wedding shower, so he got lots of loves, kisses, hugs, "atta-boys", and congratulations from all of us. He left in December for basic training, followed by another school and now another, so we were all very excited to see him.  This great Auntie could not be more proud of this young man.  We are seeing so many wonderful and positive changes in his life and know that he is going to have an amazing career in the Navy, and all our buttons pop off with pride for his strong faith, his leadership skills, maturity, honor and integrity.  Well done, Joseph!

Let's get started on this week's prompt -- CIRCLES. Lots of circles. I had a lot of fun with this.  We love circles in our ARTFUL circle. <wink> Mostly I played with circles this week, almost always very late at night (or should I say morning) while trying to unwind so I could go to bed and try to sleep.

This first spread is all wonky circles -- perfectly imperfect.  Sure, I could have used my circle cutters or punches, or even a stencil. But I needed some down time with just me, my pen and a couple of other mediums while chillin' in the recliner.  I worked on a piece of 9x12 Bristol. The circles were all first drawn out with a Sakura Gelly pen, then I painted each circle and circular intersection with watercolor.  I followed by embellishing with Caran D'Ache NeoColor II and smudged some areas with my fingers and others I wet with a #6 pointed round brush.  I then added more NeoColor II to the background and did wet all of it with both a wide flat and a #6 pointed round.  Lettering with a white Signo Uniball.

After I finished this one, the next evening I still felt the need to make some more circles.  So I did. Again, nothing fancy or inventive.  Just focusing on the circles, the pen and the paper. The circles started by making random circle marks all over the page with a Sakura Gelly pen. Intersecting some, others not.  This time, I went with specific color families of blues and greens with my trusty watercolors and NeoColor II's.  Lettering with a #1 fine liner brush and white acrylic paint, varying letter sizes, density and style to create a little bit more interest.

Both of these pages have been tipped in to my Canson mixed-media journal.  I chose to do them independently, thinking I might actually cut them up, but decided to just include them in my journal. Looking at them makes me happy.  And they really, really, REALLY helped me to relax when I needed it the most.

ICAD-Warm Up #8

Also this week, as a warm-up to ICAD 2015 at Daisy Yellow, "circles" was one of the warm up exercises.  If you don't know about ICAD (Index Card A Day), this is a fun thing to do in the summer to force yourself to create art every day during the month of June and July.  ICAD starts June 1st, and this is my third year to participate.  We're not making fancy art. It isn't a competition.  It's more about the DOING. The CREATING.  We are using ordinary index cards, that are inexpensive, flexible and we use whatever supplies you have on hand.  This is the brainchild of the remarkable Tammy Garcia and she is quite inventive with her 61 days of prompts.....making us push the envelope and often think outside the box with technical and creative challenges.  Sure some of the prompts may be something we've done before, but for those, I try to do something different with them.  Pushing the envelope or getting out of my comfort zone. Some prompts can take just a few minutes to complete, others perhaps a little more time, but none are so challenging that you cannot complete them each day during the two month challenge.  So if you are interested, click on the linky over there on the right side of my blog and check it all out. Maybe you will play too.

ICAD 2015 - Warm Up #8

I couldn't do just one of these either, and actually my page for this week's prompt was inspired by the first one I did for ICAD, as you can see above.  This second image is a watercolor blending technique I also learned from Tammy at her Watercolor Playground workshop.   Very relaxing, blending these very wet watercolors.  I need relaxing right now.  And this week, circles came to the rescue.  For  both of these, I am using the plain manila tab-top 4x6" dividers.  I like the thickness of them for use with wet media.

So there you have it.  My circles for the week. Soft. Wonky. Imperfect.  And it's all good.  This week was more about play and less about thinking. Just the doing.

Now just do yours.  Get some relaxing done yourself, then show us your version of this fun!

Be sure and see what Melody, Tamie and Shana are doing by visiting their blogs. You can find the links over at ARTFUL CHICKS.

Happy arting!

~~Betty

ICAD WEEK 1

I am behind on posting pictures from the fun we are having over at the Daisy Yellow ICAD Challenge, and am running behind on completing week #2.  We are only in week 2 and yes, I'm already behind.

Week 1's "theme" was "Text" and purely optional on our cards.  I used it some, depending on the daily prompt.  I like to follow along with the prompts for the most part. Sometimes I go off on a tangent, but so far, not yet.  

Our prompts for week one were:
1.  Prism
2.  Circus Tent
3. Hello my name is
4. Puzzle
5. Galaxy
6. Nail Polish
7. Yellow

If you look at them collectively, you think you could never do it. But that isn't the challenge. The challenge is to create something on an index card EVERYDAY.  You know, life happens and some days you maybe do 2 or more.  Some people fly through all 7 prompts so quickly it makes my head spin.  I like to think about what I'm going to do and occasionally I do skip over one until some kind of inspiration hits me.  But I always finish the week and do all 7 cards.

Here are my cards, in order, for week 1.























1. PRISM -- Copic markers

2. CIRCUS TENT - Copic markers, Sakura Gelly pen, Sharpie, Uniball Signo

3. HELLO MY NAME IS -- I found a neat drawing on Pinterest that was my inspiration for this and tried to emulate the shape and perspective. Drawn first in pencil and then with Sakura Gelly Pen in Black.  I then scanned it and digitally added what I believed to be more positive attributes (my goal this year has been to focus more on the positive things in my life) and realized that without some of my less-than-stellar qualities, it wouldn't be an honest assessment in this snapshot of who I am.

4.  PUZZLE.  Just deciding what to do for this one was challenging for me. My first idea was to do a crossword using art buzz words.  That was a fiasco.  So, for this piece, I glued a piece of graph paper to a 4x6 index card and colored in random boxes with Copic markers, added the puzzle piece and the quote with Sakura Gelly pen.

5.  GALAXY.  The first problem I found with this prompt was how on earth (pun intended!) would I interpret this??  The wallpapers on my desktop are some rotating NASA images from the Hubble telescope, so I drew inspiration from one of these images which is a Nebula, in the process of "exploding" for lack of a better term.   This is also on a 4x6 index card, done in Acrylic craft paint in Admiralty Blue, Kings Gold, Pale Daffodil & White.  I added some gold acrylic glitter paint to the enter of the nebula in my galaxy.  Sadly, after scanning it doesn't show up that well, but the effect in person is, well....... shiny.

6.  NAIL POLISH.  Last year I purchased a bunch of wild nail polish colors so that I could color code a bunch of keys, including a bright neon yellow, neon pink, neon orange, and electric blue.  Traditionally when I was getting my nails done, I almost always wore red or raspberry colors.  I drew the outlines in pencil first, then with Sakura Gelly pen, then painted each section with these various colors of polish.  In my stash, I also found a glittery gold top coat which I painted onto the yellow colors and a heavy metal flake in silver that I painted on top of the electric blue.

7.  YELLOW.  My love of sunflowers runs long and constant. They make me happy.  I draw them a lot. I send them to people, both real and artisically.  This piece is also 4x6 to which I mounted a piece of a vintage agricultural book page, then hand drew the sunflower with Sakura Gelly Pen.  I colored it in with Copic markers in Yellow Ochre,  Africano, Light Camel, Atoli, Maize, Cadmium Yellow & Lemon Yellow.  Additional highlights added with a black china marker, smudged with a pencil eraser dedicated solely for this purpose (keeps from getting the fingers so dirty!).  The found poetry  and edges were embellished with my trusty Scarlet Lime pen.

So, week one has come and gone, and week 2 is almost over.  I'm still finishing up this week's prompts and will share all my little creations for you in a few days.

~~bgr

DIY GELLI PLATES

Printing background pages on the Gelli Plate is one of the latest rages in the art journaling and art community. You can create dozens of pages in just a few minutes and this method offers tons of variety with unlimited options for experimentation with your stencils, objects, shapes and mediums.

Tammy Garcia from Daisy Yellow is featured today on The Crafty Crow, A Children's Craft Collective with her DIY Gelli Plate tutorial she made back in February.

I have the 12x12" Gelli plate and love using it. I just haven't in a long time and need to drag it out and get some more backgrounds made to use in my journaling, to share in happy mail swaps and other projects.

If you are interested in making your own, it is inexpensive to do so. All you need do is run to the grocery store and buy up some unflavored gelatin and follow the instructions. This particular DIY version will last about a month.  How many hundreds of pages can you make in a month?

Midnight Challenge

Tammy Garcia at Daisy Yellow has started a Midnight Challenge, and we have had two so far.  Many of you know I have terrible insomnia so this is right up my alley!  Being up to create at midnight is a no-brainer for me!

The first challenge on March 12 was to create 3 lines of found poetry on an index card. Each line must contain numbers and words.  This was my entry, clipped from the pages of Vogue magazine, always great for journaling fodder.

Last night's challenge was to again use an index card and create a story in 25 words.  Wow. This was more challenging.  I can't do hardly anything in 25 words or less.








I am sure this is all, and excitingly so..... leading up to Tammy's Index-Card-A-Day Challenge (ICAD) which begins June 1st.  I participated last year and it was so much fun!  There were technique challenges, drawing challenges, painting challenges...challenges of every kind imaginable for 61 glorious days.  We are all excited to begin ICAD again this year.  Be sure and join us over at  Daisy Yellow so you can have our same kind of fun this summer.  Tell her "Aunt Betty" sent you!  LOL!

Happy creating!