Toad in a Boat

What’s a woman to do, in a world gone mad? The Three Muses Challenge this week is steampunkerie. I love steampunk, but wasn’t sure I’d have images that would work in my pile of magazine and junk mail clippings. I sifted through and found some things that seemed to fit when they were all put together in my collage journal.

If you’re interested in reading some steampunk, you might like Boneshaker by Cherie Priest. I enjoyed the Audible version.

Last night, it rained and rained and rained. There was thunder and lightening and the electricity kept going out. This morning, I’m hoping the sun will come out and put a sparkle to all the wet outdoors. No sign of it yet, but at least it has stopped raining. I think all the little frogs will be out enjoying the puddles today. This is my Whimsical Wednesday entry for this week. Prismacolor pencils in sketchbook.

Obviously, this is not finished and probably won’t be. I was working on it at night, which is my usual sketchbook play time, but I was tired and not paying much attention. I lost the highlights in the hair and was pretty much just scribbling in the background when I made myself stop. It may be salvageable after being in “time out” for a while. Perhaps it will show up again next Sunday looking better. If not, I’ll hopefully have something I’m happier with to show. I’m showing this for Sunday Sketches, just to prove I’ve been practicing, successful or not. Click on over there and see what everyone has been sketching this week. I’ll be back to check myself, after church.

The Three Muses have invited us to visit the Land of Odd with our art this week. I pretty much live there most of the time, anyway! I had fun bringing this gal to life. It took me a while to find just the right words in my pile of magazine clippings, but when I found them I knew there were the ones. This is also my entry for this week’s Whimsical Wednesday.

This week’s Take a Word theme is Architecture. This is collage, paint, pencil and a hand carved stamp in my collage journal. Click the image to enlarge it. Love this theme, so I’m off to see what everyone is making.

Over on the Classical Art forum of Wetcanvas.com, we are looking at the children’s illustrator Jesse Wilcox Smith – 1863-1935. I love her illustration of Little Red Riding Hood so for this week’s Sunday Sketches challenge, I did my own version of Little Red. This is about 5.5″ x 8″, watercolor pencil, in my sketchbook. You can click the image to see it larger.

This is my great nephew, Hayden, done in watercolor on a half sheet of cold press. I’ll crop it some when I have it framed but I haven’t decided just how much. I’m late getting this up for Paint Party Friday, but it is still Friday if only just. Now I get to go blog hopping and see everyone else’s paintings!

When I saw this week’s challenge theme of Fish over at Three Muses, I knew I wanted to make a page in my collage journal. I remembered saving this big fish image from a magazine way back. I glued in a friend to help him out and painted in a few details like the bobber and hook and bubbles. Then I looked through my box of words clipped from magazines to see if anything suited, but without really expecting to find anything. Better Luck Next Time just jumped out at me. Love me some fun fishy art!