I might be crazy, but I’m joining the 29 Faces challenge at Ayala Art. Can I draw a face everyday in February? We’ll see. Little ones count. Any style counts. Even unfinished ones count. I’ll be away from home a good bit but I’ll still try to get something small and simple done on those days, even if it is a doodle face. They just may not all get posted on the day they were drawn. Why don’t you join me? It will be good practice!
This journal spread is the result of a couple of different challenges. My Art Journal Challenges group is challenging us to use wings on something that doesn’t normally have them, and it can’t be a person. At A Year in the Life of an Art Journal, the word prompt is Imagine, the stuff prompt is words or images from magazines, newspaper, ect., and the technique prompt is masks/stencils. This is what my imagination came up with. I love the idea of traveling and seeing new places but at night I just want to be in my own bed in my own house.
This is a work in progress that is still in the terrifyingly ugly stage. I hate stopping at this stage because it’s hard to want to pick it back up again to finish but I ran out of time tonight. She isn’t meant to be bald, I just haven’t decided what I want to do with her hair yet. and hopefully she won’t look so much like a zombie when I’m done with her. This is a cropped version because the whole thing won’t fit on my scanner and it’s too dark here for a photograph. Mixed media but at this point it’s just watercolor crayon and gesso. Maybe she’ll be looking a bit spiffier by next week’s Paint Party Friday.
Finally, the internet is back up! Yay! It was down when I got up at 7:00 this morning. My phone was out, too. And my son had my cell phone so I couldn’t even report the outage. And he had my car, too! I worked in my journal and carved a Strive stamp while the rain went drizzle, drizzle, drizzle.
A note to my Blogger friends: For the past 2 weeks, I’ve had a hard time commenting on a lot of the blogspot.com blogs. The page just reloads but nothing happens. The ones where I can post with my Name and URL seem to work (why don’t all of you allow this? It makes it so much easier for non-blogger users to comment!) but if I have to use my Open ID, it’s hit or miss. I even signed up with a different Open ID provider, thinking the one I was using was to blame, but no luck. Plus, the Open ID works on all non-blogger blogs just fine. Anyway, just wanted you to know that there’s some kind of problem there and I am not ignoring all of you, LOL.
I’ve been using my word of the year – strive. I wanted to sketch something before bed but the house was dark and I couldn’t think of anything interesting to sketch. I thought maybe a quick self portrait to practice faces. For me, if I’m trying to get a likeness, portraits are not quick and easy. But I remembered my word. I grabbed 2 colored pencils so I couldn’t erase and knitpick like I usually do and just went for it. I didn’t have a mirror so I used the front facing camera on my 7″ tablet and drew straight from the screen. The likeness isn’t perfect but it’s much better than I expected for a quick one-go sketch. I was proud of myself for making that effort and not finding something easier so into my journal it went. I saw the quote on Design Dreams by Anne and knew I wanted a copy of it in my journal so I would remember it. I’m entering this spread as my submission for the Artists in Blogland soul challenge.
This spread was fun to do because it started with a page from a catalog. It was a pile of cardigans. If you look closely, you can still see the buttons and text. I just liked the curvy lines so I pasted it in and colored over it with inktense pencils. I thought it looked like a strange landscape so I painted in a few clouds and waves and a little person standing on an outcrop.
 
Just a few random things drawn with colored pencil on brown paper, for Sunday Sketches in the morning. 🙂