2012/365 - Day 218

getting back to work on things I have been putting off

I have really dropped the ball on my end of the collaboration for Art-o-mat with William Hessian.  Today I finally started painting the edges of the little "portraits" that William delivered to me in late June (!) when he was here for the Arts & Acts Festival in Northville.

You know how much  I hate to paint...well, I really hate to paint (neatly) the edges of the MDF blocks -- they don't take paint easily -- and -- I am having to choose the edge colors myself (oh, poor Took).  Each time when Juana and I made an edition of Penciled In, she'd also pick the colors for the edges for me.  I think she even chose my edge colors on the last edition I did on my own -- LOL.  Yes, I have that much trouble with choosing colors.

Anyway...

Here are the first ten of the William Hessian collaboration edition.  One has pewter edges, the others have dark purple...I think it's called grape.  I really had to force and threaten myself to settle down and just finish ten...then I could take a break.  Ha -- that break has managed to fill the rest of the evening so far.  Ten down, forty to go!

But it's not like I am not doing anything else in the meantime...I'm just not painting edges anymore tonight.

My attention is now on the ATC's I should have figured out already -- the meeting is on Wednesday night.  The theme this month is "dream".   I usually like this theme, but I was having a bit of a hard time with it today -- it is feeling too broad of a topic.  How was I going to illustrate or represent the word?  Song lyric, quotation, drawing, eraser carving, collage...yikes!  I couldn't narrow anything down.

Then it hit me.  I just brought home my artist proof print of "This Bear Dreams" from the Northville Art House store...they are changing some of the art and I was kind of glad this hadn't sold...I wanted it back.  It inspired me at the last moment to try something.

When we were in the thinking stages of the yarn bombing (of the Art House) I looked online and printed out some pictures I liked.  After we were done with the photocopies I brought them back home and I was using the paper as a coaster for my ice coffee.  The condensation on the glass made a little puddle and pattern on the back of the photocopy...somehow changing the colors as it got wet.  I was going to toss the pages into the paper recycling bag when I thought they looked pretty cool.

Then I laid them all out face down on the studio floor, spritzed them (and played around with spritzing some glasses) and tried to recreate the effect.  I like how the colors look...sort of like water color washes.

This is an example of the "right" side of a water-ruined photocopy.

















This is the "wrong" side of the same photocopy where I have spritzed more water and set a glass down on it in several places.

It is strange and cool to me how the colors are different -- more blues and purples than the "right" side with the reds and yellows and greens.

This is the one I am practicing with and that I will keep for myself.

I found an area on the photocopy I liked and glued it to an ATC-sized playing card.

Then I started fooling around with an image of my printed eraser carving in my computer's photo program because I knew I did not want to print the actual eraser carving -- it is too large -- and while I was messing around I decided to do a mirror image of the bear so that he is facing the other direction.  Then I printed the reversed image onto card stock and cut him out.

For now, this is as far as I have gotten -- just gluing the reversed bear onto the flipped over wrecked photocopy paper.

I really like this so far...pretty dreamy.  I will be calling it "This Bear Dreams, Too" -- I am not sure what else I will do to it -- or IF I will do anything else to it (besides putting the title on it).

Happy accidents.

2012/365 - Day 178

time for William to go

Wow -- time really flew!  I can't believe William has been here for almost a whole week.  Tonight William leaves for Maine via Canada. 

Today I got to see the Miniature Art Hunt table murals before I gave them to Joan for the Art House...I hadn't unrolled them until today.  These are some of my favorite parts:

 Also today William finished up the first 50 (of 100) of the "Penciled In" mini portraits we are collaborating on for Art-o-mat.

 Later...William gave me some specific pointers for adding shadow to the two collages I am working on...to show me how to (hopefully, if I can pull it off) make the creatures look like they are popping more on the canvas.

And then...after dinner we played a few more hands of Magic: the Gathering.

LOL -- William used some of my decks and with this one, the card he was waiting for was the very last card on the bottom of the deck.  (Which happens to me all the time...LOL)

Well -- it has been a great week, but it really really went quickly.  Hopefully William will have some time to visit again when he makes his way back from Maine to Minnesota later in the year...if he does, we hope to do a semi-big Arto-Session with Juana and other local Art-o-mat artists.

2012/365 - Day 71

a variation on an Art-o-mat series

Today I am working on putting together a prototype for a variation of one of my Art-o-mat
series. Even if it is a series you have been doing for a long time, when you make a major change you need to do a new prototype.

A few years ago I started an Arto-series called "Penciled In". It was a colored pencil drawing on a smaller-sized version of the MDF block, packaged in an Artists in Cellophane box. Back then I did the series myself. I liked the series a lot, but we all know how I feel about coloring things...choosing the dominant color and then selecting the coordinating and contrasting colors while not losing the main object in the picture...I'm just not that good at doing it and I don't understand shading very well.

My artist friend Juana Moore hadn't done an Arto-series yet and we started collaborating on Penciled In. I transferred the drawings, Juana colored them, then I finished them off with painting the sides and making little twisty wire hangers for the backs. It went really well. We did several editions of the series and I added more characters. Juana started adding more of her own touches to the characters and it really made a big difference...they were great!

In between times, Juana did her own series for Art-o-mat called "Queens O' Scream" -- wonderful individually hand drawn portraits on MDF blocks of the horror film actresses she is so fond of. That went really well and she did a second edition.

Then we both started getting busier and Penciled In was set aside for a bit. We had done a LOT of those little guys! I really love collaborations and Juana and I agreed it would be cool for me to ask other artists I know if they'd like to do an edition with me, for a change of pace. Right now artist friend/fellow Arto-artist William Hessian is working on a set of 100 pieces, putting his spin on them. William is an incredibly amazingly talented and busy guy...check out his blog!

In the meantime...in order to keep true to my goal of making plenty of Art-o-mat art this year, I thought I would have a go at making a new kind of collaboration for Penciled In.

I have been feverishly tweaking drawings, working things out on the computer (not one of my strong suits) and putting the prototype together. You would not believe the ridiculous things I need to do in order to make something as simple as a border and print it out in the correct size...LOL. And re-sizing things? HA! I don't do this sort of thing very often, so that kind of compounds the "problem" and add to that the fact that I am in no way interested in taking classes to learn how to do things on the computer. I get by just fine most of the time...I know there are much easier and simpler ways if I would just take the time to settle down and learn how...but honestly, I would most likely forget how to do it the next time I sat down to do it again anyway...I just don't do computery things very often...and have little interest in it.

Wow -- okay, that tirade is over. Whew. Where was I...oh yeah...

What I plan on doing is making transfers on the blocks (as usual) but the collaborator will be the person who purchases the "kit" from an Art-o-mat machine. I will paint the edges of the blocks, include three teensy colored pencils, three blank coloring cards (on card stock) of characters from the series, and an information sheet on how the new owner can get their colored in block listed at the Penciled In blog.





This would be the placard for the series for the machines.


















This is what the box would look like.













And this would be what you'd get inside the box (except I haven't done the info insert or end label for the boxes yet).

I have chosen ten of my favorite Penciled In "The Youngsters" characters, young versions of: monster, dog, cat, robot, giraffe, panda, rabbit, bear, yeti, and Wolfy, Jr. (who can also be colored in as a fox).



I will finish all of this up tonight and mail it out tomorrow. I am really liking this prototype -- I sure hope it gets approved!

365 Day 211

almost ready to ship

I got farther than I expected to today in the process of preparing the Penciled In blocks and boxes for shipping to Artists in Cellophane, aka Art-o-mat HQ. I actually only need to put on the cellophane/acetate and put them in a shipping box...and take the boxes to the post office.



close up on the labels

















Last night I ran the pages that I printed the label images on through the Xyron machine to be made into stickers. Last night I also trimmed them and put half of them onto boxes.

This morning I put the other fifty on the boxes and bundled them all up.








There are 20 characters with 5 coloring variations of each. Because I already scanned them for the Penciled In blog and also posted the photos as entries with numbers on that blog I decided to do one more labeling step. It was a little tedious but in the long run it will make things easier for Carol when she pulls my artpacks for orders. She will be able to tell what is in the box and that will make it easier for her to give a host an assortment rather than possibly ending up with say 4 out of 5 of the cats with crowns in one order.


So I made a label that says in general what is in the box (young rabbit in this case). I also wanted to make it easier for new owners to identify their characters on the blog...so I made a label for that as well, leaving a blank spot for me to fill in as I packed the boxes.









ooh...pretty colors of tissue paper and cool mini moo cards









A Penciled In artpack labeled and ready to be stuffed with the block, info insert and mini moo card...all wrapped in tissue.










the five "big dog" art packs stuffed, and numbered/labeled











the box is starting to fill up...












THAT'S what I like to see -- 100 artpacks ready for acetate. I think I will probably do that tomorrow.

365 Day 185

good gosh I hate to paint

There is only one thing I can say to express my true feelings about having to paint. I think it was originally said by the incredible canine thespian -- Lila -- "hah-buh-buh-buh-buh-hah-buh-hah", while tossing her head expressively. (I hope I quoted her correctly.)

I really, truly went into this full of hope and with high spirits. I did the base coats last week sometime with Montana Gold spray paint. I wasn't thrilled with the results (or the intense paint aroma), but it put some color down for me. It's not the paint, it's me. I am not totally giving up on the spray paint, but I am done with it for now.




how they started out with the base coat of colors

















this guy is going to end up with 30 coats of paint...I can just feel it...LOL
















a gray wolf-creature? dunno...probably not


















this cat creature guy looks like he is glowing
















I don't mind him so much, but I am scared to do the eyes.















Perhaps a collaboration (with an artist who actually enjoys painting) is in order???? Yeah -- maybe!

Okay...I have 100 Penciled In blocks to scan now.

New batch of Kettle-y goodness arrived this evening!

Here is the teaser photo for the latest batch of Kettle-y goodness that arrived this evening for our Art-o-mat collaboration series "KT Goodlove".

This will be our 4th set of KT Goodlove blocks...and will start with #151.

A new character or two...a few I'm not sure what they are...this set will be a challenge!

I will most likely get started on my part mid-week next week.

Coolness abounds.

KT Goodlove # 149 and 150

Wow -- 150 collaborative collage blocks in three editions. Pretty cool!

This is the first time I have participated in a 2-block piece. It sure looked to me like this could have been one of those Kettle 2-to-4 block "sets" that he sometimes does. The blocks look good alone, but they actually go together to make a larger piece.

It seemed to me that the background lined up on these blocks, so I tried to make one large picture and still keep it so that the single blocks would make some sort of sense if they get separated.

That's why there is no Animal Person -- I couldn't place one to make "sense" (as if Animal People make sense to begin with) because I would have needed to make the separation in the middle of a face...or send a limb flying off onto the other block. Believe me, I tried to do it...LOL.

I like this end result and will most likely end up buying it myself -- just to have it in the Kettle and KT Goodlove collections I am amassing -- and because I am fairly certain it isn't likely to happen again.

These are blocks #149 & #150 in the Kettle and Took collaboration series KTGoodlove for Art-o-mat®. They complete the third edition of KT Goodlove!

KT Goodlove # 148

"They only did it to say they'd done it."

Yeah, like that fixes it.

This is block #148 in the Kettle and Took collaboration series KTGoodlove for Art-o-mat®.

KT Goodlove # 147

"the vibe is big - the room is small"

I can't tell who is saying that...and I like it.

This is block #147 in the Kettle and Took collaboration series KTGoodlove for Art-o-mat®.

KT Goodlove # 146

"wait -- what???"

Tennis balls, a bird, a cat jumping at the bird and balls, and she's on the phone. So distracting.





This is block #146 in the Kettle and Took collaboration series KTGoodlove for Art-o-mat®.