Old Art Projects

Here is a little kitchen set I painted a couple of years ago for our nephew. My husband built this for the day care our church had. When it closed, we got it back, but it was in need of a make over.
John really likes it. He still plays with it a lot.
This is scenery for an Easter play at church. It was dressed up with a rustic table and chairs and some urn and such later.....I don't think I have a picture of it though.

I did these a couple of years ago. But I have a limited time today, so I thought I'd post something I already had ready to go.

March Calendar

All calendars all the time. I'll have to fix that. Anyway, here is March. I wish I was better at fooling with the colors in photos, because it's really more bright and cheerful than it looks here. It's been a dreary month and I suppose I was attempting to combat that.

EDM Challenge 87: Draw Lunch

I always keep peanut butter and crackers in my office at work because I'm usually running too late to make lunch......and I'm too cheap to order out everyday. I've put the Copic markers in my desk drawer too. They are a fast and fun way to add color.

February Calendar

I've been drawing more, and I did another calendar for the month. I like doing these...just a little doodling a day and presto! A little diary of the month.

Love makes the (blog) world go round!

Margaret at Water Blossoms honored me with this award. Thank you Margaret! I love her blog too....every time I visit I want to run and grab my sketchbook and draw something. She's a wonderful artist. This is my first award...exciting! I'm supposed to pass this on to 5 bloggers whose sites I love to visit.

1. Andrea Joseph's Sketchblog: Want to be inspired? Go see her wonderful sketches! I love her drawings of collections of small things!

2. Julie's Pictures: Julie is a marvelous artist. She captures her family and friends in wonderfully loose sketches...someday I hope to be able to do that! She also encouraged many of us to get off our duffs and walk for exercise by linking it to drawing. I didn't stick to it as I should have, but I enjoyed what I did and now I always carry my tiny moleskine when I walk.

3. Felicity's Philosophies: You will just have to check her out......Felicity is a master with the pencil and she just started using colored pencils with the most amazing results. You will be astounded. Felicity also lives in some wonderful places and her photos let me travel from my desk chair.

4. So Many Stars: Kathleen just got set up in a studio space away from home. Her blog is always inspiring...from journal pages and paintings to collages and stamp carving. She'll inspire you to do something creative today.

5. Learning Daily: Cin has a wonderful blog. You'll be charmed by her sketches of the people and places of her life!

The participation rules are simple:

1. If you get tagged (and want to play along) write a post with links to blogs that you love, too.

2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme, created by Emilia.

Drawing myself to sleep

Well, Joe is working nights and I don't sleep as well when he's not here. So I stay up late reading and drawing until I pass out. Of course then I'm pretty tired the next day. But at least I'm not having to turn my whole schedule around like he is. Ack, now anyone who reads this knows I still sleep with a stuffed animal occasionally. And of course I sleep with this one too:

Drawing Vintage

I'm drawing at the shop, and there's plenty of old interesting stuff to draw! I have lots of these old cabinet cards and I may start drawing these faces from the past. I'd be good practice...and none of the subjects will care if the drawings turn out or not!
This is a cute little sterling pin. I was trying to capture the reflective quality of the metal. This will be EDM challenge #32: Draw something metallic.

Back at it...

Our new puppy dog, Hawkeye. And a drawing of him. I'm feeling verrrry rusty because I haven't been doing much sketching. But I'm sure a few days of sketching and I'll start seeing better again.
I got a cool new journal/sketchbook made from a recycled book. Some of the pages are from the book and some are plain white.

Valentine Swap

No drawing on these, but they were really fun to make. I used Moleskine cahier notebooks and collaged pieces from old children's dictionaries on them. These are my handmade valentines for the valentine swap at this flickr group. When I get all of mine in the mail I'll post a pic of what I received.

January Calendar

I'm going to try and do a calendar each month. I'm putting these in a bigger book so the squares are large enough to write in. These are not "to-do" calendars like the one hanging on our kitchen wall. These are "what I actually did" calendars. At the end of the day I'm writing a few lines about what we happened. I was inspired to do these sometime last year by TracyU. Go see her calendars...they're amazing.

Library Showcase

The library features citizens' collections in this showcase. Mine is a different sort of collection...I filled it up with art journalling. Click to see it closer. Since they can't flip through the books, I made color copies of many of the pages. Maybe someone else will catch the bug.
Decorated my new Moleskine with paint pens. Worked pretty well. Sketch is of my office at work.

Tagged!

Felicity tagged me for this little game...tell 7 facts about myself and pass it along to 7 other bloggers. Be sure to visit Felicity's blog if you haven't before...she is a master with the pencil.

1. I love dogs....so much personality and always so eager to love you and please you. I have lots of little dog figures and art around our home.
2. I attended Purdue University....holy cow, 25 years ago. I did 2 years, got married and never went back to complete my degree. I never did stop learning...lifelong learner....keeps you sharp (I hope).
3. I was raised in the American Baptist Church and am still a Baptist. Contrary to popular belief, many Baptists are fun folks who are or aren't teetotalers (I'm not). We dance, play cards, tell jokes and laugh out loud. I'm always suprised when folks think being a Christian means you can't have fun...after all, God invented the platypus...he's got to have a sense of the funny.
4. For some reason, I have to work twice as hard to be half as organized as most people.
5. I really enjoyed being a full time housewife. I was never bored...there's always a million and one things to do or make or read. We had to sacrifice some things for me to stay home with our kids, but it was worth it and I'm glad I did. I like all the creative stuff about homemaking, but hate doing laundry.
6. I love books. And paper. And I'm kind of wierd about it...the texture and feel and smell of the paper, ink etc. is important to me.
7. I'm afraid of heights. I don't even like to watch other people being up high.

Now, who to tag? I don't know who's done it before so forgive me if I'm tagging you and you've already played.

Julie, Cindy, Starr, Julie, Linda, Teri, Lisa

Everyday Matters #94 Draw a Spoon

Trying to get back to drawing each day. I'm not crazy about the way this spoon turned out...probably to impatient to look at all those reflections carefully. But I like the little border.

Another Route 66 Building

I've been working on another building to make into a postcard. This one is a really charming old gas station in Odell, IL. It's been restored and if you're ever travelling the old highway you should stop and see it. Making these are not quite as fun as my usual wing it drawings in my journal...but they have to be a pretty good representation for a post card. I think I may just use them as a jumping off point and create a collage that includes the drawing as the final design. I've set up a drawing table in my office and if it's quiet I sit in there and work.
On other fronts, I've been getting to go bike riding lately, which is one of my favorite things to do. So much fun it hardly seems like it'd be good for you!

Old City Hall Shoppes

This is the antique mall I have started managing. We needed an image to use in print ads so this weekend I made this:
I hope it works out OK and reads well in print. Much of the time it will be really small in an ad...I'm not sure if it's too detailed. But I think it gets the idea across...we're in a neat historic building.

Drawing at the Lake

I didn't get much drawing done for some reason. Too much serious lounging on the porch I guess. But here's one on a toy from the toybox.
Then I tried to do a watercolor of a nearby island. I usually just color in my line drawings, so it's definitely trial and error trying to watercolor. I worked on parts of this too long and muddied it up...and then stopped before I probably should have on other parts. It could have used some darker darks.
Used my artistic license and got rid of all the houses and the choppy water. Pretty breezy that day.