Road Trip Art Journal Update

Well, I have the cutest art journal ever!  Many of you saw it a few posts back, but here's a picture to refresh you memory.

Here's the only art in it and it's a bare bones sketch of a Corvette! I had to tell you what kind of car, because it's not clear! This was my first attempt and after talking to a fabulous car artist at the show and my husband looking at it and having the face of someone who just saw his sleek sports cart turn into a family car, I knew it needed work!  More on this a little later.  Anyway,  I really thought our trip to Chicago (suburbs) with a Corvette and my little dog Jack in tow would be boring and I would have so much time in the car and at the hotel to create!  I follow so many blogs where people sketch everything they see as they travel, but I have to tell you this is almost all I worked on for the entire eight days!!!!

Bill did all the driving, so I thought I would be able to sketch - not with a little dog sleeping on your lap!  I thought the hotel would be a great place, but after a busy day I just didn't have the urge.  I even thought I would sit over at the show on a grassy knoll at the golf course and sketch - I think not!I did paint a few flowers on rocks (I took a little bit of everything with me, including these wonderful acrylic paints that come in a perfect travel size and rocks) and gave them as gifts while I was there, but that's it.

I saved some mementos to stick in my book and I took lots of pictures, to sketch later.  This barn is one of my favorites.  Such a classic and on one of the main roads totally surrounded by businesses. With the land for sale you know it's fate!  I'm just thankful I saw it and was able to save it for posterity in my own little way!



We went to the best nursery ever!  I saw so many things I want to try and make on my own  Don't you love this dragonfly? They were dog friendly and even had a water station for  little four footed visitors, so Jack had a good time, too.  We were driving so I did get to bring some goodies home with me- one huge advantage to driving!

I did start one of my wild wacky women sketches and finished it when I got home - I think the wild eyes were a picture of mine after two 11 hours days on the road!  Heehee!

This car sketch was a stretch for me - It seems so easy to paint flowers and feet, but cars - oh my, not so easy for me.  The artist and previous teacher said I had tried to fit all of the car into too little space and to just cut it off and stretch it out, so with some major erasing even Bill said it was a little better.  We all know there's a lot more work to be done!  

Always good to get home and over 2400 miles is a long time in a car, but our car passed the Survivor category in the show and now we can look ahead to going gold next year. The show is moving so it will be about four hours closer to home!  Yay!!!!! Less driving and perhaps by then my sketching skills will have improved!

Road Trip Art Journal

Leaving on a fun road trip with my fab hubby tomorrow. This trip is more about him than me as we're taking a Corvette to a car show near Chicago! I am taking watercolors and acrylics, lots of pens and pencils and plan to sketch away the trip! I needed a watercolor journal so made my own and just finished the base coat colors for the front and back.

As soon as they're dry I'll do the inside and be ready to go. I love these colors and haven't decided what else I will use to decorate them, but I made an adorable card for hubby for dad's day from our dog (he's going with us) and may put it on the front.

 I ask him and he said yes, I think I will do just that! I've got some Tim Holtz stickers for different state license plates so I think I'll use the ones for the four states we wander through, Texas, Arkansas, Missouri and Illinois!  We will be so near my hometown, but with a trailer attached to the back of the truck, we will just keep on driving and save memory lane for another trip!

Now it's ready to go! Picture is too blurry to read, but at the bottom I used the stamp - "Half the fun of travel is the aesthetic of lostness."  I like this because it sort of sums up the sense of going someplace you've never been - you always have that question of whether you're going the right way and that's even with the girl in the box!

Art of Wild Abandonment Continues

My last post was of my first radish sketches and my cupcakes, yet to be colored.  Well, I'm back and I've been busy sketching and coloring and paper piecing (a first for me) and generally having fun.   I'm still on last weeks classes so it's a good thing we can work on this at our own pace.

This was a busy week for me, spring break was over and it was back to business, Bible study Tuesday and Thursday morning, Sealy Christian Pantry Board meeting Wednesday afternoon, City Council meeting Wednesday night  and Property Owners Association Meeting last night and I still squeezed in a little bit of sketching and painting as I found time.

So here are my painted cupcakes.  I ended my last post with a picture of the sketch.  I did this on watercolor paper and then put it in my art journal.  I did get it colored later that night, but just didn't get around to taking pictures and posting it until now.

The next thing in our class was an exercise drawing sweet peas - you know green peas in a shell - well, this just didn't jive with me and so until a couple of days ago I didn't even draw one.  I was sketching in my bible study book and I drew one along with a few on a picket fence and some other things


The next thing in our class was called "Spring Line Up" and was a clothes line filled with clothes or what ever we wanted.  The first one I did I painted the clothes, then I watched the second video and found out we were paper piecing the items on the line.  You make a simple sketch in your sketch book and then draw it on heavier paper in your art journal and paper piece the items.   I have so many paper scraps that it was easy for me to find paper to match my clean clothes!  I grew up with a clothes line and so this really took me back to some good and not so good memories.  We lived just south of St. Louis and in the summer it was fine to hang clothes out, but come winter - well, they froze!  We were very fortunate to have a basement and mom could hang clothes in there in the winter, but still cold and not much fun.

I journaled a little bit on it, but when I realized I hadn't done it correctly, I just stopped and started over.
So here's the second one - with the paper piecing.

This one had some wind blowing and I added a nest for one of the birds, a cat and some bluebonnets and some journaling.  The red long johns represented the end of winter and I would like to have a dress like on the end - will be watching for that as I head into spring and summer shopping.  The point of the exercise is to have fun and I did, but I'm still not comfortable with splashing paint and stamping willy nilly on the front of my work, but the class is called "The Art of Wild Abandonment" so I guess I just need to continue to let go of the thoughts of perfection!

Following this I haven't painted another thing, but I've done lots of simple sketching.  I did this one of my work table!  I'm actually surrounded with stuff with about a foot of work space and this showed it quite well.  This is on plain paper, so I probably won't redraw it in my journal and paint it, but you never know.

The rest of my pictures are simple sketches I did during  some meetings on the back of the handouts or in my study book.  I said several months ago when I posted some of my sketches, long before this class that I draw on anything that stays still!  I still do, the difference with this class is that I'm learning to use sketching as a form of journaling (haven't really learned that yet) and also, to paint the sketches.  Up until now I mostly just sketched to be sketching!  Just like these little pictures here.  I did practice on my owls and another little clothes line, but mostly just scribbles with one painted with a highlighter! Not exactly fine art!!!!!

                                       

Note, I reverted back to my flowers, my go to comfort sketch and what about that sheep?  You did know it was a sheep, right?  Actually it kind of reminds me of Lassie with a way too curly perm!  So, now I head back to class!  This week we do some dogs and some cats. That's the only thing I know as I couldn't look ahead and complete what I needed to complete.  So later tonight I start looking at this weeks daily videos - See you in a few days with my newest sketches.