ATC's

I created theses for a swap I am involved in. I have been experimenting with mixing pen and ink with pencil. I like the strong contrast in values. The bottom right angel was created using inktense by Derwent.

Word Cloud

I enjoy using type and images in my work, this site creates a word cloud with endless possibilities, visit http://www.wordle.net/create. The above cloud was created by providing the url to my blog.

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.

Urban decay

This past weekend we traveled to see friends and family. We also took my good barrel horse to lease to a college girl to use at a college rodeo. As we were traveling we passed a group of stationary train cars. These images are from those cars. I always look for rust. It is an appealing texture to me. I am not sure if it is the colors, both warm and complementary or textures (which by now you know I drawn to.) These images were beautiful. I am really enjoying my new Cannon Rebel XSI. These photographs were all taken with this camera.

Zentages again

Ok I just have been obsessed. This has been so much fun. So now I need to get busy with other work. If you ever get a creative block or just need a release zentangels are really healing. You can experiment with textures/patterns and sometimes it can be a fine art piece in itself. I choose to do all of my zentangles with some sort of recognizable image all so .

Zentangles

I recently stumbled upon this art form while looking at doodles on flicker. I thought what a wonderful way to experiment with lights, darks and textures. I doodle all the time while on the phone, in a meeting or waiting for an appointment. Now I will doodle with a purpose! The web site http://www.zentangle.com explains its conception, and has a beautiful gallery of images. Flicker also has numerous examples.

These zentangles are on envelopes for a mail art swap on Swap Bot. For those of you not familiar with the site, it is a site where you can swap things with other people both in the United States and Internationally.

"There is a rich history of creative examples sent through the post. The most familiar example is the illustrations on envelopes carrying first day issue postage stamps, which philatelists refer to as "first day covers", but mail art encompasses other decorated envelopes as well as a wide range of other procedures and media such as rubber stamps and artistamps. Mail art is traditionally, though not always, distinguished from simply "mailed art", which is art that does not truly use the postal service but is simply regular art that is sent through the mail." Courtesy of wikipedia.

I originally signed up to exchange ATC's (Artist Trading Cards) but found this doodle swap so decided to give it a try. If any of you would like to exchange artist trading cards I would love to do so. My high school students really enjoy the opportunity to look at others work!

Inspiration

Marshall Arisman
Artist, Illustrator
His images are dark and animalistic. http://www.marshallarisman.com/

Dave McKean
Artist, Illustrator,
I especially like his CD covers.
http://www.mckean-art.co.uk/



I have been suffering with a migraine for the past two days. So as I sit here unable to create I thought I would share two artists whose works seem to speak to me creatively. As I have mentioned before I focus on lights, darks and texture. I work mostly in a realistic style but am gradually feeling less and less need to include every detail. The layering of images and the abstract texture it creates inspires me.

Wendy Smith

This is a drawing I just finished. Wendy (the gal in the sketch) had asked me about doing her portrait two years ago. She would often see me and ask how it was coming, but in the last 9 months I think she gave up all hope that I would ever do it. I am going to present it to her at our year end horse banquet this Sunday. I am terrible at keeping secrets! Good thing I only have 3 days or I would probably just take it to her today. I enjoy giving my work to others almost as much as I do creating it.

Update: I think they really liked the drawing. The top photo isWendy and her family receiving the drawing at the year end banquet sunday, February 15th. I sure enjoyed doing it for such wonderful people.