Shadow Box #12 ~ Inside and Outside Series ~ Sweet Sign of Spring

This one is 10" square. I started with the colored pencil drawing of the yellow warbler. It's done on Bristol board, which has been glued into the frame. There are small dowels wrapped in fabric in each corner. A vine twisted around a stick has been painted black and rests against a carved shelf. On the shelf is a carved wooden bead, painted black. It holds painted sticks wrapped with small pieces of fabric. There is a painted masking tape ball on the bottom shelf. The leaves decorating the frame were drawn with pencil and painted with acrylic.

Daily Practice ~ Heart Drawing 4.6.14 ~ "Breaking Eggs"

Instead of depending on randomness to choose the composition for today's drawing I cut the heart shape from the Post cover photo to include this chicken. It is a sizable statue in the middle of someone's yard in Fort Recovery, Ohio. A company called Perham Eggs plans to open an egg-breaking company in this small, rural town in June. It's an interesting article about how difficult it is to find the 40 qualified people needed to run the machinery which breaks the eggs, the contents of which will be shipped to commercial bakeries across the U.S.

I wanted to draw the chicken. I chose some of the colors randomly, but played around with adding colors I picked on purpose and I scratched into the surface for highlights and texture.

Daily Practice ~ Heart Drawing 4.5.14 ~ "Father and Son"

The photo on the cover of the Post is of a father and son high-fiving as they watch the Washington Nationals at batting practice before the first home game of the season.

Last night I dreamed about a green heart with a black edge. I started this drawing by tracing with charcoal the outline of the heart randomly cut from the photo. Choosing colors randomly, too, the heart came out predominantly blue. Sorta disappointing because I wanted it to match my dream. I burnished the drawing with tissue to get the antique look of the dream heart, then decided to pick one more color, without looking, to go over it, and there it was ~ a yellow pencil (yay!). That made the heart green, as it was in my dream

Daily Practice ~ Heart Drawing 4.4.14 ~ "Street Kids"

Lebanon has one million Syrian refugees, making it home to the highest concentration of refugees in the world. With soaring rents and little assistance for migrants, thousands of children are forced to work selling flowers, tissues, chewing gum and shoeshines on the streets of Beirut.

Black and white ink drawing surrounded by randomly chosen colors. My reaction to the story makes itself evident with agitated pencil strokes and scratches into the surface of the drawing.

Daily Practice ~ Heart Drawing 4.3.14 ~ "A Step Closer"

Muriel Bowser is the Democratic nominee for Washington D.C. mayor.

Limited randomly chosen colors to five. Smeared on a top coat with a cream-colored pencil. Accents with ink.

Daily Practice ~ Heart Drawing 4.2.14 ~ "The District Goes to the Polls"

Coverage of the mayoral primary in Washington, D.C. The photo shows supporters of both Vincent Gray and Muriel Bowser in front of an elementary school where the voting was taking place.

Changed the title of this series of drawings from Daily Project to Daily Practice. That's a better description of what they are and what I'm doing. I use the minutes creating the drawings to ground myself for the work and the day ahead. I'm trying to look at them as little pieces of art in their own right ~ a looser interpretation of the piece of photo reference.

Daily project ~ Post Heart 4.1 ~ "Off to a Good Start"

The Washington Nationals baseball team wins the season opener against the New York Mets. The photo on the Post cover shows the team members high fivin' second baseman Anthony Rendon after he hit a three-run homer in the 10th inning.

Something different from just coloring in the lines of the photo's composition, as in the previous heart drawings. Wanted this one to stand alone as a little piece of art. Made most of the lines blurrier except for the upper right where I liked the sharp contrast of those shapes. Faded the center section from dark to light because I wanted the colors at the bottom edge of the heart to be softened by going over them with a lighter color and I wanted a dark color at the top to emphasize that hard edge.

Because my "gallery" outlet for this project is Facebook and this blog I've chosen to put the drawing only on Facebook. I think the single image is stronger by itself. The section of the photo used for reference will be posted here.

Shadow Box # 11 ~ Inside and Outside Series ~ "The Heart Has Its Reasons"

This one is 8" X 8" X 2". I started with the painting in the background. It is a piece of a larger painting I did last year ~ burnt sienna ground with acrylic over it. The window was already there. I added gold trim to the cut edge.

I stained the frame with polyurethane mixed with burnt sienna acrylic and placed the gold foil on before it dried. After it dried I put on another coat of polyurethane.

The little basket...I've never woven a basket, so I was winging it here. This wooden bead, which I wanted on the shelf, insisted it did not want to be carved or distressed, it wanted a basket around it, so I obliged the best I could. I used some waxed linen I had that just happened to pick up the colors of the painting. Here's how I started it ~

I painted the top of the bead with some brown watercolor and sprayed the whole thing with poly. The piece of grape vine is painted black and glued into the hole in the center of the bead.

The heart in the window is made with Sculpey, the sculpting compound you can bake in your oven. I used a ceramic stamp I made to give it texture. I painted it with titanium white and then black/brown and wiped that off so that the texture would show, to "age" it. It is recessed in the window, glued to the back wall (or bottom of the box) with black Thai banana paper behind it. The painting surface is on foam core spacers so that it sits in front of the heart, but gives the basket room on the shelf. 

Daily Project ~ Post Heart 3.31.14

Daily Project ~ Post Heart 3.31.14 ~ Sweet 16

University of Maryland women’s basketball team beats Tennessee in the NCAA Sweet 16. This is player Malina Howard’s elbow.

The colored pencil drawing and the heart cut from the Post photo are 2" in diameter. Colors chosen randomly to fill in the abstract taken from the photo. This is a nice way to loosen up and center myself, with this little 10 minute practice, before I get to work.