Day 335 ~ Make a protective structure for a delicate object and run a text by dropping it.

It worked!

Day 334 ~ Work with bar codes.

I've been saving bar codes from packages all year in anticipation of this project. From now on, when I go to recycle a package, I'll miss cutting the bar code off first.

Today is the birthday of my friend Emily. I made this to post on her Facebook wall, but her account has been suddenly deactivated. Bummer. Oh well, Emily, if you happen to see this, I hope you have a great day!

The colors on this come from scanning the pasted up (and I mean this in the archaic sense) image of the black and white bar codes into my computer and then messing around with Picasa effects.

Day 333 ~ Create a unique trophy and award it to someone.

This solid gold (well, gold anyway) "365" trophy was made just for YOU! And it is your reward for sticking with me throughout this year's project and giving me your 'likes', support and feedback. Thanks VERY much to Amy, Amy, Anne, Aundrea, Beth, Blair, Branka, Caitlin, Chris, Connie, Debbie, Doug, Emily, Frances, Francis, Heather, Jackie, Jennifer, Jonathan, Joshua, Joy, Judy, Karen, Kyle, Lance, LB, Leslie, Lisa, Luna, Lynn, Marcia, Mark, Mark, Melonie, Nan, Nan, Neal, Noah, Paige, Ricki, Sheila, Stan, Sue, Sue, Susan, Suze, Sylvester, Tara, Wa, Yvonne and anybody else who has gotten a kick out of seeing my progress. I hope I brought some smiles. (Of course, we're not quite done yet!)

Day 332 ~ Create a wheel chart.

This is a 'Creativity Wheel' made from heavy watercolor paper. It's about 8", fingertip to fingertip.

It was fun to work out the engineering of this. I made models of each layer, measuring the placement of the windows as well as the words that appear through them. The 4 pieces of paper are fastened together with a homemade rivet so that they can turn easily.

The idea is, if you want to do a fun project, but need some inspiration, you can turn the wheels to reveal random choices of a subject, materials to use and a color suggestion. As the wheels are positioned here, you would be making something that had to do with harmony, using azure-colored shoe polish. Other combinations could be things like having the subject of life times, using toothpaste and gold. Or the underground, using fur and the color ecru.

Other subjects on the wheel include outer space, extinction, tribes, architecture and fables. Other suggested materials are rocks, fibers, raw food, newspaper and kitty litter (clean, of course!). Additional colors ~ violet, puce, teal, ochre and sepia.

Day 331 ~ Make a flower out of everyday objects.

Flowers from leggings and socks, shown with my able assistant, Zubie.

Day 330 ~ Do a finger painting.

Do a finger painting? How hard could that be? It started out innocently, having fun covering the paper with gentle swirls of yellow then green, thinking, oh, this is so much fun, I'll have to tell everybody to do this because it's so much fun...

Then the obsessing entered, the more I obsessed about coming up with a successful finger painting (! think about that !) the weirder it got. More and more paint, fingernails scratching through the top surface to reveal the colors underneath.

I kept trying to find my "headline", as my friend Neal has counseled me to do. Your paintings need headlines! he says. (Implying, correctly, that much of my work lacks a focal point.) But this finger painting's headline wanted to be I'M A MUDDY MESS. So I put it out in the sun to dry.

Painting over the dried mud with white looked good to me. The lighter paint enhanced the textures and gave me that complex, overworked, detailed, layered look I like so much. I smeared on too much and washed it off with a wet towel, leaving a glaze.

Then, try as I might not to do a horse AGAIN, I did. My easy solution to a headline. At least it's going to the right for a change. Another friend, Nan, asked me Why do all your horses go to the left? It's because I'm right-handed and I always start with the head and move to the right. Same with profiles of people, much more comfortable drawing them facing left. Already struggling with this painting I thought, hey, as long as I'm trying to paint with my fingertip anyway, why not add the challenge of having the horse face to the right, forcing me to work from right to left.

The one thing I noticed about painting this horse with a finger is that I was much more aware of the form and movement and not so concerned about the contour, so it was more akin to doing a sculpture than a rendering.

Day 329 ~ Work with tissue paper.

For this I used a technique that my artist friend Tobey uses on his paintings. I painted a surface with acrylic paint and stuck a sheet of tissue paper on the wet paint surface and let it dry.

I started with a 9X12 watercolor block, painted it with black acrylic and covered that with white tissue paper. Let that dry. Then I painted in the rough horse shape with red oxide acrylic, over the white tissue paper. I put a sheet of blue tissue over that wet paint, let it dry, then peeled away the tissue that hadn't adhered. Next I painted over the blue tissue horse shape with clear acrylic medium and laid a piece of green tissue that I had crumpled and brushed over lightly with black ink using my deer tail brush (from Day 82). I let that dry and peeled off the access again. I needed to boost the contrast at that point so I defined the edges of the horse shape with a charcoal pencil, smearing it in places to bring out the texture of the first layer of white tissue over the black paint. I finished it by brushing on some acrylic medium to enhance the color and contrast. I had to do the horse first, then the background, otherwise the charcoal would have smeared onto the surface of the horse.