Day 365 ~ Do something to celebrate your year of creativity!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axuOgyJw7Ik

This a link to a YouTube video produced by Dave Singer who was so generous with his time and who, with a great attitude, put a lot of work into it. It just so happens that his wife Carrie had won a pet portrait I donated to a benefit auction, so in exchange for his kindness I've offered to do all three of their cats ~ Shadow, Gracie and Spirit.You will probably see the finished portrait.

I had really wanted to use a piece of music by my friends Al Petteway and Amy White, but we ran into licensing issues with the powers that be, even thought we had Al and Amy's permission. If you aren't familiar with their beautiful music do check them out. Dave did find some other music we are able to use that is a lot of fun and I like the energy of it to go with my playful project.

There aren't 365 projects on the video! Just enough for a great review. I didn't do 365 projects anyway. Between Days 230 and 303 I doubled up on many of them because I missed a month due to my show schedule and did that to catch up. Those combinations turned out to be some of the most fun. It was a good thing Sheila Vertino wrote an article about me in Fluent Magazine around that time, which talked about the project, or it's possible I may never have gotten back into it.

Incidentally, not doing all 365 means I don't deserve the official 365 merit badge. I major disappointment, as you can imagine. My mother was very clear about that concept when I was in the Girl Scouts and she had to sign that little book that said I had done every single one of the requirements for the nature badge or whatever. You don't get what you don't earn. OR You mustn't cut corners if you want something done right.

It wasn't exactly easy to produce an assigned project a day, and then it was. Mostly, the whole experience was a blast and extremely interesting. I was made for this kind of thing. I loved being a student and later being an illustrator. I love the challenge of taking an idea and putting it into some tangible form. Like solving a puzzle. I'll miss this project! And I feel a little sad about it ending. But it certainly won't be an end to my creating. I have gotten countless ideas to apply to "my own" work and I plan to keep posting on this blog about my processes and experiments. So if you are interested in what I come up with in 2013 I hope you'll continue to visit when you get the chance.

Thanks very much for being part of this. May you be inspired to continue enjoying a creative life!

364 ~ Rewrite a traditional song.

Here are some new lyrics I wrote to the tune of a traditional song for the end of the year ~ Auld Lang Syne.

Another year has come and gone. I gave it all I could.
Here's to my friends and all I love, to things that make life good,
to hopes and dreams, to smiles and schemes, to never being rude,
to grace and strength and mindfulness and living as I should.

I had originally written this in the plural and decided to change it to the singular so as not to finish up my fun year of exuberant creativity on a preachy (sorry, Blair!*) or overweening note. This is, after all, my sentiment, not yours, necessarily. But you may sing it if it works for you, in the singular or the plural, or not!!

Overweening. Isn't that a great word? I didn't know it and found it as I looked through the dictionary for just the word I wanted there. (That's just one of the things I've gotten out of writing this blog. I've had to look up lots of words for spelling and to see if I'm using them correctly.) It means to be arrogant or presumptuous, immoderate or exaggerated. Presumptuous (overstepping due bounds or taking liberties) would have worked here, too, as well as didactic (designed or intended to convey instruction or making moral observations), but none as well as overweening, and that not as well as preachy, which begs the question ~ why am I rambling on like this? Because I find words and definitions interesting and because this is my penultimate project and I'm going to miss writing to you every day.

*Blair is my cousin who followed in the footsteps of my father and became a Presbyterian minister. 

Day 363 ~ Extend an existing painting beyond its edges.

I've been thinking about something I heard a writer say in an NPR interview. He was asked if it was difficult to come up with ideas to write about. He said not at all because he wrote what he would love to read.

This gave me the idea that I should create what I would love to look at. And I love to look at pattern and color.

So, when I was looking through a National Museum of Women in the Arts' book on women artists to find a painting to copy for this assignment, I found one that spoke to me in this way. I chose it for its pattern and color.

This painting, on which I've extended the borders, is by Lois Mailou Jones, an American who lived from 1905 to 1998. She enjoyed a successful seventy year career as a painter, designer and teacher.

The title of the painting is Ode To Kinshasa, painted in 1972. It is mixed media on canvas, measuring 48" X 36".

My piece is 10" X 7.5" and done on card stock around the print of the artist's piece from my computer. I used colored pencil, mostly, and added some cut paper, which she also used on her original.

When extending the image, I found some patterns in the costume designs by Julie Taymor for a production of The Lion King. I resisted the urge to carefully measure and mechanically duplicate the diamond shapes. Jones uses precisely cut paper shapes, but I wanted to keep what I did freer and more organic to match the other shapes in her composition. This let me have more fun with it.

I have copied the work of other artists often and always find it a fascinating way to build my vocabulary of techniques and approaches to what I do. This exercise helped me see how to build up areas with colored pencil to a rich value that I've not achieved before. I see how this can help me solve a problem I have with my pieces that I often feel unsatisfied with because they are lacking something I want them to have and really feel, to me, kind of anemic.

Day 362 ~ Make a rainbow from everyday objects.

I used skeins of my weaving yarn in the rainbow colors to spell out "Happy Birthday!" to Dave Singer.

Dave has been working like crazy to create a beautiful video for me, showing images of my projects from Noah's book (see Day 356), to celebrate the end of a year of making things. We will post it on or around the 30th.

Day 361 ~ Work with bleach to take the color from something.

Here is a watercolor where I used bleach to take away the paint to look like falling snow.

This is what it looks like around here today!

Day 360 ~ Be inspired by an internal organ.

Hearts in the snow.

I thought the heart the most appropriate internal organ for Christmas Day!

Second most appropriate might be the stomach, but that's not as pretty, or as recognizable, a shape.

Day 359 ~ Make a cityscape out of things you have on hand.

Granted, this came out pretty weird, particularly for such a sweet time as Christmas Eve! But it is what it is, whatever it is...

This cityscape is constructed of pieces of wood that I use to make my WordKeepers and other things I sell at shows. The scene was really hard to photograph. I took many photos before deciding on this view. I then, very roughly, used Photoshop to scrub out the background. I like the effect because it looks like a cloudy sky. Then I messed around with a bunch of effects in Picasa.