Playing with Posterizing

This is a picture I took the other night when my daughter walked into the room with her cat, Rozie, in her backpack. Looking quite pleased with herself (my daughter, not the cat!), I just had to snap a photo. I wanted to try something totally different and so I uploaded the photo to Photoshop and played with the posterizing effect. My colors were too watery and the turquoise was way too granulating but, hey, I tried it. :) Think I'll try again with a photo I took of my dog - just for fun.

Cafe Latte Zen Tangle

Watching an old episode of "Freaks & Geeks" with my family I still needed to get some sort of artwork done for today. I decided a nice Zen Tangle would be fun. It's too late for coffee for me so this will have to do.

Primrose

Since yesterday was the last day of the 21 Day challenge I needed to find something to paint. I found these Primroses at the store for only $1.50 and thought they looked bright and cheerful. I'm trying to keep it loose and not fret over my artwork.

Day 21 - Final Day of the 21 Days of February Project

Day 21 - Today is the last day of the online challenge "21 Days of February". For our assignment we were asked to give ourselves an award for sticking with it, trying new things, keeping it positive and pushing forward. Here is my award (I even remembered to keep some of those lovely white flecks I like so much.)

Day - 20 Circle Art

Day 20 (one to go!) - Today's assignment was circle art - mandalas, zen tangles, etc. with the additional of journaling.

Day 19 - Red Dress

One of my favorite paintings is a romantic, whimsical scene of a man and woman in formal dress dancing on the beach in the rain. I love that the woman is barefoot and by their embrace you can tell that they are unaware of anything but each other. The rest of the scene includes a maid and butler carrying umbrellas and shivering, braving the rain and cool weather. It is tender and fun at the same time. You can't see the faces of the couple, which I like, it adds ambiguity and lets the viewer imagine that it could just be him/her! When I saw the assignment was RED DRESS I thought of this painting. I love her simple yet elegant dress so I decided to "borrow" from the picture. I decided to forgo pen and ink and leave in my pencil sketch lines in keeping with my attempt at a loose sketch.

The original painting is called THE SINGING BUTLER by Jack Vettriano

Day 18 - A Song from Highschool

Pink for Cindy Lauper - she had pink hair once, right? The assignment was to paint a line from a song the year you graduated highschool

Day 17 - Bad Haiku Day

Day 17 - Drippy, dreary, raining day. My friends were over and we were sitting around the table drinking tea and trying to decide what to paint/draw in our little art journals when, out the window, we saw Chuck Norris (a.k.a. grey squirrel) trying to destroy my little garden scarecrow. I guess the scarecrow wasn't that scary since "Chuck Norris" was wrestling with it and pulling the straw out of its arms to use for nesting! I wish I had thought to take a picture before tapping on the glass to give him the get lost signal. Either way, I decided that he would be the focus of today's assignment -writing a BAD HAIKU. Enjoy (or not)!

Day 16 - Create a wallpaper pattern

This one was fun, I used with a little brass template, a bit of artist mask and two washes of Cobalt and Turquoise and a few droplets of water.

Day 15 - Would You Kiss a Frog?

Today's assignment was Kissing a Frog.....would you? I didn't really know what to paint so I just drew what I thought were dancing frogs! :)

Day 14 - Happy Valentine's Day

Today's assignment was to collage our face into a journal page. I thought this was just perfect for making a Valentine's card for my best sweetie. (No, I didn't get him the car for Valentine's, just a happy coincidence!)

Day 13 - Picasso Style

Stepping outside my comfort zone here to try a Picasso style lesson. I had a hard time keeping it abstract and kept trying to make the shapes look like something. :) I like I prefer the black and white version.

Day 12 - Positive Thinking

Day 12 - Positive Thinking

I often admire other artists whose work seems so fresh and spontaneous, as if it just flowed naturally from their fingertips. I would like to create work like that. Part of what holds me back are bad thoughts, like I can't do it, what if I mess up, etc. I tend to want to fill in all the "spaces" instead of leaving those lovely white flecks of paper peeking through. After reading the instructions for today's assignment I just scribbled out the first thing that came to mind, trying to be spontaneous and playful. I like the end result but, as you can see, not a white speck to be found! What I enjoyed about this project is all the positive thoughts that came to mind right off the bat. Anyway, there are more days to embrace "white specks", perhaps tomorrow. :)

Day 11 - Bird's Eye View

Today we painted from a bird's eye view. This is my backyard with a few added items that I have on my "wish list" - new lawn, paver patio, and a few more bedding plants.

Day 10 - Hearts & Favorite Things

The theme is hearts and favorite things. I played with the mask and layers of color. My dear hubby, Jeff, and my wonderful daughter, Liz, are my MOST favorite! :)

Day 9 - Blob and Straw Play!

What happens IF? A blob, a mess, a smear of paint - get a straw and blow the whole mess every which way! FUN! I thought the quote from Lennon was appropriate. :)

P.S. This catches me up on my assignments! Yeah!

Day 8 - Self Portrait and "Interview"

Falling behind in my "homework" I had to do this page and the next one back to back. I am actually pleased with it because I have a hard time with people and I did it so quickly, also I'm trying to work on my journaling so I enjoyed the 'interview" part of it. :) The colors didn't scan well though, I guess they were too pale.

Day 7 - Playing with Lettering and Brushes

Just trying out some of my brushes to see what different types of lettering I can make!

Day 6 - Ask a Question

Ask yourself a question and then paint the answer! With all the wonderful weather we've been having Spring is foremost in my thoughts! When can I start planing?! :)

Day 5 - Creative Friends Who Inspire Me

This one came out a bit too dark making it difficult to read but the "gist" is my creative friend's names are on the left followed by all sorts of wonderful things that come to mind when I think of them, like how awesome they are and supportive and just plain FUN! :)

Day 4 - Borders and Rectangles

I started out with the flowers as a border but somehow it morphed into a spring scene so I added more borders, since that was the exercise. Originally I thought to divide the scene into the four seasons but then decided to also divide it horizontally into values, dark to light. I had some "bleed" problems with the tape so I decided to cut my loses and leave white vertical areas. I thought it looked "unique" that way. :P

Day 3 - "Pep Talk"

Day 3, playing with tape, pen and "encouragement".

Day 2 of 21 Days of February Project

Another gorgeous day, sitting on a bench at Memorial Park in Cupertino (this is why I love California). For today's page I couldn't get recipes and time (clocks) out of my head so I incorporated them into my theme of trying to make a habit of watercolor journaling.

21 Days of February - Day 1

Yeah! Yes, its me and I broke out the watercolors again (finally)! I know it has been a long time so I decided to sign up for a project called 21 Days of February where we paint in our journal every day. Here is my piece for Day 1. Can you tell what things I like?