Index Card a Day: Week Two

Well, I managed to miss a day last week with all the other projects that I have floating around my studio space but I'm OK with it. At first I thought about making an extra card so I'd have 17 cards today instead of 16, but I feel like that's cheating a bit. So, I'll carry on and if I miss more cards, then I miss more cards.

I'll be travelling for a week starting tomorrow, so my materials for the next few cards will be limited since I don't want to lug around 10 lbs of art supplies. Not sure what I'll be packing yet, but it will be interesting having just a few supplies to work with.

Cards 10-16:

This one I smooshed some acrylic paint around on the card. I was going to leave it 'as is' but in the shapes of color I saw, what seemed to me, to be a friendly sea monster. So he was given an outline to make him a little more prominent.

Acrylic paint and silver paint pen. Theme: Favorite Things.

Smooshed acrylic over some oil pastel squiggles. No theme, just experimenting.

Up, Up and Away! We spent the day at Carowinds, which had a bit of influence on today's card. This one is done in permanent markers.

Just some doodles. Permanent Marker and India Ink.

Quick acrylic sunrise, nothing fancy. I was up earlier than I prefer to be. ;)

Mixed Media; smooshed acrylics over crayon swirls with a mini playing card secured with more paint. Finished with India Ink that was poured and blown on.

Index Card a Day: Week One

I'm joining Tammy at Daisy Yellow and a plethora of other bloggers, artists and instagrammers for her annual Index Card a Day Event. The long and short of it is, essentially, to create art each day using only an index card and the supplies of your choice. She gives themes and prompts that you are welcome to use, but there are no hard and fast rules.

For more information, please click the image on my sidebar to visit her and sign up!

When I decided to do this challenge, I told myself I'd try my best to do a daily card and that if I missed one, I would be gentle with myself. No beating myself up or getting frustrated because sometimes, you're just going to forget to do something. I also said I'd take a gander at the themes each week and use them if I was stuck or if they really spoke to me. Trust me, there are going to be days that the blank card stares me down and I can't force my hand to start - even at random. I'm embracing that now so that when it happens, I'm not surprised.

That all said, I didn't miss a single day in the first week! As a reward, I've got a lovely stack of random cards piling up. Here they are:

Micron Pen and the first day's theme of "Zebra".


Acrylic Paint, No theme. Just playing with color and line.


Watercolor and Micron Pen. I splashed a bunch of watercolor on the card and let it run and pool, originally intending to leave it like that. Once it dried though and I saw the shape of an elephant and a unicorn, I had to outline them!


Oil Pastel.


Oil Pastel.


Micron Pen. Theme: Paisley.


Oil Pastel.

And two more from the weekend...


Watercolor and salt, with a hint of oil pastel. For the New Moon.


Oil Pastel. Inspired by the week of thunderstorms.

P.S. These are all photos taken with my iPhone, not scans. Hence the graininess and sort of muted colors.

Hammocks and Upcoming Projects

Since it's been hot and humid these past few days, I've been spending a good bit of my afternoons curled up on my hammock in the shade. The icing on the cake of my relaxing afternoons is my Moleskine, a cold beverage and my puppy curled up beside me. Some days I just doodle random things and others I sketch the things I see. The other day, I gave watercolors their first shot in my sketchbook.

I'm not completely satisfied with the color vibrancy or the way they responded to the paper, but I've got another set I can experiment with. I am happy that I was able to just let go and more paint/sketch how the tree felt rather than trying to capture the detail of every single leaf, fruit and piece of bark. It feels good to let go.

I've been taking a break from my big paintings, having finished two incredibly exhausting ones, The Lady and Deep, in the past few weeks. I'm giving my brain, my guts and my brushes a bit of a break and instead focusing on something fairly new to me; quilting. I made one small picnic quilt a few years back and it was, well, a labor of love (and tedium!). I'm sort of a rule breaker, so there were no exact measurements or fancy tools used, just folding and snipping with my scissors to get squares that were close enough to the same shape. It resulted in just the right amount of wonkiness! This time around, in an effort to bust up my fabric stash (I have tons of fat quarter remnants all over the damn place), I'm making a quilt for my queen sized bed. Same size squares as the picnic quilt, because most of my scraps are on the small side.

Wish me luck. And patience. So much patience!

There are some exciting projects starting up in June, if anyone wants to follow along with me or join in themselves!

Starting June 1st is Daisy Yellow's Index Card a Day project. I've never done this project before, but am looking forward to giving it a shot - going to try not to put too much pressure on myself, but to try to do at least 1 card a day and try out some of the prompts.

And starting June 3rd is Twinkle, Twinkle's Summer of Color 3! I participated in last year's Summer of Color on my main blog and had a great time. I'm looking forward to the start of this one!