The Summer of Color 2014 Week 3

This year, I'm once again participating in Kristen at Twinkle, Twinkle's Summer of Color blog party. If you're curious about the party, you can check out all the info by clicking the button on my sidebar.

This Week's Color are:

Lavender, Grey and a Splash of Plum.

This week's colors are so elegant and I felt could only be properly represented by a particularly regal monster; a dragon! Really. Grey and purples just cry out for a great scaly beast in my mind. Though, as you can see, this one isn't quite grown up yet. :)

The Summer of Color 2014 Week 2

This year, I'm once again participating in Kristen at Twinkle, Twinkle's Summer of Color blog party. If you're curious about the party, you can check out all the info by clicking the button on my sidebar.

Week Two's Colors are:

Colar, Teal and a splash of Bright White.

And here is this week's monster, based on the color prompts. He's a silly, fuzzy, many eyed bugger. :)

Summer of Color 2014 Week 1

This year, I'm once again participating in Kristen at Twinkle, Twinkle's Summer of Color blog party. If you're curious about the party, you can check out all the info on her post here.

I had picked up a few burlap bunting pieces and ribbon at a great clearance price and was planning to use it to make a hanging for the baby's room right before the challenge began. I've decided to use each week's color prompts to create each panel so I will have a cohesive project rather than random pieces of scattered artwork at the end.

Week One's colors are:

Aqua Blue, Yellow and a splash of Hot Pink.

And here is what I made. I didn't have a "true" aqua in my paint stash and I'm on a self-imposed buying freeze right now so my blue is a little darker. ;)

Our theme for baby's room is "monsters". Not just the Disney variety, but any and all of them, from the Loch Ness variety to the Wildest of Things and beyond. :)

The Summer of Color: Citron Green and Turquoise

For last year's Summer of Color art-party I went ahead and made random pieces of art using the color themes each week. And while I really enjoyed the process of working with an ice cream inspired palette (and maybe did a bit of 'research' along the way!) I'll admit that I was a little jealous of folks who had a collection of art that all went together at the end: buntings, books, etc.

In that spirit, I was wracking my brain right up through the middle of the first week as to what I'd like to create and collect in to a cohesive project at the end of the party. On Wednesday night, as I looked at my tubes of Citron Green and Turquoise paint I decided I wanted to paint an image of the earth with them. They'd be perfect colors! Then I had to think about materials. What to use? Oh! I've got a big stash of leftover white linen fabric from a project several years ago. That could be fun to paint on. But, what would I collect my pieces of fabric in to at the end? A pennant? Sew them together in to a quilt or a flag?

Flag? Prayer flags! Yes!

I've been wanting to make some of these magical flags to adorn my yard since we moved in to the house, but I always sweated the process of how to go about making them. Even after reading about them and researching them, I was still having a hard time bringing myself to just do it. Well, no time like a party to give something a try!

So I sat down with my paints, my big hunk of fabric and my brushes. And as I painted, I held my prayer in my mind. I kept the imagery simple, as I think it conveys my hopes well without anything to distract from it. :)

Each week I'm going to use the colors we're working with as a jumping off point for inspiration for a prayer to paint on my flags. While this could prove to be a bit of a challenge, I'm looking forward to it all the same!

It's not too late to join in the fun, come party with us!

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!

The Summer of Color - Strawberry Lemonade

As ever the husband and I have quite a few projects going on and with the heat index reading well over 110*F, we've been hiding out of the sun. So, for this week's color prompt, Strawberry Lemonade Punch, I once again broke out the sketchbook so I could work in between other things (prepping food for the week, clearing out closets, re-organizing, making cucumber vodka.. you know, all sorts of things!).

So here is this week's piece for the summer of color:

It is far, far, far more pink than anything I've done before and honestly, I don't know that I like it. It's been quite a while since I worked with colored pencils really, having given them up to devote more time to learning watercolors and acrylics, and I sort of think this one looks a bit like I did it with crayons. Again, that's what sketchbooks are for I suppose - practice and trial runs. Who knows, maybe this bright drawing will grow on me, or you all will like it. After all, we usually are our own worst critics!

The Summer of Color - Baseball Nut

Those who follow here regularly or are friends of mine elsewhere on this magical interwebs know that I've had a stressful week. It's felt like an eternity wrapped up in just a few shorts days and I'd be lying if I said I was displeased to see the backside of it. (if you missed my update on my niece, please see my previous post here.)

While I was happy to see my family for the brief time I spent in NJ, I wish it had been under better circumstances and that I didn't now feel like my little world has gone cock-eyed in my absence. In an attempt to get it back on keel I broke open my sketchbook and worked on a face for the summer of color. The ice cream flavor? Baseball Nut. I call this freckled lady Ginger Bee.

She's done up in micron pen and prismacolor pencils. Honestly, I liked her better when she was just a pencil sketch, before I added color. I don't really like the look of the cartoonish lines when I draw faces, so I'm not really sure why I did that. I suppose this is what sketching is for though; to practice and find out what does and doesn't work for us.

The Summer of Color - Mint Chocolate Chip

I've been slinging paint and cranking out all sorts of things in my time home over the past week. Between working on the first assignment for Total Alignment over at Dirty Footprints Studio, working with oil pastels in my art journal, going to a beer festival at the zoo and staying out way too late with a new friend, I got a late start on my piece for this week's Summer of Color prompt.

Luckily, the little guy who jumped up and said 'Me, me, paint me!' was incredibly cooperative and more cuddly than you'd expect from someone of his species. So let me introduce you to the Mint Yeti:

This furry fellow is painted on 8x10 stretched canvas with acrylics. We know there's not much brown aside from his eyes, so we hope you'll let the warm gray pass for the chips part of the ice cream inspiration.

I had some "help" with this project this week too. You see the tube of gray paint rolled off my table and I didn't notice it at first. Little Luna was kind enough to fetch it back for me:

Luna's idea of 'helping'.

Gray patches of evidence.

Someone is pleased with herself, gray patches and all! Those spots on her arm and shoulder are not normally there...

The Summer of Color - Rainbow Sherbert

As I mentioned in my last post, I'm taking part in The Summer of Color party over at Kristin's blog - Twinkle, Twinkle. The prompt for week one was one of my favorite sweet colorful summer treats, rainbow sherbert! Looking at her inspiration photo I immediately thought of the sunset and bright bold zinnias at the local plant nursery. I sat down to sketch and in a surprisingly short period of time had whipped up a wee friend for this week. Here she is, Miss Zinnia:

She's done up in watercolors and measures in at 4x6". This was my first go at a proper sunset as well as those big poofy flowers and overall, I'm very pleased with her.

Are any of you playing along?