A late Fanz entry

Well, I was on vacation all week with the family so I had sporadic hotel wifi access and managed to peek at the Diva UMT Challenge . After walking ALL day and seeing every possible sight about the only thing you can do in the evening is sit with your feet up and draw! So here are my poor attempts to use Fanz. I like some of the other versions I have seen perusing the entries better - but, these are what got put down on the paper...

I like the pattern in the upper half of this tile - it is a vacation inspired one done in a little different way. The last time we were in DC I saw the cobble stone streets and walkways, especially near the art museum and came up with a pattern inspired by that. This trip it came back to mind and I tried it out again. I like it, I think it should be called Cobbles if there isn't already one like it. I have done it up in its original conformation in the dark tile below and this is a link to the first time I posted it. 

This is the second tile with Fanz. It has been forever since I used Gloven and the river pattern was brought to mind by looking at old maps from colonial times where the rivers are surrounded by contours like the graduated auras. I also used a blending stump for this shading because it was pretty rough since I was doing it in the car... blend it a little and you can't tell!

 This one was done at the end of last week when I still had Flux on my mind.

Finally, this one came about from seeing all the spring blooming flowers in DC (yes the Cherry Blossoms as well as others) and seeing those cobble stones again. I really like this darker paper and the look of the white highlights it allows. So what do you think, is that Cobbles pattern like anything you have seen before? Should I step-it-out? 

Till next week, have a great one!

An unheard of mid-week post...

Whoa!! Wait, what? Its Wednesday and I am already posting a challenge?? Crazy!

Really I just love Flux and have used it in many forms over the years. I have a little extra step that I do when I do it Maria-style that helps me to keep it evenly spaced, but otherwise its pretty much the same. I tried thickening the lines in places in the first piece to see what that was like and ended up not really liking the effect. I haven't given up on it yet, but  this certainly isn't the answer. Anyway, here they are.

Springy Saturday

Another week, another week closer to spring break! I must be thinking of traveling to warm and sandy places, not that I will be but because the Spiral Challenge this week kept resulting in pieces that looked like shells!

I like the off centered-ness of this spiral. I actually did not intend to make that first section have horizontal lines, but I was drawing while waiting for all the kids to get their hair cut and got distracted... no mistakes, right?

This was an attempt to break out of 'spiral snail shell' mode by doing more than one... the drawing had other ideas. I must remember that changing the thickness of lines is so effective - I am sure it could be used with great effect with lots of  patterns.

This was a very uninspired one, very plain and not terribly imaginative but it has its simple appeal.

Then last week I got to looking at Challenge posts and ran across the one at Margaret Bremmer's blog, The Enthusiastic Artist and LOVED Sam Taylor's Narwal tangle she was trying out. So I went and watched the video and played with it some on Saturday. I added some to the bottom left corner of my art box. I have been slowing decorating it over the last few years and the bottom is the last surface left. I really like how it came out with the very dark black and the very light highlights of white it really leaps off the surface. I highly recommend Sam's videos, there are some really great tangle patterns there that I had not seen before.

Spring Green challenge!

I was very excited to read that the Challenge for this week was to "green up" your tangles... I had spent a little time last weekend making myself some color wash water-color tiles with some new paper squares and I had one that was all greens with a little brown. Then I couldn't find the silly things to save my life. Then the week got really busy with grading and things and here it is Friday night before I get to sit long enough to make something to meet the challenge. Spring and green always make me thing of ferns, and the fiddle heads that come up in the spring. Frickle has alwasy reminded me of those so I started with it. After a few green patterns I just had to put some other color in there as well!

Of course as soon as I was finished and went to the scanner to scan it in I found the original colored tiles... so now I guess I can play with those too - if I don't misplace them first! I also finished a piece this week that I have been working on one section, and sometimes part of a section at a time for many days. No green, but I like it anyway!

Poke Root Challenge

Here is my entry for this week's Diva Challenge and, I am here to testify that Poke Root IS a challenge! I always have 'neat and orderly' angst with tangles that are super free form like Poke Root and Bridgen. Somehow Mooka has a flow to it as does Squid and a few others and I have never found the 'flow' to Poke Root - maybe I just haven't done it enough. Of course I love Cubine and really enjoyed looking back at the original tutorial for it on Margaret Bremner's blog - such loveliness and great ideas! I tried a triangle version of it here in the corners and set up the square grid in the middle just in pencil. Then I went back and finished the Cubine when my Poke Root 'mushrooms' had sprouted and grown as much as I wanted. Who has good advice for filling in large black areas with out the strokes showing? Obviously I had a little problem with that on this one, even after going over the areas a second time they show up.

Have a great week! I have, as usual lots of grading and I suppose, in the interest of feeding my family this week I should make it to the grocery store today. I also have to direct the finishing stages of a 1st grade science project before Monday!

UMT Challenge for March

Things have been pretty tight this week and I am super behind in all things physics, but my artwork and the articles are done for the magazine (and sent out today!). So sometime this summer I will have to share the excitement of the special edition magazine with my articles in it coming out. I capped off the week with a relaxing Friday night trying out Unbatz a cute little pattern by Sandy Hunter for the Diva Challenge. Tomorrow it will be up early, an online meeting and lots of grading, writing out solution sets, configuring a test, and planning the next two units for two different classes! I am tired already.

One 'traditional' rendition (right), and an echo-y one of my own device (left).

Have a great week!

Carving out some time.

Greetings out there in the world! I feel like I have had no contact outside my classroom and the adjacent classrooms (except the occasional parent communication) in months!

I read the Diva Challenge for this week which encourages us to try new tools or techniques and thought "Hey, this is just what I needed this week!". My interpretation includes different paper and a situation that I have not tried drawing in before and I will admit that the two entries I have in this post for that Challenge were done prior to reading the challenge but they are no less relevant because of it.

So the first one is an exploration of both a different drawing tool and a different drawing paper. I usually draw on white card stock or pale cream mixed media paper. Last week had a chance to go get a new supply of paper in light of a new project I will tell you about in a minute and branched out into a darker paper. I was drawn to the "craft" paper color - sort of like a paper grocery sack - just for its gentle variation and not-so-serious black color. I fingered the dark coffee and latte colors, but in the end they were too smooth and perfect and I went with the craft color. Using this color I was able to try out the white pencil and white gel pen that I don't ever get to use when I am drawing on white. I put it all together this weekend and this is the result.








The second one was done about a week ago and involved a less than ideal drawing situation and familiar materials and tools.  In general I have very little time for drawing these days so it must be squeezed in. The other week a few other teachers and I were taking a couple of bus-loads of sophomore's in a field trip. I had about 30 minutes on the way there and 30 minutes on the way back to occupy since I was not driving and the students are pretty self sufficient. The situation was not really conducive to anything 'productive' like grading papers or planning lessons and, I thought at first, not really conducive to drawing either. The bouncing and swaying of the bus on the highway was seriously messing with my obession with smooth, straight lines. I do like to have 'control' (or at least the illusion of control!). I decided that you can't always control your circumstances and it is up to you to make the best of what you have so I pulled out the pen and the card stock scraps I take along in my bag and tried to make the best of a bouncy situation. This was the peice from the trip back. I had seen an interesting modern painting with the spiral motif as the "sky" texture on our trip and wanted to try it out. I kind of like the wiggle in the lines on Footlights.  I think it would be hard to get them to wiggle so regularly 'on purpose'!

That project I mentioned above, by the way, involves writing a couple of articles for a special edition of a magazine that is due out this spring. I decided to try to create a new piece for each article and flesh it out with with some of my more recent, but already finished ones (and it may or may not be because I don't know where all of the older stuff is!). That was the reason for buying some nice new paper - but then, do we really need a reason to buy new supplies? I have been happily draing on card stock scraps for months, and giving them away as book marks, but a magazine submission deserves better paper - if only so I don't have to write in the article that I use plain old card stock!

Until next time (don't anyone hold your breath - I have 55 tests to finish grading and 55 notebooks to go through ASAP)!