Archive for Art

Done and Done.

July 2, 2006 at 8:25 pm · Filed under Art, Cards, Paper, Photos, Sewing, Swaps

My “Coloriffic” swaps are definitely done. I scaled back the handmade items as I wrote last time, and even so, I think my swap partners will be pleased with the results.

For the international version of this month’s Coloriffic Swap-O-Rama, the colors were chocolate brown and light blue (or aqua). I made a tote bag and card/envelope set, to go with a bunch of sewing-oriented craft items for my partner.

Brown & Blue Polka Dot Tote Bag Brown & Blue Polka Dot Tote Bag - Close-up Brown & Blue Coloriffic Swap - July

And for the US/Canada-only version of this month’s Coloriffic Swap-O-Rama, the colors were black and white. I didn’t really get into this one as much, but I made a zippered pouch and another card/envelope set to go with more paper-oriented craft items.

Black & White Musical Pouch Black & White Musical Pouch - Lining Black & White Coloriffic Swap for July

Everything will go out first thing in the morning, and hopefully the recipients will like what I picked. I tried my best to consider their personal interests, as any good swapper should! ;)

I’m still signed up in a few more swaps via Swap-Bot, but fortunately they’re not as involved and aren’t due very soon. I will definitely not be doing any sewing for them, which is fine because I’m not really in a fabric sort of mood. I think stepping on a needle this evening sealed the deal for me, at least for awhile. ;P

Working on these swaps has definitely reaffirmed my interest in playing with color combinations in my creative projects though. Color is just a very exciting thing to look at, enjoy, and experiment with, and after my recent art class on the subject, I really want to play around more, especially with what I learned about color schemes. I have plans for a few “colorful” series of projects, focusing on paper for the time-being. Here’s what I consider the first piece for one of these series:

Handmade Postcard - Cyan, Blue Green, Green

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Being Artsy

May 20, 2006 at 3:42 pm · Filed under Art, Events, Groups, Shopping

I haven’t really been working on as many craft projects lately, thus the lack of posts over the past few weeks. I’m enrolled in a few art/design classes at a local community college, and the assignments for those have been taking up quite a bit of my time. Although the projects are more art than craft, they’re still creative things, so I thought I’d post a few photos of them.

Color Symbolism   Color Wheel in Gouache

Neutralizing Color with Complementary Colors   Expressive Color - Monterey

These are all for my “color” class, and I’ve had a lot of fun working on them and learning more about color. We’ve been using gouache paint for the majority of the projects, and it’s been interesting, since I’m more used to using acrylics.

The graphic design class I’m taking though has been quite different from what I thought it would be like. I was especially looking forward to it, as I had really wanted to study graphic design in school, but it’s turned out to be less interesting to me. Perhaps that’s partly due to it being entirely online, so any sort of communication seems rather forced. I don’t think I’m doing too poorly in it, but I’m still not sure if it’s something I want to pursue further.

Other than that, I’ve been having fun with some new friends from the South Bay Craft Group, including a shopping trip and a craft party. This past weekend, a few of us went down to Santa Cruz to check out some thrift stores, as well as Hart’s Fabric, a really wonderful fabric store I happened to find the week before. We visited a very strange Goodwill store called Bargain Barn, and also stopped in at Bookshop Santa Cruz, which is probably the best bookstore I’ve found in this area.

The craft party was a lot of fun too, especially since I hadn’t been to one in awhile. The theme was altering t-shirts, based on the fairly recent book Generation T. I ended up making a pillow and started some embroidery on it, though I haven’t quite finished it yet. I was more into being social, and would love to organize a party of my own sometime. The last one I helped with was all about making decos (little booklets of collaged pages that are exchanged through the mail), but I don’t really work on them anymore. There are so many great new books out this year though, so I’m sure I can find something, as well as a new project to work on.

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Abstract Art Idea

November 20, 2005 at 2:10 pm · Filed under Art, Inspiration, Web

I haven’t been watching many how-to decorating or craft shows lately, but I did catch part of an episode of “reDesign” on HGTV last night. The room turned out fairly well, but one of the projects caught my attention and sounded like a cool thing to try.

The project was to make some inexpensive wall art for the room, by using something personal to the homeowner. They started with some of her personal photographs and by using a piece of cardboard with a square cut into it as a viewfinder, chose particularly interesting details of the photos. They color-copied these image details, enlarging them by 800% to get a somewhat abstract image as the result.

Anyway, it sounded like a really cool way to make some cheap art for yourself, and I could see it being applied to other projects as well.

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Art Class Photos

September 28, 2005 at 9:08 pm · Filed under Art, Miscellaneous, Web

After all this thinking about art class, and especially since my calligraphy class takes place in an art classroom, I was inspired to create a new group on Flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/artclass/

If you have any photos of projects you created in art class, feel free to join and share them. :)

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Back in time…

September 28, 2005 at 8:48 pm · Filed under Art, Inspiration, Miscellaneous, Paper, Photos

The other day, I decided to pull out my old art portfolios from college, hidden under the bed and still in the box they were shipped out here from Illinois in. I scanned and photographed a few pieces that I felt were ok enough to share:

Spring, Seasons series - Design 1 Summer, Seasons series - Design 1 Fall, Seasons series - Design 1 Winter, Seasons series - Winter - Design 1

This series was done for a design class I took at a community college near where I grew up. The intent of the project was for us to learn how to mix acrylic paint to get the colors we wanted. The pieces are a lot sloppier than I remember them being, but they were the inspiration for the postcards I made earlier this year:

Painted Squares Postcard Painted Square Heart Postcard

These came out a lot better, and I’d like to try playing around with this theme again sometime. It’s fairly easy to do and it’s a lot of fun to blend all the paints just so, in order to get those gorgeous streaks.

Leaves on Gray - Drawing 2 Leaves & Feather on Blue - Drawing 2

I thought these were perfect for this time of year, and both were done for a drawing class at UIUC, though I don’t remember much else about them. The one on the left was doen in chalk pastels, whereas the one on the left was done in oil pastels.

Still Life Collage - Drawing 1 (with flash) Still Life Collage - Drawing 1 (with flash)

Finally, these are two shots of a collage piece I created for a drawing class at the same community college, one with flash and the other without so that you can see the full piece and still get the effect of it. This was a still life, done by tearing bits of magazine pages and adhering them to a background with gel medium, which was also used to create the lovely varnished effect over all of it. I remember really having a good time with this, especially for how it felt to tear all the bits of paper up, and then for the effect of using these fragments to create a larger image. It got a bit messy with all the gel medium, but it was fun to work on.

It was weird looking through all of these and the rest of the pieces (mostly hideous) in my portfolio, mainly because it feels like I worked on them an eternity ago (8 years now), but also because I never did pursue a degree in an art or design field. Not that these pieces were all for naught, of course, because I did enjoy working on a lot of them, even if they didn’t turn out as well as I wanted them to.

I think that’s enough time down memory lane for now though… :)

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