You Suck Monday

Strikes again. Computer died and it's put me in a funky mood. I'm using my husband's laptop right now, but the screen is cracked so it has to be plugged into the television and it's hard to use like this. So if I'm gone I'm not ignoring you, and if I'm NOT gone but posts are looking strange (without subjects or photos only) it's because I'm posting from my phone. Blah.

Still drawing like Teesha

Maybe I shouldn't say that, she probably wouldn't appreciate me comparing my pages to hers! But at the same time, I'm mimicking her style so it doesn't seem right not to say that and pretend it's my own.

I know, I know - they're both pink AND the last one was pink, too. (The crazy bird thing.) The reason for that is because this is my Paper Research Project journal, all five paper types have to be treated the same. Even the same paint COLOR? I mean, Golden makes lots of pretty colors...

That is true, but if I used a different color, it would be harder to tell how the different papers take the paint. So five papers means five pink pages (magenta, actually). I really, really enjoy journaling like this. Now I'm trying to decide if I should do a WHOLE journal like this, or just a few pages in my everyday journal. I like a page being prepped and ready when I just want to blabber. (Like this morning.) But there are lots of times I want to draw. Have a different journal for drawing? Or combine? I think combine. Eventually I just want to have ONE journal that's for EVERYTHING - the cartoons, paint, drawing, all of it. Can I do that? Dunno. Maybe. We'll see.

February AS layouts...

This is my good friend, Jessica, and her grandma who passed away in 2010.

I used a paper pack by MamaLlamaLisaDesigns called Summer Seersucker. I love brown and green, brown and blue, brown and pink - all those combos! This paper pack has great colors.

This is Miles, my cousin's son.

This kit is Morning Wake Up and is from a new designer at Ahhh Scrap, JDK Scrapz. Again the brown/color combo. I don't know what's so fun about it!

This is mt friend Jess's mom and grandma.

For these awesome pictures of mom and daughter, I used Ahhh Scrap's February Collab, Song of Love.

And back to Miles. What a face on this kid, huh?

I scrapped him with "Joyous" by Piccolina Designs. This kit is FILLED with amazing colors, tons of pretty papers. Love it!

Depth

I think my art needs more depth. My backgrounds are boring. These two are little canvas panels. One is my son (we're not doing anything special, he just has a very expressive face!) and the other is my friend.
They're cute, I like them well enough. But - shouldn't there be more? More what, I don't know, but more something.
I painted, I stamped, I inked and I like them. But I'm not completely satisfied, you know? They're finished, but if I was going to do them over I'd add something. Maybe drips or splatters. Both, even. I'm pretty good and making things that are pretty good. I want to take things over the top. Gotta work on that.

This makes me giggle...

OK, so I've been playing around in a new Paper Research Project journal and I made a Teesha-like page on each paper. But I really hate collage, even Teesha-style collage, so I sort of didn't want to do that part of it. Instead, I thought it would be fun to draw like her. Any drawing I usually do involves lots of measuring, rulers, lines, some more measuring...

But drawing like Teesha was FUN!!

I drew silly thing and painted in crazy colors and it was just fun! I journaled on this page days later, and I LOVE that. Having a page ready and sitting somewhere with my pens and just doodling the letters in.

But I liked this particular one so much I made it into a painting! I can't even TELL you how much fun this was. Amazing amounts of fun. You gotta try it!!

The making of an angel

getting tired of these??

Drippage...

This was supposed to be the background for some collage, but I totally forgot that part!!! It makes me giggle that I prepared this canvas board SPECIFICALLY for a collage assignment I was issued and then had so much fun painting it I forgot about the collage part!! What should I collage on there?

It's so very shimmery in real life...and the white looks less like bird poop.

Credit

I have a problem with credit. Not the "I spent too much money" kind of credit, the acknowledgment kind of credit. I don't like being the center of attention, I don't like being singled out, I don't like when the teacher knows my name. In school, I couldn't be the kid who turned in their test first, I just couldn't, so I would sit at my desk with it until another kid (fifteen or twenty minutes later) would walk up and hand the teacher their test - THEN it was safe to turn in mine. My clarinet professor in college told me during a lesson "You're the most talented musician I've seen come through this school" and that I needed to quit my job (which paid the rent) and concentrate on music. I dropped out at the end of that semester.

I couldn't handle being "the best" anything - all the other clarinet players already hated me because I was straight out of high school and sitting second chair, playing first part, in a space where they felt they rightfully belonged. Maybe they were right. Who was I to argue?

This is directly opposite of my nature when it comes to something factual. I had a woman argue with me about my astrological sign once. I told her I was a Leo, she asked when my birthday was, I told her, she said she thought I was something else, I looked at her like she was insane and told her I was positive I'm a Leo. Then she was like "Wow, you sure are insistent about it!" Was I? Maybe I was - because I KNEW I wasn't wrong.

But things like art, music, writing - it's subjective. Some people will like it, some won't. It's so weird to see what will change someone's mind. My husband has NO opinions of his own. He's the MOST wishy-washy person you will ever meet. He can't even decide where to pick up dinner from. He'll think something is awesome until I tell him why I don't like it - then the next time he talks about it, he hates it. If I go to the movies with someone and the entire theater laughs at a joke I don't get, I'll poke the person I'm with and say "I don't get it." More often than not they say "Yeah, me neither," but they were laughing - why would you do that? You're faking a reaction for strangers in a dark room?

That's the kind of thing that makes me overly critical and judgmental to myself. If you'll pretend to get a joke so a bunch of people you'll never see again don't notice you're not laughing at something THEY probably don't get either, why would I believe you when you say you like something I did? Even here, when I get a nice comment from someone out in cyberspace my initial reaction is "Oh, I gotta take it down. What if someone else sees it and they like it, too?" It's so much easier to be a college dropout stay-at-home mom than an aspiring clarinet player whose teacher fed her what she wanted to hear. (He flunked me, by the way.) It's so much easier and less frightening to hide in the shadows. I'm not afraid of failure, not even a tiny bit - what am I going to fail at? I'm terrified - shaking in my boots terrified, want to hide in the closet terrified - of success. So I paint and I show my friends pictures of a painting here and there. I play my clarinet in the University band that my friend conducts. And my paintings gather dust in a stack on the floor, my clarinet spends most of its time silent in its case. How long did it take me to realize I was horribly, unspeakably, irrationally terrified of succeeding? About thirty years. You?

Cartoons!

OK, OK - I got behind again! Some days I just feel too blah to actually draw anything, but I've been trying to at least keep notes on what I do each day so I can cartoon when I DO feel like it.





Now I'm all caught up again! :)

Fabirano Paper play!

On the day of Blick Madness ( who could avoid the art store on a day with MADNESS in the title???) I got enough Fabriano paper to make two journals and one extra to play with! Here are my playtime results!

One side:

The other side:

Then I ripped it into strips, ripped them in half, half again, and made a little journal. Here's a couple of pages!

I totally want to do this again, but with more of a plan next time. The mess was pretty fun, but I like plans. Now that I have a messy little journal, I have no idea what to DO with it!!

Marker Paper

Seriously? Do you know how much I paid for this crappy paper?? At least eleven or twelve bucks! And it's in my cartoon journal, since I'm testing papers to try and find the one I love. This morning I tore a piece out of my journal because I used a crappy pen and then tried to go over it with a good pen and blah, blah, blah, so I tore out this piece and THEN I thought "Yay, I can play with my copics on it and see how AMAZING it is - since it's MARKER PAPER!!"

Yeah, not so much. I know the following pics are kind of crappy, I had to take them with my phone, too close for comfort so you could see the color comparisons. The copic marker color chart was given to me by a copic supplier, so it's not even like I printed it at home on crappy paper.

This is e000 - a light color, to be sure, but you can barely even see it on the paper at all. If you didn't KNOW it was colored, it just looks white.

This is e00, another light color, but look at the difference between the chart and the paper - ridiculous!

This is b24 for my son's pretty blue eyes. It's SO bad!! Really, really bad.

I just want to find an amazing copic marker paper that keeps my colors true, doesn't feather, blends easily, and doesn't seep through the back so I can use both sides. Too much to ask?

Journals, Journals, Journals!

I LOVE making them. Maybe I have a problem. I love paper and I love journals. I have a little bit of a paper problem (you can ask Kelly, she'll tell you). It's like crack for me. I get all giddy about it! Truthfully I only have two to show you at the moment (I'm in the process of two more but I need to get a new blade for my little cutter, it's been working too hard lately!)

This one is for Ajae:

Back:This is so you can see the binding and the back and front together:

I'm pretty excited about it!! It's pretty and filled with amazing Fabriano Artistico #140 watercolor paper. I heart it.

This one is my next Paper Research Project. The covers are painted loose canvas and adhered to cardstock.

Front:

Back:Binding:

Inside:

It's a different binding than we've been using. This one is a coil and I think it's a little too big, but since it's a test journal that's what it's for!

Fabriano Rosapina

I've been trying to find a paper for someone - someone else gave her a piece but purchased it years ago and has no idea what the actual paper is. She's pretty sure it's Fabriano, but not sure what kinds...so I've been hunting. When I found this Rosapina, I thought it felt a LOT like it. But then I tried to cut it with my razor cutter and it did THIS:

And THIS:

Still, my partner (Kelly!!) has a different kind of cutter and I was thinking if this paper was fabulous we could just try her cutter. And THEN...(dun dun DUN - hear the creepy music, please). Little bits of paper started tearing off when I was blending. It was like using construction paper meant for a Kindergartener.

(This is a little piece of paper on my white pencil!)

Rip here:and here:Another disappointing paper. Still, this is the point of the Paper Research Project. So far my letdowns have been: Stonehenge, Canford (no surprise there, just wanted to test it), and now Fabriano Rosapina. In the lead still: Fabriano Artistico. (Today was Blick MADNESS so I got seven sheets of it...)

All caught up!!

Please be proud of me! (Someone? Anyone?!?) I'm all caught up with my cartooning!


OK, I'm all caught up with the drawing part - not so much with the coloring!! I know, I know - Man up, Goog! I'm just so scared of my copic markers!! I gotta get over it and I will...maybe tomorrow.