Day 12: Wet hand

Day 11: We bought a house today

This is our house. We will move in mid-June!

Here is the video tour I took!

Day 10: Wallflower

Day 9: Markers

Had to something quick, big headache tonite! Still kinda like it though!

Day 8: A beautiful day for kickball

Day 7: Sunset

Day 6: Nightwalk

Day 5: While on a walk....

At the dog park in Colonial Place....



In a puddle near the dog park...

Day 4: Kids at work

I decided to take a picture of my kids working on their shoe project in class...they are doing such a great job so far!

Day 3: the husband

husband hard at work making dinner.

Day 2+: Suitcases

Suitcases found on the street in our neighborhood.

Day 2: Frosted Tulips

Day 1: A couple of photos

Photo A Day

So I decided I need to take more photos. For the month of March, I will take a photo every day to fine tune my skills. This picture is a picture I took this past week. Sal's Halloween pumpkin that has been sitting on the front porch since October. It's awesomely shriveled and hollow! Had to take some Edward Weston type photos of it.


Blogger is somehow limiting my color palette and muting the orange....grrr.

The fun starts tomorrow

Drawing with new tools! YAY!

Last week we went to the art store and needed to spend some money I had on a gift card. A student showed me some rad Artist Brush Pens awhile back, so I thought I'd get some. Here is my first picture with them...nothing special, but they feel real nice! It's a lemur I took a picture of at the DC Zoo.

Animation cels 2009

The students finished their animation cels and I think they look great! The pictures really don't do them justice, but you can get an idea. They had to pick an animal that best represented their personality, dress them in their own clothes and put them in a setting they enjoy.
Click here to see last year's.

Our next project is "Ceramic Shoes". What kind of shoe are you?

My Valentine

So my student promised me he would get me a valentine gift. He's a jokester and I think he's great. No wrong intentions here, just good laughs (Sarah, you know who it is!!)

I received this card with a rose...

PS From the Urban Dictionary- "g-slice": Another word for homie or good friend

Thoughts on art...

Yesterday I was really trying to explore myself as an artist. I have been trying to fine-tune my skills for years, but haven't really come up with a series, a theme for my art. A true artist has a "big idea".
So last night, as I was trying to go to sleep (heat is broken, so it was very cold), I had my lightbulb moment!
Anyone that knows me, knows I love animals. Why? I love studying them, watching them, seeing how they relate to humans, how they interact with each other. Even as a little girl I recall comparing classmates to an animal that has similar characteristics (always kept that to myself!!) Anyway, so then I started brainstorming on how I can approach this in my art. Man vs. Nature, The Language of Animals, Are we Animals?
I had this vision of an orangutan at the bottom of a canvas and painting at the top. Simple, black contour drawing or simplified at the very least.
Maybe the illusion of blood at the top, strokes of vines throughout...I haven't decided yet. I traced a photograph with tracing paper of an orangutan and wasn't inspired. I played with some filters and manipulation of the photograph in photoshop and got a pretty simple version of my orangutan.
I then thought about a transfer process. Take the printed, manipulated version of the orangutan right out of the printer while still wet from ink, place on bottom of canvas and wet the back with water to transfer. The first one I didn't eliminate background, so more ink transferred than I wanted. I erased all of the background of the photo, only leaving the orangutan, and this is what I got. I am pleased. Now I have to think of what to do with the rest.

Photos:
1st one is a robot that our friend Neal donated to our collection of toys pointing at the work in-progress on the computer.

2nd is the comparison of the original photo to the manipulated one. I had to flip the picture so it would appear correctly on the canvas.

3rd is the canvas with the orangutan. I went over lines with a black marker to pop them out.

Love the Statue of Liberty people

Opportunity

My co-worker was walking passed a powerpoint screen and found a perfect opportunity to take this picture. I think I am going to play with it in Photoshop....

obviously he's making a funny face, he doesn't normally look like this.