Seven Years Slowly but Surely

Today I am celebrating seven years blogging here at Lost Coast Post.  You've heard of slow food?  Well, I'm a slow blogger.  It has taken me seven years to generate 533 posts.  For those of you who need additional figures, that averages about 76 posts a year.  My blogging habit is highly influenced by my many health and life challenges but lately, I've been posting 5 days a week rather faithfully.  That could change at a moment's notice but for now, I am in a groove.

In blogging and really, in all things in life, this Chinese proverb is one of those guiding philosophies that appear repeatedly in my journals.  I wholeheartedly believe that slow & steady wins the race.

Thank you to everyone who spends time here with me, whether it's a little or a lot.  Thank you to everyone who drops a comment my way.  Those little nuggets of encouragement and praise make me smile from ear to ear and help keep me going no matter the obstacle.  I hope that this space provides smiles and inspiration in return.  Here's to seven years and however many more are meant to be!

Lovin' Those Links

It's finally Friday and that means, that in April and now May, it's Link Love Friday!  Here's where I'm sending you all this week:

Free downloads of art instruction books from Andrew Loomis, courtesy of Illustration Age.  The books are in the public domain; just click on the book covers and download the complete book in PDF format!

Mary Ann Moss of Dispatch from LA has been sharing her Spoleto/Umbria sketchbook page by page.  Just go to her home page, scroll down, and be amazed!

It's that time of year again!  The Index-Card-a-Day challenge (lovingly known as ICAD), is going into its third year.  It begins on June 1st so click here for in depth information on this fabulous challenge.  To see all of my ICADs from last year, visit this Flickr set.

Alisa Burke's husband, Andrew Gunthardt, is a fantastic artist, especially with a ball point pen in hand.  Check out his post on Alisa's blog on how to use a ball point pen and then check out Andy's own blog for more amazing pen work.

A Gleaming Taper's Light

Owls are the critter of the week for me it seems.  I am getting close to finishing my "Unexpected Convergences" journal (for shots of all the pages in this journal, go to this set in my Flickr portfolio.)  While I've loved working on this journal, I'll be thrilled when it is finished as I've had about all I can take of journal projects that seem to go on forever.  I like that sense of accomplishment when a journal is complete and I am tired of all the journals on my shelves that are only three-quarters of the way done.  I have half a mind to rip out all the remaining blank pages and call it good.  I won't do that, of course, but the idea is tempting. 

Watercolor Wednesday: Art Supply Sketching Continues

I'm still getting my feet wet in watercolor sketching by painting my art supplies.  I really recommend starting with simple, everyday objects as the familiarity with the subject helps smooth the process.  I'm not really ready to go out on the town and begin painting my world in earnest so for now, I am using my studio as source material.  I have done the "urban sketching" thing but I've never felt really comfortable with it so I am going back to the beginning and working my way back to painting outside.

I paint each item into my journal in advance and leave space to journal later.  (In general that's the way I work in my "daily diary" journal whether I painting, drawing, or collaging.) I like journaling around my paintings so I do choose my objects and layout based on that fact.

I'm glad everyone seems to be enjoying the Watercolor Wednesday post series.  Don't forget that for links to all the posts I've done about watercolor, you can visit this page on my blog...

Glue It Tuesday: Scrap Paper Owls

Last week's paper robot play led, naturally, to more scrap paper critters.  I'm not sure how I will use these little owlets quite yet but they were fun (and a tad tedious) to make.  Anyhoo, these paper cuties are my entry for this week's Glue It Tuesday. 

How To Recycle Your Art

As I continue to work towards my goal of generating all of my own focal imagery in my journals, I find that it is extremely important to lean on old work to create new work.  In this post, I'll outline some of my techniques for recycling art.

1) Get Really Friendly with Your Neighborhood Copy Center:  
Color copies of old journal pages can be cut into strips to make borders on new pages.  Color copy bits and pieces make excellent backgrounds for small art such as ATCs, inchies, and postcards.  You get the look of complex layering without doing all the work twice.  Have a painted canvas that didn't quite work?  Cut that canvas off the frame and get thee to the nearest copier to recycle that painting into cool background material. 

 

2) Get a New Perspective Through Your Camera's Viewfinder:
I take pictures all the time of my work, not only to build my portfolio, but to see that work in new ways.  Take close-ups of small doodles, important focal images, or interesting background bits and use those detail photos to make new art.

3) Dance Between Mediums:
Look at symbols that repeatedly occur in your work.  Let those lexicon images become inspiration for hand-carved stamps and use those stamps in your backgrounds or as focal images in new projects.  For example, I recently painted a fox image on a journal page that I loved so I drew that image again on a smaller scale and created a stamp.  I plan on making a series of greeting cards with my new fox stamp.

Recycling your art is a great way to get more mileage out of all your hard work and as long as your work doesn't contain copyrighted material in the first place, it is a fantastic technique for building a library of collage fodder that is uniquely your own.

Friday Link Love

It's Friday and that means it's time once again for Link Love!  Hope you enjoy this week's virtual destinations...

Pam Garrison's quilt post makes me long for a needle in my fingers and fabric in my lap..

An oldie but "worth-reading-again" post by artist Michael deMeng...

At a loss for something to draw?  Click a button at a "1000 Things to Draw" and presto! Inspiration!

144 Characters Under My Belt, 221 to Go!

In January I decided to undertake a mammoth art challenge:  Create 365 drawn, painted, sculpted, and/or sewn characters throughout the course of 2013.  With this journal page, I have created 144 characters so far this year.  To see pictures of all the characters, check out this Flickr set.

I'm not quite halfway through the challenge and I am starting to feel fatigued.  I've been ahead of the game right from the beginning but I'm not generating pieces at the pace I was when I began so I anticipate falling behind if I don't catch my second wind.  It is certainly not for lack of imagination or interest, but rather time and energy; everyday life has sort of asserted itself over my art life in recent weeks.

Summer break from teaching will hit at the end of May so I am hoping the sudden gift of free time will breathe new life into this challenge for me. 

Watercolor Wednesday: Blending Practice

Today's Watercolor Wednesday features a super simple activity that yields a lot of information.  You'll learn how to move color across the page in a smooth, flat manner (otherwise known as a flat wash.)  You'll also see how two colors can make a third and thus, extend your color palette with only a few basic colors.  

Step 1:  Draw a longish rectangle on paper in pencil.

Step 2:   Add a dab of one color to one end of the rectangle and a dab of another color to the other end.

Step 3:  Using a clean wet brush each time you move back and forth between colors, pull the colors in towards the center to create a blend of the two colors in the middle of the rectangle.  Your goal is to get as smooth a transition as possible.

Note the neutrals that are created when you blend two colors that lay opposite one another on the color wheel, such as red and green or blue and orange.

I did this activity with my art students when I taught watercolor.  When the blends were completely dry, we cut the rectangles of color out and used them to create bookmarks...just an idea!  

Glue It Tuesday: Scrap Paper Robots

I think that many of my regular readers know by now that I love, love, love robots!  And if you are new to Lost Coast Post...well, I'll say it again: I love robots!  I love drawing them and sculpting them and drawing them some more.  And now, I love collaging them.  I get a big kick out of seeing their little personalities emerge as I layer shapes and patterns.

The process is super simple.  Take geometric punches and scraps of paper, push around on paper until a little mechanical man appears, add doodled details with a marker.  I did this project last week with my art students and they constructed an entire army of artificial life forms.

This is my entry for this week's Glue-It-Tuesday, a wonderful wee challenge thought up by the artful Aimee of Artsyville.  Check out Aimee's blog on Tuesdays for the week's Linky List of participants.