Recycled

There is another new term for recycled that sort of means the same thing, re-purposed. Taking something and using it in a new way. Hmmmm. Well the prompt here for the Art Journal 52. 2014 used recycled. I found an old mono print from my "man of blue" series that just never seemed to be finished or framed. I began by adding some black ink lines and some white lines. I liked what was happening. I thought it would be fine to put on this journal page.

A detail of the page shows this little mono print which is about a 4 inch round. It was just what I needed to begin my page.

The man of blue was somehow entangled with a unicorn! I decided to end that experiment there. I had some other objects gathered for my recycled page. There is a piece with a quote from a box of tea, a round gold closure from an old note card, a bit of a printed article and some card crafting ephemera (a scallop punched item and a key stamp).

I set off using an acrylic blue to get the background on the page started and then added the darker blue spots. As I moved on I added the gold circle and the eye like image appeared so I developed that. I just kept adding paint. I felt it needed something. Yellow. That was it. I thought the print would pop more with some yellow along the one edge. Then I glued the print on to the page. The edges of the print were not glued so the key stamped paper and the one with the words could be tucked under a bit. More yellow went in the upper left corner to balance things out and the tea box fit just perfect. At that point the eye did not look finished so I added  a yellow ring around the gold the lavender ring around the eye and some ink lines.  It was just about finished when I put the little white dots on the lavender ring and blue dots. I think the key to some meaning may be in the eye........comments?

Celebrate 75 Years with Us...

Celebrate 75 Years with Us...     Prismcolor products I use
                                Below is an oil monoprint enhanced with color pencil

Below:Watercolor pencil used for 3rd Street Park DeKalb, IL and

 preliminary sketch for NIU Huskie Pup Project

If you have not tried this product do it now. I absolutely love them. The color is true and the pencils are so nice to work with.

Just Another Sun

I try to make cards for each of my three sons summer birthdays . Since I had gotten into stamping, each year the card has been using a sun stamp. A sun for my sons!

This year I decided to make a small lino-cut and use that for my image. We had a lino-cut workshop led by Erin Nolan at a KVAL (Kishwaukee Valley Art League) workshop June 10th. I was able to pull an artist proof to use for the first of the three summer birthdays. For Bob’s June 15th birthday card I used the first artist proof done using Stamping Up eggplant colored ink.

July 16th and August 18th are the next two son’s birthdays. I will probably edition this fine art print by then or make mono-prints and probably do each one a little differently. Doing this little 3” X 5” print reminds me how much I love printing. I have another block ready to be cut. Watch for the next one. More sunflowers are waiting to emerge on my canvas too. Doing art on a regular basis is reaching a goal.