Experimenting.

I've had a busy month experimenting with gelli printing. If you haven't tried it I highly recommend it. I ordered a gelli plate but it hasn't arrived yet, so I made one of my own and wasted no time trying it out. Here are some of the pages I used in the illustrations that follow:

Gelli Print purple and green

Heading to the Beach

 

Gelli Print: orange dots

Polka Dotted Elephant

 

Gelli Print: Yellow dots

 

 

The Eames Chair

Gelli Print: Yellow Leaves

 

 

 

 

 

The Geisha

 I've also been doing the 52 Week Illustration Challenge. Here are this month's prompts and my responses:

Fish Pond: prompt: Perspective

Cinema

 

Weekend

Happy Place

A few other illustrations from the month:

Green Horse: Tissue paper collage, digitally cut.

Textured Monster

Night Frog

Trees cut from painted papers with digital painting added.

More experiments with trees.

February 2017: My digital journey.

1. I'm continuing to participate in the 52 Week Challenge (on facebook). Here are my responses to the following prompts: garden, botanical, pastel and baking.

The Garden

Botanical

Pretty in Pastel Pink

The Baker

 2.  I was able to spend some time at the studio creating painted papers and tissue paper papers. I scanned them and then cut them out digitally. (Not nearly as messy as using scissors and glue.) Although some look too "Eric Carle" I think I can make this media my own. In most cases I let the background suggest an image. I realize after seeing them all together I need to concentrate on storytelling. Guess that will be my goal NEXT month.
Brown

Brown Bear

Blue Ape

Girl with a Bow

Butterfly Banner

Cat Lady

Circus Elephant

Dragon

Frightened Horse

Birds in the Treetop

Study for Woods

Striped Cat

Frog at Night

Colorful Turtle

Yellow Cat

Brown Cat

Feb 2: On track. Writing & Learning

#STORYSTORM

Finished the #Storystorm Challenge (It used to be PiBoIdMo in February.) Complied 31 ideas for picture book manuscripts. But the best thing was lighting up my brain to hone in on generating ideas. I wish I was disciplined enough to do it every month.  I was so excited about one idea that I wrote the first draft and polished it enough to take to critique group in February.  The remaining ideas on my list will either grow into stories or remain in the file until they fade away. It's been a great exercise to get ideas flowing in the new year.

PHOTOSHOP EXPLORING

My digital explorations have had high and low points. I've kept up with the 52 Week Illustration Challenge, (on Facebook), working from prompts to create an illustration every week. I posted five.

 I've also been experimenting with images using painted patterns created at the studio. However, I've focused so much on experimentation, I've fallen short on the "storytelling aspects" of my images. Hopefully one day I'll get it all together.

The first five images here are from prompts provided by the 52 Week Challenge:

Whimsey

Feathers

Colored version of Feathers

Tribute to A Snowy Day by Jack Ezra Keats

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

         

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Most of the following images began as painted papers, or photos of fabrics, cut into clothing shapes and built around the costume. I repeated some of the elements from the images above in illustrations below. Hint: Bricks, dog

 

Peacock

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Asian Woman

The following group of images were built around painted patterns, or photographs of fabrics, digitally cut into articles of clothing. The figures and backgrounds were then added.

Island woman

Vacation in Lascaux

It's Fall

Winter Conversation

The Soloist

Man on the Street

Man and Dog

Resting

 

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Happy New Year 2017

I always start out the new year full steam ahead. This year is no exception. After un-decorating the house, dusting and cleaning, the new year lies ahead like a clean piece of paper. I've signed up for the new PiBoIdMo, now called #Storystorm, for my writing inspiration. I usually come out with at least four or five manuscripts worth working on. Having it in January seems ideal to me. Kudos to #TaraLazar and all the volunteers who make it happen. I'm very grateful.

Having finished one dummy this year, I'm eager to re-evaluate it for a few months and start sending it out. I discovered a great opportunity called Writing With The Stars that sounds perfect for me. Check it out here: http://beckytarabooks.com/contest/.

If I can manage to get my pdf dummy assembled by their Jan. 13/14 deadline, I plan to submit it and my manuscript for a chance to have a more experienced mentor look over it and offer advice.

On the illustration side, I hope to complete all 52 weeks of the 52 week illustration challenge, on facebook.  I didn't make very far last year. Hoping to do better in 2017.

I'm still working on photoshopped collages but itching to get to the studio to muck around with paint, oil pastels, pastels and printmaking. Hopefully I'll create some pieces to inspire me and add to my stash of collage bits to assemble in photoshop.

I holiday-ed most of December but did finish a couple of things. Used my collection of bottlebrush  and other evergreens to assemble this Winter Landscape, which is now my facebook banner for January.

Hope this finds you also full of new year plans that set your creative juices flowing.

Exploring Digital Collage

I've been exploring digital collage this month. My camera has had quite a workout photographing textures, patterns, hats and gloves. Here are a few of my experimental pieces:

Girl with a hat.

I drew a few quick faces, scanned them and dressed them with cropped photos of hats, fabric and buttons.

Latin Girl

Girl with red cloche hat.

Girl with red flowered hat. 

Hated the hands so I decided to "hire" my granddaughter, Phoebe to model some gloves. Two images below show Phoebe in the studio modeling and how I used the gloves below.

 

I had fun taking photos of patterned sweaters in local re-sale shops!                                                      Cut and pasted them into what I needed in photoshop.

       

Red haired girl

Laughing boy

Boy with a black hat

Frowning girl

Combining photos of gloves, drawn faces and digital drawing.

Combining three images into a banner.

Red Plaid Dancer: My favorite from the series.