I woke up this morning to snow coming down sideways.  Apparently, it didn’t snow much, but the high winds turned the world into sideways-snow-world for a few hours.

Ah, the midwest.

It also went from being almost sixty degrees yesterday to having wind-chills below zero.

Let’s just say I stayed inside, rather than running the errands I thought I’d do.  Because sub-zero is a climate best suited to penguins and polar bears, of which I am neither.

So I dug back into the book.  Today, Traci had us doodling what she calls “Girlie Glam” faces, in a prescribed way — long swirly-looking eyes, swirlier hair, colored in with colored pencils.  Oh, but seriously.

But I did it.  And in a second here, I’ll show you.  I just have to mention that tomorrow?  It’s all about making a photocopy of HER doodles and coloring them in.  No kidding.  Like, coloring them in.   Don’t get me wrong — I’ve looked at the page.  I love her doodles.  Her style.  But her style?  Totally HER style.  Should be interesting.

Anyway, after doing it as prescribed, I starting looking around at other artists I admire.  Copying bits of their style, just to see if there were things I could incorporate and make my own.  Because really, that’s what this is going to end up being about — finding parts of this method, this way of doing things, this type of mark-making…and making it my own, right?

Let’s just do a little comparison:

Exercise from the book (a.k.a. Her style, touch of me when I got annoyed with swirlies):

Contrasted with these three ATCs that sprang into being while loosely copying parts of other artists I like:

Um.

I really like the ATC-sized stuffs….

I spent the rest of the day fighting with my (hopefully soon ex-) domain registrar, who is holding this domain hostage, it seems.  (They keep turning on the “domain protect” feature arbitrarily, keeping me from transferring to another, better host.  It’s annoying me, needless to say.)

I’m almost at the half-way point for the ATC’s.  Then it’s on to journal pages and mail art and the thing-a-day project, which starts in two days.  I’m still not quite sure what I’ll do for it, other than the ATCs and such.  Maybe stamp carving.  30 stamps in 30 days, maybe?  (It gives me the happyshudders thinking about it.  That’d be almost 40 letterboxes ready to go when the snow stops going sideways.)

Stay warm, everyone.  Thanks for all the comments and emails — they really do spur me to get back to drawing when I kind of just want to curl up with the dogs and watch the snow fall….er…blow.  :)

See how one side of this puppy decided that it was going to randomly shift to the left for no apparent reason?

Welcome to my life. I think random left-shifts is pretty much commonplace for me these days.

Speaking of Left (most horrid segue ever…), I got this book on Saturday with my giftcert monies:

The Left Bank Look by Anne Hubert.

Oh, holy crapola. I’m not a big sew-your-own-clothes type (remind me, if you ever come to my house, to show you The Skirt of Dastardly Proportions. Bad things happen when I sew.), so I picked it up intending to kind of glance at it and leave it be, but it’s SO NOT THAT BOOK.

Instead, it’s all about the perception of French style, which I’m sure isn’t how people in France actually live, but that’s okay. It’s how we think they live, and even if it’s not true, I still like it. (Full disclosure: It WAS actually first printed in France. But the french edition may be different. Like what they’re doing to yarnstorm Jane’s book — re-editing it for American eyeballs.)

It’s got bed linens and table linens and refashioned T-shirts and messenger bags and transfers and curtains and….do I really need to go on here? It’s making me a little swoony.

It’s a small, cheap book. Ten bucks at Amazon (link above, where I get, like, a nickel of your ten bucks. Again, full disclosure.), non-glossy paper (which I *love*.), lots of patterns.

The cover even inspired this:

Shoes are cool.

So in an effort not to be totally un-list-worthy today, I made two new recipes for dinner (an appetizer and the main course…crab cakes and stuffed potato skins. mmmm.), updated all my blogs, and set to work, as I said I would, on Collage Unleashed.

Okay, so. We were up to #6, if we were following linearly. Which we’re not. But that’s beside the point. I dove in at #6, with the intention of getting through another two or three exercises.

The problem: It’s all about transparencies. I have none. And while the weather was good enough to go get some, I said I wasn’t going to invest a lot of money in this, nor was I going to go out and buy a bunch of crap … er….supplies, since the whole point of this thing is to use what I have, and use it a LOT. Like, use it UP if I can.

The next problem: There are transparencies in the next THREE exercises. Layering them and painting on them and blah blah blah. *facepalm*

The attitude: Screw it. I think I picked the wrong book for using up my current supplies. But we’ll get to that in a second.

The solution, part deux: Move on to the next one. Which is more my style, I thought. Doodling.

I can doodle. I doodle a lot. I post my doodles for the world to see, in fact. DOODLING, I CAN DO. I have a PhD in DOODLEOLOGY.

True to form, however, this book has you do an exercise whereby you write an alphabet, then layer more text in varying styles over the top of it about your day, then doodle on top of THAT with geometric shapes.

Can you see my eye twitching? It is. Right one. Eyelid’s twittering like a caffeine-addicted chipmunk.

I am Simplicity Girl. I like things like White Space, and the gentle use of color. The nuances of shade against white. The starkness of text on its own, or of the play between pen lines and nothingness. I even get crazy sometimes and fill the whole page with text and marks, but it’s ordered marks. Readable marks. With places for the eye to rest. Paragraphs, because my inner copyeditor gets the bends when it has to deal with improper use of run-on paragraphs.

Like that last one, for instance. Ahem.

Thus, my eye begins to twitch when I produce things like this:

It gives me a headache.

Now, I know, if I’d done more layering (…..*TWITCH*….), and maybe lit it on fire, it would look better, I’m sure. And as the background for some other kind of collageybit, sure. You could think of that as a single-note background. (….*TWITCH IF YOU WERE ON CRACK TWITCH*….) And if I’d worked larger, or with more contrast, maybe. (…*TWITCH*…)

But it so ain’t me, man. One day, someone’s going to find these journals, and they’re going to see all the pages and then see this one and wonder if I’d suddenly been struck colorblind and possibly been struck by a moving vehicle. (Which would be true, but that’s not what caused this mess.)

I’m having serious reservations about the rest of this book. I haven’t been able to do more than half of the exercises, due to the ridiculous amount of supplies necessary to complete them. The other half have sucked quite mightily. (Other than the bookbinding, which I like, but I’m still not sure why each signature needs its own cover. I’m thinking that will be revealed when I need to attach some other kind of visual puke to it later on down the line.)

It IS interesting to me to work in someone else’s style, even when the finished result makes my eye twitch. My own style has evolved a lot over time, kind of organically, so doing all this stuff that’s waaaay out of my evolutionary path is reminding me what my style actually IS. It’s defining it for me, by showing me what it is NOT. And yes, that’s valuable.

I’m going to finish it. Everything other than the stuff I don’t have the stuff for. And then I can probably even get rid of it, I think, from where I’m standing now. If it gets exponentially better for me from here, I’ll keep it, but really….I’m doubtful, based on the experience thusfar.

Which is the SECOND big benefit I’m getting from it: Before this experience, I bought every new alternative arts book that came out. Like, the SECOND it came out. And I’d flip through, oogle the pretty pictures, and put it back on the shelf, for the most part. (I do the same with knitting books. I should be court-martialled by the knitting police.) And better, I WOULD KEEP THEM FOREVER. This is evidenced by my shelves, bowing under the weight of about eight zillion art/craft books.

Now, though, I’m getting to learn what it is that I’m getting by having that object around. I’m learning what, if anything, that object adds to my life, other than bulk and one more thing to dust. I’m figuring out that I don’t have to keep things that aren’t helping me/enriching my world and work/that I love. And the only way to know that is to work with it and see if it works/doesn’t work.

I’m sensing a change coming in the way I buy art/crafty books. I’m starting to see them as tools, rather than a collection.

And that, alone, is worth the cost of a few pages of eye-twitchingly bad art.

(p.s.  No, I’m not going to stop drawing every day.  I just got to check it off the list.  It’s a habit now again, thankfully.)

(p.p.s.  Yes, I realize the irony of the lesson about books being tools to be used when I just bought yet ANOTHER craftybook and reviewed it, not two paragraphs above my revelation.  I am a living contradiction.)

Item #19 (draw every day for 30 days) is done.  SQUEE!  I also got to cross off the BPAL one (five bottles), because I ended up keeping one that Carin ordered that didn’t work on her.  Granted, this means I need to get RID of another one in order to keep that 1/2 ratio of bottles I have now vs. bottles to cull out, but it’s a pretty good one, so I’m not complaining.

That said, I have a drawing of a shoe from last night when I got home that I still need to scan (tomorrow), and all afternoon, since I’ve had some alone-time (J’s off beating his friends with sticks ….oh, but seriously….) I’ve been working on the full-sized farmer’s wife painting that he ATC from the last entry was a sketch for.

When I’m doing ATCs, I usually end up not using many words in them.  Which is weird to me, because I’m a Word Girl.  I’m one of those for whom things don’t seem all that done unless there are words.  But in the small format, the large impact of words sometimes overpowers the balance of the rest of it all.

So it didn’t surprise me all that much when words just sort of happened on the finished collage-thingee  (It’s mixed-media.  Go figure.).  See:

Excuse the funky angle.  My shadow kept getting in the way in the pictures full-on/straight ahead.  It’s complete, other than a coat of matte UV varnish — I usually wait to put that on until it has a few days to cure.  Wouldn’t want any extra bubbles showing up later on down the line.

And I had the thought that it sort of came out not about the Citrus Farmer’s wife, but about the sideshow freak’s wife, but we’re not going to go there with the deep psychological reflection bit today.  Replace the trees with a barn and the orange branch with a dog leash, and you’ve got me.  Nuff said.

Christmas…er…Extended January Holiday went fabulously with Mom.  She loved everything I gave her, and since I handmade most of it, that’s a little validating.  She even wore the scarf to dinner, despite the fact that it’s kind of a spring thing rather than a winter thing (full of holes), so I think next year, she needs something warmer.  She’s a tiny little woman, and gets cold easier these days.

She gave me a Loopy Ewe gift certificate, so five colors of plain Louet Gems is on its way to me now.  (Aqua, two greys, a brown, and a sage gren, for the record.)  I still have a lot of sock yarn…but what I DON’T have is a lot of PLAIN sock yarn with single colors, and since I’m trying to do lacier patterns, the semi-solids/solids needed a bit of beefing up in the stash.  And hey — free is free, right?  Maybe I’ll make my mom a pair of miniature socks for next Christmas, too.  (She wears size 5 1/2 shoes, US sizing.  It’d take me, like, five seconds or something to whip up a pair, versus making them for my behemoth size 9.5.)

I’m sensing another afternoon of movies and brain-relaxation today, since the huzbeast is still beating things with sticks.  Or maybe I’ll dig into those books that I’ve been acquiring lately — books on creating virtual worlds and art-spinning, and nature journalling, and baking bread in five minutes every day.  I’ve been on a spate.  Book review post coming sometime soon, I’m sure.

One more squee for checking TWO things off the list today!  I’m planning to focus pretty hard on the Collage Unleashed book this week.  I’d like to get that one done and over with in relatively short order.  (Of course, then I want to dive into another one, because as much as this one isn’t really my style, I love that I’m getting to know it so well.  That I’m USING what’s on my shelf.  That I’m using up lots of supplies.  That later, I’m going to be able to look at my shelf and know EXACTLY what’s in this book, because I’ve done all of it (or most of it) at least once already.

There’s a lesson in here for me about using what I have, I’m sure.  I really do like it.

Apparently, technology hates me. Not that it’s NEW news, mind you, and not that it isn’t completely my fault for thinking/saying “Gee, I wonder what would happen if I….”. But still. Hooboy.

I WAS, however, able to upload the widgety plug-in all by myself, and make this particular blog a little easier to play with on the back end. And there’s more to do, even if it’s kind of fiddly and needs a little bit more fiddling. I kind of like where it’s heading now, though. :)

(And now everybody reading this through a feed reader is entirely confused, I’m sure. The blog’s a little different. Not *done*, but different. Stay tuned.)

I had this whole post in mind about the inner critic (the first ATC, the one from yesterday, which wouldn’t upload due to the database issues) and how it just whines at me sometimes. It starts out as a whisper, see, and gets louder and more convoluted, until I’ve internalized it and don’t want to go anywhere near the blank page.

But since then, we recorded an episode of Lime & Violet and I spent some time with the dogs, and reading all the artblogs I’m subscribed to, and all the inspiration has crowded that little/big voice into some remote quadrant of my brain and all I want to do is Make Stuff. Of course, the inspiration is striking at one a.m. on a night when I’m supposed to be sleeping in order to make the two-hour drive to Mom’s place tomorrow for belated holidaying, and I can’t do all that much about it.

Jen Worden’s prompt for this week is “Citrus”. You’re supposed to interpret that as you will, but work the opposite of what you usually do, which means for me, I need one of my big canvases. Instead of sketching out what I want to do and starting in on the canvas, I sketched it out on an ATC instead (must think of the List, see….), and when I get back from the holidaying, I’ll get out the canvas again. I just wish there was time tonight — I’m chuffed about the idea I’ve got.

I think I mentioned yesterday that I had my first bread dough rising downstairs. Today I turned it into cinnamon caramel rolls that are freakin’ amazing. First baking I’ve done in a while that didn’t turn out really crappy, so I’m kind of excited. :) And I took some handspun off the bobbin that I’ve been plying up. Lookie!

That’s some Copperpot Woolies on top, around 475 yards (seriously), and some Yarn Love leftover merino-tencel that she gave me (!!!) when I was hanging out with her late last year. Spun thin and 3-plied, it’s around 350 yards of navajo-ply shiny goodness. Both of those were spun BEFORE the list, but plied over this past week. But this one:

is Pigeonroof Studios “Bohemia” roving, 4 ounces, spun around worsted weight when plied, done FOR the list. So it’s my first FO from list wool, and I kind of love it, just for that alone. (It helps that it’s pretty.) I’m thinking mittens for someone for next Christmas, if there’s enough yarn. (Around 250 yards or so, so there should be enough.)

The idea of driving for two hours tomorrow is exhausting me. It’s not that I don’t want to see my mom, because I do, but as much as I hate being out here in Nebraska/Iowa, I REALLY hate my mom’s hometown. It’s one of those places on the plains where it’s the largest little town for an hour in any direction (not that 22000 people is anything big, of course), and it’s got a really snotty kind of attitude as a result. They’re hyper-judgemental and kind of scary, and worse, everywhere I go is some kind of a reminder of the not-so-wonderful parts of my childhood.

I guess it’s kind of like walking through a ghost town where all the ghosts are yours and the townsfolk throw rocks at you. It’s downright unsettling.

I’m chilling some vodka for my return. Just sayin’.

Probably won’t be an entry tomorrow, since I’m not sure what time we’ll get back.

Then it’s all art all the time on Sunday, because I’m going to need to get myself grounded again after this. Some time with a glue-brush and some fabric and paper might be just what I need.

Wish me luck.

Note to the wise:

When you are looking to see if your template version on wordpress is widgetable, don’t click on the other templates, because IT CHANGES YOURS.

*facepalm*

If things look wonky around here for a few hours, that’s what it is.

(Remember yesterday when I said that 90% of all problems were caused by me, screwing around with stuff? Yeah, this would be an illustration of such. Good heavens. More later.)

edited to add:

Okay, so I actually installed the widgety bits BY MYSELF, and it’s working, but some of the blog might be a little wonkified while I’m tweaking everything. If something disappears or gives you a 404 error, rest assured, it’s *me*, not you. I’ll get it fixed by Monday or Tuesday or so.

another edit:

Oh, squee!  Rhonda Bell, the Knitting News Cast and japanese knitting guru, just gave me this awesome award and fabulous review on her blog.  I’m all squealy and stuff now. :)

Thank you, Rhonda!  I’ll definitely be passing this forward when I figure out what’s up with this widgety thing. :)

I meant to post this yesterday (haven’t scanned today’s card yet), but my web host was having a few issues.  Something was losing a packet of something near route 66 or something, and everything lit on fire and blew up.

I might have the details wrong.  I’m a little clueless as to how the whole server business works.  But something definitely wasn’t working, and they were aware of the problem, and politely responded to my emails pleading for any kind of life preserver they could toss to my data.  And they never once called me a moron, which, really, I wouldn’t have blamed them for a bit.  (I’ve learned something, as years go by and technology increases exponentially above my head — if there’s an error, it’s safe to assume first that it’s something *I* did, because nine times out of ten, I *did*.  This time was a fluke.)

Not much time to write tonight, though.  Our Thursday night Stitch & Bitch group met here tonight, and between the cookies and the olive dip and the maniacal giggling and the ordering of the fiber…I’m exhausted.  Exhausted in a good way, mind you, but still wiped out beyond belief.

Oh, and we lit the dryer on fire while everyone was here, too.  Nothing like a little electrical smoke to get the party rolling….

We’re supposed to head to my folks’ place this weekend to FINALLY get our Christmas on.  But, of course, theyr’e predicting more snow.  So if I suddenly disappear off the fact of the earth for three days, the chances are that I am either:

a) unwrapping presents by the Christmas  January Tree at my mom’s place, or

b) somewhere by the side of the road in a blizzard, eating my husband’s legs to survive.

Whaaaat?  He’s kind of fleshy.  I could survive a good month on that man!

And on that note of holiday cannibalism, I think I’ll hit the hay.  I’ll get the other two ATCs scanned tomorrow, and I have pictures of all the fiber I’ve been plying up, some of it from the list, and some of it from just prior to the list, but all of it DONE.  I dug into some CJKopec Creations roving tonight and it’s spinning up as thin as frog hair.  Considering I’ve got eight ounces of the stuff, I’m thinking I’ll be spinning it for a good long while.  So I might dive headlong into some other list items instead of spinning continuously for the next couple weeks.

I was going to try to be a little less scattered with things, though, see.  I had all these grandiose i-dears of  molding myself into one of those people who picks a thing and starts it and works on ONLY IT, until IT is done.

However, I’m finding that just ain’t me, man.  I’ll always be distracted by The Shiny.  It’s just a matter, then, of making sure that what Shiny I’m seeing is the Shiny I need/want to get done/already have started.  If I can resist NEW Shiny, then all the stuff will eventually get done, even if it’s not in the focused, organized way that I wish I was naturally capable of.

Now, really, bed.

p.s. 6 more days until Thing A Day starts!  Squee!

Dear Universe,

When I said, in exasperation the other day, that I wished there was a way that we could learn, as humans, to go for days at a time without sleeping….I was kidding.  Y’know?  Ha-ha.  Funny, funny.  Joke.

Now that I have been awake since early Monday morning, I’m rescinding that request, as joking as it might have been, because I AM NOT 18 ANYMORE.

And I’m beginning to see phantom spiders out the corners of my eyes.  I’m sure this is all much more amusing to you than it is to me.   Ha-ha, joke taken.

Can I sleep now?

love,
Eliza

Yes, it’s really been since 9 a.m. Monday that I’ve been conscious, to varying levels.  Caffeine isn’t helping anymore, and I’m beginning to have that feeling like it doesn’t matter if I sleep or not, because this is all just a dream anyway.  I suppose if I wake up snug in my bed this morning and come in here to find I dreamed making this post, I’ll know for sure.

Unless I’m sleep-posting.  Weirder things have happened.  Like the time I rolled over, punched my husband really, really hard in the arm, and yelled “PUNCH BUGGY”.  Or so he tells me.  I was unconscious at the time.

This morning, even though it was verging on eight a.m. and 24 continuous hours of being awake, I was pretty chipper.  Inspired, even.  Thing-a-day signup had gone without a hitch, I’d spent a lot of time on art-e-zine.co.uk oogling all the cool artwork, and I figured that hey…if I didn’t sleep, no big deal.  More time for me, right?  Squee!  I made coffee, baked biscuits and made breakfast for the huzbeast, and even cleaned the kitchen.  I was riding high on this weird adrenaline.  I’ve learned how to cheat the Sleep Demons from robbing my precious time!  I HAVE WON!

Then ten a.m. rolled around, and the Enthusiasm Truck apparently ran my ass flat when I wasn’t looking.   Oof.  Ow.  But by then, if I’d gone to bed, my days and nights would have been COMPLETELY flipped, and I need my mornings now and again.  Adminnie comes in the mornings.  And I *need* my Adminnie.

So I’ve been toughing it out.  Every time I feel tired, I get up and move.  I clean something.  I walk in place.  I get the blood moving.  When the blood is moving, the eyelids don’t droop.  But I am profoundly cranky, and vaguely incoherent.  And there’s that dream-like state I mentioned.  I haven’t tried to fly yet, but if it gets that bad in the next two hours, I’ll just go to bed anyway.

I got very little done as a result.  One exercise (pictured above) from a drawing book I read once, about making a complete drawing with a single, continuous line.  Other than the three times that I ran the pen off the edges of the paper like a dork, that whole thing is done with one single line.  The watercolor’s just a bonus, because I like playing with my Niji brushes.

Two new recipes got made (one for breakfast, one for lunch), since cooking requires standing up and moving around.  I tried spinning, but the repetitive motion was lulling me into sleeping whilst sitting in my chair, and since there are pointy objects around, I didn’t want to risk falling over, unconscious or not.  I knit two rows on the artist’s smock sweater from Indigo Knits…er….big swatch for my sweater that I shouldn’t cast on because of the obscene amount of projects on my needles already.  (And I’m happy to say I’m getting vaguely the gauge I need, though more rows are necessary to judge for sure…ahem.)  I culled out more bpal.

What I didn’t do is ANYTHING ELSE.  There are large swaths of today that I don’t really remember much of.  I know I was in this chair, I know I was awake.  I know I ordered a pan from Amazon and possibly a book (or two) I wanted.  I know I posted to message boards.  There’s evidence of awakeness left in my…uh…wake.  But I don’t remember a whole lot of it.  And it was NOT, in fact, the ALL ART ALL THE TIME day that I wanted to have, which is a bummer, because tomorrow will be completely consumed with work.  (Shop update = major shipping day tomorrow.)

In two hours, it will be 9p.m., when I told myself I could collapse  Which means that even IF I sleep a full 8 hours (which I rarely do), I won’t be up until around five or so.  It’s usually more like five hours, which means I could, potentially, have a really long, fabulous day tomorrow, full of productivity.  Or I could end up laying around like a lump with a hangover.

Time will tell.

Dude, seriously.  I woke up today, started working, and didn’t stop until the shop update was done at 9 p.m. tonight.  My brain feels like dogmeat.  No, worse than that.  Seriously.

And when I work that much, my brain doesn’t like to think of things.  Y’know, like…what to draw so I can keep up the “draw every day for 30 days” thing.  Because I’m on day freakin’ twenty four, and I’m not about to reset the clock now.  Sheesh.   Not in the home stretch, thankyouverymuch.

So I did what I always do.  I started knitting mindless stockinette, thinking about all the weird conglomeration of events that make me who I am.  Or what illustrate who I am, because it’s a twisted mix.

And my mind went there, as it tends to do when I’m knitting mindless stockinette without some kind of movie or podcast to keep it all in line.  I was thinking about catholic school, being a kid, and worse, being a smart kid.  Y’know, the ones who get themselves into all kinds of trouble because they’re well-read without the benefit of experience to put it all into context.  And how it’s really amazing my parents let me live until adulthood, because hooboy, was I a challenging kid.

Thus, my contender for Longest ATC Title EVAR:

also known as, “No, Elizabeth, sending you to school on a bad hair day does NOT, in fact, constitute Cruel and Unusual Punishment.”

Oh, but seriously.

I remember the look on my dad’s face.  Somewhere between “WTF!?  You’re ELEVEN.”, and “SHUT UP AND GET IN THE CAR.”

To his credit, he laughed.  And made me take off the hat, even though I’d cut my own bangs, and you KNOW how much THAT sucked.

My poor father.  I amused him, on that dear god what will she do next kind of level.

I miss him.  Were he still alive today, the chances are great that I’d still amuse him.  On that exact same level.

In other news, it’s snowing.  Again.  Another two inches today, which doesn’t seem like a whole lot, but people here are stupid.  No, that’s not being unnecessarily cruel.  That’s a fact.  It snowed three days ago, and between then and now, they FORGOT HOW TO DRIVE.  There were FOUR accidents on the road outside my house today, and it’s not all that well-travelled.  One would think that, having lived here through at least sixteen winters, people would know what to do/not to do, but apparently, my estimation of the human race is sometimes a bit optimistic.

Go figure. :)

I got signed up for the thing-a-day, so even after the drawing every day is over, I’ll be making *something* every day for all the days in February.

Life = good.  Cold.  Snowy.  But good.

It’s called “ah-CHOO!”.  It’s supposed to be a mohair goat, but looks kind of like a sheep in a hippie wig.

Then again, mohair goats kind of look like sheep in a hippie wig, so, really, I guess it’s all right.

I think I’ll stick to cutesy people.

So for two weeks now, Jen Worden’s been putting out a Friday challenge.  And I’ve done it both weeks.  But when I saw her new one, I had to stop myself from whining a whole lot.

See, I’m not into monoprinting.  And I’ve been so stuck on that fact, incidentally, that I haven’t moved forward much with doing the whole art book thing (item #7), because the next exercise in line, if moving start-to-finish linearly, were two monoprinting exercises, in varying levels of ick…er…complexity.   Traci does this layering thing that looks great and all, but a) it uses a lot of tools, as does, I’m finding, most of the first half of this book, and b) did I mention my lack of love for monoprints and complicated backgrounds?  I did?  Well, it still stands.

So tonight, while J was off at some kind of heavy-metal CD release party, I put on my Big Girl Panties and walked in the studio to do this thing.

Jen gives you two options for your monoprinting glee.  You can either paint directly on a piece of glass and print from that, or you can apply a layer of paint on the glass and etch *out* what it is you’re printing, much like stamp carving, but not repeatable.  I didn’t have any glass just laying around, so I canibalized an ikea frame (one of those little ones that comes in a pack of 3 for a buck-ninety-nine or something, so I’m not out a *lot* of money.), and horked the covering glass from it.

I got out three paints, all golden brand liquid acrylics: titanium buff, burnt (quid) orange, and burnt umber.  (They were the first three I grabbed.)  I also got out some additional paint and some paper towels, so I could do a few of Traci’s techniques while I was printing already.  Killing two birds with one stone, so to speak.

I painted an ibis-like bird on the glass, in three colors including the background.  However, in the time it took me to paint in the background, the bird appears to have dried, and the print?  GHOST BIRD:

Darnit.  Not quite the effect I was going for, there.  Cool, but kind of…well…birdless.

So  I figured I’d try painting the background a little thicker, and then paint the bird on REALLY FAST instead:

Um.  Oops.  Not only did the background not print so well, the places I painted last had too much paint.  So now I was getting the Great Thick Legged Bird of Doom instead.  Dammit.

So I hiked up the aforementioned Big Girl Panties and tried to use a WHOLE LOT of paint, so it wouldn’t dry so fast.

Oh, for the love of monkeys.  One more, the same idea, but way less paint:

I was beginning to get a complex at this point.  I really don’t suck all that much, but this stupid sheet of glass was starting to laugh at me mockingly, and I didn’t like it one bit, boyhowdy.  So I figured I’d switch methods and see if maybe the etchitybits would be less of a GIANT PAIN IN MY ASS.

a-HA!  HOUSTON!  WE HAVE BIRD!

Granted, a five-year-old with a dull pencil and a styrofoam meat tray could have done something of roughly the same quality, but that’s BESIDE THE POINT.  By this time, my Big Girl Panties were beginning to try to sneak out of the room.

I figured I’d pull one more print, and if it came out okay, I’d paint in the other colors after the fact, to make it stand out a little more.  I’m all about the embellishing.

And, VOILA!

All the details are painted in, other than the black stuff, which is penned in after it dried.  It still looks print-y, but isn’t quite a pure monoprint, and honestly, that’s FINE with me.  I’ve never been one to play entirely by the rules anyway.

Oh, and the other monoprints?  The ones with textured wallpaper and stencils and dyed paper towels?   The ones with all the techniques from Traci’s book?

You’ve seen quite enough failed art tonight.  We’ll leave it at that.  I might get some shots of the bonfire where I’m planning to store them.

Yeah, it was that good.

Other than that big adventure, I spent most of the day dealing with some work stuff, spinning the next four ounces of wooly goodness, and watching classic movies from my queue.  I needed a brain-break from the work stuff.  (When I send Adminnie a message that is either entirely or just about entirely in all caps?  Yeah, it’s an interesting day.)

Off to clean up the studio from the Adventures….and find those panties.  Apparently, they’ve run for the hills.

I ended up staying up way too late again last night.  Watching movies and playing with wool.  I do that way too often.  (But I did get to tick off more parts of list items, so I’m totally not complaining.)

Speaking of checking things off the list (which is pretty much what this blog’s turned into anyway…), I finished Anansi Boys, by Neil Gaiman, this afternoon.  Really good, typical Neil, well worth the whopping $6 I paid for the hardcover.  (On clearance.  Borders.  Apparently, they’re on crack.  But I won at Teh Shoppingz that day, so I’m also not complaining about that, too.)

My yarn from WEBS arrived today in a box that’s bigger than my first apartment.  I can’t remember if I mentioned it here before, but I got that fabulous Valley Yarns (WEBS’ own brand) Northampton, in both fawn and light grey, and some yarn for J for a sweater he liked.  And OMG, seriously, people….it’s amazing.  Like, knock-your-socks-off basic staple type yarn…for $4.99 A BALL, discountable.  And unlike KnitPicks that tries to play off its wool as a good value (and then pills like mad and gives you a whopping 108 yards or something ridiculous like that), it’s put up in 247 yard skeins.  Seriously.

So, instead of working on my finishalongapalooza stuff, I sort of cast on for the Artist’s Smock sweater in the Indigo Knits book.   It’s a swatch, I keep saying, to alleviate the guilt.  But the “swatch” is the number of stitches for the back, and I’m two inches into it.

It’s a BIG swatch.  Ahem.

Stitch & Bitch was tonight at my place, and we had Minnie and Deawn and Carin and Angie over.  Talk about a fun group — THAT is a FUN GROUP.  We laughed until we cried, ate a lot of friendship bread, and even knit a little bit together.  I love Thursday nights.

As a result, though, the only real art stuff I got checked off the list was one ATC, seen above.  Which is really okay with me, given the circumstances.  It’s still “drawing every day”, and one closer to the goal of a hundred.

Oh, and I changed one of the list items again.  (And I’m going to change another one in a few days, I think.  I’ll get to that in a minute.)  Rather than doing NaNoWriMo, which I love the IDEA of, but not so much the actual Writing Of The Fictions, since I kind of suck at that kind of writing, finding myself to be much better at nonfiction, even if it’s creative nonfiction.   It’d be like a watchdog having “learn to meow” on its 101 list, when “learn to bark louder” might be more suited to who it is.

So I changed it.  I found this little bit of loveliness today, via the CRAFT magazine blog:  The Thing A Day Challenge.   Every day in February, you create one thing, and document the process.  Any media you choose is fine; just complete one thing a day.  Thus, the “thing a day” name.

Since I’m ALREADY doing a thing a day, and sometimes MORE than one thing a day, it seemed like it was just perfect.  I’m going to dive in to the art book (item #7), if I can remember to sign up on the 21st.  It’s going to rule.   And it’s much more of a “bark louder” than a “learn to meow” for me.

About that other change…  I flipped through the cupcake deck that I was going to try to use to make stuff with, and found that I’m not really sure there ARE five of them I’d want to try.  Most of them are just basic stuff with different additives, and my family and I are kind of Cake People anyway.  So I’m ditching that one, since it’s not really in line with my personal goals, and adding in something about doing mileage on that bike trainer that I got from J.  I haven’t added it in yet, though, because Maddie needs a little bit of maintenance, I think, and if the “little bit of maintenance” turns into “OMG I need a new bike!”, I don’t want to feel like I need to go buy a new one just to finish my list.  But I’m thinking 500 miles isn’t un-doable, and possibly more like a thousand, if Maddie’s up for the challenge.  And god knows, my ass could use a thousand miles on the seat of a bike.

It’s time for bed again.  I almost wish there was a way to work it so one’s body could just regenerate itself without having all the sleepy downtime, but sadly, they haven’t come up with nanotechnology strong enough yet.  Hey scientists!  Put THAT one on your 101 lists, wouldja!? :)