Flashback - Lines

These three pieces are all assignments about doing lines. The first one was done in High School. I think. I remember doing it, but can't even place when or where I did it.  It is just a random assortment of objects and I was supposed to do everything with lines - no shading, no sketching. Then, I outlined it all in ink. (sorry about the glare - it was wrapped in a plastic cover of sorts).(And, as a parent of a violin player, I just cringe when I see the broken up violin!)

This next one was done in college in my dorm for a drawing assignment for my class. If I remember correctly, I had to draw it all without lifting my charcoal. It is just a sketch, obviously, nothing frameable, but I thought it was an interesting assignment.

And this last one, at first look, seems to be an awkward drawing of a person. The fun thing about this is that it is called a blind drawing. Meaning, this girl (in the picture) and I sat across from each other at a table, and we had to draw the person across from us without ever looking at our paper - completely blind. I think it turned out pretty good - especially when you can see what the other ones looked like. Try it sometime. It is pretty tricky.

Southwest Quilt

I had to wait until after Christmas to post this because it was a gift for someone. I was asked to make a quilt for someone whose house is decorated in a Southwest style.  I looked online at several quilts that had that sort of theme, but I decided in the end to design one by myself, using what I had seen. This is the design I came up with. The photograph doesn't quite get the colors right - there is black, dark brown, and regular brown, as well as the tan and orange (and it is a burnt orange - not as bright as it looks here).  I am learning that doing triangles takes some mathematical skills and that guessing won't always cut it. So, the quilt isn't perfect. If I hadn't done this in Minky, it would have really been a disaster because things didn't quite line up the way they were supposed to. Fortunately, Minky is forgiving and flexible, so it worked out okay. I am not going to win any awards for it, but it is the first design I have come up with myself, and may be the most complicated one too, besides the batik quilt I did awhile back. It has been fun getting back into quilting and sewing lately.

Fun in the snow

"Snow Fun" -pastel on paper

In His Image

This spring I heard about the LDS International Art Competition that they hold every three years. The theme is "Make known his wonderful works". I came up with an idea and during the summer I did four drawings trying to get what I wanted on paper the way I pictured it in my head. This was my final result. The main idea of the drawing is that we are God's most wonderful work. We often look in the mirror and see all of our faults, but we need to be like this little girl and see who we really are - a child of God.  I entered the contest back in October, and this week I heard that I did not make it into the exhibit. I am a little bummed, but it was a good experience and it was worth a try. I will try again in three years. In the mean time, I hope to improve my skills and technique and keep moving forward.

 (You will notice I put a watermark on the drawing. I am trying this out. I keep seeing things about photos being stolen from the web, so this is my feeble attempt to protect my drawings. We will see how it works.)

Flashback - Oh how I love cloth

One of my favorite things to draw is cloth.  I love how light and shadows work to show all the folds and creases. It is also sometimes a rather complex thing to draw, for the very same reason. Here are some of my cloth drawings. The first ones here were done in college.

This last one was done in High School. It was for an art contest, and it was the only piece I have done (so far) that has won an award. It was honorable mention - nothing major - but it was pretty cool to go up against all these high school students who were planning to be art majors (or had already had a lot of instruction through vocational schools, etc) For the contest I was supposed to give it a title. I figured "cloth" was good enough. But, my art teacher (the weird one - Mr. King) decided that it just was not a good enough title, so when he turned it in, he renamed it "Freedom".  It is hard to see at this angle, but people often say they see an eagle in the cloth. That, with the stripes like a flag, kind of do give it a "freedom" theme, but that was not my original intention. It actually was just a wad of light green and dark green striped cloth that my art teacher had in class at the time. This picture (obviously framed now - sorry about the reflection) currently hangs in my living room.

Flashback - My fantasy phase

Okay, I will admit that these drawings are a little strange.  But, they are part of the story, so there you go.
I have a hard time remembering when I did these drawings. I am pretty sure I did them during high school. Strange how we can't remember things like this. I believe that it was shows like The Dark Crystal and The Labyrinth that inspired these.  I showed these to my kids and now they think I am weird. But, I decided one day I wanted to try drawing strange creatures. I think at one point I was going to make a story about them, but it never got further than drawing these few. So, I played around with some ideas, and this is what my mind came up with:

 I think this guy was supposed to just be a nice friendly guy, though he isn't smiling.

 This one looks worried to me. He actually reminds me of someone I know.

 This is a warrior or something.

And this is supposed to be the wise old leader. Except that recently I noticed that he has something (blood?) dripping from his mouth. I have no idea what that is supposed to be, because I have always thought of him as this kind wise creature. 

So there you go, a chance to see into my strange teen-age mind  :)

Trying new faces

Now that I have done portraits of my children, I wanted to see how hard (or easy) it would be doing faces of people I don't know as well.  It started with this portrait:

This drawing is of a dear friend of ours who passed away in October. I debated even putting it on this blog, because I SO don't want this particular drawing to be about me (hey look at me, look what I did) but since the purpose of this blog is to document what art I have done, and this blog is primarily for me, I am putting it. I was SO nervous about giving this to them - what if it didn't look like him? I think I spent twice as long on it too, trying to get every last detail in, and have it be accurate. They were very happy with the gift, and that made me happy. I realized I like doing art that has some meaning for people. 

So, having tried a face of someone who doesn't live with me, I offered to a friend of mine to try drawing her children, making no guarantees, but I wanted to try other faces. I learned a few things.

1. It is very nerve-wracking to draw someone else's kids (family members, etc) because I just don't know if I have it right

2. Blond hair is really hard to do on a white background (though I like this "clean" look on these portraits)

3. I want to keep trying, because I really like doing portraits.

My friend has four children, but I have not done the other two yet. I will post them when they are done.

Mr. Brushwood

In High School, I had two art teachers - Mr. Brushwood (yes, what a perfect name for an art teacher) and Mr. King, which fit him too. I felt that he believed he was God's gift to mankind. More on him later though. I really liked Mr. Brushwood. Unfortunately, in our high school, art was where you put the potential dropouts and people who couldn't handle anything too terribly academic. Then, there were 3-4 of us who sat at one table and actually did art. The rest of the class goofed off, got in trouble, and made life difficult for Mr. Brushwood and those of us who wanted to learn how to do art.  One time, I was doing a very intricate drawing of a seashell - a very fragile shell - and a boy in the class picked it up and threw it for no reason. It broke. I had to try to glue it back together to finish my drawing. I did manage to finish it before the shell fell apart. It is one of my favorites from school.

Mr. Brushwood actually taught me quite a bit and let me try various mediums. He was very patient with me - sometimes I was a bit stubborn. For example - this drawing here:

I think this might have been one of the first drawings of people that I did (it was done in April of 1988). I know it was the first one I liked. It came from an ad in a magazine - send 5 cents a day to help this poor starving child.  I drew the picture and signed it and told Mr. Brushwood that I was done. Well, he said that I did a good job, but that I needed to put some kind of background, or at least A ground for her to stand on. Otherwise she was just floating in the air. Nope. I wouldn't do it. Now I know that he was right and why he was trying to teach me this concept, but at the time I would not draw one more single line on this drawing. I argued with him a lot over this silly drawing. It seems so dumb now, but I was SO scared that if I added anything to this, I would surely ruin it, and I really liked it the way it was, so I stubbornly refused to do anything to it. I still laugh when I look at this drawing. What is even more stupid is that I covered it with contact paper "to preserve it" which made it turn yellow and now nothing at all could be added to it, even if I wanted to. I covered a few drawings with contact paper, much to my teacher's horror (and mine now). But, I didn't know about fixative and other forms or preservation, so that seemed like the best thing to do. My shell drawing is covered, but with it is a fingerprint that I didn't see in time (you can't see it in the above photo, but you can probably see the glare). I didn't cover any more after that. :)

I am glad I had Mr. Brushwood as a teacher though. Especially when, later, I ended up with Mr. King. He wasn't as helpful to me, which made me appreciate Mr. Brushwood even more.

Yellowstone Falls

Flashback - Some of my stranger pieces

I am not a big fan of modern art. I can respect a modern artist if I know that they had artistic skills, but I have a hard time with certain types of art work because to me, anyone could do it. They just had the idea first, and got to make tons of money off of it. But, I suppose everyone is entitled to their opinion, and I know there are people who disagree with me on this.
That being said, I did like to try things that were atypical. I really liked Salvador Dali (until I found out what a creepy man he is). He did the paintings of the clocks that look like they are melting over corners and stuff like that.  I like the idea of taking something usual and doing something unusual with it. So, I came up with this idea. I still think it is a fun painting, though the quality is somewhat lacking. (It is cracked and lumpy in places and the cloth isn't very accurate).  But, the idea is kind of fun. I was just thinking of the transition from night to day and day to night. Really, it could go either way on this - it all depends on how you see it.  Though, I was (am) a huge fan of sunsets, so this is probably more of that than a sunrise. Really, it is up to you.

 

 Also, the more I got into art, the more I realized that I saw things differently. Ordinary things became a potential drawing. I saw light and shadows that I hadn't noticed before.  I have found this happening again recently, more so than usual, because of the drawings I have been doing. I see color and shading and shapes that I hadn't really paid attention to before. So, I decided I wanted to do a piece that showed the world from an artist's perspective. I took an ordinary picture - it was actually a photo from an outdoor mall in San Diego, and I portioned it off into sections that represent how different artists might see the world as they look at it. 

I had a photoshop file that labeled all of the parts, but the file was too big and I would have had to redo it, so I will just explain the probably obvious sections.  The top left, done in abnormal colors and abnormal shapes, including the abnormal people on the balcony, is a Picasso-esque view.  The top right is supposed to be the "just as it is, realistic" view.  Just below that, still on the right, is how it would be viewed broken down into simple shapes.  The black and white  middle is supposed to be how  either a photographer would see it (who likes black and white) or how one might see it with lights and darks and shadows, not paying attention to color so much. To the left of that is how someone might sketch it.  The bottom left is also supposed to be realistic, and then the bottom right is more cartoon-like. I titled it "Artist's World"

These were both done while I was in high school. Unfortunately, I do not have accurate dates - I just remember doing this at my home in my bedroom.  I am pretty sure the bottom one was done in 1989 or 1990 because I know when the picture was taken (that I drew from).

Flashback - well, that's one way around it

From time to time I am going to post some of my old art work on here. I do this mainly for me because there are stories that sometimes go with them, and it is fun for me to look back at the things I used to do. So, this first post is about one way I solved a dilemma.
I like drawing people. I had forgotten how much I liked it until I looked through my old art and found many, many drawings of people. I will post a couple of them in here at some point. But, most of them are not good. Really. I am completely serious and honest here. They are disproportionate and just look.. weird. But I like the subject of people. One of my favorite artists ever is Norman Rockwell because I love that his paintings tell stories about people's lives. He puts so much emotion and words into a wordless picture.
At some point along my journey I decided that I just couldn't draw people. Sure, I still dabbled in it a bit, but I never had any formal instruction and didn't know what I was doing, so it was pure guessing. The biggest dilemma with people was getting the face right. I could never get them to actually look like the people they were of. So, I came up with a solution. I don't know that this was a fully conscious choice, but I started drawing or painting people whose faces were not showing.  These three below are my favorite.
 I will be the first to admit (and see) that the body proportions in these works are not all correct either, but they do look like people and there is no distorted face messing up the picture.(I believe these were all done in High School, though the one of my Grandpa may have been my Freshman year at BYU)

This first one is from a photo of my brother. I love the clothing - it is my favorite part. The grass was, well, tedious, and I got tired of it after awhile. Patience is not my strong point when it comes to art.  But I mainly picked this because I thought it would be a fun one, and it reminds me of when we went fishing with my Grandpa.
Which leads me to the next piece.  This next one is of my Grandpa fishing. I made a "print" of this and framed it for my grandparents and it hung in their house for a long time. (There is a reason why I didn't give the original, but that is for another blog entry - it has nothing to do with my sweet grandparents) I love this painting because it totally captures the essence of my sweet Grandpa.  He loved fishing, and he always had those overalls and the hat and the long sleeved shirt that he wears in this picture. Yes, these two fishing pictures happen to be from the same trip, but they were done at different times, I believe.


The third picture has a story too.
These are cousins - Kurt and Dylan. I babysat for their families for years - especially Dylan's family. Dylan's mom took this photograph and framed it and it sat in her living room. I looked at it all the time - I thought it was such a great photograph. So, one day I got up the nerve to ask her if I could borrow the photograph to make a painting. This was the result. Again, no faces. The bodies are a little distorted, and that has bugged me to this day, but I love the cousins hugging each other. I love the ocean, so this was a perfect subject for me to do.

I did actually draw a lot of faces over the years. I wish that I had received better instruction on faces and bodies when I was in high school and college, because so many drawings didn't turn out due to lack of experience, knowledge, and training. But, it is still fun for me to look at them and remember when and why I did them. And hopefully now I can get more experience and training and do people better.

Fun with pastels

A chalk drawing of a chalk drawing  :)

 I did a little bit of art this past summer, but not much. I just struggled with finding the time and motivation that it would take. But, by the time the kids went back to school, I felt like there was something in me wanting to get out. I finally took an afternoon and did this drawing, abandoning all responsibility. It felt good and I think my mood improved too. I need to remember that. Art is kind of a therapy for me, I guess.

This drawing comes from a photograph that I took the night before my sister's wedding. I love the photo, so drawing it was very fun. It seemed appropriate to use pastels, since it is about chalk drawing. I can't think of any medium that would have worked better. This was my first attempt at doing a person with pastels. It is a bit tricky getting skin tones right. I am learning though, and it has been fun.

Batik

I love Batik material. I think it is beautiful and I love the rich colors and variety of designs. I decided that I wanted to make a batik quilt. I found a pattern I liked and worked on it over the course of a few months. Piecing quilt material  is a bit more meticulous than the soft stretchy minky. Minky is very forgiving if you screw up. Cotton is not. I think the quilt turned out pretty good for it being my first "real" quilt. Doing corners and triangles was a bit tricky and there are definitely places that a real quilter would say "tsk tsk" to. The machine quilting isn't great either because there is bunching in some places. But, I did learn a lot. There is a design I really want to do next but it is really complex. I want to do it in blues and greens - many of which are batik designs.  I need to just find the time now to get going on it.

This is the quilt I did. I was happy to see that, when it was put all together, I loved the colors and the design. After cutting and sewing all of these pieces, I kind of got tired of the individual squares. but putting it together was almost like getting a new quilt with fresh new colors I hadn't seen before.

Portrait number four

 Because Olivia was home sick and I was stuck here, I finished Madeline's drawing.

And here are all four together. I really like them :)

Quilts

In November of 2010, a friend of mine called me and asked me if I would like to go to the store with her to help pick some fabric for a quilt she was just finishing up. I thought, "sure, why not, I don't have much else going on". I had no idea what this would lead to.
First of all - some background. My Mom made quilts off and on while I was growing up. They were mostly taking two large sheets or pieces of cloth and putting them together and tying them. I am actually not a fan of tied quilts - I don't like the texture of the yarn. Silly, I know, but the yarn has always bugged me a little.  When the kids all left home, my Mom got into quilting more and she started doing it more often. There were more pieced quilts, and many baby blankets for donating to the Humanitarian center. I kind of always thought of quilting as something "other" people do, but not me. It seemed like an old lady thing or something. Silly, but that is how I felt.
Now, back to the quilt store. When we were looking around, I saw a quilt hanging from the ceiling. It was a very cute pink and brown quilt made of the softest material I had ever felt. I fell in love instantly and said, "I HAVE to make this quilt."  As I look back, this seems so ridiculous. I knew nothing about quilting. I sew a little, but not much, really.  I bought all the material, got some basic instructions and had my friend show me how to cut the pieces. Let me explain that I had no idea you could get these rulers and cutting wheels for making straight cuts. I seriously tried to make a quilt once by hand cutting all of the pieces. It was SO bad that I never got past the second row. Now I understand why. There was no uniformity at all.
Well, I made the first quilt and my youngest child decided it was going to be hers. "Okay" I thought. No biggie. Well, of course, then my other children wanted one, so I made more. Then I made one for a girl who babysat for us, and one for a friend with cancer, and one for my sister, and it just kept going. I loved quilting. Most of them were made with this soft material called Minky. I branched out to a regular pieced quilt, but that is part of another post.  These were all done in the course of a few months. I kind of went a little crazy and bought a new sewing machine and everything so I could do this. I took a break for awhile, through the summer, but when the school festival came up and needed auction items, I made three more. Unfortunately, I forgot to take photos.
Here are some photos of the quilts I made:

 This is that first pink and brown one that I fell in love with

 This brown one was for my son

 This (above and below) was for my daughter. The top was made from flannel and cotton and the bottom was minky. I know they don't really match each other, but this is what she really wanted, and this tiger minky material is so amazingly soft, we just couldn't resist.

 I made the one above for my daughter, and the one below in similar color schemes for my sister.

 This one (above) I made for my husband

And another portrait

I am really enjoying this portrait thing. I am learning a lot as I go and I think these are improving over time. I have been in such a mood to do art lately, and it has been fun. Unfortunately, other things get set aside that probably shouldn't, but I guess it all gets done eventually, and the house hasn't fallen apart yet.

There is a little story to this particular drawing. When Jeff and I got married I had this picture in my head of a boy, about 7 years old, with a baseball cap on. And, he looked a lot like Jeff. So, it was no surprise when Jonathan came along and he looked a lot like Jeff.
This is that boy. And, he happens to be seven.

Another portrait

Well, it sort of looks like her and sort of doesn't. I can't figure out what I need to change. I have looked over it many times. The one thing that should be fixed is that her hair is not that full and thick. But, all in all, it is better than the last portrait of her. I found out that I may be able to take an art class from someone who does portraits for a living.  She is really nice and I think that she could give me some pointers. Hopefully I can make that work in the near future.

General Conference Art

 This is the result of an afternoon watching General Conference in April 2011. I listen better when I am doing something with my hands. I thought it would be fun to attempt a landscape drawing, so I tried this one of Mesa Arch in Canyonlands. My husband liked it so much that I framed it and it hangs in his office at work. I hope to do 2-3 smaller companion drawings to go with it on the space on his office wall.

 After writing my post about portraits I decided to try doing Olivia again. I like this one better. It actually looks like her more than the other one.

I did this one today during Conference.  (October 2011)

Portraits

Ever since I had my first child, I have wanted a pencil drawing done of them. I have looked into professionals doing it, and it costs a TON of money. My sister in law offered to do it as a Christmas gift one year and she did do one of my youngest daughter, but never did the others. In the mean time, my kids get older and older and I felt like I missed my chance.
In the beginning of this year, a friend of mine and I got together and started reading a book called "The Artist's Way" by Julia Cameron.  I will probably write a post about that another time - that book really changed things for me, especially with my art. I was talking to this friend, however, about how I love drawing but I just can't draw people. I would love to have a drawing of my kids, but I just can't do it.
And, she said "yet".
Yet. A simple tiny word, but it has so much power. I can't draw people YET. That means that maybe sometime I COULD.  So then I thought, "well, I have wanted this for so long and apparently it is not going to happen unless I try to do it myself.  I guess it won't hurt to try. What is the worst that will happen? I will try and hate it and throw it out."  What has kept me from trying all these years? I don't know. Fear of failure, I guess. It seems so silly and so simple.
Well, I decided to give it a try. I took a photo of my daughter wearing her Luigi hat - the photo is SO her. And I drew it. Now, I still look at this drawing and I see lots of things wrong with it, BUT - I did it. I drew her, and it does catch the essence of the picture and of her personality. Then, I tried my son. That one worked out really well - it looks even more like him. Then, I did my other two daughters. They both wanted pictures of them when they were younger (though now I want to do some current ones). Again, I look at them and I see things that are off and disproportionate, but still, they aren't too bad, and they do look like my kids.
But the best thing I got out of all of this was confidence to try. And to try again. And, if I don't like it, I will try again. The only way for me to get better is to keep doing it and keep learning what works and what doesn't. In the mean time, these drawings hang in my childrens' rooms for them to see. I think they like them :)

What I did in art class

The attendance in my art class, which was already small to start with, dwindled down to just me most of the time. We were originally going to try various mediums and rotate through requests with the students so that everyone could try what they wanted. I don't mind painting and pottery, etc, but my love is with drawing. Because I became the only student, the course objectives changed. We started drawing with charcoal. It was back to the basics with boxes and balls and a lamp. But, I did learn how to better use chalks - they work very differently than pencil. I had never really done much with charcoal and pastels before, and this opened up a new medium that I really enjoyed. I think I still like pencil the best - you can get tiny little details in with pencil that you just can't do with pastels, but I have enjoyed trying some pastel drawings and I think I will continue to do them. Here are some of the drawings I did in class:

 For most of the semester after we finished our little statues we did drawings like this - find something in the studio - mostly stuff like boxes and balls and art supplies - and draw it during the class.  I like lines and shadows, so the upside down stool seemed like a fun challenge.

 This is the first time I got to use something besides black and white. We added some earthy colors into the drawing, and I really liked it. Because this went well, we moved into color drawings in the second semester.

This last one is my favorite. The teacher thought I was completely insane to set up such a complicated still life. I did it while she was on the phone in another room. Because I had started drawing, she didn't try to change it. Otherwise I think she would have made me do something different. Maybe it was just a silly act of rebellion at the time. I love cloth and I wanted to try something bigger and more interesting than just boxes and balls. The art studio was also part of a theater, so they had all of these random things available for a still life. My only regret with this is that, when I finished, I got up to wash my hands and while my back was turned, the teacher grabbed some pastels and adjusted one part of it because she thought it should be done differently. I was so shocked I didn't say a thing. I wish I had. I don't think anyone should draw on someone else's art, especially without permission. It is a pet peeve of mine. Now, I am more cautious about it and hopefully if it happens again I will say something before it is too late. Every time I look at this drawing, I see the one part that isn't mine. To me, my teacher owns it.  It is too bad, because I worked really hard on this drawing over the course of several weeks, and I like it otherwise.