Scribble Faces

Day 4 in the Faces 101 class called for "scribble faces." I sat in a local taqueria (waiting for my to go order) and quickly sketched the people around me.  I really enjoyed doing these. The two on the left are both of my husband.  He liked the top one well enough that he made it his profile picture on facebook! The more faces I draw, the easier they become, and I've gotten lots of good ideas for different styles of faces that I could start including in my art journals and collages. In the class we sometimes draw/paint faces from live models, sometimes draw/paint them while looking at a picture and sometimes draw/paint from our imagination.  I'm not sure I have a preference yet. If you draw, paint or sketch, do you have a preference?

How Portrait Photography Helps My Drawing

The scariest assignment so far in the faces class I'm taking has been this one because we're supposed to draw realistic faces. Which means there's a high degree of opportunity to fail. I'm pretty happy with these two portraits. Are they perfect? No. But, if you asked me last week if you thought I could draw anything this good, I would have said, "Heck no!" So, I'm pleased with my efforts.  The portrait on the left is based on my mother-in-law's bridal portrait.  The one on the right is based on this photographic portrait I took of a local activist:

It's my favorite of the two. I think that having spent time on improving my portrait photography is helping my attempts to draw faces. When photographing portraits, the key is to find enough light to have catchlights in the eyes and to have a natural expression.  I think the same thing is true in drawn faces.  I try to put "catchlights" in the eyes, and I have found that using a model with a good expression really helps me draw a more expressive face. 
It's a happy coincidence that my efforts to improve in one art form have delivered dividends in another one. Has this every happened to you?

Ten on the Tenth: Twinchies

I used my January vintage counterfeit kit to create some twinchies (2x2 inch squares) for an art exchange hosted at the Gingersnap Challenge blog.  Got any favorites in this group? If you've never checked out the Gingersnap blog, you really should.  The artists over there are wonderful, and they host all kinds of fabulous challenges.  Today, being the tenth of the month, Shimelle hosts a ten on the tenth link-up. You click here to see what other ten on the tenth bloggers are up to.

New Music Monday

When working with Henry to clean up the desk top in his room, we came across a few itunes gift cards. He said he didn't use them anymore and that I could have them.  He gets all his music off of You Tube these days, but I decided to go old school and buy some new music.  In particular, I decided to support some artists that are new to me and not widely established (at least in the U.S.) by buying their albums.  First up, I bought "The Head and the Heart" by The Head and the Heart.  You can check out the video for" Lost in My Mind" above.  Next up:

I bought the album "Father, Son, Holy Ghost" by Girls. You can check out the video for the song "Honey Bunny" above. My next purchase:

I bought the album "Helplessness Blues" by Fleet Foxes. This is a video of the song "Grown Ocean."  Finally, I bought an album from a band not widely known in the U.S. (though I hear they're big in the U.K.):

They're called Elbow, and I bought the album "Build a Rocket Boys!" The video above is for the song "With Love."
I also bought several songs from The Decemberists and Trevor Hall.  I love having new music on my ipod! Do you have any good new music to recommend? Do you fancy any of the ones featured here today?

Jan. Counterfeit Kit and OLW Check-in

The Counterfeit Kit Challenge blog has a wonderful selection of kits from Cocoa Daisy to counterfeit this month. They're all warm and vintagey - right up my alley!  I was inspired by both the sunshine and snowflakes kit:

and the amber snowflake kit:

to make my kit at the top of today's post. I wanted to keep it small and selected mainly 6x6 papers from my stash.  I'm going to use the kit to work on a variety of projects.  I want to enter the Gingersnap Creations Twinchie Art Exchange (vintage theme) and also create some altered wooden blocks, something like these made by Deb Turtle. I also used the kit to make the Tim Holtz birthday card I posted yesterday!
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In other news, I've been focusing on my one little word for 2012 ("Home") by starting a major cleaning and reorganization of my craft space (which also means reorganizing my clothes closet, since I store supplies in there). It will take me a while to complete, but this week I accomplished the following:
*Sorted through all my craft books, back issues of craft magazines and stamping catalogs. Gave away two books; recycled 24 old magazines and catalogs.
*Sorted through my scraps and threw away several pounds of scraps that were really too small to do much with and which just created clutter.
*Organized my jewelry (hint: old stampin' up stamp containers are a great way to store beaded necklaces because you see them but they're contained) and took six pieces of jewelry in for repair. I store my jewelry in my closet, too, so that's why it's part of this organization.
*Organized my bookshelf which holds crafting supplies, clearing enough space to store several albums on it, which meant that I could organize the upstairs bookshelves enough to hold all the other scrapbook albums.
*Created a system for storing my collage sheets and began to sort through and file my collection.
*Created a storage system for my pens, pastels, pencils and chalks. 
*Organized my clothes closet and purged it of all the clothes which I don't wear (I threw out one shopping bag of clothes which were unwearable and filled four other shopping bags with clothes to donate). Sorted through my clothes drawers while I was at it!
*Purged a very full, somewhat musty, old large rolling crop bag. I either moved the contents to a better storage system or threw them away.  Tossed the old bag, which was actually kindof smelly. Eeewww!
*Organized my photos to be scrapped (along with appropriate supplies) into three different utility bags: summer vacation 2011; sports photos 2010-11; miscellaneous 2011. It will make it easy to work on these when I get some scrapping time.
I still have a lot to do before the organization and purging is complete - dealing with my overflowing stamp collection is the biggest puzzle still to solve - but I feel like there's a light at the end of the tunnel, and I'm really, really happy with how it's going.  After I finish with my craft space, I have lots of other home projects to do - organizing/purging the front closet; organizing/cleaning the laundry room; organizing the kids' closets; clearing out the back yard; etc. etc.  I'm hoping to post an update on my blog now and again to track my progress, so I remember how much I've accomplished.  Are you doing anything special to track progress on your one little word?

Happy Birthday Tim Holtz!

Today, Saturday, Jan. 7, is Tim Holtz's birthday! 
Linda Ledbetter of Studio L3 has set the Grungy Monday challenge this week as one to create a birthday card for Tim.  Although I haven't participated in Grungy Monday for a while, I couldn't resist making a birthday card for Tim Holtz because he is such a wonderful, generous, creative person.
So, here's the card I made for him. Tim loves Disneyland (in fact, it seems to me that in some alternate universe Tim could be Walt Disney's illegitimate son). So, I made him a Disney card with a paper pieced Mickey Mouse from my stash. The bottle cap held by Mickey has been colored with alcohol inks and features an image from Tim's stamp line. The edges of the papers have all been distressed using the Tim Holtz distress tool and inked with distress inks. I feel very lucky to have met Tim and to have taken several classes with him. He really is a terrific person, and I hope he has a terrific birthday!  If you want to join in the birthday party, go check out Linda's blog.

Captions in Paintings (+ Paint Party Friday)

When I painted my series of watercolor faces for the "Faces 101" class I'm taking (you can see the other paintings here), I found myself compelled to add captions to them.  The one on the left reads "She always blushed when she drank too much." The one on the right, simply "Pixie Cut."  I found myself doing the same thing when I drew some faces in the next lesson.  Except for this drawing, which I didn't caption:

Nothing came to me. So, now it's your turn. What caption or title would you add to this face? Or would you just let her be?
I'm linking up today to "Paint Party Friday," a blog challenging artists to paint and post at least once a week. You can see the current week's paintings at this link. My blog friend Gloria is a regular participant and planted the seed in my head.  Thanks Gloria!