Z is for craZy Turkey

The kids in my kids' classes this week were all about making art for Thanksgiving. They all seemed to want to make something to bring home and share with the family. Great idea.

I needed a project idea. I thought about doing a cornucopia, but somehow I wandered off to look at illustrations and photos of turkeys. This was where I found inspiration for my lesson of the week.

In my senior class last week, we had great success with patterning (snakes), not to mention that I am on a patterning tear in my own artwork. The other day I drew a big turkey on 14x17 drawing paper and let him sit on my table. I had no idea what it would become, until today, thinking about how creative my kids were, and planning for seniors tomorrow, I started to pattern, first drawing words and then filling the spaces with markers.

Since I am up to Z in my alphabet, there are many z's worked into the pattern, and a few notes on our family Thanksgiving - hiding in the feathers. As I was coloring, a name appeared - that both describes my bird and fits by blog post.

This is craZy turkey and she wishes you a great holiday.

I brought my drawing into Photoshop to smooth out the marker lines, ended up adding a filter. I love the results -

U is for Ultramarine

Ultramarine is a deep blue color and a pigment which was originally made by grinding lapis lazuli into a powder.^[1] The name comes from the Latin ultramarinus, literally "beyond the sea", because the pigment was imported into Europe from mines in Afghanistan by Italian traders during the 14th and 15th century.

Ultramarine was the finest and most expensive blue used by Renaissance painters. It was often used for the robes of the Virgin Mary, and symbolized holiness and humility. It remained an extremely expensive pigment until a synthetic ultramarine was invented in 1826.

I was up until midnight last night trying to think of a way to incorporate U into my alphabet postings. One approach I use is to move through the alphabet, trying out each letter when placed after U. Up, ubiquitous, ugly, uncle, unite, umbrella, umbrage ... on and on. Eventually, and out of order, ultramarine arrived in my thoughts, and I slept.

Today I cropped part of one of my word/drawings and filled it with all shades of blue, including, of course, ultramarine. I love this color with connections to both the sea and jewels.

P is for Process, (I really mean Play)

Word/drawing again. Same process which is mostly like playing around.

I draw words around a letter, paying attention to the shapes of the letters. There is plenty for me to say about the letter P - starting with my name. This time I kept the image small and simpler so I did not need to crop it, in fact focused more than before on composition.

Once in Photoshop I continued as I have this week, placing colors on layers and within spaces. When I add color, whether with ink or crayon or Photoshop I ignore the words and only attend to the shapes I see, applying color to create the picture I see on the page.

I wanted this piece to be filled with light and tried to keep larger blocks of color and fewer lines to keep it simple. I think this piece is joyful.

Every time I repeat this process, I find something new.

N is for Next

Continuing to play with the possibilities that occur when I combine word/drawings with Photoshop, I have arrived at this next piece.

There is a entire story written within the full image, but it was so complex that I cropped a portion and continued to add lines and color.

This is a very interesting process. Every time I do this I can't wait to see what will happen next.

Tomorrow is O. Oh my the month is speeding by.