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Ultramarine is a deep blue color and a pigment which was originally made by grinding lapis lazuli into a powder.^[1] The name comes from the Latin ultramarinus, literally "beyond the sea", because the pigment was imported into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.

T is for Teaching Today

This is the second snake project I have worked on today. The first was in my senior class - where I actually taught a simplified version of the very LONG project I worked on yesterday.

Clearly, the inspiration of the week is reptilian, in honor of my grandson who is snake mad and turning four this weekend.

Patchistan Snake by Carol

Because of his passion, I have looked at snakes, talked about snakes, played with toy snakes, watched snake videos, read snake books, drawn snakes for him to color, and visited snake stores. It might not be my first choice of subject, but I guess snakes, and their shape and pattern, have gotten under my skin.

Yesterday I spent the day creating a four foot long snake word/drawing as a giant birthday card. I loved the process and I knew the patterning and simple shape would make for a great art project for my afternoon class.

Stanley Snake by Winnie

The results were wonderful (as you can see)  - and fun to do.

So much fun in fact, that as soon as I got home I knew I had to do another snake for myself. This one is smaller than my last, only two feet long.  I drew it with sharpie, colored with Prismacolor markers (I love to work with these), patterned with fine lines and gently tweaked the end result in Photoshop.

Today was one of those days where teacher and student are perfectly blended and rendered in full glorious color.

Thanks

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.

L is for Lucky Me

Sometimes, when the art work is going well, I feel lucky. Lucky to have the time, resources and ability to spend making art. This last run of word/picture drawings is one of those times. I feel like I've stumbled into something new, challenging, mysterious and interesting.

 

Today's piece is the next step in working on yesterday's image. I used Photoshop for the color. What fun!

 

 

K is for Kids

Today's project is a drawing I started in class with my kids this afternoon. This is K day.

I have the most wonderful students, but I feel a special bond with my older kid painting and drawing class. These young women (9-12) come to my class to make art , and their wonderful parents bring them and take them home from the Art Center where our classes are held in a wonderfully equipped art studio.

 I always look forward to this class because the kids are up for anything, and have great ideas and opinions of their own. And they work independently once the assignment is given.

Anyway, I'd planned flowers in pastel today, but I found myself telling them about the work that I am doing with word drawings. They all wanted to try. So, I worked along with them and drew this word picture on the subject of K, using fine sharpie on Bristol paper.

The kids' work (focused on their name, or their brother or Thanksgiving) is still in progress. ,

This new method has yielded unexpected opportunities to be creative. The drawing on the black background is my original drawing inverted. The results, up close, look like a tatted spider web.

The image above is a section that I cropped from my drawing once I had it in Photoshop. The drawing is the original black on white, but I added some strong whites and greys just for fun. I am now working on a color piece and I think it will be beautiful - or maybe, L for lovely.

Check back tomorrow and see what appears.

J is for Journey

My husband says I work well under constraints ... creatively that is.

As usual, I thinks he is right. That is the reason that I post according to the alphabet. I have done this every year for five years and it is consistently a recipe for creative freedom and new process.

During November I spend lots of time thinking about the letter I am about to work on. Sometimes, especially early in the alphabet, the hardest part is choosing among options. But try J and Q and Z and things are more of a challenge. Yet I always find something. Check out the other AEDM art on this blog to see how I have done it over the years.

Yesterday, I day, I did a word drawing based on the letter I. The process worked for me on every level - brainstorming words, drawing and writing them in a pleasing pattern, then designing and painting and playing with Photoshop. I was delighted with the results and with the pure pleasure I had in making that piece of art.

So today I did J. Slightly different approach - I drew/wrote the words that J suggests, creating letters to reflect the images of the words. I added lines until "something" appeared to me. My thoughts today are an upcoming journey, mostly, but also on snakes, because I spent the weekend with my favorite four year old herpetologist. When I looked at my drawing made of words, there in the center is a stunning snake.

Today, instead of coloring, I decided to go digital and developed this image into layers and filled them with color. I love the cheery scene that I see. What do you see? What can you read?

This is in interesting way to make art, and I want to continue exploring what happens when I combine words and pictures.