Beelieve

fun with kiki bird

these are just some fun little 4x4 collage/paintings i created as i sit here waiting for spring to come :)

the return of the snowbird

watercolors have been out since painting Katie Jane's page so i played a bit more...and read old postcards...this one the family from the north is in west palm beach for 6 months to 'winter' there...it reminds me so much of life in the frozen Adirondacks...the lucky ones escape for the winter and are just now returning by the flockfuls...symbolic of me returning to art? a better 'place' and time?  who knows... but art is always symbolic of something, just sometimes it may take a year or 10 to understand it...so i guess that is why i keep track of it all

moving right along with the travelling artbooks...

...and those involved know i am joking with that title.  I just could not create crap for these women, especially Kate, our very patient host of the girlfriends traveling artbook

i have been wanting to play with my watercolors but so i dabbled and came up with this little bird...the background elements came later. the words are from a page of song lyrics my grandmother wrote out.  She had journals upon journals of poems and song lyrics, and i just have to mention boxes of notebooks of every recipe known to man, especially if it was Slovak.

Katie Jane's theme to her book is 'i believe' so i give to her 'i believe i can fly'

it is 6x12 inch and will be folded in the middle to be part of her accordion style book.  it is watercolor on  fabriano artistico 100% cotton paper with mixed media collage elements.

 

and fyi i have yet to open mine since i do not want to open it until i am finished with all these...one more to do!  :)

Kiki dances on Yupo paper

Here is my completed page for Lynette's book in the Girlfriends artbook exchange .  She created her first page on Yupo paper and I was thrilled because I had just bought some to try out.  This gave me the perfect opportunity.  I had never worked with it before and at first was not sure I liked it...until I saw they way things developed as the paint dried.   I used watercolors, Twinkling H2O's and some Inktense pencils.

 

Kiki's body was done with some pigment powder mixed with a gloss sealer.

This and my first page should go in the mail today or tomorrow. 

The Girlfriends traveling art book

I have been so busy finishing up PJ girl's school year I have not had a chance to talk about a very fun Artbook collaboration started by Katie Jane.  The Girlfriends Sketchbook Exchange  is a group of 10 artists from the US and UK and I am thrilled to finally be a part of one.  The way it works is we each start our own book and then send our first page to the next name on our list. We will continue to receive books getting fuller and add a page of our own art then send it on until we have filled all ten books. At that point ours will come back to us full of art from the hands of artists we have only met online.  I will talk and share a bit more about it soon since I have also completed another page for the person before me on the list.

What you see here is the inside cover and first 2 pages of my book, which will be accordion style when completed.  I have chosen a loose theme, I want anything bee related...duh!  I am also going to ask all the fabulous girlfriends to add a flower to any frame above, in any manner they choose.  A quick doodle really girls!  They may also decorate the frame and sign it.  When my book comes back to me I not only will have it filled but my front pages will be like the credits, or table of contents or just a fun gallery showing of what great pollinators of the art world these honeys are!

I started with 6x18 inches of Fabriano Artistico watercolor paper and just took a piece of cardboard to swipe on some paint.  Once that was dry I laid down some scraps of paper for the grass and sewed them down, the rest just some fun illustration and a funky painted banner.  For a finishing touch I sewed around the edges to frame it.  It folds ups nice and is ready to mail off to Mim, along with Lynette's book and her page I added (to be seen soon so stick around).

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Easter