estonia creates

DYAL: Blind Contour Drawings

noreply@blogger.com (estonia) — Fri, 15 Nov 2013 08:13:00 +0000

Bad blind contour drawings. LOL!

Draw Your Awesome Life: ToDo List

noreply@blogger.com (estonia) — Fri, 15 Nov 2013 08:10:00 +0000

The perpetual todo list.

Yet Another Week

noreply@blogger.com (estonia) — Fri, 15 Nov 2013 07:32:00 +0000

Another week in Joanne's style. I combined Monday through Thursday, since they were all swallowed up by the class.

The Week

noreply@blogger.com (estonia) — Fri, 15 Nov 2013 07:26:00 +0000

The week in boxes. Technique from Joanne Sharpe's "Draw Your Awesome Life".

Draw Your Awesome Life: My Grocery List

noreply@blogger.com (estonia) — Sat, 02 Nov 2013 04:20:00 +0000

Thank heavens she didn't instruct us to draw the items to scale!

Draw Your Awesome Life: My Travel Watercolors

noreply@blogger.com (estonia) — Wed, 30 Oct 2013 06:17:00 +0000

This turned out much better than I hoped. Nice to draw something made up of simple shapes.

Draw Your Awesome Life

noreply@blogger.com (estonia) — Wed, 30 Oct 2013 06:15:00 +0000

This is the first art I've done since starting the job from hell 7 months ago. So glad I'm not working there anymore!

The Magenta-Haired Girl

noreply@blogger.com (estonia) — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 06:18:00 +0000

All of my faces end up looking sad. The corners of my mouth are naturally down turned when at rest, so I suspect that's why my visual brain sends that shape to my hand when I draw.

Draw What You See

noreply@blogger.com (estonia) — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 06:16:00 +0000

This was a fun exercise. Do a multimedia background and then look at it every which way to see what's hiding in it.

Here's the background and what I saw.

Hedgie

noreply@blogger.com (estonia) — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 06:03:00 +0000

Had a sudden Need to draw a hedgie. They're just soooo cyoot!

Silly Cartoon

noreply@blogger.com (estonia) — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 04:15:00 +0000

A doodle over a page used to protect the table as I sprayed some tags.

Book of Days: Mondays Suck

noreply@blogger.com (estonia) — Sat, 25 Aug 2012 05:29:00 +0000

Yup. They sure do.

Book of Days: 12-3-27 Split Pea Soup

noreply@blogger.com (estonia) — Sat, 25 Aug 2012 05:27:00 +0000

Sometimes random thoughts are amusing enough that they just have to be immortalized in art.

Book of Days: 12-3-26 Marching Orders

noreply@blogger.com (estonia) — Sat, 25 Aug 2012 05:24:00 +0000

These are my marching orders for this year. They came to me screaming loud during a meditation.

Book of Days: 12-2-27

noreply@blogger.com (estonia) — Sat, 25 Aug 2012 05:22:00 +0000

This me, that me, the other me...

Life Book: Opposites

noreply@blogger.com (estonia) — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 03:07:00 +0000

For this assignment, we explored opposing qualities within ourselves. Officially, we were to draw two goddesses, each representing a quality or set of qualities, for example a sun goddess and a moon goddess. However, I've never been into the goddess thing, and I didn't like any of the poses I came up with for a pair of figures. After much back-burner bubbling, I came up with the idea of splitting a single figure down the middle with half representing logic and the other half art. Very me.

The art part of the assignment was to work with hatching and cross hatching on the figures and to do a frame with a shaving-cream marbling technique. I mostly struggled with the hatching, since I've never been very good at pen and ink. It was fun to pull out the shaving cream and stamp-pad reinkers for the marbling. I haven't done that technique in over 10 years. Oddly, I still have the same can of shaving cream in my supply drawer.

I resisted the urge to add color to the figure. Figured I should do at least Some of what I was told. LOL!

Life Book: Goddess Qualities Spread - Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (estonia) — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 03:58:00 +0000

When we last saw our heroine, she had just added an arm to her creation...

My first thought upon seeing her when I walked into the studio the next morning was, "Oops! I gave her my arm, not a scrawny model arm." I stared at it a long time and finally decided that replacing her arm was more work than I wanted to do.

I also didn't want to add a background. It just felt complete as it was. I felt like anything I added was more likely to ruin the spread than add to it. Similarly, I was struggling with how to add the list of qualities on the flap without throwing the whole out of balance. I settled on staying very simple and wrote them by hand in a hand-drawn frame over the arm. As a bonus, it also makes the fat arm a bit less noticeable. :)

All finished!

LifeBook: Goddess Qualities Spread - Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (estonia) — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 06:48:00 +0000

Ugh. I know the spread isn't finished, but I'm totally fried. Looks like I'm going to have to allow more time for LifeBook assignments in the future...

My first run at a three-quarter portrait was horrible. The features were in the wrong places relative to the face, relative to each other.... Shudder!

For my second try, I started with a reference photo.

However much the features look right in the photo, they look just plain weird before there is shading or color. I kept thinking, Really? There's that much distance from there to there? Wow. After much drawing and erasing and drawing and erasing, there was a sketch... (I wish I'd taken a picture of it rather than putting the 9x10 paper on the 8.5x11 scanner. It made for some weird shadows.)

I stared at it for days, terrified that I'd ruin it when I started adding color. Eeeeek!

Deep breaths....

Here goes... First the shadows...

Then the first couple of layers of skin tone...

This was followed by layer after layer of color, to get...

The next step is to add the fold-out piece, a background, and some journaling. I managed to glue this page and the half-page foldout to a piece of scrapbook paper. Of course, the first thing I noticed was that, now that there's more paper, the chopped-off elbow seems weird.

Sooo.... Add the rest of the arm and try to match the colors... Or, make the fold-out page obviously NOT part of the picture... What to do... What to do....?

Addendum: I decided to add the rest of the arm. While I was at it, I noticed more shadows that I'd missed before, so I added those too.

Accomplishments: A Todo List Becomes An Art Project

noreply@blogger.com (estonia) — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 04:44:00 +0000

I'm working my way through Goddess Leonie's "Goddess Year" PDF. It's a nice workbook with lots of questions and activities to wrap up the year and start a new one. One of the activities was to put the year's goals into a notebook of sorts.

I looked through my stuff and despite having more paper than any three people should ever own, I didn't have anything that said "use me for lists." I was just about to start creating my own notebook out of paper on hand when I noticed some unused Circa accessories. (Circa is Levenger's version of Rollabind.)

I took four plastic pages with index-card pockets and connected them with disks. I didn't like the cardstock covers they had included for inside the plastic covers, so I covered them in gesso and went to town on them.

Here's the result.

The covers (hazy cuz they're under translucent plastic covers).

One of the pocket pages.

Studio Tour

noreply@blogger.com (estonia) — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 04:29:00 +0000

This is my studio. You could pretty much burn the rest of the house down, and it would be annoying, but I wouldn't cry over any of it. This room, however, is where my heart lives.

The view from the doorway is dominated by the giant table. It's actually a cutting table with a rotary-cutter mat. I flip the cutting mat over for messy crafts.

This is the wall with the door in it. I took out the closet doors and put my Ikea Ivar shelves in there. The left side is mostly magazines in plastic storage containers, stored two deep. I can only imagine what that section of shelving weighs. LOL!

Rotating to the right another 90 degrees... The giant printer, the computer, the stereo, the sewing machine, and the weird corner window.

The wall across from the door... The bookcase, stamp drawers, and little TV/DVD. Tall, weird stuff is tucked into the gap in the corner.

And the last wall... I got these two file cabinets when the company before last folded out from under me. I think about painting them all the time. Thinking about how hard it would be to empty them and get them out of the room stops those thoughts in their tracks. :)

That's my little world. Hope you enjoyed your visit.

Book of Days: Welcome 2012

noreply@blogger.com (estonia) — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 06:15:00 +0000

Wow, the 4"x6" format of this sketchbook is a real challenge. It feels positively tiny even compared to a 5"x7".

I liked the jester image and spent FOR EVER cutting him out. All those little tiny curves! Oy. Once I had it cut out, it faded right into the page. Hmmm.... I added the collaged papers and tried him again. He was...well...OK. So I glued him down. Still kinda lost, so I outlined him with a 90% cold gray pen. Much better, but the pen bled all over his nose. Sigh. Decided to think about that later.

I added the clock as a nod to time and the fish cuz I liked him. The upper right was a bit bare, so I added the tulips. The tulips and smaller fish over the clock tied the corners together. The black art tape is from taping the front pages together to make a pocket. I like it, but it made the tiny pages feel even tinier.

Back to the jester with the gray nose... What to do... I dug through my collage materials looking for a face the right size and pointed in the right direction. Ta dah! No more ruined jester face. Yay!

Anyway, I think I was right when I declared to the group that the size of this book was going to be one of my challenges. Hopefully, I'll get into the 4"x6" groove soon...

Book of Days: Inside Front Cover

noreply@blogger.com (estonia) — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 05:52:00 +0000

For the inside cover, we were to make two pockets, one to hold a letter to 2011 and the other a letter to 2012. For 2011's pocket, I used an envelope made of handmade paper. It's just the right size for a shipping tag. For the tag's tassel, I used an old piece of kumihimo I had lying around. Who knows how long ago I made that. I shudder to think... For the 2012 pocket, I attached the first two pages together with artsy tape. For my letter to 2012, I used shipping tags with embroidery floss tassels. Each tag represents my intentions, hopes, resolutions, etc. for one area of life.

It's simple, but it's a start...

Existential Questions

noreply@blogger.com (estonia) — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 05:04:00 +0000

The other day, I was organizing my "Digital Collage" folder on the computer and stumbled upon some wonderful gray female figures. Several of them evoked thoughtful and angsty feelings in me. The question, "If the cruel and critical voices in my head stopped talking, would only silence remain?" popped into my head. It stewed there all day, and I decided to do a spread with the thoughtful figures and the various unsettling questions that echo through my being in an attempt to separate me from my inner peace.

In case you can't read them, the questions are:

If the cruel and critical voices in my head stopped talking, would only silence remain?
Have my career choices led to a dead end?
If my jokes amuse only me, are they still funny?
If I let my authentic self out, will my world explode?
Does the fluctuation of pounds relate in any way to the value of my soul?
Am I not girly enough to nab a guy who is a better man than I am?
Will my shattered spiritual self ever be whole and strong again?
Will my ~~awkward~~ awkward ever feel OK?
If I could catch the magical moments in each day, what song would my heart sing?

Aimless Art Journal Spread

noreply@blogger.com (estonia) — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 01:45:00 +0000

This is one of those "finished it before I knew what it was about" spreads. I sat down at my table, continued my march through Buffy on DVD, and just started fiddling in one of my art journals. I had no idea where I was headed or what I was going to put on the page, either elements or writing. Here's what came out.

The face is one I drew on scrapbook paper. I like the effect of the design showing through the paint.

Book of Days: Cover

noreply@blogger.com (estonia) — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 04:50:00 +0000

In 2011, most of my artsy efforts were directed towards art journaling. I've found that there's a really nice interplay between what my brain can express in writing and what it can express visually. When one or the other just isn't saying what I want to say or isn't getting to the heart of the matter, art journaling, the combination of both, is often the answer. Definitely something I want to keep doing in 2012.

To keep my art journaling habit going, I signed up for Book of Days with Effy Wild. Effy is leading a year-long art-journaling group. If you have an interest, hit the link and sign up. Hey, it's free. What have you got to lose?

Each of us in the group is picking a word or phrase to be our theme for 2012. Mine is "Trust". (Yeah, I put the period on the outside. In this case, the British way just makes more sense to me.) In this phase of my life, I'm rebuilding my ability to trust myself and others after getting a serious smackdown by someone who didn't deserve my (or anyone else's) trust. This year is about getting back in touch with the still, small voice, paying attention to my gut, and giving my own view of myself and what's good for me more weight than anyone else's.

As if the content weren't going to be challenging enough, the book I chose has really small (4" x 6") pages. I've never worked quite this small before. It'll be interesting to see what logistical challenges pop up over the year.

For the cover, I decided to be mostly monochrome. That decision held all through the background and front cover (even painted the brass-colored letters with blue Pinata inks), but I just had to use the glass-mosaic woman on the back. I've had the image in my stash for quite some time. She's from an ad for glass tiles. She had words across her middle, so I collaged over them with the phrase "How do you feel?"

Update...

She looks better in the above picture than she did in real life. The piece felt disjointed to me, so I knocked it all back with more blue. An argument could be made that I knocked it back too far, but it feels more cohesive to me, even though it's a bit darkish.