Wednesday, July 9, 2008

I've been taking an online "summer school" art class by Karyn Gartel (aka Altered Diva) called Softly Spoken and it's all about creating backgrounds for collage work. Just what I needed! This is the first piece I made using acrylic paint, stamps, gesso, colored pencils, charcoal pencil, white grease pencil, and collage images from Karyn. I call this The Caged Bird.



And this is my second one called My Stars. The quote comes from an Emilie Autumn song. Both pieces were done on watercolor paper. Even though I've done a few mixed media collages on canvas, I feel I need to concentrate more on practicing on the paper for now. I have some ideas of pieces I'd like to do, but I need to work on my color combinations. Sometimes they just turn out muddy and brown.



Karyn's blog is listed in the blogs to see on the right. Her workshop information is here. She's an amazing artist!

What else...what else...
I have been contemplating buying a bike. A vintage looking one, robin's egg blue or pink. A cruiser of sorts, although maybe that isn't the best idea since I am surrounded by hills. Nonetheless, I keep telling myself, a bike would be a grand birthday present (Aug 4). Then, after much excitement at the prospect of a new bike I remember...there's no way to get it home.

That's not completely true. My boyfriend and I went bike shopping in early spring. We took my little Ford Focus because a) his car is smaller than mine and houses large speakers in the trunk and b) we believed it could hold anything. We had stuffed a big screen tv in the backseat, a patio table in the trunk, and my whole room (when I moved from Texas) in every nook and cranny of the thing. Surely a bike would fit. That was not the case. A bike is an awkward shape and no matter how many ways we tried to shove it in, it just wouldn't go. Soo...the boyfriend decided to ride it home. I thought he was crazy, as it was getting dark outside and he had to ride it down a busy street with no shoulder! He made it home in about 30 minutes and said he enjoyed the experience. Good for him, but *I'm* not going to ride a bike from Kalamazoo to the house.

I'm wondering if stores deliver. Also, I keep going back in forth in my head whether or not I will really ride it. Sometimes I think I only want one because I love the aesthetics of a vintage bicycle.

Oh! And I must tell you that I had the most delicious dream the other night about eating French macarons. They were purple and tasted like heaven. This weekend I'm going to try my hand at making some. There's a recipe for blueberry ones in the latest Tea Time magazine. You wouldn't believe how excited I was to find that!

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

*There* you are! And making collages, too. I love, love, LOVE collages! And yours are lovely.

A bicycle, hmm? A vintage one might not come apart as nicely as the newer ones do, to fit in your car I mean. A puzzle..

Maija said...

Your collages are beautiful!
I'm thinking of buying one of those cool bikes for my birthday- August 6!

Marie Louise said...

Love your collages! Really beautiful.
And do get yourself a bike. I love Robin's Egg Blue too but sounds like you need a ten speed.
I'm just discovering your blog - lots of wonderful things!

Corwink said...

I am in love with that caged bird piece. Beautiful work!

Anonymous said...

A couple of observations:

1. Your art is lovely and looks good enough to eat.

2. I will be Really Impressed if you can ride a vintage bike around the hills in these parts.

One more thing: my blog loads slowly because I am not smart enough (yet) to reduce the file size of my pictures. Thanks for hanging in there while they loaded, and be advised that it was not your computer's fault!

http://afancifultwist.typepad.com said...

Oooo, that class looks marvelous!!! How fun!! I am so glad you are enjoying it!!!

French pastries??? Yummmy!! Make them come to real life ;)

couragetocreatewriteandlove said...

Thanks for the link! it seems something good to check and your artsy collage background is awesome