wordpress now

New Update.... No longer at Typepad. Too expensive. Now I'm at wordpress! Here it is: http://feelingarty.wordpress.com/ and http://sondisees.wordpress.com/ Stop on by and leave me a comment!

You still here???

Hey there! Are you still coming to this location to see my art? Wellll.....a while ago I migrated my feeling arty page over to typepad. The new address is: http://www.sondisees.typepad.com/feelingarty If you would like to recv updates via email instead of visiting the site directly, you can go over to http://www.rssfwd.com , give them my url and tell them you want to recv email updates (takes about a minute to cut and paste the url and check the box that says 'email updates'). I love that site! Anyhooo....that is all. Carry on!

New Look, Same Great Taste!!!

Hey there! Just a little re-direction for ya..... My feeling arty page has moved! Go there now! http://sondisees.typepad.com/feelingarty/

FRIENDSHIP, Take 2...

This is my second set of pages for the friendship theme. I was really happy with the way these came out. Instead of cardstock, I did these on canvas paper. The extra weight and absorbtion seemed to help support the various layers of paper and paint and glue quite a bit better than the cardstock had.....way less paper curling to deal with! . About half way thru I was really struggling with the balance of reds on each side and then suddenly, each piece fell into place and viola! All done!

FRIENDSHIP SPREAD #1

I thought I would try my hand at a little more cartoony-popart-ish kind of style....Bella drew the kitty and it's pillow for me and then I painted it and traced it out in black pen....the rest is done with acrylic paint and pen as well.....and some vintage paper thrown in here and there.

Men & Women

The theme for the book these pages were for was "red and black"....this gave me a pretty wide range of possibilites.....so I started piling up all the different red and black scraps of things I had and found a deck of 'conversation' cards....this one resonated with me and a two-page spread was born....The card reads, "What in your opinion is the biggest difference between men and women?".

STILLNESS

The theme of the book these are in is "Stillness".

(The left hand page reads: "the quiet peace of a sleeping child". )

I created these pages by first 1) gluing on a layer of novel pages, music score scraps, pictures cut from vintage schoolbooks, and other scraps....

then 2) painted a layer of acrylic paint mixed with gesso.

Then 3) glued on the prominent images (mostly distressed with sandpaper),

4) added lettering,

5) doodled in chalk and pen,

and then 6) painted it all with a tinted acrylic laquer.

I got to use some of my favorite hoarded images of sleeping babies and children and painted it in one of my current favorite colors....a mix of robin's egg blue and a hint of green.

Busy Busy Busy

I just had to include this picture of my daughter because, after introducing her to fingerpaints, she excitedly demanded, WHAT ELSE CAN I PUT PAINT ON??? I put paint on the paper and the wall and my toy and WHAT ELSE CAN I PUT PAINT ON????" I wasn't too pleased to be cleaning the paint off so many surfaces but her enthusiasm for it really made me laugh out loud. I just couldn't be mad at her....excitement over creativity can be contagious!

SO MANY WORDS

I have several vintage tins full of words.....scraps torn from books, magazines, print ads, fliers, you name it. I keep running out of room in my little boxes so I found this old cigar box. I liked it's really unusual shape. It's like a foot and a half long. I decorated it in novel pages, scraps of stamped paper, tissue and a dash of this and that. Then I covered it in an acrylic coating to protect it against rips and tears.

I created this book with recycled paperboard from cereal boxes and other cast offs bound for the trash. I used a method I found in the book, Kaleidoscope (i highly recommend you get yourself a copy!!!), where you time yourself in five minute increments. First you dash some paint on a bunch of pages in various colors for five minutes. The next five minutes you scribble on some pages. The next five minutes you randomly glue stuff on some pages....and on and on and on in five minute increments. When you are all done with the various steps, you cut down the pages until they are all 5 X 7 inches. The scraps you tape together with masking tape until they are also big enough to cut down into 5 x7 pages. It was SO FUN. The next few pictures show a few pages from the inside. The piece in the background of this picture is a work in progress.....

HORSES

Here are my tip-in pages for the horse themed altered book. Instead of a two page spread, in this book, participants did a single page, front and back. Made the design a little trickier. The dark horse on the first page I created on a transparency using the stencil method below.....I just didn't cut it out and use it as a stencil.

FACE STENCILS

I tried out this technique. Took most of a day to find a photo that would be identifiable as a person when posterized, changed to black and white and cut out. I ended up using that process and printing out about 9 different photos on transparencies. Only a couple of them actually ended up working as stencils though because if there is too much detail, the piece of transparency just falls apart after you cut out the details. Tricky. But I've included a couple of the photos I printed out to give you an idea of how much cutting is involved to create the final product. In some cases, using a negative image is easier. I think I want to try this process using photos of animals, flowers, and random doodles next. Hmm....

Being A Woman Is....

Here is the two-page spread I did in a book with the theme, "Being A Woman".....So I chose, "Being A Woman Means Having Fun Getting DRESSED UP !!!" I have to admit that this was my most challenging spread so far since the book is made of fabric and each set of blank pages were made of Muslin.....if you knew how UN-Handy I was with a needle and thread you would be soooo feeling proud of me. I sewed a few elements (the background fabric, A fabric checkered 'dress' and a button and a couple of other tiny things) but after my fingers started THROBBING from the trying to push the giant needle thru all those layers of fabric and paper, I gave up on sewing and pulled out my handy dandy hot glue gun. Really lovin' that thing these days!!!

POLKA DOT PARTY

Except for adding feet to the bottom( I attached hanging hooks on the back to let me hang in up on the wall), I finished my first cigar box/shrine. Why is it that they are called 'shrines' again? Nothing worshipful here. Just polka dot party time! Ooops....i just realized that I didn't take pictures of the outsides of the box (which is FULL of polka dots!!).

BOOK THEME: Forests

The wording on the page reads: "Stepping through the library doors browse through the whispering trees of knowledge" Whew! I finished this last month's altered book page-spread right under the wire....okay, I guess since it should have been mailed by yesterday it TECHNICALLY isn't UNDER the wire but I came awfully close! LOL The book's theme that I've been working with is 'forests' and since I didn't want to do just any old tree/green/leafy spread, I decided to take a shot at making a forest composed of TREES OF KNOWLEDGE so I constructed my 'trees' out of stacks and shelves of books with an odd leaf or forest critter thrown in here and there. I think if I had it to do over, I would have picked a different medium....maybe painted in the images of books....dunno....they really don't stand out enough against the woodsy backdrop in the actual book and you'd have to stare at it for awhile to even decifer what is IN the picture. Not my best work but viola! there it is. LOL I'm thinking maybe I should have gone with my other idea of constructing a forest and having woodland creatures painting it green. I had some really cute clippings from old school readers of bears holding paint brushes....ah well, there is always next time....This is definitely one of those situations where you LEARN BY DOING. With each piece I finish, I have more ideas for the next one....now if only I could get over my procrastination and DO SOME ART ALREADY....sheesh....

WHOLE ENCHILADA

instead of in peices, here is the collage as a whole

The actual collage/painting is 16 by 20 inches so it just plain wouldn't fit on the scanner. Soooo...I had to scan it in pieces. But if you can put it all together in your mind's eye, you'll see that it is basically the Grotton family reunion. *grin*

Tess and Justin are in the front middle. Bella and Mia are in the lower right hand corner (mia is in the wagon). I'm peeking around the corner of the house waving....

COFFEE!!!

Here is the two-page-spread I did in the latest altered book that I got in the mail. The theme was 'pleasures'. Someone else had already done the pleasure of reading, art, family memories.....so I did mine on one of the next best pleasures....COFFEE!!!

Ocean Jewels

Here is the altered art book spread I did to contribute to the "Ocean Jewels" theme.

Welcome to Fairyville - Population 12

These pages are from a Round Robin Book with the theme "Welcome To Fairyville". The premise is that you are supposed to compose a spread featuring yourself in miniature as a fairy ..... I found some images from the book's original pages (is is a child's dictionary being transformed) and included them. The image of the robin, the clock and the date calendar were from the original pages. I loved the calendar because the date on it is the day I first became a mom. A spectacular date in my mind!

Wednesday's Whining....

Hopefully this little tidbit isn't too small to read. I've really been neglecting my journalling in all it's forms lately. I haven't worked in my personal art journal, the group altered journal, OR any of my back-and-forth-between-friends journals! It certainly cannot be that I have nothing to say. I'm the biggest loudmouth there is.....always sticking my foot in there, for crying out loud. I think I just have been sort of afraid of my art desk.

Now, initially, I would agree that being 'afraid' of a desk sounds pretty ridiculous. But hear me out.... I walk back and forth across the house, in and out of rooms, accessing how much needs to be picked up, put away, and cleaned in each room I pass through. And then I think, I can't even STEP FOOT in the art room. I have WAY TOO MUCH TO DO! And there is the lack of inspiration....I was inspired like a week ago after checking out information on a whole bunch of woman painters, sculpters, and photographers.....and then got sidetracked with doing busywork around the house.....then the inspiration kind of just seeped away. *sigh*

I guess I just need to put the housework on "pause" and spend a little time at my desk and wait for the inspiration to come. Because lord knows, the housework never WILL be done....

theme....orange & "altered photos"

"I would not fear nor wish my fate,

But boldly say each night,

To-morrow let my sun his beams display,

Or in clouds hide them;

I have lived today."

(the color is a bit off in these scans....I used my stash of personally mixed sunshine yellow and added in some bits of chalky texture and tiny seed beads. The yellow here is ACTUALLY the same shade as the 'sisters' spread below!)