Meet Audacity

Got a new art doll collaboration starting up! Art Doll Cool-Aberration 2010. This time there are seven of us participating and we'll wrap up in May.

Here's Audacity, my doll start, and her travel journal. Audacity is a paper mache form built on a stick, not quite 7" tall. She's sporting an old decorative metal hardware piece.




Her journal is also paper mache and 7.5" X 4.5".





I'll be sending Audacity off to Mary Anne in Canada very soon. Can't wait to get my first doll from Yvonne in Texas!

Another Sketchbook Page

This one is another paper mache page colored with watercolors, markers, acrylics, pen and pencil. These are a lot of fun to make.

Sketchbook Project and Sketching for Real

Here're a couple more pages for my art journal for The Setchbook Project 2011. The first shown is a paper mache page of 3 denim-clad pals smoking in the alley. (I've started using paper mache for everything - may even start patching stuff here at home with paper mache instead of Duck tape. :) ) I started this page by cutting out the body shapes in cardboard and gluing them to the page. Then I paper mache-ed over the entire page and painted, penciled, and markered over that. The facial features and clothing, etc just evolved from what I saw in the initial paint layers. I may still add some text.



The next page just kindof evolved on it's own. I'd doodled some human shapes I saw lurking in a painted surface, and I thought the expressions were of dismay and perplexity as the people looked up at something. That made me think of the Towers falling on 9-11-2001. At the time, I was also experimenting with embossing some paper using a grid-like metal cake cooling thingie. The embossed paper reminded me of many-windowed buildings... like the Towers. So it all ended up together on this page.



Then, surprise, surprise! I sat down with pencil and paper and started trying to sketch a nose that really kindof looked like... well, a nose. I've never been a sketcher or a drawer. And always wished I could. So I'm pleasantly surprised with these first attempts at sketching faces. No, they're not real good, but they're a hell of a lot better than I thought I could do. I really like doing noses and lips so far. Apparently, I like older faces with character lines and frowns. And REAL, ugly noses!

Totem Dolls

Messing around with paper mache again. These little totems are decorated with colored sections of the newspaper. Twine hair. The larger one (about 5" tall) is a rattle. The small one woulda been a rattle, but I got impatient and dried him in the microwave, and he ended up not having a hollow inside after that. Oops. :)

Here Goes Nothin'!

I joined The Sketchbook Project 2011. While waiting for my sketchbook to arrive, I started stressing badly over having joined. Didn't have any ideas for pages (the ones I had when I was thinking of joining had all flown the coop), couldn't believe I'd spent money on joining something I couldn't do (I'm not a sketcher or a drawer), etc. I'm just coming out of a loooooong creative block and I felt like this stupid idea of mine was gonna throw me right back into it.

Well, thank goodness I got past that. It's only a silly little sketchbook and a few measley dollars. It's supposed to be fun. So I'm just gonna fill my pages with whatever strikes my fancy at the time. My theme is "Coffee and Cigarettes" and, since playing in the sketchbook is something I do while drinking coffee and smoking, I figure anything I come up with falls into my category. :)

So here's the first spread I've made for my sketchbook.


It's mostly watercolors (watercolor crayons, which I love) with some pen, magic marker, and cut & paste. I used all my fave colors.

Collage

I'm not a very good collager, but I was messing around with it the other day. Trying to come up with some background material. Here's what I made from magazine bits and a touch of paint.

A Black Tie Affair

Animal skulls, sticks, paper mache.