Balloons

I seem to be on a balloon kick lately. 

Several things I have made while just playing around have included balloons. 

This one is no exception.

Actually, it may have been the first. 

7x12" Watercolor, Marker, Ink

Prayer Flag

The Prayer Flag Project has become quite something in the art world.

It is featured on the cover of the latest issue of the Cloth Paper Scissors Magazine and I have seen various artists reference it on their blogs. 

I finally made one of my own for a very dear family battling cancer.

8.5x5" Mixed Media

  I thought this worked well with Illustration Friday's theme of heights--prayers to God high above.

You Scream I Scream

We all scream for ice cream!!!

I mean, really. Who doesn't like ice cream?! 

Here's a tasty little mixed media piece I started a few weeks ago and finally finished up. 

There were lots of steps involved, but of course I forgot to capture each one. 

9x14" mixed media

First, I drew out the ice cream on cardboard and glued yarn to it (two layers actually so it's quite raised off the cardboard). 

Once it dried, I glued tissue paper over the entire thing (well, most of it since the paper wasn't quite big enough) and made sure to push the paper down around the yarn. Then I panted it with a wash of acrylic brown paint. 

Not really sure where to go from here, I added some text from an old book just to give it more texture I guess. But really it has enough, right?!

Once the glue was dry I used some acrylic paint (no brown this time) and painted over the paper and enhanced the ice cream cone. I wish I had taken more pics as I painted, but this last step took less than 10 minutes, so I honestly didn't think about it. I enhanced the raised yarn with some darker black/brown/red paint and gave the ice cream and cherry a bit of color. 

I'm really pretty happy with it and hoping that I can make it into a project for my students.

Nevr-Dull Collage

I am currently working with some of my students on composition and they are finding it more challenging than I expected especially since we've been talking about composition all year. 

It's amazing what they do and don't retain. 

We are creating compositions using magazine pages and Nevr-Dull to matte and dull information that is not important and add texture. (It's actually a metal polisher, but dulls magazines!). 

Here's an example I made for them. I love the marks and texture it creates on the plane white paper!

Magazine Collage and Nevr-Dull, 10x6"