Another batch of postcards ready to go out for an international swap ...

Another batch of postcards ready to go out for an internationalswap.

One of the things I love about making art is that you can keep re-creating ideas in new ways. The phrase on this postcard has had more than a few incarnation over the years. I have a weird affinity for sentences where all the words have the same length, and in the past I've put this phrase into a tidy little grid. This time around I gridded the background and let the words be funky (i.e. random type and not lined up, lest you think I mean something else).

This background is becoming my new favourite background to work on ... it's made from the reader's digest pages where I clean off my brayer while using my gelli plate. I love that cleaning my brayer gives me huge stacks of colourful text pages to play with - there truly is no waste ... just lovely texty coloury bits to play with. For this background I cut the text pages into 1.75" squares, glued them down in a pleasing sort of spectrumy order, and then gessoed the borders, dry-brushing towards the middle of each square as I went. The trouble with this background is that I kinda fall in love with each step as I go (well okay, maybe not step one ...). A friend of mine at seeing step three called this background "Paper Pillows" and it's as good a name as any I can think of myself, so here are the steps to Paper Pillows in case you want to give it a go yourself:
 

 
The frames are a rubber stamp, and the last step (for my postcards) was to stamp text in the frames. I've also been using this same background in my art journal and then doing non-grid drawings/paintings on top of it, but I'll save those images for a future post because I still want to tweak them and add more detail.

Hope you're all having a colourful day ...

Postcard Love ...

Just thought I'd post a quickie pic of the postcards I made for a recent International Postcard Swap I participated in ... they're on the way to their various recipients, all of whom are new art contacts for me, so there's very little chance they're reading my blog (yet!), so they won't see what's headed their way ... but I thought you folks might like a look. If you detect a certain "bantockishness" to them you'd be right ... I'm getting in the groove for an upcoming class with Nick Bantock.

Gotta say not only is this one of my favourite colour schemes ~ gold + blue (notice how it matches my blog background?), it's also one of my favourite themes (celestial). Now if only I could have worked a map in there somewhere, my life would be complete. Well, maybe not ... but you know ... some things just make you happy, and even looking at these postcards all spread out on my worktable was deeply satisfying. Now ... off to make more art!

Oooooo .... pretty ...

Sorry ... couldn't resist showing you the rainbow of painted buttons I finished today to trade at Artfest. Is it just me or do they look like giant, shiny, tasty smarties? They look so pretty all spread out together, I've been running them through my fingers like a colour-demented Scrooge McDuck, enjoying how they feel and sound ... oh, and trying to figure out how to keep them all for myself. Mwah-hah-hah.

Whoosh! Say ... wasn't that a deadline?

This year's trades: Books, Mini-Zines, Buttons & Tags

Time tends to speed up as Artfest approaches, and this is especially true when it's time to make all those items to trade with other attending artists. I decided to make a variety of items since this'll be the last Artfest (insert moment of silence here).

The largest (and most collaborative!) trade item is the Book of Faces (top left). I posted an invite on the Artfest Yahoo group for people to send black and white line drawings of faces to add to my ongoing collection ~ an attempt to encourage myself to draw more faces. I'm pleased to say the finished book contains more than 150 drawings, as well as additional sections on tracing and clipart, as well as blank pages so people can continue to add their own faces.

Also included (by kind permission of Kathy Barbro) is a section I'm calling "Art Projects for (Big) Kids", which features some of the face-themed projects over on her Art Projects for Kids website. Her site  has *way* more than face-related art projects, and I highly encourage you to surf over and have a look, particularly if you have children or, what the heck, if you've ever been a child. The full-size version of my Book of Faces will be traded with people who submitted drawings, and I've made four mini-zine excerpts of the book (the blue covers along the right-hand side of the photo) to trade with other attendees. I'm so pleased with how they all turned out ~ and relieved to have them all done in time!

I'm also making some laminated luggage tags with some cool thread "dribbles" on the back. Mr B. wanted to know how exactly you "dribble" thread ...he insisted it's not really possible ... of course, when I showed him what I was doing, he agreed that dribbling was as good a word as any he could think of.

Artfest-wise, I'm also making some fun 1" buttons, as well as participating in the Artfest ATC book AND the 4x4 chunky book, but thank heavens all those bits and pieces were sent to their respective organizers long ago. I might even manage to get a few more ATCs made when all is said and done. Whoosh, indeed!

For any of you who've been to Artfest, I don't need to tell you how wonderful and rare an experience it is. So, here's a shout out to Lelainia for taking me to my first Artfest years ago, and bunches and bunches of appreciation for all the fabulous teachers and like-minded friends who've grown out of my Artfest connection. I know this last Artfest will be amazing and bittersweet and I plan to soak up every little bit of it ~ hence the overkill in my participation this year. I wish Teesha and Tracy and their whole gang all the best as they set their sails for other projects and artistic horizons.

Artfest 2011 - Part 1

I must be getting old ... coming home from Artfest feels like jetlag {artlag? festlag? surely there's a German word to describe this, they have a word for everything}. It might be sleep deprivation ~ I stay awake far into the nights {did I mention the military beds?}, or I'm too wired to sleep ~ my head brimming with ideas, and then it's back up at 7:00 to get breakfast before class each day. Thank heavens all I had to do was wander sleepily across to the commons building and into the buffet line, where some very nice {morning} people put lovely edible things on my plate.

I kept bumping into people I knew ~ either from other retreats, or from classes at previous Artfests, or from swapping through other websites {hey, beenebag!}. And this year something odd seemed to be going on ... I'm not sure why, but I felt more "settled". I've yet put my finger on the why of it, but I just felt more present and confident and at peace. I didn't do my usual "sit-at-an-empty-table-and-see-who-will-sit-with-me" shy thing I used to do in the dining room. With 500 or so people milling about with food trays {okay, maybe not ALL 500 at once!} there was always someone to sit with ~ so I did. I traveled down this year with my friend Rose {hey, Rose!} and we always looked for each other at meals, and even had our first day's class together, but then it was off in different directions.

There was the usual trading frenzy at the first dinner, and as I'd posted a link to this blog on the Artfest yahoo group, it was heart-warming indeed to have people actually recognize what I'd made from seeing my blog post beforehand. Apparently I'm still getting used to be out there blogwise. I made 120 trades and only came home with about 20 {never fear ~ they will find a home!}, and I received very creative stuff in return. Lots of people handed out collage packs, which came in VERY handy in class on day three. The trading pretty much continues throughout Artfest, and Rose very kindly kept pointing me in the direction of people who had cool stuff I hadn't seen yet {Have you traded with the pea lady yet? She's sitting over there ...}.

And now a word to my gentlemen readers {if indeed there are any}, here's something you might want to remember when faced with an audience of 500 or so artists {primarily women} who've come to take three days worth of classes with roly carts bursting with art supplies ... after dinner on the first night, Teesha and Tracy, our most excellent hosts, had the teachers and the Artfest crew come to the mic and introduce themselves ... and one of the volunteers nearly got a standing ovation for this: "Hello, my name is Richard, and I also know Tracy from an unnamed online game, and my passion is ... lifting heavy objects for women." Of course, your circumstances may vary, but I'm just saying, you might want to have this line in your repertoire.

More on Artfest in the next few days ... after I've recovered a little more from Festlag!

Prepping for Artfest ...

It's that time of the year again, time to go off for a *massive* creative get together with 500+ like-minded folks ~ AKA: Artfest!

For those who've been to Artfest no explanation is necessary, for those who haven't been, it's hard to know where to start ... imagine summer camp for grown-ups, completely dedicated to the creative experience, hosted by people who are dedicated to creativity in their own lives.

The teachers are fabulous, the food is wonderful (I think *any * food I don't have to cook is wonderful, but seriously, it's a miracle we all don't gain 5 lbs in the 5 days we're there!), and the accommodation is ... um, barracks? Yep, that's right, the venue of this artful party was previously a military fort.

I'm scheduled to take three intriguing classes (more on this later), but there's so much beyond the classes at Artfest ... one of the traditions is that lots of people bring some small thing they've created. This year I've made three things to trade: a very traditional ATC (artist trading card), some artful little buttons and a rather clever (if I do say so myself) bobbin made by adding a whole whack of colour to a quite ordinary clothespin.

There's still a bunch of stuff I've got to do before I go, but I think I'm narrowing it down to the last few fragments and oddments ~ it's tempting to take a whole studio's worth of art supplies, but over the years I've learned to travel lighter each time. More about Artfest when I get back!