Index Card Art

I can’t say if what I’m doing now qualifies as index card art, because I didn’t use any actual index cards. I found they don’t take paint and glue so well—they tend to curl up. So first I bought the box, and then I determined the size of the cards I wanted to make. I decided on 6”x4”. Then I pre-painted a couple of large sheets of watercolor paper, and measured them out.

A little background info on my skills: When I was in high school my art teacher taught us how to cut our own matts. Later on in life, I became a paste-up artist and a typesetter. This was all during the Dark Ages before computers. We literally cut and pasted in those days. So I am not at all shy around an Exacto knife.

I wound up with eight perfect cards, ready to decorate.

I managed to decorate two cards today. I’m not very good with stamping, but I did want to do some words.

I tore bits and pieces and modpodged the whole thing down. I ironed it twice because curly makes me crazy.

Here I found stumbled upon a picture of yours truly that I had photoshopped for a forgotten project. It was the perfect size.

So there. My first two index cards, and a third is on its way.

Tender Hearts

This was a fun project I did in my art group. I cut words from a child's book (bigger text) and glued them down to a sheet of watercolor paper, which I had painted, pasted patterned tissue onto, stamped, and stenciled.

I carried it home and mounted it onto a board that I painted. (Leftover wood from Hubby's project.) I really enjoyed doing this. I always liked those magnetic poetry words, and considering these came from a Hansel and Gretel book, not bad.

If you look hard, you can see my Goddess. That and the big leaf stamp were carved from this amazing stamping sheet, which is easier to work with than old-fashioned linoleum block, and much cheaper. It's made by Speedball, and it's called Speedy Carve Block.

I mount lots of paper projects either on canvas or on wood, since I'm too lazy to go out and have things framed.

Muslin and Leaves

I’ve been obsessed with leaves recently. Also obsessed with fabric. So I have been experimenting with painting on muslin and playing with leaves. I also love the rough edges of torn fabric. So I slapped some paint on a piece of material, and set it on a canvas that had been previously painted.

I had also been playing around with “tie-dye” with inks and alcohol. So I grabbed a few of those and arranged them on the canvas. The leaf was the fun part. I disovered that you can iron leaves flat. If they are old dried curling-up leaves, you can actually use steam. On a fresh leaf, you can iron it with a dry iron. I did this several times. I painted the leaf and and used a fine brush dipped in alcohol ink to bring out the veins.

I used Mod Podge to glue al the items to the canvas. This darkened all the colors, and I went back over with paint to give it better contrast.

I need to do a better job taking these pictures, and I need to do these posts on my computer, because Blogger is pretty wonky in my iPad.

I’m Back!

I’ve decided to revive this blog, even though I’ve moved on from digital art. In the past few years I’ve “unplugged” myself, and have been getting my hands dirty. So I’ve been painting and gluing, and generally making messes.

So since I already have my blog set up, and it’s been gathering dust for so long, I might as well share some of my work here. 

The Word Is Love

This one is for the Choose A Word challenge at Three Muses.

Click image to enlarge.

The challenge was to pick a word and illustrate it in journal form, so I made up a scene where I am pasting into a fictitious journal.

High Noon

Okay, I'm back! For those of you who suspected I may have fallen of the edge of the world, I'm back again. 2013 was a tumultuous year for me, with a whirlwind of challenging events. Halfway through my Dad died, and also two dear aunts followed in quick succession.

I got a newer Mac recently, but to my disappointment found that my old version of Photoshop is not compatible, tried out the monthly subscription to the Adobe cloud version, but I wasn't really impressed. I have the latest version of Photoshop Elements, but it is lacking some of the cool features that even my ancient version of regular Photoshop offers. So, I'm chugging along on my old Mac in the back to create my digital art and then surfing at high speeds on my new pooter.

Well, here is my first challenge in months, which is the Three Muses challenge, Still Life.

Click image to enlarge.

Naturally, I couldn't be content with fruit in a bowl and a bouquet of roses for a still life.

Please leave a comment and let me know you haven't forgotten me.

Go Fly A Kite

This is for the Kite challenge at Three Muses.

Click image to enlarge.

Ball of Confusion

This is for the Written Word challenge at Three Muses.

Click image to enlarge.

I went from thoughts of newspaper clippings to news in general, and pondered how we get over-saturated by bad news these days. I don't have newspapers lying around the house, so I started collecting terrible news headlines online and kept dropping them into layers (after a bit of formatting). Then I spherized them (spell-check doesn't like that word) and laid them over a globe. Then I did some swirly things behind it.

All the while, I had the old Temptations song "Ball of Confusion" running through my head. (You youngsters should look it up in YouTube--great song.) We were pretty pessimistic about the state of the world in those days. People still carry on as if the world is about to end. Did I mention we banned the news channels in our household about a year ago?

Botanical

This is for the Botanical challenge at Take a Word.

Click image to enlarge.

The word botanical makes me think of those detailed drawings of leaves and plants. I was going for a somewhat whimsical look here. I wanted a leaf that still looked like a leaf, but also so you could see what I see when I look closely at a leaf--a little tree.

I picked a leaf and scanned the back of it where all the veins can be seen. Then I did magical things to it using probably five layers where I carefully separated the veins to color them brown and did some fancy footwork with noise and pixel effects to give them texture and a hint of leaves, and added a shadow to give them depth. I gave each tree a cast shadow, that was set at around 45% transparency. There are probably more than twenty layers in my working copy.

I used a photo I took this morning of a large lawn and played around with it to make it look a little more like a painting.

April Come She Will

This is for the April challenge at Inspiration Avenue.

Click image to enlarge.

Yellow Moon on the Rise

This is for the Moon challenge at Take a Word.

Click image to enlarge.

The globes and stones were digitally created and finished up in Photoshop. The moon is from my brush.

Making a Moon Brush

I think Photoshop is one of those programs that even if you have used it for years, there is always something new to learn. I started using Photoshop at the start of the millennium, but it was only last year that I discovered the magic of brushes. My version of Photoshop is the very ancient CS2 for Mac, but I'm sure most everyone can follow along with me.

Brushes are very handy for anything monotone that you use a lot, or for something that repeats on your work. I've created brushes for the moon, trees, stars, shells, pearls, and one I use to trim my clouds. (Yes, you can use brushes with the eraser too.)

So, here's how I did the moon:

First of all, I found a picture of the moon at the NASA site and I trimmed away the black  space and left the background transparent. Then I reversed the image. Since the moon is white against a dark background, this is a necessary step, unless you want your brush to come out as a negative moon. I also lightened it, because the outer space pictures have more contrast than what we see here on earth.

Click image to enlarge.

The next step was to choose define brush preset which is located in the edit menu.

Click image to enlarge.

It will ask you to name the brush, and then the brush is created. It appear with your preset brushes. Now you can stamp away with your new brush. You can make it bigger, smaller, colored, or change the transparency. To toggle the size quickly, use the [ and the ] keys.

There are numerous tutorials on the web that also teach about brushes. Just google away and you will find them.