Botanical Gardens



Japanese Gardens





Bonsai tree









rosehips

Fall harvest

What a beautiful fall day at the Botanical Gardens! These are just a few of my photos and I haven't retouched any of them in photoshop yet. I will definitely be using these for some of my drawings. 

New Pottery

This is what came out of the kiln yesterday! I am trying to make items to sell with the art club kids for our very first Art Faire. We will be doing it in conjunction with the Madrigal Dinner which will draw a large audience over the course of the three days they are performing.

Remember the nuts from the post on my other site? Well here they are all done! I will be making a whole bunch of these and will probably sell them in a group of three. I decided to brush them with an iron oxide stain and it turned out exactly the way I wanted. The picture below shows how big they really are. They would be a really great fall decoration but since the Art Faire isn't until December I might be missing the window of opportunity with these.

I'm pleased with the mugs because I've never been good at making them. They are easy to throw but I'm not good at making them look uniform...so I figured who cares! They are handmade so don't expect any two to look alike! But what really helps is the new way I've been making the handles. Pulling handles was always an effort in futility so with a little help from the new extruder at the school I've finally been able to make a mug I would actually use. A good coffee mug is a very personal thing to many people. The weight of it, the way it balances in your hand, the size of the handle, thickness of the lip, etc... I figured mugs would be a good money maker regardless of the season so I hope to crank out a whole bunch of these. And maybe make some as Christmas gifts for family and friends.

A B C's

I started this alphabet project almost two years ago as a gift for a friend who had just had her first baby. Needless to say I never finished it but I'd like to! I really just made it such a huge project that I am having a hard time trying to find enough ideas to complete it. Each letter is about 4"x4" and everything within the space relates to the letter.

 A~at, apple, apple seeds

B~ blue bird, brown, buttons, branch

C~Coca Cola, Christmas colors, castle

D~drawn D, DaVinci (can you see the Mona Lisa in there?)

E~envelope, elephant, eight, E, e (it's on the back of the stamp) and I like the way the envelope closes with a figure eight.

F~ frayed fabric, feather, five

G~ green, gold, ginko, grass

H~hearts card, happy, rose petal heart

R~ raised, rough, red

S~ sandpaper, seeds, stamps, scribble, starfish

 T~toothpicks, texture, tie dye
The M, P and Z are unfinished

The M is from the Magikist sign. Anyone who lives in Chicago remembers the Magikist lips off of the Kennedy! And the P is polkadotted... The Z is made of a holographic zigzag on a background of zebras.

My favorite blog artists

Queen Anne's lace drawing next to my favorite Raku bowl.

Seeds inspired by Arounna from Bookhou

These sketchbook drawings were inspired by two of my favorite blogger artists. Geninne's Art Blog is so colorful and whimsical and it makes me happy every time I go to her site. And Bookhou at Home is a site by one half of a husband /wife artist team whose work is so simple, clean and comfortable. Take a look at their blogs too!

From my sketchbook

Now What?

This is a sketch from a few years ago that I drew on our flight to Florida for Spring Break. There were about thirty of us in all going on a cruise in the Caribbean and I couldn't wait to get to some nice weather! I'll post more sketchbook drawings tomorrow.

Berries

Here's a simple watercolor I did a few weeks ago. I think I might scan this and use this for a design for a note card. Is it "christmasy" enough for a Christmas card?

My First Post

I thought I should start a blog in order to force myself to do more art work. I had another small site that I treated like a blog but I wanted to create something more. So here goes nothing!