Make It/365! Two Weeks In

I've been keeping a record of all of my 2017 "making," and I thought I would share some of the entries with you so you can check out my progress.  As promised, I have used the word "make" to refer to actual creative enterprises, as well as more abstract endeavors .  Check it out:

In the first two weeks of the new year, I have:

• Made an effort to find a friend's lost dog by going door to door in my neighborhood.
• Made a big pot of spaghetti.

• Made a blog post. 
• Made it to church on the first day of the year.
• Made "cute animal" sketches in my sketchbook.

• Made school lunches again after the winter break.
• Made a master list of DIY cleaning products from a binder full of notes and clippings.
• Made an appointment to start getting allergy shots (and made it to my appointment).
• Made our house cleaner than it's been in awhile.
• Made Valentine doodles in my sketchbook.

• Made it through to the end of a book I was reading.
• Made an afternoon snack for six little girls having a play date.
• Made erasers out of eraser clay with my daughter.

• Made a yummy dinner of spiced mini-burgers and pita bread.
• Made excuses to myself about why I'm not making things in my craft room.
• Made a beautiful dinner of roasted chicken and vegetables in a cast iron skillet.
• Made a smoothie for lunch.
• Made gingerbread cookies with my kids.

• Made it through a major mishap--washing an entire box of tissue the girls let fall in their laundry basket.
• Made my exercise goal on my new watch (on just one day, lol!).
• Made chocolate chip banana bread.
• Made a lunch date.
• Made a Pin the Gumball on the Gumball machine with my daughter for her birthday party.

It's been fun to reflect on my day each evening through the lens of "making"..."what have I made today, anyway?" I hope to do more traditional making--working my way through the supplies in my craft room and the pins on my Pinterest boards--but until I get to it, I like seeing all the other ways "making" makes an appearance in my days.

Keep those ideas coming for my Make It/365 list! I got some great new ideas in the comments for my last post, and I will continue to add and update along the way.

In Memoriam

Stella Kaskey (1997-2016)

I lost my long-time feline companion, Stella, on Tuesday afternoon. She has been by my side since I was 24-years-old and she was just 3-months.  My first husband and I found her at the SPCA after she had spent her earliest days on what I like to call "the mean streets of Kensington" in Philadelphia.

She was a fighter from the beginning, making sure I did not change my mind about adopting her.  I told this story on Facebook already: I had spent some time playing with her, and decided that she was the kitten we would take home with us.  But when they put her back in the cage so we could fill out the paperwork for her, I had a moment's hesitation when I saw an adorable little tuxedo cat two cages up.  He was all black with a little white marking right where a bow tie would be.  I mean, adorable!!  But Stella was watching me the whole time, and she clawed her way up the front of the cage and looked at me with these meaning-filled eyes, and I could hear her just as surely as if she spoke out loud: "Don't you dare change your mind, lady! I am coming home with YOU!"

It was tough to find a name for Stella.  The "finalists" were Zelda and Stella--Zelda for F. Scott Fitzgerald's wife, and Stella for--no, not A Streetcar Named Desire!--Sir Philip Sidney's sonnet sequence Astrophil and Stella.  (My college English professors would be proud!)  I think it was a year until I felt like the name Stella was the proper fit.  Now, of course, I couldn't imagine any other name.

I had just accepted a job to teach at Haverford High School when we first brought Stella home, but summer vacation wasn't yet over, so I spent the first day with her just sitting on my lap to get to know me.  We literally sat on the sofa for hours, she just getting a feel for me and looking around at the apartment, her new home.  We really bonded that day, and it was a bond that lasted us for the nineteen years that followed.  I told her, "You have to live until I'm at least 40 years old.  That's a requirement!" And she met her obligation, and then some.  She lived an extra three years beyond.

You can see that we had a tendency to order each other around!

Stella has lived with me in four different apartments and two houses.  She's been on road trips and in airplanes many times in her younger days.  She has been by my side through a separation and divorce, a remarriage, and some highly questionable boyfriends in between.  She has comforted me through countless sad days and sicknesses. She was there for me during the absolute anguish of two miscarriages and the amazing joy of two births.  She was always a notoriously crabby cat, but she fully accepted and loved my husband, and let my daughters mess with her in ways that no one else on earth was allowed to.

Last night, to try to make me feel better, my husband said, "She was a sweetie." I looked at him and laughed, saying, "Did you even KNOW Stella?"  I've been calling her a crabby old lady for years; she would have given Grumpy Cat a run for his money.  I can't tell you how many times I've said to people who come into our home, "Um, you might not want to pat her; she's not all that friendly," while thinking what an understatement that was.  An unwelcome pat brought growls and a severe paw padding, and she even spit at the veterinarian once.  How embarrassing!

But I loved her spirit.  Somehow I needed her to love and accept me, even when everyone else in the world seemed to annoy her.  And then when my husband Michael came along, and I saw how much she accepted him, I knew he was The One.  We both agree that she was instrumental in making (allowing?) our marriage to happen!

Every morning and throughout the day, I find myself looking over at "her spot" on the sofa.  She didn't move around too much in these final months, so I still expect to find her there.

There's a little Stella-shaped hole in my heart.

Rest in peace, little girl.

About Face

I really love sharing my creative efforts and learnings with my two daughters, ages 7 and 8.  I always tell them, "It's a good day when you learn something new," and I try to let them know when I am working on learning something new myself.

A teachable spirit is one of the greatest assets a person can possess.

This past Saturday morning, we sat down together at the breakfast table, and I showed them the "proper proportions" for drawing a human face.  Even though I am far from mastering this, the three of us drew together, and learned together, and had a go at face-drawing together.

I thought it would be fun for you to see the difference a little information can make.

Just a couple of weeks ago, my 8-year-old drew a portrait of me for school, citing me as her hero, and labeling her picture "Hall of Fame Mommy."  Now, make no mistake: I love every single thing about this portrait she has drawn! But I am using it as a "before," in the sense that she had not been taught facial proportions.  The drawing next to it is what she drew after learning some of the basics: 

(Never mind the tree growing out of the top of his head.  That was her imaginative addition later in the lesson!)

My seven-year-old was also learning facial proportions, and here you can see her results on the left, alongside her sister's on the right:

I think they did a phenomenal job for their first-ever faces based on new information!

Here is the "cheat sheet" I was using in my sketchbook--some tips I picked up from various sources about drawing realistic faces:

The basic guidelines we worked from include:

• The head is shaped something like an egg (whereas many children are inclined to start with a circle).  
• The eyes are placed about halfway down the head.  
• The face is roughly the width of five eyes across.  
• Eyebrows are a bit wider than each eye, and tend to grow thicker toward the nose. 
• The top of the ears are just above the eyes, and go down to the halfway point between the eyes and the bottom of the head. 
• The hairline is 1/3 to 1/4 of the way from the top of the head to the eyebrows. 
• The bottom of the nose is around the bottom of the ears, at the halfway point between the eyes and the bottom of the head. 
• The bottom of the lip is at the halfway point between the earlobes and the bottom of the head, and its width is about to the eyes' irises. 

I'm pretty sure the girls thought I had lost my mind with all these guidelines, but they were troopers, and pulled through with amazing first efforts!

What they really enjoyed, though, were the cartoon faces from the book I had checked out from the library and played around with myself.  They found it a little hard to work through the cartoon faces on their own, but had no problem when I talked them through the steps while drawing my own examples.

My 7-year-old's cartoons

My 8-year-old's cartoons

It's a good day when we learn something new.  

I love challenging myself to try new things, and I also love watching my girls doing the same.  What will you try to learn today?

Making Faces

I have discovered that anytime I want to learn something--about history, science, art, or anything else--one of the best places to start is the kids' section of the library.

Sometimes when I go right away to the resources intended for grown-ups, I can get overwhelmed with information or frustrated with the complexity of the subject.

Just the other day, while browsing through the art section for kids, I came across the book Drawing and Learning About Faces, by Amy Bailey Muehlenhardt.  It took me back to when I was a kid, wanting to learn how to draw cartoon faces, but so desperate to be perfect that I just ended up tracing the pictures at the end.

 Well, this time (thirty-plus years later, ahem), I decided to try my hand at honestly following through with all of the directions to create the eight faces in the book.

(That's another reason to love kids' books:  Eight faces...that's it! I can definitely handle eight faces, and then feel the achievement of making it through the whole book.  Mind games...they work every time!)

The author provides step-by-step instructions for drawing the ovals and adding each of the features to create a face that expresses a particular emotion.

There is happy:

Embarrassed:

Angry:

Surprised:

Excited:

Sad:

Bratty:

And scared:

I kind of love these fun little cartoon pages in my sketchbook, and I'm looking forward to my girls giving some of the faces a try for themselves.  I think they'll be amazed to discover that eyes are actually situated about halfway down the head! And excited to see how that one simple change brings a better result to their drawings.

Now, I think I'll head back to the kids' section to see what other drawing books they have!

Zentangle Untangled

One of my local libraries has an impressive collection of books about drawing Zentangles, and I am working my way through their inspiration this summer.

Most recently, I poured over Kass Hall's Zentangle Untangled to get new ideas for my sketchbook.  I thought I would share some of the designs I learned from her:

She presented some tangles she had created, as well as some tangles from other Certified Zentangle Teachers.  She also had some other random designs and doodles, which she named.  When I imitated them in my sketchbook, I noted the title she gave to her design.

I really like the design above called Twing, but my very favorite here is Huggins, in the lower left corner.

My sketchbook is Strathmore medium surface drawing paper (400 series), and I am using a combination of Micron pens [in all different tip sizes from .2 mm (005) to .45 mm (05)] and a Faber-Castell PITT pen S.

I like all the designs on the page above.  The one called Meer in the upper right corner would made a great border for a journal or diary page.

I usually don't like how loopy designs like "Nouveau" turn out, but in this case, I like the result:

"You Are My Sunshine" is not a tangle, but a doodle, and would look great in my planner on a particularly hot summer day!

"Gizmo" is another example of a drawing that isn't a specific tangle, but uses ideas from other tangles to make a picture.  Mine looks a little different from Kass's, but the idea is there:

Here is another page of designs I made using ideas and inspiration from Kass's book.  This is actually the first page I created:

Some of these, like Diamonte and Haze, would look even better with color, I think.

I didn't think I would like Mysteria very much, but I did like it once I drew it!

In my opinion, my greatest triumph was Honeycomb.  I don't usually use a ruler for Zentangles, though I had it out for the tangles from this book, and it was obviously indispensable for this design.  My daughter looked at it and said, "That doesn't look that hard."  Well, let me tell you...it took one false start, and a TINY Micron pen, but I love how it looks:

Finally, lest you think every page is a winner and that I'm happy with everything that makes it into my sketchbook:

Frippery, Mooka, and the design Kass called "Echoing Munch" came out pretty well, but the middle row was a total fail.  My pen ran out on the design on the left, and I lost interest in finishing it, and I should have used a ruler to try the design on the right.  I'll give it another shot, and maybe glue it over top of this fail!

I am on to the next Zentangle book I borrowed from the library: Let's Tangle! by Kathleen Murray.  It is a great introductory book if you are new to Zentangle; I recommend it highly, and will share some of what I have been learning from it in a future post.

2015: My Year to FACE IT!

My elderberry syrup failed me this holiday season, leaving me with a sinus infection over Christmas and plenty of time to rest and consider the upcoming year. 

That was my silver lining for spending over a week feeling sick and tired!

I read an essay by Julia Roberts (not that Julia Roberts) entitled, "Be the Mother of Reinvention" in the book Forty Things to Do When You Turn Forty, edited by Ronnie Sellers.  In Roberts' chapter, she suggests having an unpregnancy--nine months to give birth to a new you, and to a life that fills you with "curiosity, excitement, and energy that can only be achieved from a true sense of purpose and a giddy enthusiasm."  Just as a woman's life changes dramatically during the 40 weeks of a pregnancy, a woman's life can change in equally dramatic, though completely different ways, during the 40 weeks of an unpregnancy. 

I was intrigued by Roberts' nine-month model for success, transformation, and reinvention!

Right after reading the essay, I discovered a half-price opportunity to sign up for the online art course entitled Radiant: Faces, offered by Effie Wild.  It was pretty uncanny: a drawing class with nine teachers, nine styles, nine characters. 

I decided right then that in place of a Word for the Year, as I have done in the past, I would have a nine-month artistic journey to learn how to draw radiant faces.

 

2015 will be my year to FACE IT!

 

(In my head, the phrase ABOUT FACE comes to mind about equally, so that might end up being how I think about my focus.)

I have already watched a valuable lesson from Effie about using a notebook to get the most out of the online art courses that I take.  The photo above shows my chosen notebook.  It has a gorgeous aboriginal design on the cover, and was a gift from Australia brought to me by my niece-in-law.  The first several pages of the book contain images and messages from the various family members who celebrated New Year's Eve 2013 with me, when I received the book, and the rest of the book will contain my notes and sketches from the 18 lessons of Radiant: Faces. 

 



The following pages from my art journal have nothing to do with the class, since I haven't begun the lessons yet, but they are two little ladies I drew using ideas and images from my Drawing board on Pinterest, which has been a helpful drawing resource in these, my pre-instruction days!

I have already begun to watch Jane Davenport's workshop in the Radiant: Faces class, and am willing myself to not feel intimidated before I've even begun.  I have nine months for this journey, and can't wait to see where I am, come October!

Zentangle Inspiration from the Library

I have to give a shout-out to the Delaware County Library System.  I am so lucky to have a network of 29 libraries where I can search out books on so many different topics.  I can check out books at any of the 29 locations with my library card, return a book to any one of the sites I want even if it's not where the book originated, and request books to be sent to the library nearest to me for pick-up.  How awesome is that?  Since I discovered how amazing our system is, and how many books are available to me, my Amazon book bill has decreased unbelievably. 

Having said all that, I wanted to show you the books I checked out last week from our Media-Upper Providence branch. 

I think I counted a total of five Zentangle books, so once I have squeezed all the goodness out of the two at the bottom of this stack, I'll be heading back for the rest!

 

Right now I am focusing on The Art of Zentangle: 50 Inspiring Drawings, Designs, and Ideas for the Meditative Artist.  I didn't realize until just now that there is no author listed on the cover or title page, but four artists are highlighted on the back page: Margaret Bremmer, Norma Burnell, Penny Raile, and Lara Williams.

 

At first glance, I would not be very impressed with this book because so much of the inside space is given over to empty pages where the reader is supposed to "try out" the designs and ideas presented on the previous pages.  I would immediately have the idea that the publisher is just padding the book and wasting space.  But I have to say, the designs and ideas that are presented are really phenomenal.  As much as I've enjoyed other Zentangle books that I have purchased, I'm not sure I've spent as much time with any of them as I have spent in the last week with this book.  (Except maybe Totally Tangled, the first Zentangle book I got and an on-going favorite.)

My tangled sketchbook page, completed while reading The Art of Zentangle

Instead of creating traditional Zentangle tiles with the hot-pressed watercolor paper, the border, the string, and the tangles occupying their designated spaces within the segments created by the string, I like to start a page in my sketchbook with some of the tangles I want to try out.  Then I come back over the course of several days, whenever I have a spare moment, and add to the page, until it is packed to overflowing with tangle patterns.

 

I've just been meandering through the book, trying out the tangle patterns that catch my eye.  I absolutely love how this one, called Dragonair, came out:

Dragonair, tangle designed by Norma J. Burnell

The curves really have so much dimension, and I love the effect of the stippled dots.  The book provides some awesome variations of Dragonair, in order to create designs that look like suns, leaves, and seed pods.  I have not finished playing around with this one!

 

I like this next little corner of the sketchbook page, because after I drew the stem and leaf design presented in the book, Katy saw the Poppet design I had drawn somewhere else on the page and suggested that I should use it to complete my flower.  I always like teaming up with my creative daughter!

Poppet (top), tangle designed by Lara Williams

Another new-to-me tangle design that I really like is Pokeleaf:

Pokeleaf, tangle designed by Norma J. Burnell

It looks dimensional when you first draw it, but also really benefits from shading.  I'm not a huge fan of shading--first, because I've never mastered it, and second, because it tends to make my page smudgy and dark, rather than a crisp black-and-white contrast that I enjoy.  But sometimes shading does add a really wonderful look to the tangle designs.

 

I really love how Candent looks on the page:

Cadent, tangle designed by Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas

I'm pretty sure I tried this one before, and really made a mess of it, but it came out really nicely on this page, and I plan to use it again.  It is based on a grid, and is really surprisingly simple to do.  It's one of those patterns that proves true the Zentangle slogan that anything is possible one stroke at a time!

 

Here are a couple more views of the tangled sketchbook page I've been working on in bits and pieces over the past week.  You will see tangle designs including Flux, Hollibaugh, Roxi, Printemps, and Shing, as well as doodly patterns that don't come (as far as I know) with official names.

There are a number of project ideas in The Art of Zentangle that I haven't even delved into yet.  I'm pretty sure I'll be renewing this book when its due date rolls around!