Daily Sketch, March 16, 2015

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I’m visiting my daughter and granddaughter for a week, which is why I’m not getting much drawing done. I had forgotten how exhausting toddlers can be, no matter how delightful.

Mixed Media Collage, March 3, 2015

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I printed out my abstract drawing of the woman writing and then painted, drew and collaged over it with other drawings that I drew and printed. It will take lots of practice to learn this new medium. I stopped experimenting with this one last night.

Mixed Media Collage, March 1, 2015

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Today was Sunday. I gave myself permission to ignore my web design work today, and draw instead. Here is more experimenting with cutting up drawings and collaging them together, adding paint and pen, working from my imagination.  This is 8.5 x 11 inches.

Here is another that I played with last night, a variation of a previous collage that started with the same base drawing.

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Explorations, my stay-cation

This week is spring break for the island schools, and my husband and son are up North skiing. I stayed home with the dogs to work. However, part of me decided since it was vacation week, I would take a break from my daily sketches and start experimenting with collage and mixed media at night, a vacation from my usual routine.

I had some sketches that I’d printed out when I was first learning how to use my printer, and they did not print right. I decided to see what would happen if I applied collage techniques and painted back in to them.

It was a struggle and a mess. For example, I tried applying masking tape to mask the edges and keep them clean, but the tape stuck and tore at the paper, so I ended up painting the edges as well. I pasted one drawing on top of the other, but didn’t line them up correctly and it stuck on skewed. With no idea what I was doing, I doodled on the piece with pen, painted into it with acrylics, added charcoal pencil, and pasted cut up sketches on it.

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Each time I put a mark on the piece, it ended up not at all as I’d intended, one accident after another. Fingers sticky from glue and paint, I experimented and finally filled it to capacity.

Last night (and today) I worked on a piece entirely from my imagination. I drew wall paper patterns and layered them in the drawing, added an abstract figure reading, added some crows, and then printed the drawing and pasted, painted and drew back over it.

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My visual vocabulary is so very different when I’m not trying to draw what I see, but rather am just putting marks on a canvas. The disparity bothers me. I hope if I keep experimenting and working at it that a more unified voice will emerge.

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I want to keep exploring this direction of expression – so I’m extending my stay-cation past the spring break week, and am looking forward to more accidents, surprises and challenges.

Daily Sketch, December 5, 2012

I was looking through photographs that I’d taken from years ago, and I found one where everyone else was engaged in talk, flipping burgers on the grill, turned away from the camera, but my niece was posing, staring at me, an energetic focus in a mediocre photo, and I decided that I had to draw her.