birthday girl

one great big happy birthday wish to my wonderful sister Katherine!
this is her dressed up in my marge simson halloween costume.
i had my camera with me the day i dropped the costume off for her to wear to a party and when she tried it on she just started hamming it up.
we were both laughing so much it was hard to hold the camera still.

you are still the one i want to be with when a smile on a stick is truly necessary!
much love. julie

kids

trying some techniques i learned in carla's class using my own style. I have had fun doodling around.
this series of kids was started with some scribbly doodling i did on a program. i have been trying a bunch of different combinations of paints and ink to test out the effect.

i am liking the kid-ness of it all. maybe i just don't like to make grown-up art.
the watercolor paper is gorgeous! I would definitely order it again. Fabriano hot press watercolor paper from dick blick.
the new pen i have been using is a Faber Castell PITT superfine black felt tip pen. it writes on pastel, acrylic, and watercolor beautifully without clogging up.

it is one of those cold october nights where the sleet is pelting the windows and i am feeling warm and snuggly inside. i plan to cook a tasty dinner, pop everyone in their jammies, then sit up late with some hot tea and my art papers to play.

Art and Soul. .day 1

It was such a wonderful couple of days at Art and Soul in Portland! I am unpacked and settling in to my life again. I want so much to have a bit more time to experiment with what I learned. I am so glad I took some photographs of the works in progress! Even though I was frustrated dragging my big camera around. The nice tiny sony hit the cement and it was changed forever. alas.

Day 1 was my class with Carla Sonheim. You can see more of her work and see a link to her blog and etsy here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/carlasonheim/
She is a wonderful person and amazing artist. I learned more in this class than any other. We made a book about our kids and practiced drawing and painting. Carla layers marker, gesso, acrylics, watercolors, twig charcoal, and pen.
It was facinating to try her style and incorporate it all together.
Here is the cover open in the middle of the steps. I really didn't think I could pull it together. It looks so ugly at this stage, but the photo gives you an idea of the ordering of layers. We were painting on canvas paper for the cover.


For the inside pages we practiced several types of drawing: one line drawings, sketching without looking, and drawing with our left hand. This page of Burke I was especially happy with. Both the colors and the image carved into the paint.