December Art / #17 put to bed

 Ate a lot of fruit...

 

 Tried to win the $638 million lottery.  Didn't win anything at the company Christmas party either.

 

 Treated Mom to spa as her Christmas present.  My friend, Kathy, invited us to dinner at her church function.

 

 OMG!  I finished another sketchbook.  (Wondering what number this is.)  The end view on the scanner just looked interesting.  I had stuff on the cover too.

Okay, I think Smash #1 was "sketchbook" #16 so this would be sketchbook #17.

November art

 I finished all my work at work and felt like drawing stuff on my desk, I felt so rusty. It triggered a creative flood...couldn't wait to get home.  These are in the Altered Journal.

October art

 The fern was a happy, successful experiment in the "crispy crunchy mom-made" sketchbook.  So I was ready to follow my idea.  Unfortunately, after that my paint clogged and I couldn't make it work anymore.

Blue Bulldog

Acrylic in my 2013 journal 5x7 inch.  This has been fun but I'm out of references for this series.

Painting again, finally

Acrylics in the 6x8 inch Strathmore #2.  Hoping this will be sketchbook #17.  I've put together a 6-compartment acrylic palette of 5 colors.  Maybe having it in easy reach will encourage little quickies like these.

Last page of SMASH#1

Damn, I never intended to buy another SMASH book again because I made a couple of my own mixed media books by recycling a couple of my half-used wirebound notebooks.  But I was at Michaels yesterday looking for something small to buy so I can get a 40% off coupon for a larger purchase.  There in the bargain racks was another SMASH book of the same size for $5, wow!  There is no plastic cover or pen--so what?  New one has photo pockets. 

Palm Springs, CA

View from the room at Palm Springs Tennis Resort.  I've had no time for sketching/painting this year because I've been burning the candle in 5 places in April!  Another one of those wicks will burn itself out by next week, thank God!  That's two down.  It took all three days (that's all the vacation I could spare) for me to de-stress so that I could get anything down in my sketchbook.  This is Inktense blocks in my 6x8 inch "2013 sketchbook."

Inspired

I've been busy with lots of work, wanted to do something loose.  I found inspiration at Ross (store).  Acrylics in the Smash journal.

Productive weekend

Cold, rainy weekend.  Plans were to be elsewhere but weather cancelled those plans.  I baked!  The pot pie came out great as did the bread pudding.  I was too busy with the art to do biscotti today.

I knew I had alot of sketchbooks started and I knew I had alot of acrylic paint. I have alot of paper, too. After taking that Color & Design class in 2008, I went a bit crazy with the paint purchases.  They're getting a bit old now.  The earth colors/browns just aren't holding up.  I was taking stock.  OMG, that's alot of paint tubes. Half are the small, skinny tubes but I recently bought a color I thought I was out of--whoops.

So I filed away another sketchbook, #15.  I started the day with the three film canisters of left over paint from that 2008 class.  I get to end the day with just one--blue.  I made two new sketchbooks, actually they're reused/repurposed old notebooks.  I'm going to need more Mod Podge, hehe.

My art goals in the past few years was to (2009) use up paper, (2011) to use up sketchbooks, and to use up paints.  Okay, two goals for 2013:
  1.  To use up all the skinny paint tubes plus Galeria.  The Galerias were my starter paints.  I guess I have to learn to paint thick.
  2.  To use up all the sketchbooks that were on my 2011 list plus "Julie Sketches 2013."  They're the ones with the checks and list how many pages I have left to go.