In few words: Part time art student, full time nerd!
Where I live it’s 10:14 on Feb 29th. I drew this tonight while watching cartoons and Spaceballs 
It’s based on a photo of a horse and rider I took at Spruce Meadows last fall, but I cut the rider out. It’s been truly enjoyable doing Thing A Day! I’ll have to keep it up - now I have all the sketches and stuff for future projects and I’m very happy about that.
We had a power outage today, so I sat down and wrote about it. Not terribly exciting, but I seldom write thoughts down on paper these days!
It’s a minotaur! I have to change the position of the head…it needs to be lowered, his eyes changed and made his face widened.
Mr. Jill is one of my budgies 
I tried drawing him in one continous line while he rubbed his head on the side of the cage, but it ended up being several continuous lines. Souffle pen on cardstock.
There’s an exercise in Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain where you draw every little wrinkle in your hand without looking at the paper. It’s called “pure drawing”. 
I tried to do the same thing with a Souffle puff ink pen. The trick is, though, I’m left handed, and it’s easy to smear! I had to take it very, very slowly. The lady at the art store said these pens work better the slower you go, so that wasn’t a problem! I did it before I went to bed, so I didn’t get a chance to scan it…wanted to make sure it was nice and dry so it wouldn’t smear.
Today’s things are three sketches of sun conures inspired by an LJ friend. A sun conure is a small parrot that’s actually kind of like having a dog with feathers. They are extremely smart and extremely loud, and not for everyone.
OK, I seem to have badgers on the brain lately Maybe I made this one look too friendly! A while ago I cut some ATC sized cards and coloured a solid background with Prismacolor markers. The time was right for this purple one - and I think gray was the colour to match with it.
I’m very good at losing things. Too good, in fact. I often leave things in the most obvious place and then wonder where they went! Such was the case with Thursday’s ACEO, a little green parrot. I just found him this morning after looking all over for him. I don’t why I can forget where something went in such a short period of time! This ATC/ACEO is made from chalk pastel for the background and watercolour crayons for the rest. I’ve had these crayons forever, and figured this was a good time to try them out. The package says to make short, hard strokes. Not much happened when I wet the crayon areas though! I probably have to blend a lot more and use different colours.
This is a pair of samples that we have to make in class. The pieces on the left are for a technique called married metals, which is like wood marquetry. One has to bond two (or more) pieces of metal with solder. It’s very important not to have gaps on the matching sides, which are in this case copper and brass. The one on the right is for a technique called sweat soldering, where two pieces of metal are bonded. The trick with this one is to not get the solder in the pierced area. I’m going to go into the studio on Saturday and try this out. It took me about half an hour to cut and saw these pieces. If you want to read up on my art school adventures, pop on over to my blog at http://purpleponyart.livejournal.com
Now off to work on today’s thing!
I’m a little behind on scanning and picture taking as I was volunteering and I had class on Wednesday! This is a little ACEO made from some Swedish, US and Canadian stamps. It’s so rare to get stamps these days, and it was something I always enjoyed collecting when I was younger.
Yet another homework related post Now that I had the wooden cage built, I could draw and plot the other pieces of the piece quite accurately. I’ll need to buy more copper to finish it. I can’t wait to get into the classroom on Wednesday now…we have a piece of equipment called a jump shear, and it’s a giant blade, which means that I won’t have to do too much sawing 
This is a wooden cage that is going to be a part of my free project for my metals class. It’s going to have a figure wrapped around it and a sterling silver bird cage inside of it. The theme is “obey”. I hope it turns out as well as I envision it. I have to do some sanding still and fill in the gaps with sawdust and glue 
Future picture idea - Ms. Paullie Anna Keats, a character I created for a character
art exchange.
I drew this yesterday, but the scan needed quite a bit of clean up which I didn’t have time for. It’s an African violet that my granny gave me. It’s such a robust little plant with such delicately curly petals.
Thing #13 is a blog entry I wrote last night, although I don’t know how I can provide photographic proof. Currently I work full time while pursuing a BFA part time, and it’s very slow going. Whenever the time was right to apply, something happened and I couldn’t (change of jobs, big dental bill, etc) and the time won’t be right again until I develop new pieces for my portfolio since my drawings from Drawing 110 are 5 years old now! Toldya it was slow going
Right now I’m taking jewellery and metals on Wednesday nights. I can’t say that I have enjoyed this class 100%, because it’s in the evening and there were so many new skills to learn. But, here is my post…I have found it really helpful to blog my classes because, well, the brain can hold so much :-)
I scaled down the original pencil drawing to make a 4×6″ postcard. Wasn’t quite crazy enough to go for ACEO size
I really don’t want to post this, but I suppose I have to. I wish I had time to make another thing! When I’m tired, I can’t draw worth beans and this proves it! Once I goofed up the eyes, I lost all heart :\ Maybe I’ll try this again on the weekend. I did a full face, but I cropped the best part for you to see And made it real tiny too!
What does it mean when you don’t lose a girlhood passion for horses? I can say I’m very thankful today for Thing A Day. I have been taking a jewellery and metals class since September for 3 credits (the hardest three credits I will have ever earned) and it has left me lacking energy and will to draw. I’m much more of a drawer than a metalworker It just feels so good to sit down and say “I’m going to make the time to draw, darnit!” You can see my metalwork at http://purpleponyart.livejournal.com Oh, and according to my breed book, this is supposed to be an Anglo Arab.
