Thing-a-day.com

I’ve recently gotten into bhangra (an Indian style of music) and today while listening to it I was finally able to finish this painting. It took me forever to figure out what to do with it. I’m kinda bummed thing-a-day is over. I’ve been so inspired by all of you! Who’s up for 365 thing-a-days? I had this awesome plan to make a cool animated gif for my last thing but I couldn’t figure out a way to set up my cheap camera in a steady spot to take pics at the same angle every time. Maybe next year

We had guests over tonight, so afterwards I was in a rush to finish my pysanky duck egg. The first colors (yellow, apricot, orange, red) went well, although the egg seemed to be having a seepage problem. Tiny droplets of water started bubbling out of the egg at random spots on the shell because I hadn’t sealed the egg hole tightly enough with wax. I tried to deal with this problem by putting the egg in the freezer before dying it. Then I tried to dye the egg magenta. The color did not take very well over the red. Same with dark red. In fact, the dark red dye turned the egg a nasty blotchy shade of brown. It didn’t look good and the color would not wash off completely with Ivory soap. I decided to soak the egg briefly in vinegar to etch the shell and return it to white. After that, I attempted to dye the egg turquoise and royal blue, but these dyes took very unevenly. The water inside the eggshell kept bubbling out through the shell and formed interesting, splotchy patterns on the shell. I kind of like the splotchy look of the blue areas, although it wasn’t intentional.

Today I decided to make another abstract egg pysanky, similar in design to the modern egg that I messed up earlier this month. On this duck egg, I’m going to use mostly warm colors — lemon yellow, apricot gold (the current color), and then orange, red, magenta, etc. I’ve only dyed and waxed two colors so far, but it is a fairly simple block design and hopefully I can finish it by tomorrow. The challenging thing for me is to get the wax lines really straight and even.

It kind of reminds me of this bedspread, which I intend to purchase eventually.
http://www.overstock.com/Home-Garden/Retro-Radar-Camel-Red-7-piece-Bedding-Ensemble/2581347/product.html

Tired. Don’t feel like typing much more today. So here is:

The colors are a little less boring in real life… promise.

For my latest egg, I wanted to do something different involving larger areas of color. I found an image of an abstract painting by the artist Jay McVicker and attempted to create an egg in a similar (though not identical) style. I drew guidelines on the egg with watercolor pencil and filled in some of the areas with wax. The colors I’ve used so far are lime green, apple green, green-blue, and dark turquoise blue. I hope to finish the egg tomorrow and post the results.

I finally went back to my watery painting thing and finished it up. Here’s the finished product ^.^ I’m happy with how it turned out. Acrylic on 16 x 20 canvas

Tonight I created this painting, with which I am very pleased…

And now (this is work, so I’m not sure it counts, but it does require creativity) I’m trying to improve my web design company’s logo.

Current logo:

Sketches:

Illustrator play:

And now that I’ve photographed my sketch, I can actually trace it in Illustrator and get that damn fox tail shape right. (Yeah, I don’t have a scanner. I’ve been begging my boss to get me one for a while now!)

Oh, and for the record, I didn’t slack off yesterday. I did some sketches (they just didn’t turn out post-worthy), one of my cat, one of a high heel - my absolute favorite shape in the world is the silhouette of a stiletto heel, I’m fascinated by the shape, it’s beautiful! Wearing those kinds of shoes make me fabulous, also.

This is still unfinished (hence the feelers). Done today for Design I class. Seem completely incapable of cutting things out so that they are nice & even, & laying them down in the same manner. Despite lining them all up with a straight edge. Plus, the glue makes it look even messier.

Can be rotated around to create a different effect. (Flip it around so that the many lines are coming downwards & the fewer are coming upwards, or flip it 90 degrees either way.)

Not sure if it really counts…?

Day three found me at a flea market (dud) and a thrift store (score!).  More of a Puppy Bowl kind of girl than a Super Bowl chick.  Besides the purchases for future creativity I also pulled out my reclaimed electrical copper wire and started fiddling.  Despite being just a test run, I am trying to embrace the imperfect in life.

buddha blur, originally uploaded by xgray.

cat in the sun, originally uploaded by xgray.