SOC week 2

The colors for week 2 of Summer of Color are orange and hot pink. Perfectly good colors which pack a big punch when used together. I had absolutely nothing to work with in those colors so I got out the gelli plate for this one. I may do something more with them before the next colors come out, but for now, this is it. 

Actually I drew the first image with Neocolor IIs and oil pastels. Vaguely inspired by various Mary Ann Moss blog posts featuring this design. The others are gelli prints using stencils, a comb, large bubble wrap, various circle making things, etc. Each has 3 or 4 pulls on it, enough to be interesting without starting to cover up the first layers.

As usual, I like the one on the telephone book page. It'll become a couple postcards I think. Maybe wake up those postal workers a bit.

On a side note - it's been major windy here for like 3 days now and I'm in such a vile mood because of it. I can totally see how those poor Kansas housewives lost their freaking minds from the ceaseless prairie winds. Unripe fruit is being blown from my trees, my hair looks like crap constantly, everyone's allergies are killing them. We live in a wind tunnel here and I hate it! Calgon, take me away......

(rant over)

and so winter begins...

I live in a windy town. A few years ago we got gusts that hit 62mph. That's really windy when you're just trying to walk across the parking lot to your car. There were tumbleweeds the size of Volkswagens rolling down the streets. Crazy.

Yesterday wasn't that bad but late in the afternoon, a wind sprang up that set all the piles of leaves to dancing along the sidewalk, swirling them up into leafy tornadoes now and then. A storm was blowing in and the cloud formations were gorgeous. Here are some shots from around 5pm yesterday. Notice the lean angle on the (blurry) trees shot from my car window while driving. Every tree in town has a permanent eastward lean like that, plus the wind was blowing the tops over even more.

 

June 4th... sort of

The calendar says so, but I think we've been transported back to March.
Or maybe Idaho.
Certainly not northern California on June 4th.

wind makes you crazy

In an ongoing effort to free my inner... whatever, I'm running amok in the pages of an art journal. And even more strangely, I'm going to share the pages with the world.

It was really windy the other day, which drives me bonkers, so I came home and got it all out of my system on this journal spread. I'd done the background a few weeks ago when I was playing with paints. It looked like gusty wind to me, so I used it.

I did some writing in gold gel pen at an angle on the right page - you can sorta see it. I talked about how I could totally understand the poor housewives of the newly settled plains states going slowly insane from the unrelenting wind. Not that I have the urge to butcher my neighbors with an ax, but I can appreciate the basic instinct that drove them to such horrific acts.

You can barely see him, but there's an unshaven, going-bald man up in the upper right hand corner, blowing as hard as he can. 

Self-portrait, when the wind is shrieking across the parking lot at work, blowing away tumbleweeds, trash, and my mental health. My husband took one look at this and asked me if I needed therapy. I told him no, I'll be fine - I have an art journal.