Food thoughts this holiday weekend run to hamburgers and hot dogs, which often go well with fries. Potato salad usually takes over at this time of year, but these sweet french fries go with anything because they are made of cake – and that is raspberry “ketchup” for dipping.
And they are easy to do . . .
http://www.instructables.com/id/Cake-Fries/
The “Pictionary” Art Journal
Making daily entries in an art journal is an elusive goal for many, if not most art journalers.
I recently was reading about One Sentence Journals. The idea is to write just one sentence per day. memorializing the small moments, so they are not forgotten.
I was thinking about how that idea could be translated to an art journal, and thinking about simple drawing brought the Pictionary game to mind.
If you have never played Pictionary, the idea is to get your partner to guess a word by drawing a simple picture. This is done in a big hurry, of course, so the drawing has to be REALLY simple.
If only we artists could keep things SIMPLE!!
Anyway, I wondered if I could record something about each day with a simple drawing.
The hardest part seems to be picking the one thing that stands out in a day, because a LOT goes on around here – every day.
But here are a couple of examples I came up with . . .
Friday was “about” Gopher Baskets (more about those in a moment).
Saturday was all about wind. It was one of those awful windy days we get here in the Southwest in the Spring – sustained winds of 38mph, and gusts of heaven knows what speed.
Now, this is not great art by any means, but it’s fun to figure out the most simple way to illustrate a thought.
I created these in one of my iPad art journals. June will bring the Art Journaling Workbook to the iPad Studio Workshop. If you love art journaling and have an iPad, now would be the time to join us (all past workbooks are there in the classroom as well, and the May Workbook is all about creating visuals for your upcoming art journals.)
About Wind . . .
Does anybody love wind? I know there are folks who love rain and snow and thunder, but does anybody love wind?
I just can’t make friends with it. It makes me a little nuts. No, it makes me a lot nuts.
I remember when I was a school teacher and the students would all be a little nuts whenever we had a really windy day. That was in California, and we didn’t have that many really windy days. I don’t think I would survive as a school teacher here in the Spring.
About Gopher Baskets . . .
I found a great solution to my disappearing plants problem – Gopher Baskets. Of course, if you are a He-Woman, you can make your own baskets out of small hole chicken wire or hardware cloth, but I can’t afford that much blood loss (even wearing leather gloves does not save me!).
So, thankfully, someone else makes them.
They come flat, and in several sizes . . .
And opening them up is not too hard once you figure out how. Basically, you pull the wire into a basket shape, and then bend the metal sides over at the bottom (This is not my picture – I use a pliers to bend those corners AND I wear gloves!)
So, everything is going in baskets this year. I have even dug up some favorites from other years and replanted them with baskets. I get mine from some nice folks in Arizona . . .
Arbico Organics
Woe is Me . . . MobileMe, that is
All of my workshop videos are hosted on MobileMe because it was the best possible platform for watching them, and because it allowed students to download their own copy.
Apple is doing away with MobileMe on June 30.
I am working feverishly to get some new platform set up, but meanwhile, if you have purchased or taken a video workshop from me, and have not downloaded all the videos yet, do so before June 30.
My workshops with PDF lessons are not affected. Affected workshops are Love This Journal, Art School, Watercolor, and PanPastel. Links in all these Workshop Guides will be changed once I have the videos parked in a new location.
Greatest Wedding Proposal Ever . . .
This is one those things you watch, and you feel your smile getting bigger and bigger all the way through. How wonderfully romantic:
Isaac’s Proposal
Artist of the Week
Kumi Yamashita is one of those artists who just amaze. Not only is the creative thinking involved in the projects astounding, the time invested in bringing them to fruition is beyond my ability to comprehend.
Remember doing “rubbings” with crayon or chalk? Well, imagine creating someone’s portrait using a gradual build-up of pencil rubbings from the raised numbers of that person’s expired credit card!
Or how about figuring out how to make this happen . . . or even thinking of it in the first place!
Explore her site – and the Press section, which gives you some insight into her process:
Kumi Yamashita
My coffee cup is empty, my plants are thirsty, and I better get outside. The winds are much calmer today and maybe I can get something done!
Enjoy your holiday!
10 thoughts on “Sunday Morning Coffee #23”