Monday, May 20, 2013

One Big Whopping Mess

A mess party? Yeah, buddy! I know how to throw one!
Actually, I am taking a one week online class with Carla Sonheim. You know Carla? She's the lady with the awesome drawing and painting books about Imaginary Animals, The Art of Silliness, and The Drawing Lab - all for mixed media artists. I love her work! This week she's teaching a class on gelli plates. (No, not a jelly jar, not a jelly plate - - - gelli plate. Google it.)
Because she makes her living teaching classes like this - I won't go into specifics and how-to's, but I do want to show you what I did with today's assignment.
We were supposed to make eight pages. I liked it so much that I made sixteen! It was a big whopping mess! But so much fun to do! I can totally see me doing this all over again tomorrow.
These are two pages (7"x10") that I made. Don't you love the textures? And I totally think that little green sticky-outy thing on the right looks like one of Shrek's horns :). Am I right???
I like the texture in that pink section, and those blues with the pink streaks were total accidents. At least the first one was, then I figured out what caused it and did it on purpose after that :).
These two pages were from the very first set I did. That page on the right is going to be a wonderful underwater tangled garden. I don't have any idea what Carla is going to have us do with our pages we made today, but that one on the right is mine!
These last two pages were my absolute favorites! Blue, a little white, some teal, some of two different shades of pink. Yep! I think I'm going to love this gelli plate thing! And tomorrow we get another lesson. I can not wait! Yay!!!


The Creator's Leaf

Sunday, May 19, 2013

Fractal Trees Completed

I started work on this project a little over a week ago while I was at Kali's.
This was the first picture I posted. Those trees are a design by Marie Browning, they are called fractal trees. She talks about them in her book Time to Tangle With Colors.
A couple days ago I posted this picture. I took my layout and filled in the layers with various tangles. 
Next I started laying in some color with my Tombow markers. They are a fairly new product for me. Mark gave me a complete set for Christmas,  but I am just now getting around to learning how to use them.
A little more color. Leaning towards a sunset of colors behind those fractal trees.
There you go, there's a closer view.
This will give you a little better idea of what I was working with. This is on Canson, 98 lb, mixed media paper. And, yes, I used every single one of those tombow markers you see laying on the desktop.
Getting close to being finished. Just a little more detail work.
Can you see what I added? Marie calls it haloing. I added a halo around the trees, and around several of the sections down below. At this point I believe this to be complete. Easy enough to do, why don't you give it a try and send me a picture? I'll post it here on my blog :). And if you get a chance, try out Marie Browning's book Time to Tangle With Colors. I carry it in my Etsy store, or you can pick it up online. 

I am linking this post to Jenn's Artist's Play Room over at Just Add Water, Silly. The challenge this week was to do whatever type of art project we wanted to. What perfect timing :). Here you go, Jenn, fractal trees.
The Creator's Leaf

Digis by CiG i

My friend Cindy has recently gotten into designing digital stamps. She uses her own artwork to make the stamps, and in some cases also makes digital paper to go with them.
This is an example of Cindy's work that I printed out and colored with my copic markers. I love her designs! Her work is featured in the Etsy store called Digis by CiGi.
Once I colored the designs, I used them to build this card. I am going to send it to a little princess who was attacked by a pitbull. Her favorites colors are purple and pink - perfect colors for a fairy princess, don't you think?
Many of Cindy's stamp sets have more than one component, and as I said some of them also have background paper. What a great deal!
Please visit Digis By Cigi and check out the cool digital stamp art of Canadian artist Cynthia Garner. All purchases are downloadable. You are going to be seeing Digis by CiGi here regularly on The Creator's Leaf cause it's that awesome!

The Creator's Leaf

Saturday, May 18, 2013

Fractal Trees

A couple weeks ago while I was out of town, I posted the beginning of this homework assignment. Pretty much all I had then was the row of reflective trees across the top and some dividing lines drawn down the length of the page. It didn't take me long to fill in the rest of the page with tangles. Now that I am back home, I  need to fill this with color. Once that's done, I will come back and post the finished project for you to see. I'm taking Marie Browning's online class Time To Tangle in Color. I'm learning a lot and loving it! Thanks, Marie!

The Creator's Leaf

Thursday, May 16, 2013

A Garden to Mark the Spot

While I was at Kali's I had a bit of time each night to draw. I have really been enjoying drawing the gardens that Canadian artist Cherryl Moote taught us at Retreat to Paradise. My thought with this particular one is to add color, then trim it into probably 4 sections and make bookmarks from it. I even have a cool little lamination machine that I bought online from Overstock.com, which I have never used but it looks simple enough. Once I add color, I'll bring it back and show it to you again. Just wish I could figure out how to use a cool bookmark like this with my kindle!
The Creator's Leaf

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

The Light of the Lord

As soon as I figure out where I took this photo I will post the name of the church. Still working on thoughts for publishing a book of my church steeples and cross photos I've taken across the United States. I believe I will interweave some of my scripture photos as well. 

The steeples, the crosses, the scriptures, they all remind me of why I started this blog and why it is named The Creator's Leaf. It can be summed up by the words in James 1:17, every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. Everything I am, every gift I have, every talent I have - they all come from the Father, and in all my ways I want acknowledge Him and give credit where credit is due. With Him. The Creator.
The Creator's Leaf

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

The Creator's Sunset

I recently posted these shots on my photography blog - The Shadow of the Cross - in response to a weekly challenge. I thought I'd share them here as well, since most of you don't follow Shadow. We spend time in Cedar Key at least once during the spring or summer and I always take my camera.
As we were walking down by the waterfront, I turned and saw this amazing sunset above the houses and tree line. At first I thought one of the houses was on fire, then I realized I was just seeing one awesome, amazing sunset. The Creator was putting on a light show - just for me. And now, it's for you, too!


The Creator's Leaf

Monday, May 13, 2013

Mandala Practice

This post is going to have lots of photos, walking you through how I made the above mandala.
I am taking an online class with Marie Browning and one of this past week's assignments was to make a mandala and color it with Irojiten pencils. I was in Maryland, 800 miles away from home, and didn't have my normal supplies with me. As I was walking around a fabric store, I came across these quilting templates hanging on a rack.
It dawned on me that these templates would make pretty good mandala templates. I started pulling them off the rack and layering them on top of each other, trying to see what would match up together and look like a mandala. I ended up buying four templates and used these two for this project.
I placed one quilt template onto my paper and used a micron 01 to trace within the lines. Then I played with the second template, moving it around until it lined up in a pleasing format. Then I traced those lines. I didn't use all the lines, on both templates, just the ones that looked like they went together.
Next I started filling in lines, connecting paths that seemed to go together. A flower started appearing, so I added some small leaves and started outlining some larger ones.
A few more lines made those larger leaves start standing out more dramatically.
I filled in some seed pods with some purk, finished the larger leaves, then used the tangle phicops to start turning the rest of the design into flower petals. A little fescu soon became stamen.
Once I got my flower mandala looking the way I wanted it to, I used my Japanese irojiten coloring pencils from Tombow to start laying in some color.
These are some pretty incredible pencils. Not watercolor pencils, just coloring pencils. The shading and color variation comes from dropping in layer after layer of color.
I think this was the second time I used these pencils, so I still have a way to go with them before I feel competent.
I used five different colors to lay down a technique called scrumbling around the outside. The scrumbling gives an almost drop-shadow kind of cast to the mandala.
All in all, I think I used 15 different pencils. Here is the finished product and I love the way it turned out! If I can do it - anyone can do it!
The Creator's Leaf

Sunday, May 12, 2013

New Kittens

We like cats at our house. We like cats a lot. Right now we have three cats that live indoors, and about fifteen cats that live outdoors. Five of those are babies. So cute! I drew this ATC while I was in Maryland with my daughter. To give you some perspective, this is on a piece of 2 1/2" x 3 1/2" watercolor paper.
Then I used my Japanese irojiten coloring pencils to add some color. Layer upon layer of colors gave me these rich hues. The design looks oriental to me. Could be those asian fans on the chest.  Earlier I showed you the dragon ATC I gave to my nephew (grandnephew? my nephew's son would be what to me?) I sent this oriental cat ATC to my niece, sister of said grandnephew, would it be great-nephew? I have no idea, I just hope my niece liked her cat.


The Creator's Leaf