Celebrate! We were at Ikea and Susan saw an ice cube tray in the kitchen section. Search Ikea for "plastis ice cube tray", and no, that's not a typo. There are other shapes available also, like hearts, on eBay. Use plaster of paris or push in clay, let it dry and there you are, ready for painting. I'm having a lot of fun doing different patterns. Some people say you can melt crayons in them and it makes swirl patterns. You try it, I'm not that energetic.  I've glued magnets on the back of some these.

Susan wants me to tell you that she insisted I buy the ice cube tray even though I said "Why would I want that?"Then it took her about a month of asking me to try it before I did. This picture is just a small sample of all the ones I've painted so far. Listen carefully, she's saying "I told you so."

someeecards.com

I put these flowers up in late June. Amazingly enough, they are still there! That's my old-man bike in the picture. It's so lame looking it will never be stolen.


Sometimes I just draw, sort of zentangle-like.

I've been reading Art Before Breakfast by Danny Gregory.  He was a speaker at ArtUnraveled in August and his talk sort of motivated me to ... well, read his book instead of making art before breakfast. No, actually, he was very interesting and I like it when I hear a guy talking about drawing and mixed media because usually it's women who predominate at the art events I go to.

Anyway, the other night Susan was already asleep when I was reading Danny's book. We drastically downsized a few years ago and the most comfortable chair for reading is in the bedroom. That's where my pillow, Pinky, comes into play as an eyeshade for her. Instead of Art Before Breakfast I made Art before Bedtime.
But this guy is a loser. He'll wind up being a Give-Away or maybe take a train ride.

I went to ArtUnraveled in Phoenix in August and one of the classes I took was from Jane LaFazio.  She's what Susan calls "a gentle soul" and her classes are fun and relaxing and helpful.  This picture is the view from our hotel balcony.
This isn't what I learned in her class, it's just something I did earlier in the year.  Susan wanted to put it in the blog to remind me not to eat mint chocolate chip ice cream after 9 p.m. at night.  I'm admitting nothing, even though the empty container was sitting in the kitchen sink when she got up at 3:00 a.m.  I can neither confirm nor deny that my thrashing around in my sleep was caused by the fact that my brain was telling me my cow got loose somehow and it's not my fault that woke her up at 3:00 a.m.  You may not know this but people with chronic insomnia get really cranky by noon because, as they will loudly tell you, they've been up since 3:00 a.m.


Who? Me?

Sidebar: This business about deleted/undeleted/secret/not secret Clinton emails and all that deleted email of Tom Brady's deflatedness made me wonder:  Where is Edward Snowden when we need him?  Why don't we just ask him to reveal all that stuff because Inquiring Minds really need to know.  If he tells us that, maybe as a reward he could come back here for a brief visit, just to get some real BBQ or fried chicken or something.

Oh yeah, I'm an experienced ceramic artist.  See this little guy?  No, he's not supposed to have his arms sitting in his lap.  The wire and red balls were Susan's idea on how to try to put lipstick on the pig and maybe distract you from his anatomical strangeness.  The picture below shows what he was supposed to look like, glazed but not yet fired, with arms that would be on a stiff wire through his body, arms that could swing in place. The wood skewer in the picture below is just holding the arms in place temporarily so I could take a picture before firing the piece.


So, your experienced ceramic artist carefully glazed him and took him to school and put him in the kiln.  When he did that, experienced ceramic artist that he is, he carefully laid the arms on the guy's lap so they wouldn't get separated when the kiln was unloaded. Of course, once the piece was fired the arms fused to the guy's lap. Duh.

I've been doing ceramics for about 8 years now so Susan was quite sympathetic about this situation, beginning with "You've got to be kidding me" and then transitioning to "You fool!" followed by some statements appropriate only for Mature Audiences.  I started to toss him in the trash can but she made me put him on the shelf above my worktable as a reminder to Pay Attention To Details. Actually, now we've both grown sort of fond of him.

Sometimes I draw, sort of in a Zentangle-like style.

When we got home I painted this small picture. In the mornings I cut up fruit for myself and always leave some for Susan, who hates fruit. She feels guilty if she doesn't eat what I fix for her but she often forgets to look for it in the refrigerator (or that's what she claims anyway) when she comes back from her walk or swim. Now I put this picture right on the counter by the front door - no more excuses!

She took the same watercolor class I did. Here are two of the pages from her watercolor journal. She did two leaves on every page and then the flower and then asked Gina for more images to copy and did the bird and some other stuff.  She is very "wiggly" in classes (her word, other people might call it Attention Deficit Disorder) and works fast - she says if she works fast she doesn't have time to wiggle and think about what her work looks like and fuss about it.



The other day I did a long bike ride and put another little Give-Away (a bird) in place.  This is Jennifer's Garden wall in a front yard where I'd previously put a smaller bird down low - both show in the top picture. This week-end I'll check to see if they are still there.

The class was Gina's The Watercolor Artist's Notebook and the first night we just learned about colors and how watercolor paints act, which is usually well-behaved except for when their parents aren't looking.


Gina has a lot of stuff going on and she thinks there are No Excuses for slacking off on your art. Well, maybe she'd allow Happy Hour but she'd probably want you to paint your hangover the next morning.  Her classes are incredibly informative, lots of demos and handouts, and she moves around the room all the time while you are working so she can help if needed.  There's a lot of structure in the class but that meant we accomplished a LOT in just 9 total hours of class.


We all got the same leaf pictures to copy. I thought that would be boring at first but then I became One with My Leaf.  First we just did a careful line drawing, then we starting doing paintings of it, each time getting more and more individualized.



Finally we got to the last exercise, a picture of a big flower.  Well, maybe mine looks like an exploding asteroid but I learned to really like watercolors in this class. 


This is by a fellow classmate, Elaine. She was very talented. She made it look like the flower instead of an asteroid.

Chris Cozen is a very patient and calm instructor. She brings lots of materials for students to use and is a representative for Golden Paints so you get a wealth of good information.  We started out by spreading colors around on paper and learning a lot about the properties of the paint, color mixing and composition.  Above is the final, below is its start:


Later in the class we developed the experimental works into images and themes that were of our own particular interest. I went with the map concept. I told Chris I didn't want to do any "girly" colors and yet I have pink in my work! How did that happen? Below is start and then finish:

In the morning the class was Layers and Textures and I just didn't get that. Once we got home and unpacked all our stuff I realized I had enjoyed the process but really didn't have any pieces I wanted to keep as examples or reminders or even just photograph.  In the afternoon the class was Teeny Tiny Art and we made lots of little pieces that were just 4" squares.  This class I got.


I'm all the way out to Phoenix in a class and wind up meeting another person from Austin. How does that happen?  Here is Jane Cobb's work:

I think, but am not sure, but whatever, that this is my friend Marlene's work:


I take pictures and forget Susan's advice, which is to follow the picture of the work with a picture of the person's nametag. Or, when in a museum, the picture of the signage next to the artwork. So, Marlene, Helen and Jane, if I got it wrong, sorry. I'll try better next year.

It's me, in a class taught by Jane Davies, at ArtUnraveled. We had a great time, visited with old friends, took lots of classes and got really tired of driving when we headed back to Texas.

Why weren't you here?

More to come.

A while back Susan had a birthday and I wrapped up some presents for her. We aren't big on gift-giving because we know that if we really want something we just tell the other person "I'm getting that for myself." And besides, we don't need any more stuff.  Except for books, which are two of the above gifts, thank you, Amazon (even though you are making publishers mad).

So I've got these nicely wrapped gifts in some great paper we bought a roll of at a garage sale and then I didn't know how to wrap the last one which was red nylon tote bag you can fold up real small. Dumb gift but we have No Bag rule now in Austin at stores and she is always forgetting to take in her own bag. This way the tote bag will stay at the bottom of her purse and she'll always have it. That's the plan anyway.

Well, I found some burlap scraps and then tied it up with a little metal piece I had made before. What the heck - it was a last minute thing.

Being married to a person who loves art and goes to museums and makes art herself makes life much easier. She totally ignored the nicely gift-wrapped books and charged off to photograph the little tote bag wrapping and then started fiddling with the burlap.  It was sort of like when people give a toddler an expensive toy and all they want to do is play with the box it came in.

We've been in Phoenix for 8 days of classes at ArtUnraveled. We drove 18+ hours over 2 days to get there. Doesn't everyone go to Phoenix in August? We do. Is it hot there? Yes, but so what? We are inside all the time going to classes and the hotel room rates are very low in August.

We love the drive through west Texas and New Mexico/Arizona. The terrain slowly changes from central Texas Hill Country to flat desert filled with saguro cactus - cacti? - and we never fail to wonder how in the hell anyone in a covered wagon or on horseback ever made it to California.

The drive for about 8 hours in west Texas is on a highway where the legal speed limit is 80 mph. It's very isolated and rest stops are about 90-100 miles apart. Susan hates them because they are open air; it's not the lack of air-conditioning but the flies that aggravate her. This, however, doesn't seem to bother her.



We took 3 cartons of art supplies, used up lots of them, but somehow wound up coming back with 4.  We are still unpacking. More to come.