98

yippeee ... i have read 98 books this year ... i finished two yesterday on thanksgiving day .... rah!
read about them here on my book list if you want .... happy friday .... off to take a walk with my family .....


P.S.... it is now dec. 28th and i am on book 103 ... hurrah ... the best book of the year has been either blue jesus or the pecan man ....

happy thanksgiving....

here's wishing you a day full of things that you are thankful for .... 

and pie ... here's wishing you lots and lots of pie.

happy thanksgiving.

5 little birds ...

 i've been on a bird binge lately .... i brought five more home from pottery class ....

 so now i have ten sitting on my sideboard .... and one more in the kiln .... 

they're birds ... but they're also kinda plates ... and kinda bowls.....

bowl of blueness...

 i made a big blue bowl ... speck gray clay ... anne's blue with a brushing of impossible purple over it .... it could be a salad bowl ... or a chip bowl ... or hold easter eggs in the spring ... or gourds in the fall ....

or it could hold about thirty bananas ... if you were of a notion to have that many bananas and needed somewhere to put them.

patterns ...

when i was a girl, my mom sewed a lot ... she made dresses from patterns ... the patterns were tan crinkly tissue paper .... in my teens, i sewed a few dresses and skirts for myself .... even in my 20s i made a couple jumpers (it was the 80s, i was a teacher, jumpers were like a uniform).... but i never got as proficient as my mom was at sewing ... 

now i like patterns in my collages ... the paper is cool transparent ... i like the color too ... i like the wrinkles you can make ... 

 i have an art project going with little.e.beck.artist's class ... to make a piece of art to sell at an auction ... instead of taking in a horrifyingly white canvas, i've started it up with some dress pattern tissue paper .... that's a 24 inch square canvas ... nice sized ... 

 and then once i started putting tissue on stuff, i just kept going and put it on things that were just hanging around waiting to get worked on .... 

once again, starting projects ... not finishing them! 

96.

i updated my books 2012 page .. i'm up to 96 ... and just read a GREAT series of novellas .... catch up with what i've been reading HERE ...

what have you been reading?

small art

one teeny tiny brown dictionary paged canvas .... that is some not so thrilling artistic endeavor for the day, right? 

 so instead of taking a pic of the canvas and cropping it just so, i went ahead and gave you the left side of my art table .... kinda messy .... yikes! .... go to yesterday's post to see the right side .... i have some cleaning to do ... but predict that i'll just keep layering the mess til after christmas ... and probable after the trinity art show ... no time to clean up .... and one of these days i'll have to start completing paintings instead of just beginning them!

art every day ... blog every day .... exercise every day ... laundry every day ... it's good to have goals, huh?

oooops ...

uh oh ... apparently on my blog every day challenge, i am taking sundays off ... ok?

and at the beginning of the month, my posts were landing at 8 or 9am ... i would write them ahead ... all quite organized ... and now .. the day is coming to a close and i am squeeeeeeeeezing in a post ....

here is the right side of the mess that i call my work table .... that's an 18 by 18 canvas leaning on a pile of papers ... the canvas started purple ... light purple ...then i did a light blue layer and pulled some of it up with a plastic bag ....no worries, i recycle the bags first by using a store bag, then by using it over and over til it is a painted colorful mess .... i usually use cloth sacks for my shopping, so not many plastic bags make it into my house, and i reuse and reuse .... after that blue layer, i put on a lavenderish dictionary page .... and right there i'll put something groovy ... some sort of statement ... just don't know what yet, ya know?  

happy artsy week to you .... 

and again with the birds ...

yesterday's artistic endeavor was at my pottery class ... glazed one enormous bowl, that i imagine i'm donating to an auction ... that's the plan, but best not to plan too hard cause as soon as a piece of pottery is earmarked for something particular, it turns out horrid ....

and five more birds .... i can tell you one of these is pinkish, one yellow, one tangerine, one medium blue ... and i don't recall the other ... probably turquoise ... i generally default to blues shades ... i don't generally prefer them, but i think most people don't want all the orange that i want! in the pic, all the birds look white because, after i underlazed them, i dunked them in clear glaze to make them all shiny and lovely ....

these are on a cart just outside the kiln house, because at the LAST second, i realized i needed to snap a picture .... it was actually a second too late seeing as i'd just toted the big bowl into the kiln house ...

once these are out, i'll be up to ten birds ... not sure if that's enough for christmas gifts or not .... we'll see ...

every day

 this is a 12 by 12 painting that i'm having trouble finishing ... i want to fill it up with words but don't know what words to use ... alas, i'll keep thinking.... meanwhile, i am arting every day quite well ...
i'm also doing dishes and making meals and exercising and sleeping and breathing and blogging and eating and bathing every day .... how many things do you truly do every day ... oh ... i walk my dog every day .... and kiss ... i kiss someone every day ... i have some spare kissees luckily, cause my main one is out o' town ...

what do you do every day?

multiplying birds ....

 i have been making bird bowls ... the above and below pics here are the same birds .... though you certainly can't tell that from the coloring of the birds .... red, orange, turquoise and true blue .... just another testament to my camera woes ...

 my art today for art every day was actually painting .. but not much to snap pics of ... soon though, i'm sure ...

home sweet home

hope everyone in your home is happy today .... happy wednesday ....

day 7 of art every day month .... tra la la ....

peculiar

so ... i was at costco today .... buying my usual grapes, apples, bananas, berries and avocados ..... and looking at the unusual ... and found down right peculiar ...

with the cut flowers, i found these:

 what are they? aren't they odd? they look like pine cones only yellow turning orange ... and they feel like rubber ... and they are at the end of super thick, tough stems .... quite peculiar .... labeled as mixed flowers .... i felt compelled to buy the oddity ... they seem like they'll last for ages because of their rubberiness ... like how amaryllis can last a long time ... they don't appear to be wilters .... we'll see .... anyone have a name for me?

my art today is a nest ... i'm not sure it's finished .... on a 12 by 12 canvas ... with a dictionary background ....

wow is it nesting time here ... it was a cold and rainy day .... it was election day and my youngest didn't have school ... we mostly nested ... stayed inside snug and warm .... except for a lunch date with pals and the aforementioned foray into costco .....

today is day six of art every day, aka, don't forget to blog every day about the art you're doing ... 

i hope you voted if you are in the u. s. of a. ..... regardless of whom you choose, voting is the right thing to do.

thanks for flowers and i need a new camera

 it is art every day ... and i have not posted my 8am blog update ... darn ... it is nearly 8pm ... so much for preblogging and preposting to keep me from the frantic last minute post .... day 5 and i'm already slacking.... alas.

here is a tiny 6 inch square canvas i worked on a bit today ..... thanks for the flowers.amen.

i usually snap pics of my art on sunny days. the sun is down. so i took pics inside with my camera ... and they were HORRID ... really, really horrible.... so i tried my phone and voila ... just fine .... larger it gets grainy, but for here for this, it is fine, right? how come my phone is a better camera than my camera? rhetorical. never mind.

so, thanks for the flowers. and the orange leaves. amen.

diy gifty ....

 so i'm still doing art every day .... and, actually, more to the point, blog every day .... and i'm to a whopping day 4 ... pre blogged on day 3 .... but showing on day 4 ... so, yeah, maybe i'm cheating ... but the spirit of this for me is more art, and consistent posts for however long i can manage ..hopefully a month ...

and this is what i did:

 i finished off a ceramic cross .... i dry brushed it with a couple different brown paints ... the texture pushed into the clay stayed white ... because it's white clay ....

and then i even artistically wrapped it .. that counts right? so double artsy for me .... bonus points for a DIY gift and not having to shop for a baptism brunch momento .... one of my daughters is coming with me to the party because we are going to it on the way to another thing we have to do ... she wasn't thrilled .. then she said, WAIT, will there be an actual baby there? ... yes ... well that's ok then, she said.
babies make things better.

hi high

i am not that short.
i am oddly bending my knees so that the top of my head wouldn't be cut off in the picture by the sculpture.
i could have stood up straight but didn't realize it.
darn.
instead i look goofy to myself.
i went to the high museum in atlanta.
i love that place.

i went to a new(ish) exhibit ... called fast forward:  100 years .... modern moments ... or something like that.

they picked pivotal years from the last 100 and showed bunches of art from that year ... it was interesting mostly because of the differences in styles in each year.

my very, very, very, very, very most favorite part of the exhibit was the LAST room. just before the gift shop. and artist named sarah sze had done and EXTRAORDINARY (oh my gosh i loved it) art installation.

go google her ... and then go to images .... i couldn't find a great site for her ... you could try this one .... and do a slide show of grooviness down at the bottom where it says selected works ...
and ... here's one more bloggish article ...

i do love a good trip to a museum.

i also love a good foray into my art studio ... hence, making myself get there and get to it more often, i have joined art every day month ... to work in my studio EVERY day ...

we'll see how that goes ...

hopefully i will start working on more than just backgrounds to paintings!

the rut vs. the groove

 sometimes you are in a rut,  in a spot where you've gotten kind of into a spot where you do the same thing.
sometimes you are in a groove, in a spot where you've gotten kind of into a spot where you do the same thing.
one is good.
one is bad.
i'm in a groove ... good
i'm in a rut ... bad

but maybe it is the exact same thing, it just depends on your perspective, right?
i've been painting lots and lots and lots and lots of backgrounds ... because they are fun and easy and happy and relaxing and nice and easy and ..... and i'm procrastinating getting anything finished, completed .... i'm a great starter .... a twist my arm first finisher.

i'm painting again.
now i just need to finish a painting, huh?

this is day two of my art every day posts in november ... click here to read about it ...

not dog poop. NOT.

here are two twelve inch square canvases, done up in maps and turquoise glazing.

 i just do nice backgrounds without a plan for the foreground usually.

on one of them, i started to put a nest.

but my dog sat on it.

before it was fully a nest.

so it looks a bit like dog poop.

but it is not.

it is going to be a nest. 

really.

a nest.

on a groovy, mappy, turquoisey*** background.

without poop.

i promise.

****when i write the word turquoisey, (a) it is underlined in red as being not a word, (b) it is so a word, and (c) when i say it in my head as i write, i pronounce it tur-kwah-zee ... in case you were wondering.

********* i've joined a group ..... i'm doing art every day month ... i'll do something artsy every day and blogging it each day in november .... wish me luck!