Sketchin' the cat

So mostly I'm too intimidated to do my own drawings -- I'm working on that, really! -- and occasionally my cat will hold still long enough for me to get a chance to try and capture him. Here is a recent sketch with a quick watercolor wash to give a sense of the tabby-ness of Daniel Striped Tiger. As usual, all I had was some scrap paper on the coffee table... but I do sort of like how the lines of text added to the sketch -- done in bic pen.

more 'morons...

11/14/05 the prompt was "pretty bad"



11/18/05 the prompt was "recent history"

The Gingerbread Man is on Vacation

My friends and I are taking off a year in the local gingerbread house contest. It's just SO much work, and we're all so very busy. So, in honor of the past four years of blue ribbons, here are two of our local landmarks captured in gingerbread...

Politely Insulting -- 11/12/05 prompt

I was flipping through some images I'd printed out, and the look on this woman's face was just too much like some catty comment at a cocktail party to pass up. The "insult" text is: "I should not like a man who is so soon discomposed by a hot morning." --(from Austen's "Emma")

liked the aqua blue as a vintage-y color.

Oddly Appropriate -- 11/8/05

This one came together somewhat on it's own power. I had intended for it to go one way, but once I started gluing, this is what emerged. I like the balance of the orange and yellow stripes, and the contrast with the blue background. The addition of the little plastic grass strip from a sushi take-out container was a total last minute inspiration, but I like how it picks up on the green of the girl's dress.

Quiet Riot

I've been struggling with the oxymoron prompts this month. Had about a week where I haven't really come up with much... but I did the one for 11/16 without too much trouble... which speaks to my state of mind, somehow.



the text reads:

"...one broad, perpetual riot
enfolds me night and day.
You think my life is quiet?
You don't know what you say."

from "The Riot" by Gamaliel Bradford

I get a lot of my text by going to http://www.bartleby.com/100/ and searching either in the quotes or the verse section. Usually something will pop up that resonates.

New and Improved (Prompt #7)

Had a lousy Monday in response to an even lousier Sunday night, so I thought it was some kind of synchonicity when the prompt was "new and improved." And I ended up with 2 collages out of the magazine pages I tore out ... both very different and yet both inspired by the same prompt. And there's nothing like improving my mood with a new collage!!

Prompt #3 -- Plump nee Junk Food

This prompt has been eluding me since last Thursday. I pulled out some things that I thought might work, but couldn't find anything that really sparked my interest. So the collage has been languishing for days. Determined to finish, I pulled some more stuff out last night, but the collage I thought I was working on kept fighting me, and I eventually had to let it do what it wanted, but it's still a mess. Somehow "junk food" turned into something more about fat and excess -- albeit in ways I don't even fully understand myself. So for whatever it's worth, here's the aftermath of the struggle. The stuff at the top and bottom that just looks blurry in the picture are neon lights in some big metropolis, probably Tokyo-- but why neon lights, lipstick, and chefs?? Goodness knows I don't know!!

Mannish woman

I had vague ideas about looking for either a woman doing something very manly, or creating a collage of a person that was part man and part woman... when I came across this credit card ad that did it for me. Not sure why the grass for the background, but perhaps its a sort of Eden like spot when woman is made of man or something. Odd things happen in the back of my head when I do these, and I'm not always sure if there's a meaning to them or not. The text at the top says "for all the sides of you."

Midnight Sun

So this was a tough prompt, but what I came up with was some lights on a film set, the globe showing a map of africa (which probably has nothing to do with 'the land of the midnight sun' but somehow I liked it) and a bit of an advert with some neon lights. It's much brighter in person... but perhaps that's appropriate for a piece entitled "midnight sun."

Necessary Evil

this was Friday's prompt, and I guess I must have had finances and bill paying on my mind as I paged through my magazines looking for something that was necessary and yet evil at the same time!!

oxymorons 1 & 2

Been working on the November prompts from the Gluebooks Yahoo group. The first is "Larger Half" and the second is "War Games."

Stage Door

Finally got around to watching my latest Netflix shipment, the wonderful 1937 weeper, Stage Door. It just crackles with snappy patter (and gets way too much mileage out of lamb stew), meanwhile showcasing some of the great women of stage and screen (small and large).

Great clothes, too. Love the strong silhouettes of the period, and the emphasis on details... the right buttons, the right shoes, the right furs, the right jewelry...

Just check these wonderful dames out:

Falling

Here's a shot outside of one of the windows at work. Hoping to get another shot when you can see the yellow tree behind the red tree. But still great fall colors. And this tree looked fabulous during our freak snowstorm the other week!

we're walking, we're walking...

Took a hike with my friends over this lovely fall weekend in one of our local state parks. Was a bit more exercise than I wanted, perhaps, but good for me none the less. And what can compare to vistas like these:

etcetera, etcetera, etcetera

So, I'm rather bleary eyed this morning as I stayed up late watching my latest Netflix movie. It's an oldie but a goodie... "Anna and the King of Siam" ... the 1946 black and white, non-singing version of "The King and I."

http://amazon.imdb.com/title/tt0038303/

Very lavish for it's day, and you've never seen so many hoop skirts in one place since "Gone With the Wind."

And Rex Harrison makes a very different King than Yul Brynner. More hair for one thing!

Next up: 1937s "Stage Door" ... where "Anna and the King" has an excess of hoops, "Stage Door" has an excess of furs.

Why do I always judge a movie by it's clothes !!! :0)

a summer reading list in winter

For a long time (gulp, since around 1994) I’ve had this “summer favorites” reading list from the National Endowment for Humanities and from time to time I dive back into it. It is geared for grades 9-12. I find this ambitious. I have a degree in Education, and additional higher ed credits in Library Science and even I haven’t read many of the titles on this list. More power to any 9th through 12th grader who has. SO. In the further attempt to continue my education through great books, I am starting back in on the list. Maybe if I post my progress here I will keep up with it!

The most recent version of the list can be found at:
http://www.neh.gov/projects/summertimefavorites.html

So far I have made it this far down the list, and some others later on…

A Death in the Family by James Agee
Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson
Emma by Jane Austen
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
Go Tell it On the Mountain by James Baldwin
Pere Goriot by Honore de Balzac

Am off to tackle Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett next -- and then I am skipping the next book ... The Bible ... that's its own project all by itself!

Cards Blanche

Lately I seem to be channeling much of my creative energy into these little (mostly) fabric collage cards. These are from two series that I did for a charity auction at work and I'm really happy with. They're much better looking in person as the red brocade and the red sequin fabric don't come across too well with my somewhat basic digital camera.

People I know keep telling me I should try and sell my cards -- so I'm looking into it. Maybe I'll try and do a craft fair or so and see what kind of response I get to them. In this little victorian town where I live, I think there might be some kind of a market for this thing, but I don't know how extensive...

But, whether I end up selling the cards, they're very fun to do. I love crazy quilts, but would never have the patience to do a whole quilt, so I try and replicate that feel here in this 4X6 size.

I have been tentatively calling this card "line" -- Card Blanche -- since they're blank cards :0) Still wondering if it's a marketable name. Having this blog I've become rather attached to "Ephemeris" as a moniker.

Broadway Bound Pix

To complete the circuit I suppose I should post some pictures from "Broadway Bound."

The trick here was, of course, to make it look like everyday 1949. I think I did a pretty good job -- there was the occasional mutter of ... "I think I had that dress..." or whatever. Slightly tough on the ego though, as it was meant to be subtle ... such a blue/grey/brown color palette you've never seen! ... so mostly there was no feedback since it was meant to slide under people's radars ... to be so in tune that there was no need to comment as it was -- like Little Bear's porridge -- just right!!

Compositions II

And here are some spreads that I'm really pretty happy with. Been experimenting with writing on magazine pages as backgrounds (I use Vogue a lot -- ok mostly -- in my collages). Some of these are journal pages, and some are my nearly daily collages that I like to do to somehow sort of represent my day. Again, trying to say things w/o saying them with words. I especially like how the 2 on the August second page echos the two legs in the picture -- selected merely because it had a pale background that I thought would be easy to write over