Washi Tape Love

My friend Kelly stores her washi tape like this:

I totally heart this, the slightly organized, slightly random jumble of colour and designs.

A New Type of Face

I found this tutorial on the Internet about painting faces, posted by an artist named Lynne Hoppe, whom I discovered thanks to a face she drew that Dina Wakley had pinned on Pinterest.  I was in a bit of a hurry but decided to give an abbreviated version of Lynne's techniques a try, using a book page and my Caran D'Ache Neocolor II pastels.  This was the result:

I was quite happy with this face.  I called her "Ariel, Fairy of the Forest".  When I first drew the shape of her face, it turned out that the stag's head in the upper right hand corner seemed to be sticking out of her head so I decided to turn her into a forest fairy.

I used pastels on book paper again today and ended up with this face:

I called her Roberta.  Yes, she has a retriever on her forehead but I like to think it looks a little like a barrette! ;)

Feeling very inspired by Lynne's tutorial.  One of these days, I'll have to give it a try when I have more time, using more of the supplies she recommends.

Wild Kingdom, Cottage Style

My sister and I drove into town after dinner at the cottage on Saturday night to pick up a few groceries and spotted a bear on the side of the road.

I manoeuvred the car closer to where he was and tried to get a better photo.  I didn't have much luck.

The bear was moving pretty quickly and didn't seem to care that we were there, although I was sure he was deliberately trying to avoid having his picture taken.

I was trying to drive the car along the road beside him and take a picture at the same time, while arguing and giggling about how fast, how close, window up or down, etc. with my sister.  This is the best of the photos I took:

Then I noticed farther down the road, a family of turkeys was crossing the road.

"It's like an episode of Wild Kingdom around here!", I said to my sister, which made us giggle some more.  "Or the opening credits of the Partridge Family!"

When we got to the spot where the turkeys had crossed, we noticed a bunch of cottagers watching the turkeys from behind the decorative iron fence on their property. I rolled down my window to caution them that there was a bear on the other side of the road.  My major concern was that this might be a growing cub and his mama bear might not be far away (one never wants to get in between a mama bear and her baby, that could be extremely dangerous).  Did they heed my advice and stay clear of the wild animal? Noooo.  They rushed out onto the road to get a better look.

By this time, the bear had moved farther into the forest so we gave up watching and continued the drive into town.  On the way back, we came across another group of people further down the road, staring into the trees on the opposite side of the road, clearly watching the bear (although we didn't spot him this time).  Half of them were barefoot, several were young children, none of them showing much common sense about being so close to a potentially dangerous wild animal.  Luckily, the bears on our cottage road have yet to do anything harmful to humans and hopefully they never will.

On this occasion, the bear, being the smarter of the two species, kept going and stayed well out of their way.

Yesterday's Face

Sometimes, you just need to do one small thing to change the way things feel.

August 2nd

We have a long weekend coming up here in Ontario. Someone on the radio called it the "last long weekend of the summer".  It confused me but I guess they meant that Labour Day weekend will signal the end of summer, whereas this one is smack dab in the middle.

Still, you can feel things changing. Maybe it's just because it has been an unusually cool week for this time of year, making us think more about the approach of fall.  I also heard on the radio today that we've had 50% less warm days this summer than we did last year, that I can believe.  Enough already, bring back those warm days, I say!!  It's bad enough the days are getting noticeably shorter already and it is becoming dark earlier each evening, I want to squeeze every warm moment I can out of summer before the dreaded winter months return.

I haven't had any time off since February and I'm feeling the urge to have a break.  Work has been quite busy lately and the weekends in between have been full and active. Somehow, a long weekend doesn't seem long enough when you feel like that, at least not to me. Maybe because I usually spend them at the cottage and it's a 2 hour drive to get there and a 2 hour drive to get back, which means there's really only one day in the middle where you're actually staying put and not thinking about going somewhere.  I'm in the mood for a staycation.  Plunking myself down with a good book, some art supplies and the TV remote and not doing much of anything.

Can't decide if that will happen this weekend or not.  Hopefully I'll figure it out by the morning.

August 1st

Oxygen was discovered on this day in 1774, did you know that?

It was the date of Anne Frank's last diary entry in 1944, she was arrested 3 days later.

In more recent history, it was exactly one year ago today when those badminton players were disqualified in the Olympics for not trying hard enough to win the game.  I had forgotten all about that until I read it on the list of things that happened on this day in history, which I found here.

For me, it wasn't an unusually significant day in the history of my life.  I did wake up early and have a workout before I headed off to work, which I've been thinking about doing for a while now. It seemed a good idea to do that today, the first day of a new month.  I find if I work out first thing in the morning, it's better for me because at that time of day, it's hard to make up excuses not to do it.  Other than the obvious one of rolling over and going back to sleep, of course!  But if I plan to work out at the end of the day, after work, there are many things that could keep me from doing that - having to work late, needing to go grocery shopping, dental appointments, social events, bad weather, you name it.  Somehow, at 6 a.m., none of that stuff gets in the way.

We'll see how it goes tomorrow, whether I am motivated to get up for the 2nd day in a row and do it again.

Sixty Percent Done

I am 60 days along in the 100 Faces in 100 Days challenge.  Some days, I just don't like the results but more often than not, I really do, which is exciting.  I can definitely see progress and I continue to really enjoy the process.  Here are some of my recent successes:

My interpretation of a drawing
done by Dina Wakely

When I gessoed over the sprayed/painted background of this page, it seemed as if there was a face wanting to come out - can you see it?

This is what I drew.

Edward

I'm finding it challenging to draw eyes the same size or evenly spaced lips.  In reality, we all have one eye larger than the other - one of everything is larger than its mate on the other side of your body, actually, but it seems that discrepancy is sometimes made even more exaggerated when I draw certain faces.  For example, I tried to even out the size of this woman's lips on each side of her mouth and ended up making her look like she'd had too much Botox or something as a result!  I'd like to paint over it but don't want to mess with the scuba diver on the background that just happened to end up on her chin.

Hmm, wonder if Picasso or Rembrandt ever had to worry about these sorts of things? Ha! Probably not, especially with respect to the scuba diver.  Not to worry, I shall persevere!