Something About Nothing

I took an online mini-class from Linda Kemshall: Learn to Paint - Painting with Pencils, Birds. I've played around with Inktense pencils but never to this extent. I feel like I learned a bit in this class. I'm thinking of making more birds. Maybe a 100 days worth. Maybe not. We'll see. I do still have a lot to learn about using watercolor pencils,  but I have found I like them more than watercolors.

My friend,  Jane Davila , asked me to participate in her project called  The Migrant's Alphabet.  Here is a description of the project from the website: "In 1846, two Quaker sisters, Mary and Hannah Townsend, published the  Anti-Slavery Alphabet  to bring attention to the abolitionist cause against enslavement. Inspired by this book of Illuminated characters and accessible poetry, Bridgeport artist Jane Davila started a project, the  Migrant’s Alphabet , to bring awareness, education, and conversation to the current crisis of immigration in the United States and around the world." Jane asked 26 artists to create a 12"x12" piece of art, and a poem, using a letter of the alphabet, and something to do with immigration. I chose C for the children. My vision was to have the faces of a lot of children behind fencing, and in front of words. Specifically the words were to be the laws we have created in our country regarding the immigration of children...

It's no secret that I like Map art so when Mixed media artist, Jill K. Berry , put out her second call to create a map of our personal vision of 2015 I joined!  This year I decided to play with the idea of a city map.  I had the idea of a round-about with my family as the center and everything else I do coming out from there.  My first sketch reminded me of a spider's web.  It wasn't what I wanted.  After a few weeks of mental processing I decided to play with another idea putting little circles in the center for each family member and making buildings along each road. Nope, something wasn't right. More processing time needed.  I wondered if I didn't like it because I hadn't added color yet.  I then remembered some stencils I made some time ago and thought they might be perfect to make a colorful page. I cut a couple circle masks, pulled out my square stencils, my Inktense blocks and a paintbrush and went to work. I put the circle m...