Something About Nothing

My husband and I took a red-eye flight to Columbus, Ohio, and then drove the one hour to Athens, Ohio, to attend the opening of the Quilt National quilt show where my piece, Wild Flowers was being shown. Made a stop at Tim Horton's, a Canadian chain for some delicious breakfast sandwiches and donut holes. We went to the Kennedy Art Museum, on the Ohio University campus. This is the side of the building. Photo of the front of the building from the cleveland.com website. The building was designed in the 1860s by Cleveland architect Levi Scofield, and was originally part of the Athen's Lunatic Asylum. It opened in 1996 as the Kennedy Museum of Art. There were some lovely prints, paintings and exhibits. It didn't take long to tour, which was good for my knees. I was glad to be able to see this Elizabeth Catlett print. I admire her work. I've seen some of her her other prints in person, and was anxious to also see this one. Friday evening, the Quilt National show opened, and...

 The Copic markers bled through the peony page and created another lighter peony. I spent months contemplating what to do with this lovely.  I finally painted a little bit of background color, and drew some mandalas using Pitt Pens. Another little rose and mandala completed the page. Mandalas showed up on several pages in my sketchbook. Looking at this page now, I think I should have put another mandala or two on it, but instead I filled the open space with lines. I could paint over the lines and draw more, but who has time for that. Not to mention the lines are made with a grease pencil so they would still be there in the background. I even got brave and tried out some writing. "I don't think there's an Artist of any value who doesn't doubt what they're doing." - Francis Ford Coppola "Every Artist was first an amateur."

Between Thanksgiving, setting up for Christmas and getting a cold, I have not been very productive with my drawing. I have been doing a lot of hand stitching but don't want to share it yet in case I can find a show to enter it in.  I did manage to finish up this mandala I started a week ago.  I like the variations in color. Mister came to visit me this week, and he was kind enough to pose for some photos.   He loves going in the yard.

I'm starting to tire of creating mandalas but yet I can't seem to stop. One night, before I fell asleep I had an idea of creating a mandala that was a birds nest seen from above with the branches and leaves coming out from below the nest. I thought it would be clever to use a spirograph design as the nest and then paint eggs over the top of it. I forgot to take a photo of the spirograph colored in as a nest. You can kind of see it under the white I painted on top (bottom right). I really hated it. I was going to toss the whole thing, but decided to give it another chance by painting  over the spirograph immediately. I'm glad I gave it another chance. I like the way this nest came out much better. I have no idea what this one was supposed to be. I think I had sunshine in mind. After I colored it I thought it looked off. It took me a minute to realize I hadn't put any designs in the shapes! I like this better. More to look at, and more shading to add depth. Flowers and Tr...