A pie and a book - 2 creative endeavors!

In anticipation of my son coming home from Africa, I went blueberry picking last week, and this Sunday my son and his friends put together this delicious blueberry pie. Pretty nice!

:-)

After reading Erica's blog http://artprojectgirl.blogspot.com/ yesterday about an inspiring painting professor, I decided it was time to get creative. So, I finally started painting and collaging my altered book, that I talked about in the blog back when school was ending. This project is in preparation for making these again with 6th graders this fall. Earlier this summer I began by cutting into the book to create my river, and then gesso-ing all surfaces to be painted.

The book is based on the lyrics of the Beatles song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. I chose it because the lyrics have such magnificent visual imagery. These are the first two pages:

Picture yourself on a boat in a river,
with tangerine trees and marmalade skies...

Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly -
the girl with kaleidoscope eyes.

a couple of close-ups:

Darn, the best photos keep entering sideways so these will have to do. It's hard to see that the pages have depth cut into the river. I think I'm going to add some silly collage fish in the river.

In book pages still to complete, images include: towering cellophane flowers of yellow and green, newspaper taxis, plasticene porters with looking-glass ties, a girl with the sun in her eyes, and of course, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. Hope I can get it done!

Eureka! It works! (blog change again)

Hi folks, you should FINALLY be able to leave comments on my blog, even if your browser of choice is safari. Whew!! So - speaking of safari - this is so appropriate -

These AMAZING photos are just a teensy sampling of those taken by my son on safari at the Tintswalo Safari Lodge in South Africa. I know this is supposed to be an art teacher blog, but heck, who doesn't like pictures of animals? I'm planning to do some African animals lessons this year in school, so these photos should help.

Isn't a rhino just about the silliest looking animal ever? And my kitty yawns and stretches just like this cheetah!

In case you don't know your animals, that photo in the middle is a buffalo!

I'm going to get more photos from him and hopefully soon post pics of his 216m bungee jump and some images of the beautiful South African coastline,etc.

As for my blog - I changed it back to a SIMPLE template, and gave up on tryingto be more original. My son, with his Mac, kept checking it as I changed it to see if comments could be made using safari, and finally it should all be OK. I like the wallpaper, because it actually reminds me of some in my house. When my son is free, he will help locate my missing dragon image for the title and then I don't think I'll change it for a while any more... I've learned my lesson! :-)