My New Mat Cutter!

This is a quickie post to share about my brand new 'toy' - a Logan Compact Mat Cutter.  I was gifting a doodle drawing to my stepdaughter, and I had purchased a frame but needed a mat.  I couldn't find the right size/color mat anywhere locally, I didn't have time to have a mat professionally cut, and anyhow after buying the frame, I really didn't want to pay for a custom mat. 

So instead, I purchased myself a Logan Mat Cutter.  I had one in my classroom before I retired, but it wasn't mine so I had to leave it behind.  But I was adept at using it.

 My favorite framer retired, and gave me a bunch of mat board scraps when she closed her shop, in particular, metallic mat board scraps.  The metallic was going to be perfect for the artwork I was matting.  I cut the mat, put it in the frame, and then proceeded to cut another 29 mats before the afternoon was over.  So in one day, I think I used the mat cutter enough to make the investment totally worthwhile!  I'll be cutting more mats whenever I need one, rather than spending money to have someone else do the cutting for me.  Yay!

By the way, here she is with the gift!  She loved it!

 And while I was into making gifts, I also sewed together random scraps of fleece to make goofy hats and a scarf for my step-grandchildren!

Doodling for dollars?

It's no secret that I'm a compulsive doodler.  I have been, my whole life.  

Lately I have enjoyed using white and metallic Uni-ball Signo gel markers and Sakura Moonlight Gel markers on black paper, at least until my pad of Fabiano Black Black paper (yup, that's the name; it's awesome stuff) ran out.  I need some more.

Meanwhile, I also have a nice pad of bright white marker paper that I've been using with black Sharpies or black Signo Gel pens, and also with color added (my favorite colored marker pens of choice are Flair pens.  Great colors!)

Sometimes I'm not sure whether I like them better in black and white, or color.

Recently, I posted the black ink 'daily doodle' pictured below, on both Facebook and Instagram, and I debated over whether I wanted to add color to the ribbons and/or the orbs, or whether to leave it black and white.  (I still haven't decided).  A friend (who teaches a mixed class of 5th and 6th graders) asked if she could print out my drawing and color it herself.  She mentioned that her students absolutely loved the drawing.  And I had several friends remark that I should design coloring books. 

But here's the thing.  I like to doodle, and evidently, people like my doodles.  But my reason for doodling has nothing to with making money.  While it sounds lovely to make money from my doodles, I have no desires or skills regarding publication and marketing.  So unless someone miraculously volunteers to figure out how to publish and market my doodles, its not gonna happen, because it is not my personal priority. I doodle because it is a part of who I am and has been my whole life.  But you know, it's not really that hard to do!  I suggested to my friend that her 6th graders could easily do drawings like the one above.

Here's how:
Draw the ribbons looping and overlapping, lightly in pencil.  Figure out where they cross each over each other, erasing as needed where they cross.  Trace over the pencil lines with Sharpie.  Add orbs to further break up the space.  Fill all the shapes created in the negative space, with repeating patterns, a different pattern in each space.

 Or, as I did above, try radial designs that grow and attach to each other.

You can find several other posts on this blog about doodling.  To find them, use view the blog in the web version and search the labels/tags on the bottom of the blog!

Here's one last doodle for tonight!

Doodle gifts

It is no secret that I'm a compulsive doodler, and I love a good challenge and a reason to do a large doodle.  So I recently made three gifts by/for family relatives.  One was a gift from me, and the other two were 'commissioned' by a family member for her adult children.  I wanted to share the results with you.  Sorry the photos aren't great; I don't really have a good setup for photographing artwork in my home and its frustrating. If I try to make the mat look bright white (which it is), the drawing colors look washed out to me.  Plus some of the markers are metallic, which is tough to photograph.  Anyhow, the pics above are a couple of closeups.  The entire pieces can be seen below.  For the first two below, I was given a list of items and names to include, and the rest was up to me.  The required items were a challenge!  Celtic knots and crosses, unicorns, lions and tiger - none of these things are typically in my 'wheelhouse'.

 I did the one below for my adult stepdaughter and her family as a gift from me.  Because it's already framed in this shadowbox frame, it doesn't photo well at all. 

 And here's the other two, in their frames.  My medium of choice for these sort of doodles is Flair pens, a black Sharpie, and some wonderful metallic gel markers.  I don't usually pre-draw with pencil, but I did need to do that for the Celtic knot and cross, the lion and tiger, and the unicorn. 

My very own art show!

The library in the little community where I taught has a hallway gallery when you enter.  Artists are invited to sign up to exhibit for one month.  For many years, I hung my elementary students' artwork in this gallery for the month of March, to celebrate Youth Art Month, and the teacher who replaced me  has continued this tradition.  The high school art teacher also takes a turn of a month for her student work!  During my final year of teaching, and her first year, she and I did a joint exhibit of our personal work in this gallery; I blogged about that show in a post you can find HERE.   Fast-forward a few years to now, and I'm back exhibiting in the library, this time with just my own artwork, including the paintings above and below.

This past summer, I attended an immersive plein air painting class on the campus of Bennington College, and wrote about it in a blog post HERE.  I recently refined the two paintings directly above that were painted during this time (on the Bennington College library patio, and a statue found in a garden on the grounds of historic Park McCullough House).  I wanted the opportunity to share these paintings, as well as the other work from the summer, and also some acrylic textural paintings I had recently completed.  So I jumped at the chance to show this work for the first time, at this gallery, where my work will be seen by many of my former students!  Here's a few views of most of the gallery, each wall from both directions. First, here's the wall with the oil paintings (and some photos and doodles not visible in these pics).

And here's the other, shorter wall...

I should note that due to the size of the hallway and lighting, I struggled to get decent photos.  I didn't want to use a flash and get glare on the artwork, either.  So these imperfect photos will have to suffice.  Anyhow, here are some close-ups of the work on exhibit. Directly below, four of the oil paintings completed during my Bennington week - trees at dusk outside the painting studio, a brick wall at the faculty village, an interior of the greenhouse at the Park McCullough Historic House, and a campus view. (There's another campus view at the top of this post.) 

Also on display are two recent acrylic textural abstractions.  Directly below is a piece titled 'Elements', and below it is the larger 'Marsh Dreams', which incorporates a lot of fabric collage and beads, as well as the use of various textural acrylic mediums. 

And there's a selection of 8 of my photos.  Choosing just 8 was an insane challenge, but I only had 8 frames and I wasn't ready to buy more or cut more mats...

I am also displaying my doodles, many of which you saw in my prior post.

There's a small oil painting that I did looking out at the lake from our 'camp', where we spend much of our summer and fall.  I keep changing this painting - unfortunately the light was different each time I worked on it plein air, so I gave up and just had fun with it at home in the studio.  Not terrific, but better than it was!

 And a stand of bright flowers painted on the Bennington campus

 And that's the entire show, pretty much!  Thanks for stopping in for a look!

Doodlemania!

It's no secret that I'm a compulsive doodler.  I've blogged about doodling on other occasions, HERE, HERE, and HERE, for example.  There are more if you choose to look for them. I'm getting ready for a little art display in a local library, and thought it would be fun to mat and display a few of the more elaborate doodles.  So I started digging though some old little sketchbooks.  I got a couple of mats cut with six windows, figuring I could pull at least a dozen doodles to put in them.  The two above didn't make it into one of the mats, at least not yet.  Here's what did:

And here's another six.  The six below remind me somehow of the circus.  Not sure why, but I think I'll call them 'circus doodles'. 

 I realized  I had so many pages of doodles that I  will need to cut some more mats!  And these are just the ones that are in three little sketchbooks.  There are more...  Anyhow, here's another batch of 6:

 Occasionally I just leave a doodle in black and white, like the two below.  Then I have friends and acquaintances insisting that I should get a job designing for adult coloring books.  But here's the thing - I doodle WHEN I WANT TO, and not to anyone's specifications.  I don't think I'd be happy doodling if it was for a job. 

 Sometimes two disparate doodles seam to belong together.  That's what happened with the two below.  I was surprised to find how much I liked them next to each other.

 A lot of my doodles have been done at meetings and such. Case in point, the one below, done at a Temple Board meeting.  A few little notes sneaked into the doodle. 

 I came across these old doodles from union meetings, from my time when I was union president and/or on the negotiation and grievance committees. I bring a little pouch to meetings loaded with a batch of colorful Flair pens, black Sharpies, and an odd assortment of other fun pens and markers and such.  And of course a little sketchbook. 

And it appears I did a LOT of doodling at those Temple board meetings.  Others on the board would make sure to sit next to me so they could watch me doodle while we argued about finances and the religious school and such. 

 I think  this doodle below was from a speaker or workshop at an art conference.  I don't recall who the speaker was, but I like a lot of the words I wrote down. 

 If you are interested I've also written blog posts about the value of doodling.  Yes, it's a good thing!  To find any of these posts, just go to the labels on the bottom of the blog and click on 'doodling'.