july challenge

Play ball.

Set and spike

Went too dark, lost the elements If I was doing it again, I think I'd go light, fire, then add elements on a second round. 

Adding more black powder and some color. Happy with it.

July challenge week one

Here's the work from the month, not in order, and not every day, but most of it.

Day 28 Albert Einstein fired.

Day 30 Self portrait fired.

Day 30, just before going into the kiln

Day 29 worked on my self portrait. Am seeing I went way heavy on the hair and need to correct some shapes. Those teeth need some flossing..... but not a bad start.

Day 28- 

 2nd day of Albert, other things to do, will tweak it some before I fire.

Day 27, Kelly sent us a picture of Albert Einstein and told us to turn it upside down to draw, taking pictures along the way to make adjustments. It's a 2 Day project, here's my first day from the start with sifted and pinched powder application.

Day 26 tree with working left side left hand, right side right hand. It wasn't bad before I totally fried in in the kiln!

Day 25, draw with the non dominate hand.  Just used the business card, but now see we could have used some other tools, May do some cleanup before I fire. Well, was a couple of days behind in the challege, so after doing the Day 26 exercise, I put them both in the mini kiln and started Day 27 with the Albert Einstein sketch. Zoned right into a sketching frame of mind (very relaxing!) and completed spaced on setting the timer. Oh well!

Day 24. Challenge today is to use our non-dominate hand to draw a tree again, using only a business card and hands as tools. Left picture is today using my left hand, right picture is from early in the month with my right

Day 22, Challenge today was to draw something we collect. I have lots of favs: small wood & other media carvings, boxes, vases, paperweights, salt and pepper shakers,  wine (ha ha! a revolving collection!), my old dolls, but settled on a shell. After the pin, I was ready to relax! When I finish work at a job site today, I'll do a bit of clean up and correction. I liked where it was going, needs some shading.

Day 21, we were all to draw the safety pin. Read some spent as long as 3 hours on it. I took about 1/2 hour and it's nowhere close to being right. Should have photographed to critique and correct before I dumped it back in the jar. Those mid values are so hard to get in the powders. Main tool was a straight edge razor blade.

Day 21, challenge was to put some flowers in a vessel. Looks like these nasturtiums would knock over the little vase, which got smaller and smaller as I tried to even it out. :) But they are light weight flowers.

Day 20 We grow fuschias and have lots of hummingbirds in the yard.

Day 19 Little warmup piece, petals moved with finger tip and kinda liked how the ends were darker. Went off on that one to the left bottom. Passion flower, used to have vine, but it was lost in the jungle of a yard.

Day 18 fired.

 Day 16 & 18, water lilies fired. still struggling but got a little curl in the petals.

Days 16,17 & 18 Draw something white. Shading is hard with the powders. Tried several roses in different stages of bloom, a gravy boat and a creamer but didn't like them at all. Switched to a lotus today. No where close to what I want them to look like, but there are a couple of petals on the right that are getting close. I learned a bit with this challenge and I think another attempt will go better. Busy day today, and going out to the desert in the morning to see a friend. Will continue the challenge when I come back
!

Day 15, draw something we are afraid of. When I was kid, there was stray dog in the neighborhood. I took him home and put out a bowl of food and then tried to pet him. Was totally taken by surprise to be bitten. The tags were expired from out of state. It took some time to verify vacinations; I was very close to having the rabies treatment which I'd been told involved long needles injected into the stomach. Steered clear of strays after that.

Day 14, draw something you are afraid of. The idea of my own dying doesn't seem to make me afraid so much as eventually losing those I love. I've always been pretty healthy, so maybe the thought of my own death just seems so danged unlikely, ha!  I think I'll take the dremmel to this to clean up a bit, rework some lines and add some more color. I'm actually fond of skeletons,  (yeah, I'm married to a declared Deadhead and I absolutely love Halloween) but they do represent our end.

Ummmm, got distracted and forgot to set timer. whoops. Was right there and next thing I knew, it was too late! Too rough to save.

Did another with front and into the mini kiln. These are 2 1/2 x 4.

I liked where this one was going and the 3/4 angle. Used the straw to scoop the black into place.

Day 13 fired, Some of the black that looked darker faded out. Hard to get the soft interior medium shades. Good challenge, fun to see most of us trying the same exact subject. I did go with a larger tile than I've been using, 5 1/4 x 5 1/4.

Day 12-  I liked the handle, didn't notice it was a bit lopsided until it was fired.

Day 12, Draw something we use everyday. Well, even on coffee days, this is on my counter. Powder on.

Day 11 was supposed to be a vegi.... so here it is.

Day 11, another day of fruit, still not into it.

 Day 10 another day of fruit, tried a cantalope, just not into it.

 Day 9, today's assignment was to draw a piece of fruit. Not easy with powders! Back in the jar it went!

I started the new year with a 30 glass challenge. It seems most of the artists have a blog. I've used my business Facebook sort of like a blog, so this is a new venue for me.
I guess I'll start by posting the little sketches done in glass powders for this art challenge!

First day. Jan 1. I cut 2.5 x 4" tiles to see what I could do in a small space. The participants were allowed only one tool, our fingers. The powders are from Bullseye. Royal blue, Fushia, Neo lavendar and Adventurine green.

Day 2. Assignment was to render a tree. Added a new tool, a business card. Powders are Woodland brown, Adventurine green, Royal blue, and Kelly green.

Day 3 Thought I'd try more of a challenge with a sunset over Catalina and the pier. Colors were way darker than intended. I miss my regular tools, still just fingers and a card. Still working on the little tile, not much space to work!

Day 4 Make 5 tiles and spend only 5 minutes on each one. Fun to work so quickly.  We were supposed to not get attached to each sketch and dump the powder. Can't really do that with mixing the color and I liked them, so into the little kiln they went.

Day 5, same assignment, same tools, only now we know we can also use a sifter. I cut a hole in the card to use as a stencil for the water. Sifter the tale over my hand. 5 sketeches, dumped one, but liked the others enough to fire.

Day 6 Same tools, same assignment. Have always had an infinity to lizards and frogs. Decided to work only in black powder today and not even think about keeping and firing.

Time was going by really fast today. Found it harder to pull out powder to get details.

Barely made it past a rough silhouette before that timer went off, toes were tricky!

Missed my colors today!

This was my best one today. When I was a kid, there was a fishing hole down the street I'd go to on summer Saturdays. My favorite thing to do was to catch (and release most often) polywogs. Some came home to live in our pond, including a bullfrog we had for years.

 Day 7, adding a tool of choice today (though a paintbrush was forbidden. Decided on a pencil figuring the pointy end and the eraser end would be handy, they were. Found myself working too fast after the 5 minute limit exercising of the past few days. And not wiping away areas that were going down right.

 Went in with the eraser head on the orange after the photo of the pre fired powder, was thicker than I thought it was. Darker than I wanted. I need to find my white to work the foam. I have a whole lot of powders... I need to sort them out and shelve them to find what I need.

Thought I'd poured this powder off the glass yesterday. He was waiting for me to fire him up and I'm glad I did. Still kinda like him, that's my frog bias coming through.

 Day 8, using hand as a stencil with the sifter to put the powdered glass on the sheet. I doubled my glass size today to 5 x 4, the little tile was just too small!

 Quickest way to "draw" is to get right in with a finger and outline the shape.

 My extra tool today was a sharpened straw. I thought I'd use it to puff the powder for shading, but the glass quicker absorbed the moisture in my breathe and didn't want to move.

 The straw served well as a scoop and to get into tight corners.

Fired I see some lines that went astray, but overall, I like it!