Mixed media fun

So, I went to the workshop I talked about last night. Initially, I was nervous since clearly I had misunderstood the instruction about collage (I was supposed to bring collage materials, not a collage). However, it turned out all right. Teesha had plenty of collage materials for us to work with and I was forced to be a bit more creative in terms of creating a journal around fish.

We first prepped our books by painting watercolor paper with acrylic paints. Next, we bound them into a small journal. After that it was collaging time - first the borders of some of the pages (there wasn't enough time to do the entire book). Next, we worked on our content for the pages - the collages of our various beasts. Then came time for pen work, which meant we added color and marks to the collage primarily with pens. Finally, we got to the cover and how to do the collage and paint it.

Mine's nowhere near finished but I finished one two-page spread. I think it turned out pretty nice:

I guess I was still thinking about Moby Dick and that eye of his, though my whale isn't white. All in all, it was a lot of fun and really freeing to just start making marks without worrying too much about how it turned out. That's one of the joys of the "beginner's mind" - fearlessness and pleasure at just having created something you didn't know you could.

All hands on deck

That phrase really has nothing to do with my life. I just happened to be watching Moby Dick last night (pt. 2 is this evening - I'm sooo excited - though I promise I will, eventually, finish reading the entire book) and that came to mind as a good title for this posting. I recently purchased a piece of artwork from a blogger I follow named Seth Apter. The piece is called Fides.

I love the hand position in the piece - it's originally from a religious statue. I feel as though I'm perpetually being blessed.

I had originally planned to place it in a more quirky spot beside Godzilla and a fake orange, but it didn't seem to go. Instead it's beside a pine needle Tarahumara basket, a miniature painting by a Georgian (think Russia, not peach) artist, a enameled Russian box and an Acoma ceramic piece. I think this is a better location.

This piece is a nice companion piece to a porcelain hand/plate that my husband gave me. It came from the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Culver City, CA. The admonition on the plate is "Fairly Safely Venture."

Fides also reminded my husband of a monument we saw in Prague. It commemorates a student protest that occurred on November 17, 1989 during the Velvet Revolution.

A round of applause for the hand in art. Sorry...I had to say it.