Quiet Mother's Day

I like my Mother's Day nice and quiet. I like to reflect on my own mom's life I guess and since she's been gone for almost 19 years now (has it really been that long??), I don't like a big fuss. It took my family a while to really get that but I think they do now and that's just fine. I'm a mom EVERY day. I don't need one special day a year to fuss over it.

I was too lazy today to even sketch much. I did get a couple more faces sketched though. They are unfinished but dammit I"m counting them for my 29 Faces! I'm hoping this week gets me back on track working a little more on my projects than I was able to this week. I also have one more from yesterday... a practice sketch for my Portraits 123 class.

I see some issues that I need to work out a little better in both of these sketches and I will work on that tomorrow. I would like to turn what I can into finished projects or include them in my art journal when I fix them. But anyway... here's numbers 11, 12, and 13.

Face #10

My son is out with friends this morning so I had some time to eek out a quick face sketch which will be my number 10 face for the 29 Faces challenge. I used another magazine photo as a reference for this one. I'm finding that quite fun. I may play around with some shading for it later when I have some time but for now it's at least a face I can count.

Prom preparations will commence real soon and I will post some pictures of the boy in his crazy outfit. Grand March should be interesting!

Update:

I decided to go ahead and do a little shading right now while I still had a little time. Boys sure are different than girls when it comes to prom! With the girls it was an all day project getting ready to go. My son isn't even home and isn't coming home until it's time to get ready and get out the door for pictures. After five of them... I think I'm finally glad that this will be the last one. This mom is tired! 

A little further...

I've taken my Drew Barrymore sketch a little further. I fixed the right side of her face that looked a little wonky and I fixed the right side of her head that looked like she had a big ol' tumor growing there. We haven't gone that far in the class yet but I went ahead and did some shading on the face according to the photograph. I don't know that my girl really looks much like Drew Barrymore but I'm not hating it as a drawing. Her hair leaves a lot to be desired. I am looking forward to that part of the class so I can get something that looks better. I know I still have a lot of work to do to get better but I don't feel it's too shabby for never having drawn anything until January of this year. I did a little bit in junior high school but I hadn't since then... and never people.

Unfortunately I am not going to have a lot of time to play around with my drawings this weekend. Well not until Sunday anyway. My youngest son's senior prom is Saturday. We just picked up his tux. The boy has a sense of humor, that's for sure. The tux he is wearing did not come from a tuxedo shop. It came from a costume shop. It is the powder blue tux with tails and ruffles from the movie Dumb and Dumber. He's wearing his high top Converse sneakers with it and carrying a cane. It's actually the tux he wore a couple years ago in the high school's production of Grease. He was Eugene (the nerd) and he wore it in the big dance scene.So yeah... tomorrow will be interesting to say the least!

Sketching and class homework

I was finally able to sit down and concentrate on one of my new classes I'm taking with Rhomany. I didn't think I have been doing this long enough to be "set in my ways" but having a bit of trouble teaching this old dog new tricks. LOL  I have no doubt the system works. I can see that it works. I'm just having a little trouble applying it. I will persevere!

So I have a little homework to show and just a sketch I played with. Today is really the first time I've ever tried to draw a face from a photo. I quite like my second one. It's certainly got a LOT of room to improve but not too shabby for a first couple tries. I'm going to count these two faces as my numbers 8 and 9 for my 29 Faces challenge. I may have more to post by the end of the day as well. I'm in that mode now to keep going.

I don't think this first portrait is the greatest. It could definitely be better. The second is supposed to be Drew Barrymore. I'm much happier with her than I am with the first one even though she could use a lot of improvement as well.

I highly recommend Rhomany's Portrait 123 class though. Seriously... I've taken several classes online already. Some were pretty great and some... eh. This is the first time that I've really felt like I was learning something new though. She's VERY thorough with the content she provides in the classes and seems to be every bit as helpful when you feel stuck. I love fun and games as much as the next person, but her no nonsense approach to teaching makes me really feel like I am getting my money's worth. And this is just having gone through the first lesson only! :) Kudos to Rhomany! I can't recommend her classes enough.

Finally some play time!

I took my time getting myself motivated to do any sketching today. The coffee just wasn't doing its thing! But once I got started I have been on a roll. I put this charcoal sketch in a recycled art journal I recently started. It's not the greatest but it'll do. I played with some sprays and stencils in it last night before I got too tired and just decided to do the sketch there. I used a few pan pastels for some color. Two more to go and I will be caught up with 29 Faces again.

I am hoping to get started on Rhomany's Portrait's 123 class with my next faces. I joined this class earlier in the week and have had next to no time to even look at it, let alone work on any of it. I did watch some of the videos last night though and I have to say this is probably one of the better portrait classes I've seen yet. Very thorough and well organized! I am looking forward to diving in and getting started with the exercises.

I'm also signed up for Christy's Eclectic Altered Art Journals class coming up on the 15th of this month. I am chomping at the bit to start that one! I love making hand-bound journals but I also love the idea of recycling things I already have here or can get free or cheap somewhere. I was at the Goodwill store yesterday and bought several books to use as altered journals for this. I also got some sheet music there and an old dictionary to use the pages in my journals. In the meantime while I wait for the class to get started I've tried a few things on my own. I'm a little unsure of how successful I am with it at this point but it's all learning, right?

Yeah... this art journal crap has pretty much taken over my life. :)

So much for being ahead!

I haven't drawn a face since the weekend! I was two or three faces ahead in the beginning and now I'm two behind if I don't get any done today. But I WILL get them done. If not today then definitely tomorrow.

It's been a crazy busy last few days. My youngest is graduating in a few weeks and had his very last "May Fiesta" choir concert this weekend. It's a big deal in our town and they always hold a special little ceremony for the senior choir members. Yes, I cried. He's my baby!

Then Monday I had my sick grandson while his mommy and daddy worked. He was really clingy so he pretty much set up camp on my lap the whole afternoon. Needless to say this did not create much time for drawing/painting.Today I had to grocery shop and then my youngest daughter came to spend the afternoon with me... a kind of last minute thing. She is a summer RA in her college dorm so isn't coming home for the summer. It's just a couple blocks away though. But she has so many jobs and duties there that I hardly ever get to see her and she had a day off and wanted to use my craft supplies for a project. LOL  And now that same grandbaby is here for the evening while his parents are at a baseball game. So definitely not much time for art. I'm thinking tomorrow I am putting on comfy clothes and not leaving the house all day so I can play at my art desk.

One thing I did do while my daughter was here was work on a hand-bound journal that I'm making for her. Just regular paper, coptic bound for her to write in. I got all the signatures sewn together. I just need to put a hard cover on it for her and she wants me to decorate it somehow. Have I mentioned how much I LOVE to bind my own journals??

No art today

Not much in the way of art to post about today. Got up WAY too early for a Saturday and ended out laying back down for a while later in the morning and when I got back up I ended up watching Creative Adventures on Linqto for several hours, learning all kinds of new things until I just couldn't avoid it any longer and needed to put "real" clothes on instead of the sweats I schlepped around in all day.

My youngest... my little baby... is a senior this year and like all my older kids, has been very involved in the award winning high school choir here. Tonight is his very last May Fiesta... a BIG choir concert our high school has every year. It's always especially big for the seniors because they do a big senior slide show at the end for all the choir seniors. I've been going to these and going to these over the years and this will be my last one! And I'm not even going to try and pretend like I'm not gonna cry. It'll happen!

So it's a good thing that I got myself ahead on my 29 Faces this week because by tomorrow I will no longer be ahead anymore! Tomorrow there will be art time though come hell or high water!

Journal love

Looking at my journal this morning makes me so happy. I made this journal by hand and I absolutely love it. There are four signatures in it and there is only one signature left to fill up with artsy goodies. I have another one already put together and waiting to replace it once it's all filled. I will be looking for another cute charm to dangle off the binding like this, too. I honestly didn't think I would keep up with this but I am loving the whole art journaling process. :)

Six of 29 Faces

 I am up really late once again tonight. This time not necessarily by choice. Yes, I'm still dragging ass from the insomnia last night but tonight my son just HAD to go to the midnight Avengers movie with a bunch of his senior buddies. I'm sure I could go to sleep if I wanted but I still like to wait up and make sure he gets home ok. Yes... he's still going to school tomorrow. Morning should be fun!

 As much as I was dragging my feet about doing this 29 Faces challenge, I'm really having a ball with it. Most of these are going in my first handmade journal. It's going to be all filled up before I know it.

I had this partial background already started so I decided to put my next face on it. The colors were bright like my last spread so I wanted another bright and fun girl and I think I succeeded with that. LOL  She turned out a bit wacky but I love her. I put some texture in her hair with Golden glass bead medium. Love that stuff! It's hard to tell in the picture but her peace sign on her choker is purple glitter (Love my Stickles!). She's probably not quite completely finished yet because I think I want to do a little journaling on this page but I will save that part for morning.

#4 and #5 of 29 Faces

This spread will count for numbers 3 and 4 of my 29 Faces for May. It is also my Duality spread for Art Geeks. I haven't done much in the way of painting over a big goobered up background before. I used to always paint my face and then put a background in later or as I go. I really actually liked this process a lot. I love having bits of the background coming up through the girls.

We all have different aspects of ourselves. I'm sure most of us have even more than two but I combined pretty much the positives on one side and the negatives on the other. I try to be a pretty positive person and when I am positive I am quite happy. But on the other hand I can also find myself in this sad and lonely place because of certain circumstances. I try very hard to not let these things take over me. And this is precisely why I used bright and happy colors throughout... on both the positive and negative sides. Because I fight it! I fight it every day and will continue to do so til when hopefully I won't have to fight so much anymore.

Anyhoo... this is probably going to be it for the day. I'm BEAT from not sleeping so great last night and I did this big spread and some chores around the house AND went out to lunch with my youngest daughter and some of her friends before they went home (from college) for the summer. Long day already!