Heroes

I carved this in the fall in honor of a friend going through chemo right now.  I was reminded of a lyric in the song Nothing More by The Alternate Routes: "Heroes don't look like they used to, they look like you do."  This was version one:

Here's version two:

Can you see what changed in the carving?

DLP #25

June Theme: Travel Journaling
June 20
Art Challenge: Hometown Inspiration
Journal Prompt:  There is no place like home

I feel like I'm doing more inner traveling with the June prompts than documenting any actual trips.  It's all good.  

I had no idea where I was going with this page and it turned out much different than expected.  This was a good exercise in trusting because I pretty much hated this page until the very last step (putting on the smeary, black dots).

I had all kinds of fun making marks with paint: lids, bubble wrap, stencils, the end of a piece of paper.

Happy Year of the Sheep- 2015

Here's my carving for last year's Lunar New Year.  I designed it from a photo of a sheep we took in New Zealand.  The background is a Gelli plate monoprint.  I masked a rectangle in which to print the sheep.

 A little bit closer:

I'd like to print this again with printing ink instead of an ink pad to get better coverage with the sheep.

Happy Year of the Horse--2014

After posting the Year of the Monkey carving that I did, I realized that I haven't posted any "Year of" stamps since 2013!  So here was my contribution for 2014.

Sorry about the crummy lighting in the photo.  I started off trying to do make some zentangles but wasn't really enjoying that and then I remembered some symbols I'd carved for another swap that were ancient symbols of fertility and rebirth from Goddess oriented societies.  I decided to incorporate those inside the horse.  It felt appropriate for a new year carving.

DLP #24

June Theme: Travel Journaling
June 13
Art Challenge: Recording Memories
Journal Prompt:  Taking the Road Less Traveled

Facing the fear

Last week, the amazing women in my women's group helped me realize how much making art means to me.  My thinking has shifted from viewing it as a hobby to viewing it as part of me.  So I decided to start taking this art thing more seriously.  The trouble is that my mind is screaming out criticisms and unhelpful comments.  So I acknowledged that in this journal piece.

Collaborative Art Journal

My friend and I are doing a collaborative art journal which I think is going to be lots of fun and great bonding as well.  She picked the first prompt "What am I good at?"  I found this to be very difficult to answer.  As soon as I came up with something, my mind would tell me how I wasn't really good at that thing.  Finally I decided to add self-criticism as something I'm good at.  Part of my practice right now is accepting all of my traits-- those I label as good and those I label as bad.  This was fun to make after I got to that point.

I wrote what I was good at around the edges of the petals.

DLP 23

Yes, although we are into the second month of 2016, I've decided to keep plodding through the 2015 Documented Life Project. It's good practice for me in terms of both technique and content.  So,without further ado:

June Theme: Travel Journaling
June 6
Art Challenge: Illustrative Art Journaling
Journal Prompt:  Take Me Away

Happy Year of the Monkey!

Here's the carving I did for the Lunar New Year swap this year.  2016 is the year of the red fire monkey.  My monkey is based on a shadow puppet from Bali.

I used Speedball printing ink which was much slower than ink pads but gave better coverage.  It took a while to figure out the consistency of the paint and how much to put on.  I kept over inking.  Finally I started getting layers of ink thin enough to pick up details like the small lines in the eyes.