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These are my pages in a traveling journal that started it's "Journey" in Bexleyheath Kent, UK, and went to Edmonton, Alberta Canada, then came to me in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma and is on it's way to Redwood City, California. A journal is a great way to get a glimpse of 10 days in someones life. It is very interesting and entreating. Of course I always think everybody Else's entries are more interesting than mine. But, it is great fun and I get to use all kinds of different art techniques and glazes and stuff like that. I keep a few personal journals of my own also. They are kinda test grounds for the things I like to try in the traveling journals. In this particular journal, each participant starts their own journal and then sends it to the next person on the list. So eventually you get your journal back with everybody having done some pages. They keep the journal for 15 days and work in it for 10 of those 15 days. I think I need to relax a little and just write what I am doing each day. When I read other people's journals, the ones I like the best, seem to be just writing ordinary things and it is very interesting. 
Here are somemore of the great Cabinet Cards and Post Cards that I found in the Antique Store in Jacksonville, Texas. I hope you can use them in your art work. I have already used a few of them myself. Feel free to download and enjoy.
This is the art work of Baron Farha. Baron is one of my former students. He lives and paints in Dallas, Texas. It is very exciting for me as an art teacher to see some of my former students making a living as professional artist. It is very rewarding and flattering that they stay in touch with me, when you have a student for 6 or 7 years, you become very attached to them. Baron is a very talented young man and I am proud to still be involved in his life and his art. You can find a link to his web page, which contains a lot more of his work, in the Partners in Art column on the left side of this page. You should check him out....his work is terrific.
This is the work of one of my former students Jeremy Thomas. He is a metal sculptor and art instructor at the famed Santa Fe School of Art. These sculptures are made from metal that is welded together and then expanded while still pliable. This piece is one of his many gallery pieces. If you want to see more of his work you can Google his name and it will take you to other galleries where he sells his work. He is really an awesome young man, father and teacher. I am very proud to have been a part of his life.
Here are some more freebies for you to use in your art work. These were in the batch of antique post cards that I found in Jacksonville, Texas. Hope you enjoy.......
Nico has updated his Website and created a new Blog. You can check them out by clicking on his name in the left hand column. Nico is coming to the US for an Art Conference and Workshop. The Conference will be held at Rose State College on March 1, 2008. It will be an all day program with Nico doing demonstrations in the morning and some hands on work in the afternoon. This is a rare opportunity to meet Nico in person, he has never been to the US before and he will be showing his award wining film clips and his Speed-Painting techniques with tutorials He will be sharing all kinds of tips for drawing portraits on the computer using a pad and Photoshop. If you would be interested in attending please email me at leastart@hotmail.com for registration forms. The BIT Department of Rose State College is very excited to be able to bring this very talented young man from Cordoba, Argentina to Oklahoma. The animation program at Rose State is a fast growing degree plan, and this workshop is just one of the the perks offered in the program. Be sure and email me it you are interested, seating is limited and it is filling up fast.You can find one of Nico's many YouTube Videos in the older post on this blog. Look in the Older Post on the left side column.
Here is one of my fish drawings. This piece is Prisma pencil. I use all kinds of fish as models, fresh water and salt water, I choose them by color. This particular drawing was started in one of my art classes as a demonstration. The class had been working on perspective and I used the fish as an example of ways to place objects on the paper and give the appearance of 3-D. By making some of the fish larger and some smaller it gives perspective to the drawing. The pic below is a close up of the same drawing. The drawing was done on blue 90 lb. Strathmore pastel drawing paper and it is pretty big, 25" X 32".
This is a pen and ink and gouache' watercolor picture of some iris....Iris are my favorite flower, for one thing iris bloom in more colors than any other flower. Plus my grand mother was the president of the State Iris Society in 1948, I can remember her buying an Iris bulb for $5 in 1945 and I thought my grand dad was going to have a heart attack. $5 was a lot of money in 1945. But my grand mother raised chickens and she sold the eggs and saved the money to buy the Iris bulb. The Iris she bought was pink, so that is why this Iris pic is pink.....plus it was hers and my favorite color.
This is a large (8" X 24") porcelain clay wall hanging. I took a porcelain clay workshop where we rolled out slabs and then pressed shapes into the clay. They were fired with a process where when the clay is so hot it turns white, salt is thrown into the kiln and the salt burns into the porcelain making the beautiful brown colors you see here. I did some other pieces the same day, and I add fibers coming out of the holes. I sold them and forgot to take pics of them. But I made enough money to pay for the workshop and the supplies.....can't beat a deal like that and it was a fun and educational experience.
This is a multi media drawing using Prisma Pencils and markers. Like several of my drawings this began as a demonstration piece for my drawing class. I always like to work right along with my students, so I usually give a short lecture on how-to and then do a demonstration. The kids seem to like that. I never try to teach something to my students that I wouldn't do my self. This piece was just a drawing from my imagination. It almost was like a "doodle" gone wild. lol It is fairly large 24" X 36" unframed.
This is a Tiger Fish done in pen and ink and then water colored. The "dots" in the back ground are my finger prints. The fish was drawn in pencil and then masked off, the wet on wet back ground was done and the mask removed, I then drew the details of the fish with pen and ink and water colored the fish using gouache' (opaque) watercolors. I use gouache' a lot. I like the fluidness (is that a word?) of the paint, because it has all of the benefits of watercolor yet it is opaque. I'm not sure that all makes sense but I do love gouache' It is 20" X 26" matted and framed.
When we remodeled the house, we needed something that went with our color scheme, Red, Black, Grey and Silver, so I made this collage to hang over the fireplace. It has hand made papers, mirrors and metal. It is 20" X 31" matted and framed.
This is a wood cut print. Every color is a different wood cut and it represents a pass through the press. This particular piece was done in a workshop at the Fall Adult Arts Institute at Quartz Mountain in Lone Wolf, Oklahoma. The sketches were done during an evening performance of a string quartet. We did 1 minute thumb nail sketches and then we took these back to the studio the next morning and did the drawings on the wood plates, then we carved the plates and inked them up and printed them on mulberry paper. Sometimes a print can be very intricate and there might be 100 passes through the press. It is pretty involved but the end result is worth it. It is 20" X 20" matted and framed
This piece is called "Family Shield" it is "wet" felted, the light and dark felt are the natural wool, the colored parts are wool that I dyed especially for this piece. It took me over a week to work out the thumb nail sketches and then a couple more days to make a drawing that was the actual size of the work. 19" wide X 31" long. The round part in the center represents the "Shield" the other colors that appear to hang down from the shield represent feathers. The fringe at the bottom is wool yarn dyed to match the wool. Once the felting was complete I added the yarn fringe and the embellishments of real feathers, beading and embroidery. I don't mean to turn this into a tutorial but I will give a little info about the wet felting process. Once the wool is dyed and placed on top of the drawing to make sure it is the way you want it, then the drawing is removed (very carefully) and the piece is place on a piece of synthetic fabric (I like to use drapery lining) another piece of the same fabric is placed on top and the whole thing is safety pinned together. I used the bathtub to do large pieces. Then you put some liquid soap on the whole thing, run the water until it is pretty hot, but not to hot to burn you of course. Wool has little fiber barbs and as you wet it they relax and catch on each other. The soap is just to make every thing slick so you can rub your hands over the entire area. The rubbing "squishes" the little barbs together and the heat of the water "sets" them. Of course you understand that this is a very simplified explanation of the process and if you are going to try felting you should get a couple of good books to go by, the reason I say a couple of books is because every felter has a little bite different method. I have felted some pieces with my friend Pam Huskey-Lolly that are 5 feet by 8 feet. So you can make 'em BIG or you can make 'em small. Either way it is a very rewarding craft, and it is also very practical when you make slippers and scarves and mittens. Felt is one of the oldest fabrics in the world. In Biblical times the sheep herders would put pieces of wool in their shoes for warmth and as they walked the wool became felt. Don't you always wonder how things got started? I Do.
This is a felted Book Bag. The pieces of very colorful felt were felted first and then cut out in shapes and applied with embroidery stitches. The embellishments are bead and embroidery using all kinds of fiber and embroidery threads. This book bag is 17"wide X 26"long. I like to put the size because it is really hard to tell how big it is in a picture.
These are a couple of Angel pictures I did, they are both mixed media, prisma pencil, watercolor (gouache') and pen and ink. The Angel Baby is a piece I did using a couple of pictures of my grand daughter when she was a baby. Doesn't every grand mother think her grand babies are Angels? This drawing is 13" X 13".
This Angel playing the harp in the Wisteria is 24" X 36" matted and framed.
Finally got the cover done for the infamous "Bird Book", some time when you create something that is very special to you and a big part of your heart, it is difficult to finish it. It's like if you never finish it, then you won't have to let it go. I took it to Texas, because I was (as you know) going to give it to my sister-in-law, but I just need to live with it for a while, and she was so understand about it. I did give her my "Red, White & Blue Bird House with the Big Red Heart", she loved it so much she didn't mind that I couldn't part with the Bird Book. I will live with it for a while and then maybe I will give it to her for her birthday. It is always nice for people that cherish you work, to own it.
These are some post cards with baby pictures that I found in an Antique Shop in Jacksonville, Texas. They are so precious and I thought I would just scan them and share them with everyone. There were about 15 postcards in a zip sandwich bag, and everything in a big basket was 50% off. I also found the ICE COUPON book in the same basket. There was no date on the book, but I can remember when I was 4 years old (1945) that the ice man delivered ice to our house and my mother gave him a coupon of some sort for the ice. I wonder if it could be the same kind as she used, we lived in Altus, Oklahoma in a house my Grand Father built (behind the house that my grand parents lived in), for my mother, brother and me to live in while my Dad was gone to War. My Dad was in the Navy.Feel free to copy these images to use in your art work, I hope you enjoy them. I will be posting some more of the pictures later so check back next week and see what else I found.
Haven't had much time for making Art or posting to my blog in over a week, just too much family Christmas and New Year Celebrating going on. But we are back home now and I am getting back on task. Still have a lot of work to do in getting Nico DaMittia from Argentina to Oklahoma for his workshop on March 1st, but I have set aside some "My Art Time" before school starts back up. Can't wait to work on my Angel AB for my RR group. It is coming along and will post some pics in the next couple of days. Also am working on the Experimental Tag Book for the Artist Circle group. I am looking forward to getting the next traveling Journal from Serendipity, they are so much fun, it is a real treat to read all of the entries from the other journalers (is that a word?). Lots to do, so signing off for today. Be back shortly with new Art Picks..................Linda
Susan helped Ella unwrap one of her "many" gifts, but I think she loved the horses that Susan gave her the best. A great and blessed time was had by each and everyone of us.
Susan, Chelsea and Bryan. Susan and Chelsea have a lot to talk about since Susan got her Masters in Coral Conducting at Hardin Simmons where Chelsea is studying Vocal Music.
These are my pages in a traveling journal that started it's "Journey" in Bexleyheath Kent, UK, and went to Edmonton, Alberta Canada, then came to me in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma and is on it's way to Redwood City, California. A journal is a great way to get a glimpse of 10 days in someones life. It is very interesting and entreating. Of course I always think everybody Else's entries are more interesting than mine. But, it is great fun and I get to use all kinds of different art techniques and glazes and stuff like that. I keep a few personal journals of my own also. They are kinda test grounds for the things I like to try in the traveling journals. In this particular journal, each participant starts their own journal and then sends it to the next person on the list. So eventually you get your journal back with everybody having done some pages. They keep the journal for 15 days and work in it for 10 of those 15 days. I think I need to relax a little and just write what I am doing each day. When I read other people's journals, the ones I like the best, seem to be just writing ordinary things and it is very interesting. 
