love bird

love bird. heh.


I made Valentines, with which I am very pleased. 
Monsters are my thing, apparently!


I'm hoping that I've given enough time for the mailman (postal worker? mail person? senior officer of deliveries?) to deliver all of my post cards. I apologize if this ruins your surprise. However, yours should be in color.

I also made valentines for my book club. Behold the Valentine Sasquatch!

She's based on a character in a book we're doing for book club, and she also comes valentine-free.
































I also made my mom and dad a Happy Anniversary card!
































And, I made a piggie.

The end result of this is two-fold: I'm sort of addicted to making cards and postcards, and my lovely mom has commissioned a set of Easter cards for her to use this year. I'm working on ideas now!


Also, I need to find a program that makes better watermarks. If you have brilliant suggestions, I'd like to see them!

walrus bird

The gist is that someone said they would hate to be a walrus, because of being monstrously fat and only having two tiny flippers for propulsion. Someone else noted that walruses are tremendously graceful in the water. Or, in space.


Hence:

Behold the graceful space walrus!

thirty-second bird

Create instructions that others can use to make something and then have someone try it.


I pondered a good bit about what sorts of instructions I could make. Activities at which I excel: making messes, making excuses, being busy. I thought about other crafts I've already made, but I've included instructions for a lot of those, and I didn't want to repeat myself. Because, that sort of feels like cheating. If I'm going to be lazy/excuse-y, I want to do it honestly.


After much pondering about what I'm good at, as well as some asking Chris for ideas ("Write instructions on how to run a library section." "That's a very long, involved, and slightly wibbly-wobbly process."), I settled on something very dear to my heart: relationships.


I want to challenge you all to try this (at your own risk).

And now you know...

twenty-ninth bird

Work with pens. Use them as your inspiration/medium today.


Ok!

twenty-sixth bird

Dreamland. Use a recent dream as inspiration for what you do today.


The last dream I had that I can remember at all involved a little old man running around my apartment bending my blinds. I don't know why he was doing this. 

Here he is, peering outside.

And here is a close-up of the window.

twenty-fifth bird

Make something portable (or that seems portable) that normally isn't.


I did a lot of pondering with this one. Not really liking anything that came to mind, I settled.


I call it "Bottled Water."

twenty-second bird

It's not easy being green. Work only with green-colored materials today. Try working on a green surface for a real challenge.

I'm guessing the author chose green for the song. Here is the song for you:

Here is proof that I used all greenish materials, other that white glue. Which really doesn't count (although, my completist self considered dyeing the glue green. I resisted the temptation.)



Here is the finished product. It sort of looks like a bad Saint Patrick's Day picture.

nineteenth bird

Still no clay, but I'm looking at it and thinking about it--which actually does mean something.


Create a bridge. Connect two things in a creative way. It could be small enough for an amoeba or big enough for an elephant to cross it.


Well, rather than make a bridge, I decided to think about connections. After a lot of hemming and hawing, I remembered that music connects people. Rather than torture anyone with music that I made myself, I thought I would "draw" two different people connected by music.


I'm playing with mediums and styles. Crayon + detail = not so good. It looked (slightly) better before I colored it, but I didn't think to document it half way through. In any case, here you go.
 
I'll let you fill in which music you think they're listening to. Also, drawing seated people is hard.

tenth bird

Do you see it?


Make something that camouflages with something else.

The perfection of art is to conceal art.
--Quintilian

incidental bird

For ninth bird I drew using my left hand. What was funny about this experience was not only how strangely it turned out, but also that my brain couldn't really handle it. I would become absorbed in my drawing, and my brain would get frustrated with my left hand's inability to work quickly and neatly. Several times, my right hand snatched the pencil away from my left hand (but don't worry, my right hand never actually put pencil to paper).

To appease my brain and release a little of the agitated tension that my right hand acquired from "watching" my left hand fumble about, I drew an additional picture.

Chris: "Why don't  your people ever have faces?"

ninth bird

This project was much less time consuming than my previous projects and had the charm of being utterly ridiculous and stress-relieving. 


Work on the other hand. Pick a medium you're comfortable with, then work with your nondominant hand--if you usually favor your right hand then only use your left and vice-versa.


Ok, we won't talk about the structure of that sentence.
I decided to draw because I didn't want to cover myself in paint or glue or accidentally adhere something to something else. See first bird. 

Yes, I drew this completely left-handed.

Proof!

second bird

Use your favorite animal as inspiration.