My Christmas Mandala, drawn a couple years ago. 
One event at the Old Town Newhall Street Fair a few weeks ago allowed kids to paint posters. I snapped a photo of the paint pots, using my crummy phone camera. Sometimes it takes more interesting pictures than my good camera.
A recent trend I've seen is to use the cheapest, worst cameras possible to photograph and post grainy, distorted photos. It's like effortless abstract art!
<<these are some of the bloggers I've listed below!
Remember being afraid you'd be the last kid picked for the school team? Well, I've been feeling that way for months because I haven't been tagged to participate in this cyber game. It's a little "social networking game" among blog-owners. I know I shouldn't care when I was tagged, but -- but -- well, you know how that goes. I wanted to be one of the first.
So here are the rules, followed by my list of seven fascinating, titillating, and illuminating facts about myself, and believe me all you Exceedingly Popular Already-Tagged Bloggers out there, y'all be sorry it took you soooooo long to tag me! heehee
I've been tagged by Phyllis M. of "Personal Treasures," a blog about creativity and those who create, at http://personaltreasures.blogspot.com/. Playing tag is a social networking game and a fun way to explore new blogs. The rules of the game are simple:
About me:
1. I have five brothers and no sisters.
2. My best friend died on the school playground when we were nine (she fell and hit her head)and I still have an orchid from her casket that her mother gave me.
3. I think I have a touch of ESP -- often people come to my mind seconds before the phone rings when they're calling me. Yea, seriously. ("We're All One....")Dennis Walker Graphics - http://denniswalkergraphics.com/ - Dennis builds websites such as online family photo albums, and is a graphic artist and designer.
Peacay at BibliOdyssey - http://www.bibliodyssey.com/ - Books~~Illustrations~~Science~ ~History~~Visual Materia Obscura~~Eclectic Bookart. Check it out - I love diving deep into this site!
Belinda Del Pesco - http://belindadelpesco.blogspot.com/ - fine (in more ways than one) watercolor artist.
Nancy Eckels - http://nancyeckels.blogspot.com/ - artist of larger abstract oil paintings, bright and beautiful.
Laura Wambsgans - http://laurawambsgans.blogspot.com/ - daily oil paintings, mostly landscapes of Southern California, that will blow you away.
I find it only a little bit troubling that my best Halloween images to post are those from my Life Drawing class. Oh well....
This is a study of a head with the skin unfortunately peeled back to expose the skull in certain places.
Drawn in charcoal and graphite.
In honor of Halloween, I'm posting my homework from this week. It's the right hand as seen from a dog's point of view. The thumb is on the left; the large four bones are in the palm of the hand.
A while back I started taking a Figure Drawing class (aka Life Drawing) to help improve my drawing skills. It's so much fun! Mostly we use charcoal on large paper pads (18x24"), but also graphite, ink & brush, and other tools. It really loosens up the hand and arm to draw large.
Stabilo Carb-Othello pencils (brown, navy, white) on Strathmore Artists' Papers Charcoal Sheets (25" x 19") in Velvet Gray.
This is a graphite drawing of Verus Farnsworth, my husband's grandmother, in a promotional photograph for an upcoming show. Her family were actors, musicians and entertainers, traveling from theatre or tent to the next nearly a century ago. 
Watching the evening news tonight, I got the urge to sketch the host Brian Williams with my new conte pencils -- in three Old Masters colors, plus the tan color of the paper. Brian has such an interesting face, very fun to sketch. While he and some members of the press appear to be interpreting Obama's lipsticked-pig comment in line with their political affiliations (biz as usual), I don't care what Obama subjectively meant. I think he should have chosen a different metaphor so people wouldn't have to decide whether it was a reference to Sarah Palin because of her lipstick riddle or a reference to change, as he now says. Sarah Palin was an obvious and natural connection to make and importantly, a mean-spirited reference, and he should have seen that. He should have seen that.
12" x 9", Conte crayons on toned paper, in process
Peacock Grouper, 4x6", pen and ink
I stippled a bunch of fish eight years ago. That was the first time I tried to make art seriously as an adult. Dot by tiny freaking dot. I don't stipple anymore. I guess you could say I'm an ex-stippler.
I sure do appreciate a well-stippled fish, though.
(In the interest of total disclosure, the tan background of this image isn't stippled.)
Starting in 1900 in Paris, entrances to subway stations were designed in art nouveau style by Hector Guimardas part of the Fulgence Bienvenüe project. Eighty-six of his entrances are still in existence and I think they're beautiful.
I made this collograph using matboard and glue, constructing all of the lines from glue, and after they dried, rolling and daubbing ink on the plate and printing it on an etching press.
I've posted process photos, showing the steps I took to make this, on my Flickr page.
Below are two photographs showing other subway entrances that were part of the project. For more information, see Wikipedia.
Photo attributions:
Left: Tom Fletcher
Right: Michael Reeve
Fighting a cold, I took to the couch and laptop, and had 1950's fun with digital art. Usually I take photographs and artistically alter them in Photoshop Elements. But this one involved no photographs, just Photoshop. I just made shapes and filled them in, here and there, with subtle colors of pale yellow, gold and dark gray.
Mod, 6 x 8, digital image
Gale's Restaurant in Pasadena held the event which was also sponsored by Walt Disney Engineering, Grey Goose, and other well-known eleomosynary organizations (great word, eleomosynary!!!). I had never been to Gale's but must say the food (Italian) was fantastic! The place was packed with people. 
"Testing the Water," graphite, 8x6"
I've been eyeing this old 1620's Dutch Delft tile image for a long time and finally used it for a linocut carving, which I printed on an etching press and then painted with Winsor & Newton watercolors added watercolors in shades of blue, gold, and green. 
May, 4" x 3", linocut
I loved the 1950s look of the bars on these windows and thought they deserved a 1950s color palette, so I added one but could not stop playing with it. I made dozens of different color combinations. Here are a couple more:
If I tried to paint in the Gustav Klimt style, circa 1900, this is what my attempt would look like. 
After weeks studying and practicing the style of 1920's greeting card art (colorful, flowerly, idyllic scenery, and flat -- no dimension or shading), I've concocted and painted an entire scene from my own little brain.
Here is the first draft, without a background. I found I had limited my choices for a background color or pattern by drawing in the house and the line of the hill behind the couple. Ideas I had will no longer work for a background, unless I paint over the current one. Lesson learned! Plan first, paint second!
For the background, I wanted something different -- a geometric or graphic patterned background (something like the side panels), so the scene didn't look too realistic. I didn't want green grass and a blue sky. But guess what I did? Painted the grass green and the sky blue.
Well, that didn't look right at all. The green and blue were so mid-range that the man and woman disappeared. So I darkened the blue and green. Better, but now it looks like nighttime! Nighttime, with a parasol. Maybe she doesn't want to get a moon-burn. 
But it's not too late, and I have a plan. I know some people won't like my plan, but I'm going back to the original geometric pattern idea. I'll post the final result later. First I need to find some ink or paint that will sit on top of the acrylic paint background.
Ta ta! (Or as Jody says, TTFN -- ta ta for now.)
Have you heard of a Zentangle? Apparently it's a new aid to doodling, a how-to-doodle primer. They even sell kits for $49 to teach you how to doodle the Zentangle way -- apparently in repetitive patterns, section by section.
My doodle on the left isn't a Zentangle, though it may look like one. I'm not sure how I feel about the concept of doodle instruction. It conjures up paint-by-numbers kits and Bob Ross videos, only not as ... necessary. Aren't doodles supposed to be "mindless" and "aimless"?
But I think I'm being narrow-minded about it. If you google the word Zentangle, the first few hits are from quite zealous Zentanglers. Most feel great about drawing something so well-formed and want to share the art and the experience. 
One wrote, "I have been calling what I do 'doodles' and kind of felt guilty about not doing any 'real' art. Then HOLY COW - I realized I was Zentangling. . . . " Geez. That reminds me of my mandala drawings (I'll paste one here). Before I had ever heard of mandalas, I had drawn many dozens of them and honestly thought I had invented the art form. Ha! However, I didn't feel guilty about it as a time-waster. Doodling and drawing repetitive patterns is a well-established meditative, relaxing experience. So I say, "Go Zentanglers!"
How I've missed DRAWING! I've been so crafty lately instead. That's right -- caa-rafty.
I'm working on my collage education. Not college. Collage.
Here are a couple of my recent collage efforts. 
"Beach Joan Crawford," collage
8" x 11"
Vegetarian, linocut print and mixed media collage,
6-1/8" x 6-1/8";
both for sale here
on PlanetJanet's Etsy store (all handmade art and goods), and all profits go to the Alzheimer's Association.
Next I'll be collaging with my vintage postcard collection.
I make a lot of art (I see some of you smiling in that knowing way). The house and the husband are showing signs of being overwhelmed. You who know me are aware of my months-long struggle with how to continue to make art without have it taking up space. I have found this to be against the natural laws of physics. So I've decided to start selling online and to donate 100% of the profits to the Alzheimer's Association. This will permit me to continue to produce artwork, to sell without the self-conscious feeling of self-promotion, and to help (little by little) with research and treatment of Alzheimer's Disease.
As if I was receiving approval from God above, within 24 hours of posting my first item for sale, I received an email from a writer who mentioned me in an article she wrote (here's an edited version):
Bookplates have been used to identify the owner of books since the medieval times. Actually, I just made that up. But according to Wikipedia, they were used as early as the 14th century.
Three of the five I've posted today are made with linocuts -- carved linoleum -- and the other two are pen and ink drawings. I used a magnifying glass for all of them. The red-orange tulip has the owner's initials "JC" and the rest are ready for them.
I recently bought a 
1920's book on the subject entitled, "Nothing, or the Bookplate," by Edward Gordon Craig, in which he actually "tips in" or glues 25 original bookplates into the book! They're spectacular.
Anyway, the point is that he believes the size of a bookplate should rarely exceed 1-1/2" square. That's barely postage stamp size! Being a fan of miniatures, I'm going with his recommendation. 
Butterfly, Ladybug, and Tulip are linocut prints; and Letter P and Letter B are pen and ink drawings.
