Vol. 5, No. 079, April 20, 2020

5079 - Sunny Sunday.

Yesterday I took advantage of the sun and the Easter flowers that were going bad, to make some art. I used Nature Print Paper and created some cool prints. The butterfly was my dad's suggestion.

Now I just have to decide what the next step will be.

Vol. 4, No. 309, November 5, 2019

4309 - Happy Holidays.

Tonight as I was watching The Little Mermaid Live, I pondered what to do for my project and I remembered the cork from the bottle of wine we had with dinner, still in the corkscrew. I used a paring knife to carve the cork into a heart shaped stamp. The only stamp pad I could locate was green, so I grabbed an envelope and started making green hearts. As I looked at it, I decided the shape was more leaf like than heart, so I flipped the envelope over and tried again. This time I made a small forest. The trees seemed lonely, so I used a Sharpie to create a stipples background. The finished scene looks very wintery, I think this is because I was subconsciously inspired by all of the Christmas commercials I was seeing on TV.

Vol. 4, No. 192, July 11, 2019

4192 - Lettuce Brainstorm.

I asked for ideas for today’s project, but didn’t get much help, so I decided to pull out my Nature Print Paper and make a print using fresh lettuce from the garden. I was hoping for an awesome picture that I could use to make a greeting card for the county fair, but I don’t think I was successful enough. It didn’t help that it was almost 9 pm when I headed outside and the sun was already down behind the tree line.

Vol. 4, No. 155, June 4, 2019

4155 - Lilacs.

Lying on my hammock soaking up the morning sun, I began to think about my project for the day. I was perusing Instagram when I saw the  #64MillionArtist’s weekly challenge. The challenge was to explore nature and make something with or inspired by what you see. The next post I saw was from Nature Print Paper. I brought home some Nature Print Paper from school so that I could keep exploring and develop a lesson plan for next year. I grabbed a piece of paper and headed back out side to my favorite plant in my backyard, the Lilacs. I picked a sprig from the bush and laid it on the paper on the ground. In less than a minute it was done and I headed back inside to develop the paper. It is pretty and I already have ideas for more. The best part of this project was smelling the sweet scent on lilac as I worked.

Vol. 4, No. 143, May 21, 2019

4143 - Fun In The Sun.

As I was digging through a desk drawer after school, I came across a pack of Nature Print Paper. Nature Print Paper is unique sun-sensitive paper that exposes in direct sunlight to create white on blue prints. I am trying to decide on a fun last day of art project for my Middle School students, so I decided to test out the print process. It was mostly cloudy outside, so I was unsure how well it would work. It worked just fine! It was also pretty windy, so my leaves blew a little, causing them to shift slightly. This made for uneven exposure. It was still as fun experiment. The picture on the left is pre-exposure and the right is the final print.

Vol. 4, No. 117, April 25, 2019

4117 - Pressed Paint.

This week, my middle schoolers started painting lessons. This quarter I decided to try pallet paper, which has a waxy side for mixing paint. Since the paint doesn’t absorb into the paper, the paint stays wet longer. Therefore at the end of class, students still had wet paint on their pallet. I told them to fold the papers before putting them in the trash to help keep things a little cleaner. Of course, after they folded it, they had to unfold it to see that pattern that was made from the paint. One student showed me her pallet and I thought it would be fun to press it on to a piece of paper I had sitting near by. The result was pretty cool, so as more students showed me their pallet, I made more impressions on the same paper. At the end of the hour, I used a brush to smear the paint filling every corner of the paper. The next day, I was prepping the paint bottles, and had a squirt some paint out on a piece of paper. I couldn’t just throw away this fresh paint, so I poured it around a bit and when I was mixed, I decided to smash it on another paper, making a print. The print was pretty neat, so I laid it out to dry. Today I saw the print laying on my work table, it looked like a bird with a little seed in its mouth. So I used a Sharpie to add some details. Then I remembered my impressed paper from the other day, still on the drying rack. It would make a perfect background, so I cut out the bird and put it on the background.

Vol. 4, No. 010, January 10, 2019

4010 - Cover Lover.

I couldn't picture a single album cover, so I took to Google. The first cover to catch my attention was a simple printed banana made by Andy Warhol for an album by The Velvet Underground & Nico. I was at school, so I pulled out my printing ink and used a Q-tip and a plastic baggie to make a mono printed banana on yellow paper. After 3 tries, I cut out my favorite and glued it to a piece of white paper. After I glued it down, I realized that I forgot to account for the mirrored image of printmaking, so my banana curves the opposite way of the one on the original album cover. That was okay, I just put the words on the opposite sides as well.

Vol. 4, No. 002, January 2, 2019

4002 - Thumbs Up.

If I had been thinking ahead, I would have carried around a piece of paper and made finger prints every time I got something new on my fingers. There was a lot on my hands today, yellow paint and charcoal to name a few. Well, I didn’t think of this plan until well after I was home from school. So plan b was to use markers to make my finger prints. It worked out I just took a small paper and filled it with finger prints and then used a pen to make the details.

Vol. 3, No. 337, December 3, 2018

3337 - Selfie Flop.

I was attempting to create a  printmaking self-portrait project for my 6th graders. I didn't get it laid out the way I wanted, so I am putting that project on hold for another couple days.

This picture is the printing plate that I started.

Vol. 3, No. 239, August 27, 2018

3239 - Just Because.

While today was the first day of school, I didn't actually make any art at school. Which meant that as I was winding down for the night, I also needed to do a project. I checked National Day Calendar to see if there were any good holidays today, and I found National Just Because Day. The picture on the post was of a peacock. So i thought 'why not?' I decided to cut out a peacock stencil and use my blow markers to make this peacock.

Vol. 3, No. 127, May 7, 2018

3127 - Today In History.

DAY 7 Find out something that happened today in history and make something inspired by it.

It didn’t take much research to device what my historical event was going to be; the first one to pop up was about The Scream, as an art teacher I couldn’t pass that up. Today was an art club day and I already had the lesson planned; monoprints. Not wanting to do an extra project I needed to find a way to incoporate The Scream into my prints. I was able to do so by breaking the art into a grid and drawing each section in my ink. The real challenge was reversing it so that it didn’t print backwards. I was working quickly so that I could finish in an hour all while keeping the ink trays filled for my students; therefore, not all of my lines lined up the way I would have liked, but you can still get a pretty good sense of the original artwork. Our monoprints were done on top of the watercolor exploration papers from last week.

Vol. 2, No. 338, December 4, 2017

2338 - Fresh Press.

Tonight I was doing food prep for the week, as I cut up celery and lettuce, I took notice of the rose patterned ends that I cut off. I decided that they would make a great rose stamp. So I grabbed some paint and got to work filling a sheet of cardstock with lots of little flowers. I also painted a few leaves. When the paint was dry, I cut around my favorite flowers and arranged them on a blank greeting card.

Vol. 2, No. 303, October 30, 2017

2303 - Celebrate!

DAY 30  Create a trophy or another type of award to celebrate your Creative Sprint efforts!

I wanted to create another chalk stencil example for my Grade 3 classes, so I made one using a trophy shaped stencil. After all of the printing was done, I took a picture and used my camera's photo editor to add a plaque to the main trophy. I can't believe how quickly these 30 days have gone.

Vol. 2, No. 290, October 17, 2017

2290 - Exquisite Corpse.

DAY 17 Invite two people (family members, co-workers, sprinters) to create an Exquisite Corpse today. Not sure what that means? Follow the instructions below!

What is an Exquisite Corpse?

Artists in the Surrealist movement of the early twentieth century made up a creative game that involved group collaboration called Exquisite corpse. They would take turns adding images or words to a single folded page so that they could not see what came before or only had just enough to continue. The end results were surprising and funny and allowed for unusual connections that might not normally have been made. This project gives you a chance to get the benefits of random play and spending time being creative with others. HOW TO DO IT: 1. Find one or more people to work with you. 2. Each person, including you, should fold a piece of paper into quarters as shown. 3. Write the words “head,” “torso,” “legs,” and “feet” in order, one on each section. 4. Start at the bottom or top and draw a head or feet of your choice. Extend the lines that reach the fold just slightly over it so that the next person has a starting place to work from. 5. Fold the paper so that your work can’t be seen by the next person. 6. Pass the pieces back and forth or around in a circle until all spaces have been used up and then reveal the end results to the group. For a really surreal result, leave off the names of the parts of the body and let people draw whatever they want as long as it visually connects between sections. 7. There many variations on Exquisite Corpse so feel free to make it your own!

I had a busy day planned and I wasn't sure when I would find time to collaborate. So when I checked Facebook and saw an invitation for a digital collaboration I jumped on it. My collaboration group included Andy Garrabrant (he coordinated the collaboration), Rachel Welsh de Iga, and Catherine Mehrl Bennett. We agreed to make a much loose interpretation of Exquisite Corpse. Rather than forming a corpse, we made abstract compositions. We each chose a subject matter and materials and created a square composition. My composition was a chalk stencil print inspired by National Pasta Day. I chose to do a chalk stencil print because that is my next Grade 3 lesson and I needed an example.

We then shared an image of our compositions and each of us created a new work of art incorporating each composition. It was fun to see how different each completed work is, considering they all came from the same 4 images. When I created my work of art, repeated each image, rotating it every time and then played with  the tonal balance of each image, giving them all a greenish tint.

Vol. 2, No. 210, July 29, 2017

2210 - Production Increase.

I am continuing to get things ready for the county fair, and I decided I needed more stationary. So, using the designs I created earlier in the week, I made 2 more zentangle drawings and 5 more rose finger stamps.

While I was stamping, I discovered that if I dip my finger in water before pressing it on the ink pad, I get a much brighter stamp.

The stamped stationary is a set of 6 and the drawn stationary is a set of 4. Both sets include envelopes.

Vol. 2, No. 201, July 20, 2017

2201 - Quick and Easy.

I really procrastinated on my project today. All of a sudden it was 11 pm and I didn't even have an idea in mind. So I phoned a friend; no help there. Then it hit me. I had been looking at the County Fair Premium Book and deciding what projects I could bring to the fair. One of the categories is Stamped Stationary. I thought this would be fun.

I found a OJ cap on my floor that I had been saving because it had an orange slice texture to it. I thought it would make a good stamp. Turns out it was an okay idea, but it wasn't working with my drying out ink pads. So I turned to fingerprint stamping. I made 3 pieces of stationary each with a different fingerprint flower. My favorite is the rose, so I think I will make more of that one or the fair.

Vol. 2, No. 55, February 24, 2017

2055 - Take notice of your surroundings and share something that makes you feel happy. Clean Carving.

I am on vacation this weekend and I decided to go without my standard art supplies, which would force me to get creative. I didn't know what to make today, so I asked a friend. My friend suggested drawing on a mirror with a bar of soap. I considered it, but photographing art on mirrors is tricky, and cleaning it up sounded messy, so I switched it up. I decided to carve the bar of soap instead. Then, I made a print using some tea. The carving turned out a lot better than the last time I tried carving soap.

When I got done carving, I decided to make a print with a used teabag for ink.

Vol. 2, No. 47, February 16, 2017

2046 - Artist Inspiration.

Today was an art club day at the Winsted Arts Council, which meant that I got to teach 4 kids in grades 1-3 about Joan Miro. We made prints inspired by his work. I took my printed paper to play practice and made greeting cards. 

Vol. 2, No. 8, January 8, 2017

Day 8 - Get up and dance. Dance to or make something inspired by your favorite song. It was hard for me to choose a favorite song, but with Margo's help, I settled on "All Star" by Smash Mouth. It is a family favorite, in fact we taught it to our first foreign exchange student while sitting in Olive Garden. The picture is kind of hard to see, but it is a dull screwdriver ('not the sharpest tool in the shed'), which I used to draw 'a finger and a thumb in the shape of an L' on the printing plate. I got the idea from a logo I had seen in a video sent to me today by Becca. 

Vol. 1, No. 1, January 2016