Paint Night

I have been wanting to go to a paint night for a long time and then a friend gave me a certificate to go and we went together. It was harder than I thought, but fun.  This is supposed to be my hubby and I on a romantic canoe trip watching the northern lights :)

Good Friday

At our church we were given the opportunity to make a piece of art having to do with Holy week. This is mine, representing the time when Jesus died and the temple curtain was torn in two. Before praying and reading about this in depth...I had never fully understood the significance of this.  What an amazing thing!

Book Art

I saw a display at the National Museum of African Art called Artists' Books and Africa. Artists' books are works of art in book form. The accompanied primer to the exhibit showed many great examples of artists' books.  A description from the museum's web site states: Artists’ books build on the traditional codex of sequentially bound pages. These visual and tactile artworks play with the codex format in fanciful ways, pushing the boundaries with sheer unexpectedness. Below is a snapshot of the primer.  Plus, my own form of book art. ~JM

Altered book examples.

"The Lotus" (book art)

Ping-Pong

There is an interesting art installation contest that is due tomorrow (3/4/16) re-using more than 500,000 plastic balls, called "Re-ball!".  I want to enter it so I bought twenty-four Ping-Pong balls to see if it is feasible thing to do!  Last summer the plastic balls were used at the Building Museum in DC for an exhibit that represented a beach.  Now the Dupont Underground will re-use them via ideas by the public. Here is the Contest Information.

If I were to enter the contest I would obtain very large,  tall clear cylinder containers filled with decorative hand-painted plastic balls placed throughout the space.  This would be an enormous feat because painting twenty-four plastic balls was time consuming! My at-home version is using a small cylinder vase. - JM

Before | After

Contest Winner-Raise/Raze by Hou de Sousa

"The Beach"(L) | Dupont Underground (R)

Yarn Doll

The doll on the left is very special to me because it was the first thing I ever saved up my money to buy as a child.  The one on the right is my attempt to make a similar version :)  There is room for improvement, but I was happy how it turned out!

Sign Language

This month my goal was to learn some basic sign language.  There is a new student who is deaf at the school I work at and I want to be able to talk to her.  I have learned "what is your name, nice to meet you, how are you" and a few other words. I think she likes that I am learning and I will keep it up.  I have been learning by watching u tube teachings. :)

Oil Pastels

I first began with a pencil sketch. With simple strokes I started with dark colors and then blended in with lighter colors.  The two pictures I drew below are from a beginners tutorial on YouTube (Paint Academy channel). Here is the link.  ~ JM