Letter Love 201...

Hi, Everyone. I got home from work a little early today and finally took some photos of the work I have been doing in Joanne Sharpe's month long on-line class. This has been the most challenging set of lessons yet. Not only are you lettering but you are creating art to go around and through the letters to make the letters part of the art. I only have about a 1/3 of the lessons done, so my creating will flow over into the month of March which will be great.
The work is done with permanent markers, watercolors, acrylic paints, bling, and coming up, gel medium, gesso, modeling paste and tissue paper and canvas. Wow, my head is spinning when I list all of that.
I am hoping to take a live class from Joanne at the end of June when she is going to be a guest of Donna Downey in North Carolina. Both ladies are fast paced teachers who use vibrant colors and spontaneous writing to create their art. I am excited.

Enjoy the photos-

 Cover, done in a 9 x 12' watercolor journal. Pitt Pens and watercolor paint. Alphabet soup.

Lesson 2- Lots of fun fonts and watercolors on wiggly lines.

Lesson 4- Alpha Vortex. The "S" in the center is the first letter I drew, all the others are letters placed "above" or "below" by careful placement of lines. That's Gary, Rob, Pete, Heather, Chris, DJ and my name.

Lesson 5- Word Play Collage. The letters had to touch in some fashion and we had to change the angle of the page after each set.

 Lesson 6- Shape it up. Made our letters into overlapping shapes, then colored in some of the inner spaces. Copic markers and some Twinkling H2Os on the flowers.

 Lesson 7- The Good Negative. Painted big blotch. Used one word then added sayings or words to describe and highlight what you meant by your word. In case you can't tell, I used Change- my word for the year, Create and Time- all which mean a lot to me right now. The white letters are created with a white Signo pen.

 Lesson 8- the Cluster Composition
Believe it or not, these words are clustered into an S shape around my cat picture. Words can flow throughout your art, not just get tucked in a corner or written across a straight line.

 Lesson 9- Op Art Outlines. I'm not into Op Art but I did my best.

Lesson 11- Brush and Letters. Not liking this one so much.Using a paint brush to create your lettering. You know I want it all to turn out perfectly..... Not so much.














Lesson 14- Lettered Love. This was created on Valentine's Day. Integrate hearts into our lettering. Joanne, our teacher, is a big user of hearts in her art. This was fun.

I have many more lessons to complete and a few I don't think I'll do, but on a whole I think this was an excellent class helping me find more of what I like to do and develop a style.

I'll post more as I finish them.

Thanks for stopping by.

Tuesday...

I got so much done on my 3 days off. I reorganized my side of the utility room and scrubbed the floor back there from the small flood we had. I cleared out and reorganized the Harry Potter closet under the stairs in my craft room. Took Gary to the doctor for a foot infection that sprang up over night (that happens when you are diabetic). One day on antibiotics and it is getting better.
None of that sounds all that exciting except I do love to clean and organize so it feels acomplished to me.

I worked on some of my art assignments for my online class with Joanne Sharpe. That was my creative part. Felt good to have large chunks of time to concentrate. Lots of lettering.

Also spent considerable time wrestling with my retirement demons, the little ones that sit on my shoulders and argue with each other through my head- "leave now"... "stay to June" for hours at a time.

Will post something creative here this week. People will start visiting for the Blogging A-Z and be looking for interesting content.

Thanks for stopping by. Suz

What Am I Doing?....

...That's what I just asked myself. I am already busy with home and work and trying to create art of some sort everyday and getting ready to retire sometime soon, why on earth would I sign up for the Blogging A to Z Challenge again this year?

That is a good question, guess I'll have to try to answer it, if not for you, then for me.

I signed up for another Letter Art class with Joanne Sharpe for the month of February. Each day she shows a video using creative lettering to make an art piece. You make your own with similar but your own ideas. I'm a little behind but happy with my progress. Get to use some of the various pens, inks and paints I have been collecting. Working in a 9 x 12" watercolor journal- bigger size than I am used to so I have to stretch my lettering. I've taken all of her online classes but specifically signed up for this one because February flies by when I am working on these projects. Will post some photos here.

I think I signed up for the Challenge for the same reason. I want to keep busy with outside of work things so I don't dwell on how many more days I have until I leave. No, not because I am brokenhearted about going. I have picked a date 3 times and I have pushed that date further away. The first, no one at work wanted me to leave. The second, I was a little afraid to let go of the money, I wanted to pay off a few more bills before my income takes a big dip. This third date is much more firm; I am so ready to go.

Anyway, I figure if I work on my entries in March, that will make March go quickly. I plan to write a continuing story, flowing from one day to the next using a plethora of that day's letter words. We'll see how that works.

Won't you join me.