This week's theme? Too hot for art.

Well, not literally too hot for art since I still managed to make an index card every day, but the last several days have been uncomfortably hot and sticky in my studio, and my cards reflect it.

Four of the seven cards were made on pre-printed backgrounds. Most relied heavily on the scrap basket.

The annual ICAD challenge completely validates my compulsive saving of every pretty little scrap.

It's also put me in the habit of wiping (scraping, rolling, printing) all leftover blobs of paint onto index cards, because you never know when it will come in handy. Without these strategies, I would probably give up on the challenge in the first week every year.

Here are my cards from the past few days.

This one features a gelli printed background (bonus prints from a session of envelope-printing last weekend), a scrap of text, and some scribbles with a pen.

7-20-14

 

This next one was made around 12:30 AM, after a 5 1/2 hour reading session, in which I finally f-ing finished the last 250 pages of "The Goldfinch" just in the nick of time for book group. I was bleary eyed, and a little resentful.

7-21-14

Tuesday brought another gelli printed postcard, with stickers from Gina, and a cool stamp cut from an envelope that had gotten wet in the mail, and made the ink all smudgy. For the text, I grabbed a large-print book, closed my eyes, opened a page at random and pointed my figure to the page.  When I opened my eyes I was pointing to the word "good."

7-22-14 (1)

 And since I had out my box of random stickers, I decided to make a whole index card using only stickers from Gina.  (Thanks, G!)

7-22-14 (2)

Yesterday was the worst of the heat.  I took the scrap basket down to the air conditioned living room and pushed bits of paper around in ways that pleased me, then glue-sticked them into place.  (or would that be glue-stuck?)

7-23-14 (1)

7-23-14 (2)

Tonight:  another gelli-printed background and some stamped tissue paper from my stash.  Done in 2 minutes.

7-24-14

Two more days until I am lakeside in Maine.

I expect it will be cooler there.

It will definitely be more relaxed.

I wonder how much of the car will be taken up with art supplies this year?

This time I meant it

Unlike my purple, red, black and white string of index cards, this latest group of cards was intentionally developed as a series.

I'm hosting an "asemic writing" postcard swap and it inspired me to practice this form of wordless writing on a bunch of blank index cards and transparency scraps.  Those practice pieces have shaped my ICAD compositions for the last few days.  Each day built upon the previous day's work.

Here's the whole bunch.  I made 7 cards over 4 days.

7-16-14 (#1)

7-16-14 (#2)

7-17-14 (#1)

7-17-14 (#2)

7-18-14 (#1)

7-18-14 (#2)

7-19-14

Perhaps there will be more.

of fish, birds, circles and scraps...

Faced with a clean desk and an absence of red & purple, I sat down to make Saturday's index card and had zero ideas.

There was some random smearing of paint and half-hearted stamping of circles, but then the littlest circles started looking like bubbles, and I went scurrying off for suitable imagery.  Mandy is right, everything does look better with a fish on it.

7-12-14

This one started out as the card where I 'd removed the extra paint from my circle stamps the day before.   I pulled out some markers and colored in all the little intersecting spaces.  It pleases me more than I thought it would. 

7-13-14

A corollary to the above fish theory involves birds...

7-14-14

Thank goodness for a well-stocked scrap basket.  I got home late last night from an evening of art, wine and conversation and nearly forgot to make my card.

A pre-painted background and some pleasing scraps had me done and in bed within 5 minutes.

7-15-14

 

It's been really hot and sticky in the art room, and if not for ICAD I probably wouldn't be in there at all.  As always, I am eternally grateful to Tammy for leading this challenge every summer and fueling my creativity in all kinds of weather.

Working in series....yeah...that's what I'm doing....

For the last few days I've been using a lot of black, white, red and purple.  I'd like to say there was a grand plan, but in truth, the series springs from not cleaning my desk at all this week.  I sit down at night to make an index card and all of yesterday's (and the day before's) paint and scraps are still scattered about.  I could probably invent some profound artist's statement about the meaning of my new series, but really it's a series about being too lazy to reach for a different color.

7-6-14

7-7-14
(#1)

7-7-14
(#2)

7-8-14
(#1)

7-8-14
(#2)

7-8-14
(#3)

7-9-14
(#1)

I got a little crazy on this one and introduced teal (but only because I found an index card that already had teal paint on it.)

7-9-14 (#2)

I was right back to the black, white, red & purple the next day.

7-10-14 (#1)

7-10-14 (#2)

7-10-14 (#3)

This is what my desk looked like when I sat down to make my card tonight:

It's a miracle I made anything at all

7-11-14

As of this writing, order (or what passes for it in my house) has been restored.

I wonder what tomorrow's card will look like?

Another Round Robin

I recently started a collaborative art journal round robin with four friends, because being part of one round robin wasn't enough pressure, I needed more art deadlines in my life.  (and no sooner was this group up and running when a different friend asked me if I'd be willing to host a round robin.  I wisely said no to that one, but not after thinking for about an hour that SURE, I could handle working in three different art journals every month. My sanity was quickly restored.)

For Round Robin #2, I'm altering a book from 1955 called "The Boy Scientist." 

 This is the inside cover:

Since the intention of the group is to add to and alter one another's work, a lot of my pages are just beginnings, or invitations to play.

The book has some terrific illustrations that I'm hoping my clever friends will incorporate into their work.

This page uses an aborted ICAD, it's glued into my book with the end sticking out like a little tab:

 I decided to get interactive on the next spreads.  The page on the right has a large circle cut out of it.

  

Here's what it looks like when you turn the page:

 This one got a little random...

 Naturally I couldn't resist a stamp head.

Harry Truman never looked lovelier.

I wonder if Bess knew he liked to wear ball gowns?

 

These last two could stand on their own as finished pages, but I'm not opposed to the creative alterations from my talented (and equally silly) friends.

 

Finally, here's the cover of the book:

I used layers of paint and tissue paper, and the  tissue paper left all those nice raised wrinkles.  I dragged a blue oil pastel across the surface to highlight the wrinkles.  Hopefully the group will create some collaborative art on it.

I now have two journals in my possession, from two different artists, from two different groups, and they both need to in the mail by August 1st.

Time to start collaborating!

haphazard ICADS

 Flying by the seat of my pants as usual when it comes to this week's index cards...

 6-29-14

Bits of vintage security envelopes, old postage stamps, ubiquitous circles.

 

6-30-14

An interesting bit of styrofoam fell out of the box my new fan came in.  I used it to make those black stamp marks. 

The cards from July 1st were covered in my last post.  Thanks for all your feedback. I ended up gluing the original stamp head to the index card with the woman, and gluing a copy of the stamp head to the other index card.  (Many thanks to Christie for this simple solution to my conundrum.)  (and my mother, the editor, has informed me that my grammar irritation on card #2 was unfounded.  This is known as an exclamatory question and her go-to source says An exclamation mark may be used to close questions that are meant to convey extreme emotion, as in "What on earth are you doing! Stop!")(Who knew?)(or maybe I should say WHO KNEW!)

After those July 1st cards,  I went on a stamp-head frenzy.

It was much too hot and humid this week to spend time in my unairconditioned studio, so these quick and easy cards were all I could muster.

7-2-14

7-3-14

7-5-14

 

I woke this morning to the irritating realization that I didn't do an index card yesterday.  I completely forgot.  It wasn't like I was too busy with 4th of July celebrations.  It was a ridiculously rainy day, and we barely left the house.  I had ample opportunity to create a card, but it never entered my head to do so.

I'm trying to get over my disappointment for breaking my streak, but it's been hard.  I've been walking around like the woman in the picture above.  My arm is getting tired from pressing it to my forehead for so many hours.

So it goes.

funny 1 or funny 2?

I have two index cards using the same "stamp head" image and I can't decide which one gets glued in place.

This one?

Or this one?

 

I kind of like the second one better, except the background image is too small for an index card, so it's got an odd composition.  Plus it bugs the crap out of me that the question ends in an exclamation point instead of a question mark.

Which one do you like better?