ICAD 2015 Week Two

Gentle Reader ~~~

Well, here we are with Week Two of the ICAD 2015 challenge.

I'm not sure how much I will stick to the prompts this week as they are all juxtapositions of fruits and vegetables. Could be interesting, but, frankly I find seven pairings of fruit and vegetables rather unimaginative.

Anyway, the paring prompt for Day 8 is Cherries and Grapefruit.  It was a bit of a hectic day, lots of phone calls and distractions so I was looking to do something quick, under 20 minutes if I could manage, so I reverted, once again, to bad practice and drew a threesome of cherries from memory. Still, when you have eaten as many fresh cherries as I have, drawing from memory isn't that hard {this is the bit where we all laugh over our tea and cakes}

So, here is my ICAD Day 8, "Cherries" a quick study in oil pastel on an acrylic background ~~~

Day 9 the prompt is Carrot & Lemon ~~~ ugh! Sorry, I am just not enjoying, dare I say relishing, the fruity vegetable themes that we are set, and after this I think I'm just going to do my own thang ~~~

So, we have a lemon ~~~ which looks more like a daisy than a fruit but in the spirit of the game, I published it anyway. Oh, it was my umpteenth attempt. I am struggling with too large brushes on the smaller sized 'canvas' ~~~ brushes

Now, I could point out to you everything that is wrong with this, but I promised myself at the start I'd do my very best to stop pointing out my flaws so I am going to keep quiet.   What happened here was I decided to load my brush and paint, and keep loading without rinsing the brush, only adding more paint as needed, so it is quite thick and textural.  Now, I think I need that G&T I mentioned in the writing ~~~

Day 10  I went with the prompt of Aubergine and Ginger. I went with the colours as Aubergine is my favourite colour and I wanted the challenge of mixing the colour fairly accurately out of my boxes of tricks. I'm not unhappy with the colour, although the photo has altered it slightly.

Lots of things happening behind this, yet the image itself is simple and very quickly done.

First, this morning I took this photograph of a dandelion that was sparkling in the morning sunlight and this has influenced my card today as I responded to the morning's photograph ~~~

I base coated the card with silver acrylic and painted my mixed aubergine over then lifted it using small bubble wrap and a brayer to make a pattern.

I stamped some dandelion clocks on gold tissue and highlighted the clocks with a little gold Nuvo Crystal Drops which is my interpretation of the photo I took this morning.  I loosely tore the paper not being precious ~~~

It is probably the most immediate response of all my cards, to something that happened today, and although simple has much purpose and meaning, so I stamped the little text saying to drive home that I MUST *stop* my over thinking.

So, here we are on Day 11 and I did stop over thinking! Yay me!!!  The prompt is Melon and Lime so again I went with the colours rather than shape or textures.  I made a base card with acrylic and a bubble wrap print, then painted two more cards in gouache {making it's first appearance on my ICADs} using the prompt colours and ripped the paper while still wet. I let it do its own thing and ended up with lots of edgy bits. I wove them together, and then I used fineliner to write the words Melon, Lemon, Limes, and Smile to make another layer in to the pattern. Simples!

{***note to self ~~~ fineliner does not like gouache}

The prompt for Day 12 is Parsnip and Kiwi ~~~ being a huge fan of kiwi fruit I decided to do a close up, Mr Demille!  Here is my kiwi fruit ~~~ painted in acrylics ~~~

I put both views in, as the lighting is slightly different ~~~

Day 13 almost brings Week Two to a close ~~~ the prompt was Blueberries and Plums, so I decided to use the colour {after yesterday, it would be hard to top the kiwi, so I kept things simpler}

I am a member of the Claritystamp Gold Club, and once a month {amongst other great membership benefits} I receive a Clarity stencil and stamp in the post.  Two months ago, I received 'Alice' stamp and a tree stencil and I used these for today's card.  I did not mask off or pre~coat the card, and simply let the Distress Ink soak in as I rubbed it over the stencil. I stamped Alice, and the little freebie bluebird, on watercolour card and coloured them in using Spectrum Noir alcohol pens, and Spectrum Noir pencils for highlight. I carefully cut them out, glued them on the card, and used fineliner for the wording. Simple, and didn't take up too much time either.

I love Alice, don't you? And, it is appropriate that she is called Alice ~ Alice in Wonderland, Alice Blue ~~~ I wonder what she is thinking, pondering, is she really feeling blue?

Finally, Day 14 the prompt was the less than inspiring Salt and Pepper. Hmmm all this did was make me hungry for a bag of chips plastered in salt and vinegar.

I did a quick 15 minute response, painting in some jars and just sticking some peppercorns and rock salt as the contents.  Very quick, but being Sunday I was also short on time today ~~~

I have decided I am going to have to work on text, as it is no good using scrawly handwriting on these ~~~
Here are close ups of the pepper and salt which have got really lovely textures and colours, begging to be reconsidered later on ~~~

So, this concludes Week Two!  See you all next Saturday when I wrap up Week Three! Gosh, this is fun and I'm really enjoying it ~~~