ICAD 2016 June

Hello Friends!

Do you remember last year in June and July I got involved in an online art challenge called ICAD, which stands for Index Card A Day? It is an annual event organised by Tammy Garcia over on Daisy Yellow. Although ICAD is now closed for the year, there's lots of other things to discover on Tammy's blog, so you can pop over for a quick peek {well, there's so much to read, it won't be that quick} ~~~

It's such great fun, with lots of wonderful and imaginative creations to see from so many talented people taking part, such an inspirational and friendly group of people, and making lots of lovely new friends along the way ~~~

Well, I joined in and I've been up to it again!   I've picked out two or three that I want to do again on proper watercolour paper as soon as I can. When you are looking at these, please remember that they are made on index cards, so the scale is quite small ~~~

With the weather being anything but summery it has been a lot of fun to have something creative to do indoors. Some of the daily prompts were challenging, others were quick and easy, and some took ages to do. Here is a quick summary of what I did in June with a montage of all my June cards, and some of my favourite ones are singled out underneath ~~~ I'll put the daily prompt underneath each one ~~~

Mix Tape ~ I did a play on words and used sewing tapes

Snoopy ~ I copied an image and drew it freehand

Cloud ~ always battling the clouds here!

Island ~ a collage using a dendritic print and found images

Compass ~ stamps, handwritten wording and quotes from Lord of The Rings

Cobalt Blue ~ I just had to do the TARDIS

Baseball ~ hand drawn images cut out and collaged

Bouquet ~ I did Autumn Fruits

Landscape ~ I did Carn Llidi which you may recognise from my photographs

Orange ~ I did a collage of found orange papers

Snowflake ~ die punched flakes on an inked background

1960's

Invent A Prompt ~ I chose to do arches

Winter ~ a simple, freehand line drawing in ink

Space Invaders ~ dandelion seeds in the wind

Motel 

Aqua or Pool ~ I did an aqua pool

I hope you enjoy looking at them as much as I enjoyed making them. The challenge finishes tomorrow, so in a day or two I'll put up the July cards for you to see ~~~

Until next time ~~~
Deborah

p.s. do you have a favourite? I'd love to know which it is!

ICAD Week Six and We're On A Roll

Gentle Reader ~~~ yes, we are on a roll, literally, this week for the prompts all week long are for games ~ not all involve dice as you will see ~~~ and the media prompt is a colour palette of your choice daily, any medium.~~~ so ~~~

***edit*** this has only three of the seven daily prompts. I have been ill in bed for most of the week and have not felt like standing {or sitting} to work on anything ~~~ I have even missed three of the Wimbledon finals, but am making certain not to miss the Men's Final this afternoon. So, here is my 'short' week. I do not know yet if I will try to play catch up on the missed ones, or just carry on from here ~~~

Day 36 {yes, we really are on day 36} brought a prompt of Backgammon.

One of the oldest games known in the world, but all the boards I've seen are neutral and masculine, so I decided to use a pink palette making it a bit girly adding some pink pearly Nuvo Drops accents.  The wording I used, Acey Deucey, is because many years ago I frequently played this variation on the rules.  I used mixed scrap papers and cut the wording out using my Brother Scan n' Cut and squiggled some scribbles around the edges with a Fine Liner ~~~

One day, the prompt was Monopoly {I lost count while in bed}
I used to love playing Monopoly. I was ruthless! This is made up of street names coloured and written using Spectrum Noir alcohol pens and Fine Liners. I think the colours really look like I cut out rectangles from my old board ~~~

Today, I think it might be 42, the prompt is Scrabble. This took me less than five minutes as I am still very shaky and not good at doing much else other than sitting in my arm chair {I have a bowl of Haagen Dazs Strawberry Cheesecake ice cream in lieu of berries and cream to fortify me while watching Wimbledon}, so it is not much of a muchness but, although rough it sums up my feelings on art ~~~ well, just a little ~~~ it isn't easy when you haven't any hwyl as we say in Wales ~~~

I did promise a small garden update, but obviously that has not happened either, and there is a small excitement to share too, so I hope to catch up on that during the coming week ~~~

Until next time ~~~

We're Over Half Way Now!

Gentle Reader ~~~

Week Five brings a fresh variety of prompts and suggested media too. Up until now I am using predominantly what I have to hand as I do not want this to turn into an expensive project buying yet more materials to add to my collection ~ it is time I used some of what I have!

The prompt for Day 29 was Ice Cream ~~~ okay, shush! I know, we all scream for ice cream!  I did a layered hand dyed tissue sea/sky with a pearlescent golden sand for my background.  The wood cut style stamp can be waves on the sea, or hills against the sky, depending which way your traditional deck chairs are facing. The chairs and gull ~ with his beady eye waiting for that scoop of vanilla ice cream to fall from the crunchy cone ~ are stamped images, coloured by hand and cut out then stuck to the scene with foam pads giving a 3:d effect ~~~

Day 30 and the prompt was Telephone. Okay, self confessed Whovian alert ~~~ I couldn't pass this one up without a reference to my favourite Time Lord, could I?

I had a lot of fun planning this one. It is not meant to be a great work of art, I wanted to keep it more graphic style and simple to let the humour and the geek speak for themselves ~~~

Day 31 Trivia ~~~ okay, I went a bit off piste with this, but stick with me ~~~
Not one to take things at face value, and not wanting to go down the route of finding some obscure fact to portray, off I went to Google.
Trivia has it's roots in Latin, two words, tri {three} and via {road} In Roman days, this was the name for the point where one road divided and became two, or the point where three roads converged. People would often gather for short periods of time to pass the time of day and chat about snippets of information ~ which is how the definition of trivia as we know it today, snippets of information, came about.  If you are interested, it might be worth a Google, because I was quite surprised at the origins and other things I learned just by researching "Trivia"

So, I thought, gathering of people needs food, so let's have a picnic. A rough sketch in gouache, with type written text using my late Daddy's vintage Imperial typewriter and my own home made carbon paper using an oil pastel ~~~ Tea with that sandwich, dah~ling?

My late Daddy's vintage Imperial Typewriter ~~~

Day 32 the prompt was Weather ~~~ woha boy! could go over board on this, what with all the different types of weather, rainbows, weather songs, list goes on, but in the end I settled for a jolly yellow sun with a few raindrops that are not going to rain on the parade ~~~ because I don't care what the weather man says ~~~

hand dyed tissue; typewritten text with home made carbon paper on tissue; Spectrum Noir sun on water colour paper {cut out and stuck on}; pearlescent ink raindrops ~~~

Day 32 the prompts were either Mad Men or I Love Lucy. I have never heard of Mad Men, and know very little about I Love Lucy so I went off prompt with a set of Hobby Art stamps of sunflowers and coloured them in by hand using Spectrum Noir products from Crafter's Companion.

I long to visit Provence to see the sunflowers in the fields, and lavender in long purple row upon row under endless blue skies ~~~

Day 34 the prompt was Flag.  Naturally, I did a little interpretation of the Welsh flag, and it was a lone Welsh flag in a sea of Star Spangled Banners, so here it is ~~~ I used a sticker of the Red Dragon and included a small group of daffodils as they are the national flower of Wales ~~~

The final day of Week 5, Day 35, was Portrait. Struggled a bit, but then the muse descended and Saint Anthony helped me find a small envelope of old postage stamps I'd saved for just this very moment. As he was helping me find them, we came across a packet with a perfect image of the Mona Lisa on the front! Yay ~~~ exactly what was needed to help fill the card! A couple of other found bits and bobs and Robert's Your Mother's Brother ~~~ {or Bob's your Uncle}

Onwards and Upwards, as they say, to Week 6.  Do stop by mid week as I'm hoping to put up a wee entry on the garden!

If Last Week Was Three Then This Must Be Four?

Gentle Reader ~~~ how time flies when you are having fun, and it cannot be denied that I am having fun doing these ICAD pieces. Already Week Four and where is the time flying to?

I just need to say Thank You to every one for your kind and encouraging comments. I know some of the things I'm sharing are a bit weird, but this is what ICAD is all about for me personally ~ exploring and playing with different mediums and not being precious about anything, or over thinking things.  I will say this though ~ I have produced two or three pieces so far that I definitely want to revisit after ICAD is over. The kiwi of a couple weeks ago is one, and there are two on this week's challenge ~~~ so, here we go again ~~~

Day 22 the theme was psychedelic and I really could not get in to this one at all, but ended up with this ~~~
~~~ which is lots of pearlescent ink swirled around and scratched into the card  with yet more layers of ink on top. I cut out a template for the Peace sign and then layered it with gazillions of tiny scraps of inked paper that had been hanging around, and frankly annoying me, for ages ~~~ yes, I suffer from obsessive compulsive hoarding disorder, of this I am certain. Anyway, this is what we got ~~~

~~~ Groovy Man ~~~

Day 23 and the prompt was Romantic ~~~ challenging, as I am probably the least romantic person I know ~~~ so, I took a card that was already prepared with gold acrylic paint bubble wrap pattern and I inked over with some pale pink pearlescent ink. I layered a scrap of green~shot~with~gold silk, some cream lace, a home made peel~off from my palette {ink, paint, and PVA} and added two hearts from a Martha Stewart punch that I inked and intertwined. The final topper of a rose bud is from my own photography and many of you will recognise it from my images, elsewhere, of my Elizabeth rose ~~~

Day 24 the prompt was Geometric so I divided the card into inches and just filled each one in differently using a fine liner. I put a constraint on myself not to use anything but straight lines. Not my favourite ~~~

Day 25's prompt was Botanic and Organic. Now, I could have played with these two for hours and hours but I had company so it ended up being a tad rushed. Still, the background is an organic mixed media, built up over several days using left over bits of this and that rather than discarding them. The sketch is in oil pastels which I find rather bulky and clumsy for working on this size of canvas, but it is good to persevere.

I am including several images so you can see what a difference the background and light can make to how the image reproduces photographically ~~~

For Day 26 the prompt was Exotic. I am getting rather fond of cleaning  my palette which is now providing me with a selection of PVA shapes on a regular basis, so the one that I lifted a few days ago I used today because it reminded me greatly of one of those exotic, fan~tailed goldfish you often see in ornamental ponds ~~~ so, a few bits of added fabric, metallic net, some extra dots of ink to echo the bubble wrap print and give some continuity ~~~ and a glorious, orange chiffon tail ~~~

Day 27 the theme was Academic ~~~ quite a lot going on here, despite the simplicity of the image ~~~ as a permanent student I decided to cut this back to a minimum. Gold tissue paper {symbolic of Honours on my degrees and certificates} embossed with a beautiful Austen~esque script {symbolic of classical literature}. The tape is dyed with alcohol ink {no, that is not symbolic of a glass of red wine} to blend, and the two images {symbols of study and mathematics} are stamped, hand coloured in, then cut out {fiddly or fiddly?} and pasted on with a snippet from an old dictionary that defines Academy.  Thinking about it, the symbolism is a good representation of my love of art, and the analysis of symbolism therein ~~~ am I getting too deep now?

and to round off the week, the theme was Dramatic. As many of you have seen, both on my other blog and on Facebook, I am treated to some incredibly spectacular sunsets as I live near the ocean and face west, so I decided to do a homage to a spectacular, sky on fire, sunset.  I used wet paper and gouache, keeping the paint thin and loose so it blended well. It's a bit messy, but I like it ~~~

Same one with a black frame {the computer!} to see a different effect ~~~

I actually think the lines of the card showing through add something different and adds to it, what do you think?

So, onward to Week Five! We've already had the prompts and they are getting more interesting so we shall see what happens next!