My Life With Hair

Last weekend, I spent 3 days in Susan Shie's Outsider Art Diary Quilts Workshop. Wow! What fun it was! I loved using the air pen. (I'd run out and buy one, but I'm not sure I'd use it enough to justify the $130 price tag.) I went in with the attitude that I wasn't making Great Art, which allowed me to try different things without stress.

I enjoyed Susan's Library Time, when we wrote and sketched. I treated it like Morning Pages and just got rid of a lot of crap that was floating around in my mind. My sketchbook has twice as much writing as sketches!

The first day's theme was "hair" - my quilt shows me at different hair stages.

I didn't like how the paint bled when I painted on wet fabric. (i.e. my dark hair bled into the background.) I also didn't like the straight paint look. Blending paint with extender &/or water worked the best for me. I purposely didn't mix enough paint to do the entire background. I like the variation in colors that I got as I painted across the quilt.



The writing on a face is about me when I had that hair style.
In the space around the faces, I wrote hair stories and memories. I used a Rub-A-Dub laundry marker and several ultra-fine tip Sharpies. I don't like the thick line of the Rub-A-Dub and I wish my Sharpie markings were stronger.

I used Susan's binding method, but am going to do some free-motion quilting instead of using her free-form grid. I painted one quilt each day of class (themes were 2008 and whine/wine). They are still works in progress.

Sketchbook for 2007

I love blank books! Lined & unlined, mostly the covers attract me to buy them. Many don't get used, some get used once or twice, others are filled up. I found a WONDERFUL blank book in a bookstore in December and decided to use it as a sketchbook. I don't pretend to be an artist when it comes to paper and pencil, but I do sketch a lot of things I see. The sketches are done on a scrap of paper, a napkin, or the back of a receipt. The sketches often end up trashed just because I'm tired of dealing with the small piece of paper. I'm hoping that keeping all these tidbits in one place will allow them to inspire me down the road.

I carried the book to Sedona, Arizona on Dec 28, my official Sketchbook Start Date. Another page was done at the Heard Museum. I find I am writing notes as well as drawing. Words come easy & often! The page I've chosen to share here was done as we traveled on I-40 east of Albuquerque. We made 150 miles in 7 hours. Not bad roads, just heavy traffic due to road closures the day before.

There isn't anything particular inspiring in these images, but they recall the day for me in vivid detail. Other pages are similar. I'm not sure that "Sketchbook" is the correct name for my book. Maybe I'm more of an Illustrated Journal person. So be it!