Visual Arts Class

As I shared with you all earlier in the week, my son and mum are in Japan (In Tokyo yesterday) at the moment. The earthquake has been a very scary experience, had me freaking out there for a while but I'm very happy to say that my son and mum are safe.


I wanted to share with you all what I've been doing in my Visual Arts Class. 

Yesterday in class we spent the day drawing and painting apples. Mind you I have only been using charcoal. I'm a very precise, neat, clean artist. So I find the messiness of charcoal hard to deal with mentally (even though I understand how to use it), it drives me crazy but I really want to be able to because I love the look of charcoal drawings. There are 9 of us in the class and it has been wonderful to watch everyone's process and results. I'm very slow, I like to take my time, part of the precise part of my nature I guess. Do a bit, step back and assess, do a bit more. Yesterday I got 3 of my 6 needed drawings done. Here is two of my favourites.

This was my second drawing today and I'm pretty happy with the result but there are some areas that I want to do a little bit more work on.

So after sitting there and munching down on one of my apples, this was my 3rd drawing. I really like the way this turned out. 

So this weekend and next week I will be working on the other pictures that I need to get done and then cropping out parts of my drawings that I like the composition. From these croppings I will be picking one to paint in the style of Matisse on a very large scale. Which more than just a little bit scary.

So stay tuned for some more pics.

Finally Bit the Bullet

I have known for a while that I really need to loose some weight. I really hate being on a diet, counting calories but the time had come. On Monday I downloaded the My Fitness Pal app for my iPhone, looked up some healthy recipes, went and bought some healthy food and started.

You know what it hasn't been too bad. In fact lots of the meals have been really yummy.   

My son would be so proud of me. I cooked chicken that I coated by hand and then cooked and ate. Which is a big step for me I really don't like the look or smell of raw meat and if I do get to the point of cooking it I normally chicken out (pardon the pun) on eating it. I'm OK with mince and sausages but anything else is really hard.

The Digits 

So *cough cough* I currently weigh 120kg and I want to get down to 80kg. 

I know myself and I know that's a big step to try and take so I have set a mini goal of getting down to 110kg by the 16th of May. That's 10kg in ten weeks. 

I'm going to be blogging my progress, recipes and other useful info once a week to help me stick with it. 

Now You Know My ABC's

Zoe over at A Giraffe in a Scarf did this on her blog so I thought why not. If you want to join in add your link over on Zoe's blog.


A for Age: *Cough Cough* 29

B for Bed Size: Queen

C for Chore You Dislike: All them, The only one that I can stand is folding clean washing

D for Dogs: We had a dog when I was really young called Bessie Boo but I don't remember her. I would love to have a little do but the owner of my place wont allow it

E for Essential Start to Your Day: Turning on my laptop. It doesn't matter if I'm not going to be home all day I always turn on my laptop and check things

F for Favourite Colour: It sounds so boring but I love Grey

G for Gold or Silver: I have both but I wear silver these days

H for Height: 162cm

I for Instruments You Play(ed): I played Piano for a couple of years when I was younger

J for Job Title: I'm a Student so I don't have a Job Title

K for Kids: One 12yo son. Might have more later on but that would require finding a man

L for Live: Deagon, Brisbane, Queensland Australia

M for Mum's Name: Susan

N for Nicknames: I get Jess a lot but mum calls me Jessie but I don't like it

O for Overnight Hospital Stays: Broken leg when I was a kid, had to have a pin put in then taken out later. Having my Son. Also had my gallbladder taken out in my early 20s

P for Pet Peeves: People talking with their mouth full of food.

Q for Quote From A Movie: I don't have any quotes from movies

R for Righty or Lefty: Left

S for Siblings: One younger brother who lives on Whistler Canada. He went over there years ago for a holiday and we haven't been able to get him back since. *Hint hint Uri*

T for Time You Wake Up: I get when my son is going to school but sometimes end up going back to bed if I don't have something on. I'm a night person so mornings are not my good time.

U for Underwear: If I'm leaving the house that day then I wear what I have nicknamed my "suck me in's". Otherwise briefs.

V for Veggie's You Don't Like: Mushrooms yuck yuck yuck. Just the thought makes me feel like heaving.

W for What Makes You Run Late: Public Transport. I hate being late.

X for X-Rays You've Had: Heaps for times for my knees. Every couple of years my knee starts playing up and I go for new ones.

Y for Yummy Food You Make: I love to bake but I don't tend to eat what I bake. For me the fun is in the baking.

Z for Zoo Animal Favourites: Giraffe's and Orangutan's

Where is the World is My Son............

My Son is in JAPAN

Last Thursday my son and mum flew out of Brisbane to Cairns and then on to Tokyo on Friday. My 12 day break didn't start out that well for me, because I some how got food poisoning but I'm all better now and last night my mum transferred these pics to me. So I thought that I would share them with you all. 

Mum and Dion are skiing in Hakuba and then to Tokyo for shopping etc.

Don't forget to enter my current competition 

Hop Hop

Look what I found on my window when I went to close my windows late the other night.

Gave a bit of a surprise when I pulled back the curtain.

It's Competition Time

Ok people it's competition time. I still have 6 spots left on my Day Zero Project - 101 in 1001 days (You can read what have so far by clicking the tab above) and I'm wanting ideas. So I'm opening it up to all of you for suggestions.

Here is how it's going to work.

1. Leave a comment with your suggestion/idea and a way for me to contact you if you are a winner. 
2. If you blog or tweet about the giveaway then leave a comment here you will receive another entry but you must have already left a suggestion/idea comment
3. On the 20th of March 2011 my son and I will read through all the suggestions and we will both pick a winner. 
4. Be creative, the winners will not be drawn randomly, I will be most likely looking for a really creative idea and I wouldn't be surprised if Dion doesn't pick something that will put me out of my comfort zone. But just so you all know, things like bungy jumping and skydiving will not be happening, hehe.

The winners will win a hand painted fancy initial (A4 size) of your choice just like the ones below.

So what do you think that I should do? 

35. Get an IQ2

Those that know me know that I love a gadget. I have wanted an IQ2 (IQHD) ever since I got cable tv. After getting ticked off one to many times that I couldn't record two things at once and watch another thing I bit the bullet. And now woo hoo we have IQ2.  

Link

So happy with it. It wasn't till the other night when I didn't like the look of anything that was on so I had a look at the movie catalogue and picked something out that I realized how good it really is.

Visual Arts - Blind Contour Drawing

Last week I had my first day on my new course. This year I'm studying Cert 3 in Visual Arts and Contemporary Craft. But it's hard to call it studying, today I did nothing but paint from the moment I walked into class till the very end of the day.

I thought that I would share with you all one of the very first things that we learnt in class and something we start with any day that we are drawing.

Blind Contour Drawing 

Blind contour drawing is drawing the outlines of an object without looking at the page and without taking your pencil off the page. It really helps to train your hand/eye coordination, by doing this you can train you eye so you can draw what's in front of you.

Link

It really doesn't matter what you are drawing or that what it ends up looking like what you have been drawing. My teacher gets us to draw the same thing over and over again on the same piece of paper. These drawings can then be used to create other pieces of artwork.

Next week I can hopefully remember to take some pics of the artwork that I have been working on from my blind contour drawings.

23. Buy a Great Camera

Not long before Christmas my camera was starting to get worse (draining batteries really fast) so after doing my research I finally decided on the Pentax RZ10. So off to the city we traveled to pick it up, by shear luck I stopping off at another camera shop before going to the one I had planned and they had it for $50 less. Woo hoo score.

So here is my new baby!!

Link

My last camera was a Pentax, I just loved the way that it worked so I knew that this one was going to be good but it has exceeded my expectations.

Now its not the camera, I will have to take some photography lessons to get my pics better.

Tutorial Time........

The other night I was check out a bunch of blogs when I came across Dude Craft and Paul's amazing Papercut Portrait tutorial. OMG what an amazing idea. There are times when you see something and you just have to try it.

So two days later I finally tracked down card that I was happy with and I turned this favourite pic of my son and I,

Into this..... 

I cant believe how well it turned out. 

Check out the tutorial here to make your own. 

DudeCraft - Paper Cut Portrait Tutorial from Paul Overton on Vimeo.

I did a couple of things different from the tutorial. I used picnik to change my pic to posterize. I wanted my finished artwork to big really big, so I printed my pic over 9pages (3wide by 3 high, on landscape but it might be different depending on the pic as I had already cropped the pic) and taped the pages together. When I posterized my pic on picnik I chose to used 4 colours/shades. 

I really thought that this was going to be really hard but it was much easier than I thought. I cant wait to have it framed and on my wall. 

I'm Back - What I'm up to

I know it's been a while and there has been so much that has happened since I last blogged. Christmas, Brisbane flooded, my son started high school, there was a death in the family, I returned to TAFE, ticked of  couple of my day zero goals and we also have some very exciting news that I'm going to share with you all very soon.

So today I'm going to share with you all what I have been working on 

As some of you might remember we are currently making over my sons bedroom, if you didn't catch that post you can read about it here. Over the holidays I spotted a crochet rug on a website (I cant remember where, oops) my son loved it and wanted one like it for his new room. So here is my work in progress.  

It was only about 50cm across here and has grown since I took this pic. I'm making it using 180cm wide stretch jersey knit that I got from J.J's at Redcliffe for only $4 a mitre cut into strips and sewn together to make a very long cord. I don't have a pattern so I'm just winging it, I have had to undo a couple of rows a couple of times but I think I'm onto a formula now that is working.

Stay tuned for follow up pics, I will also be blogging some of the things that have happened since I last blogged.