Keys

I have one set of keys. Car, remote car starter, house and mailbox on two key chains hooked together.  That’s it. I like to hang them up at the door so I will remember to never leave home without them.

All the rest of the keys and other hanging things belong to W. Except for my spare set of car keys, but he uses them and I never do, so they don’t count as being mine.

This is what our mess of keys looked like before I got all ambitious this weekend and made new key holders.

The bottom board is something I put together years ago when I first started painting. It is made from a drawer front, weighs a ton, and was hung up on one center nail. If you didn’t hang your keys just right it went off-balance and either hung crookedly or fell off the wall. Once it went down the basement steps. Funny how you put up with annoying things for a ridiculously long time and then one day just decide to do something about them.

My daughter has offered to paint our house interior, and although I was contemplating updating the guest room/library first, now I think we should start with the back door entrance.  Taking these three junky things off the wall was a start.  Putting up NEW junky things will probably get me in trouble.

W thinks it’s funny that there are so many hooks.  So I asked him to identify all the important hanging things we’ve been looking at every day for a dog’s age if not longer.  We have handcuff keys!  No handcuffs anywhere, but we are prepared if they suddenly turn up.  He used to be a wildlife enforcement officer, in case you’re thinking the handcuff thing might have a slightly more kinky explanation.  There are several key chains with no keys on them, keys we believe might be for one of the filing cabinets, some which could be for padlocks, and several about which we do not have a flying clue.

One of these key holders will go in our garage sale, probably with miscellaneous mystery keys included. I only did the second one because the first one didn’t have room for everything.  Keys are like plastic containers with no lids, or lids that don’t fit on anything.  The day after you throw them out you discover you need them for something.

So they get to hang there for a while and I will tackle another junk corner somewhere else. In other exciting news, our dishwasher door has a broken spring and falls like a lead weight if we let it go, so we went searching for the appliance book to see if parts are still available for it and threw out a dozen booklets for things we no longer have.  The dishwasher is 18 years old!  Today is my son’s birthday and he is 40!  Reverse those two statements in order of importance.

My point is, what is the point?  Okay, I admit I don’t really have a point today.  Except maybe to advise you to take stock of all your keys.  Make the mystery ones into a decorative wall hanging.  Give your grown children something to roll their eyes at.  Then if anyone wants to know how you spent your weekend you can make them sorry they asked.

Art du Jour 89

Even though this is not my art, it is the product of my art class, so it qualifies for the art du jour category.  My two amazing students (granddaughters O and M) when given free rein in the art corner always come up with some creative, artistic and interesting results.

They have done a lot of stickers and stamps and drawing and painting on paper, but this weekend graduated to mixed media on canvas.  I think I’ve got them hooked.

They had some help with the ink splashes (it’s pretty messy) and the addition of texture, but the rest – collage and colour choices – it’s all theirs.  I got to hang them on my wall for a day, but now the art and the artists are headed home.

I hope whenever they look at them they remember what fun we had putting them together.

Art du Jour 87

This canvas sat on my easel for weeks, faceless lady in monster hat, making me sad and wanting to watch murder mysteries rather than finish what I started.  Then I chucked her in with a stack of other stuff I still don’t know what to do with, except to keep it all in a stack under my paint shelves.

Yesterday I decided to at least fill in her face, and the rest just flowed from there.  This no longer makes me sad and I don’t hate it.  Yay!  Mission accomplished.  I love the purple and the turquoise but I have no idea what that hat is supposed to be made of.  Let’s just chalk this one up to January boredom and blues, waiting for the sunshine.

Happy Sunday!

Art du Jur 83

Or maybe I should say “art du réveillon de Nouvel an,” which might mean New Year’s Eve art in French, but to be safe, don’t quote me.  These are footprint pictures I did for one of K and C’s bathrooms for Christmas, because my son admired the ones hanging in mine that I did for myself.  Don’t ever admire something in my house unless you really mean it.

The photo was taken at night in not very bright light, so the colours are a little weird, but there’s never a lot of natural light in bathrooms anyway so maybe this is what they’ll look like, except less blurry.  Also I think they would look better hung side by side.

Okay!  My year in review!

Ha ha, sorry to scare you, I’m just kidding.  I survived it and that’s what counts.  If I don’t feel like looking backwards at the things I lived through, I can’t imagine why anyone else would want to.  My life is just not that damned interesting.  Onward and upward to another new start on the road paved with good intentions.  That doesn’t always lead to hell, does it?

Whatever.  I have a plan.  It may sound as if it’s made up of very vague resolutions. Because it is.

1.  Try to blog something every day, even if it’s just a picture or a quote or a weather report.  And once you are disciplined enough to do that, hopefully some of your posts will turn into something better.
2. Share your world fifty-two times!
3. Use your page-a-day calendars for inspiration!
4. Answer some WordPress prompts!  Maybe lay off the exclamation marks!
5. Creating art every day is a pretty lofty goal, so try for twice a week.  And if there’s more than that, well yay!  I mean just yay, with less excitement.

Have you ever been so overwhelmed with all the things you want to do that you just sit down and don’t do anything?  Wow, I hope it’s not just me who does that.  And I hope I’ve gotten that bad habit out of my system for a while with such a slack assed December. Pardon my French.

January, my least favourite month ever, with 31 dreary days, is coming right up.  I would like to fill it with fun.  I have two half bottles of red wine in the fridge to finish up (in five ounce increments per day because that’s what diabetics are allowed) so I need to get right on that before it all goes bad.  I have several art projects on the go, and several more in my head.  Chapters had their calendars on for half price today so I walked down there and bought three of them.

PREPARED is what I am.  Bring it on, 2016, I’m ready for you.

Happy New Year everyone.

Art du Jour 82

My November Day Twenty Eight

There was a vision in my head before I started out on my little artistic adventure involving a grinning cat, but the result is not what I expected.

It never is.

I’m happy with the concept and I like the colours, but this had to sit on my easel for several days before it grew on me enough to share.

I suppose you can’t be madly in love with everything you do.
“I meant,” said Ipslore bitterly, “what is there in this world that truly makes living worthwhile?”
Death thought about it.
CATS, he said eventually. CATS ARE NICE.”
― Terry Pratchett, Sourcery

 

Art du Jour 77

For something that started out looking very much like a baby quilt, this turned out okay in the end.
First there was the design and drawing. Look at me being all precise and disciplined and using a ruler.

All those little squares were boring so I changed a few of them, added random colours from my box of acrylic tubes, realized my sail boat is impressionistic rather than realistic, and then sat back and looked at this for a long time.

Then it was cut and paste time, with this result.

This morning I finally finished it, adding layers and some shading and bits of chaos here and there lest anyone think this might be meant to depict smooth sailing.  It was much too clean and organized.  There will be none of that in this house.
It’s a lovely sunny warm Monday here. It’s also my daughter’s birthday which means another July is winding down. Hope your day is beautiful.

Art du Jour 76

Since a lot of my pictures don’t have any real focal point, I tried to create one here. It’s a bridge over a muddy stream in case you missed it.

My home decor has about ten thousand focal points in every room too. I have inner calm amidst outer chaos.

Although I did get annoyed with the ink in this one, because even though I sprayed it with fixative it continued to seep up to the top of whatever I layered over it. Bad ink. Doing what ink does.

Here’s another thing I learned. A really expensive facial cleanser I don’t like works well to remove dried on gel medium from my hands. Now I don’t have to throw it out and feel all guilty about it. Or scrub my hands like I’m trying to remove my fingerprints.

This was a three-day long labour intensive project because I had a vision and a goal. Sometimes I think things turn out better when I don’t have either one of those things.

Art du Jour 74

I watched a YouTube video yesterday and it inspired me to create this. The artist used acrylic paints, brushing various colours on to the canvas, letting some dry, and spraying others while still wet with water. She then used a paper towel to blot some of the water and colour up, letting the base colour show through and dabbing the excess on to other colours here and there on the canvas.

Well. Doesn’t that sound easy? I think my paper towel must be better quality than hers, because it lifted everything up and refused to let it go. So I was barely started and already breaking the rules. This is why I don’t take art classes and prefer to just wing it and see what happens. A couple of sea sponges worked way better than the paper.

I took a picture of the background I was finally happy with, just in case it all went downhill from there. Although I don’t know what difference that was supposed to make. It was really bright so I toned it down and blended it all with some watered down gesso.

Then obviously as you can see I don’t know which way is up, and flipped the canvas so the flowers would fit. I sketched them in pencil, went over them with gesso, painted them with acrylics and did some shading with gelatos. The lady I watched did a lot of ink outlines everywhere but I tried to keep the ink to a minimum. I added some texture and stamps instead.  Because that’s what I do.

Finally, as instructed (what? really??) I added white splatter, let it dry, and then added some black. This is supposed to keep the splattered dots from mixing and turning grey. And it worked. Whaddaya know.

I really admire the artists who make these videos because of their ability to stay serious and not swear. Someone should do a tutorial on that. Sorry, it won’t be me.

And that’s how I spent my Wednesday.  How was yours?  If you were serious and didn’t swear, never mind.

Art du Jour 70

Could be an understatement to say this is mixed media, because I think I used everything within reach once I got going. It’s like cooking, where you start adding whatever strange thing is hanging around in the fridge or the cupboard to your concoction. Or perhaps that’s just me, and the reason why nothing ever turns out the same twice in a row.

In the beginning I was simply experimenting doing a face with gelatos. She was supposed to look sinister and mysterious and that stuff around her head was meant to be representative of hair. So much for that plan.  I don’t know what the hell it represents now.  These things just take on a life of their own. My muse has not so much a sense of the dramatic as a sense of humour.

We’ve had a couple of lovely cool cloudy rainy overcast days, but today the sun is back and the heat is on. Canada Day, with its celebrations and fireworks has come and gone for another year. And we’re off and running into July.

Make hay while the sun shines.

Art du Jour 69

It’s too hot to breathe. I am tucking the memory of these scorched summer days deep in my brain so I can pop them up for perusal next January.

See, that wasn’t really complaining, was it? And I drummed up sufficient ambition to complete this big canvas using my ripped up book as a base. Even though the temperature in my house has climbed to 26 and it feels like well over 30 outside.

The interesting thing about this mixed media piece is how the ink bled up through the white texture paste, so I just let it be.  Happy accident, pulling the base colours up to the surface.

Anyway, it’s too hot to talk about it.  I need more ice.  And I would like to get back to watching a documentary about Nina Simone.  It could never be too hot for that.