Prom 2009

Prom 2009 - Twilight in Paris
A turquoise-y blue, black, white and silver. Very pretty!! Happened on April 4th, and went beautifully, no glitches!! Yeah!! Only 358 days until the next one!!

Maybe I'm getting somewhere...

More on the mixed media piece. Played with silver metal duct tape and Adirondack alcohol inks. I wrote a letter to my mom on the metal over foam core, then applied the inks. Got a great metallic brass color, more like it had been polished and the left out to tarnish.

I have since gessoed the BLUE board - it was driving me crazy, way too blue! I have to work on the gessoed papers I'm adding, probably off whites, cremes, browns, etc, my colors with a hint of blue and fushia. I need to make some new stamps, but the designs escape me. Also the edges of the foamcore need modeling paste and color or collage...
I have about an hour today after school, so I'll get a bunch done.

Trip to Washington DC

In April, my art student Joey won the 11th US Congressional District Art Competition. He entered a photograph he took at our cemetery after an ice storm in Jan.2007. Part of the prize was airfare for 3 to DC and 2 nights in a hotel there. My fantastic principal paid for an extra night for Joey and his mom, and 3 nights for me and Dan, and our rental car, and part of our meals. It was the trip of a life time!

We left from Midland EARLY Wed. AM Jun. 27 and flew to Austin then to Baltimore. LONG trip, we got in about 2:30PM and drove around awhile, then got settled in our hotel - Capitol Hill Suites - and then went driving around to look at the lights. WOW, DC is gorgeous at night.
I lived in Alexandria, VA and in Upper Marboro, MD in the mid seventies. It has changed alot since then. The most noticeable is the accessibility of monuments and the government offices. Thank you 9/11...

Anyway, we visited with Congressman Mike Conaway Thursday morning in the Cannon building(wow, what a beautiful building!) and then went to the Capitol through the underground walkways - saw Joey's picture hanging in the passageway - we have awesome high school artists in this country! The temperature was 94 and VERY humid. I think we walked 10 miles that day. That night we went to the Lincoln Memorial and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial - again, awesome places.
Friday it was cooler and cloudy, we went on the White House tour, and then did MORE walking, went to the Air and Space Museum, and the Hirshorn and went to the pavillions on the Mall - they had Irish musicians there and Vietnamese dancers - very interesting. I ended up with shin splints...OOS(out of shape!) But I'm a trouper, so we went driving around all over, up Embassy Row and Georgetown, it was so pretty. On Saturday, we left at 3 for the airport, and got home at 11PM - VERY long day. As always, so glad to be home.

Next time I will do my homework for the trip. I should have looked up what art I wanted to see and had the addresses (we have a Garmin - absolutely indispensible in a strange city!) and the address of my old job on M St. NW - Aetna still has offices there, but I didn't remember the address...it was a great trip for me, down memory lane...

Think I'm Finished??

Classwork status-
I worked more on this yesterday - changed the colors in the 'balls' by rubbing gray and/or coral soft pastel over them and rubbed it with my fingers - there's so much texture in those areas(used the end of a paint brush to scratch back into the still soft oil pastel/paint sticks) so the under colors still show, and the color is dulled by the pastel. I added the stitching on the pattern pieces and across the kimono - it's oil pastel also, scratched back out nearly with an xacto knife. Added a little more collage on several flower petals, and just over all cleaned it up. I didn't want to loose some of the original color or the multicolor edges of some areas, I personally like some of the unfinished look, but I do fuss over things too. But I THINK I'm done. My friend Laree and I are going to Alpine on Monday to let our instructor(talented watercolor artist college instructor Carol Fairlie) see what we've been doing for our class. Have to be finished in 2 weeks!!! YIKES!!!

Collage ramblings-
I also took pictures of some old work - 2 oil pastels on roofing paper and a c. pastel on newsprint. I'm going to use these in the newbie ATC's as background papers - I'll probably make them b/w and hand color them, or turn them into 'colorbook' drawings and handcolor them....or something. Old sketchbooks make awesome 'stuff' for backgounds, xeroxed on cool papers. I have an hp 1210xi all in one, and I have yet to find any paper or cardstock thickness paper I couldn't run through it - I have run painted papers and watercolor paper and of course my pattern tissue. Forgive me if everyone already knows all this!! I feel I have 'discovered' all this on my own - but of course - great minds think alike, so many of you may be doing the same thing!
I am trying to only use only my own images and family photos, I LOVE collage, I like to xerox until the detail is nearly gone, then xerox onto weird papers, old stuff, maps, etc. Also, I do like to make my own stamps. If you haven't tried the blue stuff - made by Penscore - you need to - you can make and remake your own stamps, using old medals, jewelry, words written with hotglue, cardboard letters, etc. the stuff is only 3X5ish, but you can overlap and connect in 100 ways!
Misc. stuff-
Thanks to whoever recommended Blogarithm.com - it is awesome!!! Several of you posted to your blogs yesterday and I got this handy little email with a direct link to your new entry! Fantastic!!!
Have a great weekend!!! Deb

New Art Room Blog!!

Well, I did it!! I made a blog for my artroom - I'd like a different profile and picture for it, does anyone know how I can do that? Do I need a different email address?

http://ahs-artroom.blogspot.com/

Anyway, I'll email it to my upper level art kids so they can check it out! I got email addresses and cellphone numbers before school was out - it'll be fun. I'm happy, thanks again to everyone who has given me suggestions, pointed me in the right direction, and most of all for the encouraging comments and emails. You are the BEST!! Art Techniques folks, do you mind me linking your blogs and/or webpages to my blog??? Let me know! PATA (posted on Art Tecniques Also) Gotta pack and do more laundry for the trip! I'll ahve to check at least one suitcase so I can bring ocean water back from CC - Have a great weekend!!
I love the new save feature, I thought I'd lost this!!!!

Blogger Help Group

Went there to get all my posts to show on the page, so for at least a while all my carefully chosen words will show! I'm so proud of myself!!
I also found several art teachers who use the blog as a class webpage...what a cool idea for those of us with no knowledge of these things! And those I've seen have LOTS of pictures and info - eventually, I want an interactive webpage, with printable assignments and rubrics, syllabus(syllabii?) for every level, etc...but I don't know how to do it myself, and don't really want to learn either, I just want to know what I need to know to change or update it, FOR FREE of course! Art $$$ don't stretch far enough, I am always using my own money for things. Tech people say 'someday', and computer/multimedia teachers don't have time for it either. This is the most fun I have had in a long time - thanks for all the help out there!

Still having some problems

I lowered the cookie thing for blogger.com, so it would allow me to have add ons, like links - but it still takes FOREVER, to look at comments on my blog. It usually doesn't load the page at all. We have Norton Antivirus, and I can hear the popup blocker thing, very faintly, but it's catching some kind of 'poo' - we put it up higher since my little girl(19) has MySpace, and all that stuff, so we have had to do the hp recovery thing several times in the last 6 months - lost LOTS of stuff last time, but the computer was completely down, and that's all we could do...my little girl is also an artist, and taking classes at our local community college - her skills are so much better than mine were at her age, I can only imagine where she'll be when she graduates. I'm so proud of her. She is amazing.
We are leaving at 6AM tomorrow for Corpus, I can't wait! Have a great weekend out there folks!

More Thursday ramblings...

It finally worked!! I'll be adding pictures of my art work, classroom, studio, travels, etc. I really think it would be imposssible to keep up with this during the school year, but I will try...it's fun, that's for sure! It will be a good way to keep up with family things, once I get it going. And I hope to have a real webpage for my art department this year too. Most folks out there don't care what I'm doing here in West Texas, but maybe a few fellow teachers and artists will be inspired by the links I'll have eventually, and the art tips and workshops. That's my hope anyway. Is anyone out there??? ^_^