paint cut paste

this is just a quick little (momma art) entry about what has become a bit of an obsession of mine in the past year and a half… painting with white ink on smooth, dark stones.

stones i painted in july 2010

i first fell in love with this idea when i saw them on genine’s art blog a long while back – if you have not yet visited this amazing blog, check it out! sooo inspiring! although little rock paintings are not a new idea and they’re all over the internet. i figured i’d share them with you here regardless. mostly because i love creating them — even though it’s intricate work, i find it very relaxing and soothing. i love to look at the stones and let them inform me, by their shape, color, and texture, what sort of image might live on them.

i like to use white acrylic ink and a script liner brush when i paint mine. recently, i purchased some different inks in sepia, gray, and turquoise, so i’ll experiment with those on rocks soon. (N and i have already played with inks on red clay pottery.) for some reason, N has yet to paint with the inks on rocks with me, but i imagine she’ll join me soon.

these make for easy and personal gifts for birthdays, thank yous, hostess tokens, etc. and it gives me something fun to do with all of the lovely stones i can’t stop picking up along the pacific coastline.

admittedly, i got all jazzed about pinterest painted pumpkins this year. i mean, have you seen the options?! it’s intense out there. martha is quaking in her fryes with the sheer amount of pumpkin talent run amok on the interwebs. and lemme tell ya, i am NO  threat to ms. stewart in any way, shape, or form. let’s talk total craft fail right now (and a quasi-recovery?) here are some of the pinterest gems that piqued my pumpkin passion.

you know i don’t use the words “craft” or “fail” much at all, (for totally different reasons) but this is a complete craft fail (do i have to put a hashtag in front of that term? eww, lingo.) and instead of ___fail, i’d rather just call it an art-gone-wrong moment. (but yes, #craftfail!) i was inspired to make some painter’s tape resist pumpkins (like bottom left pic above) and three pumpkins with B O O stenciled onto them. i figured they’d be all beautiful and i’d title the blog “smashing pumpkins” and everything. i bought these super inexpensive beauties at a produce stand.

taped and stickered them where i wanted them to remain orange.

i grabbed some matte spray paint, and went to town.

(the only thing that was cool here was the caravaggesque lighting of these photos, and that was an accident)

after the paint dried, i peeled off the tape and stickers… um, and MOST OF THE SPRAY PAINT! (grrr)

for the B O O pumpkins, i thought i’d use these cool vinyl letter stickers i bought at michael’s, but large stickers do not stick in any sort of flat way to a rounded pumpkin surface, so i knew they would not produce a clean line when painted around. so i thought (sure, just for like two seconds) and grabbed some rubber cement and painted the letters B O O onto the pumpkins instead.

i figured the rubber cement would roll right off after they were painted and show the letters i had carefully designed by hand. perhaps this would have worked (???) if i had NOT USED SPRAY PAINT!

so i dropped this agenda altogether. i purchased three white pumpkins. i stuck the vinyl letters onto them as best i could. i traced around the letters with a pencil. i painted inside my pencil lines with sepia acrylic ink.

and it worked out well enough for this year.

pumpkins drying against sliding glass door - fun effect

and now onto designing the rest of the mantel…

you may remember that we made some lovely little pinch pots out of air dry red clay a couple weeks ago. well, i just wanted to give a little update on how we decided to embellish them.

i’m a huge fan of acrylic inks. i have a few colors from dick blick, so i decided to get them out and introduce them to N. she has seen me use them with a very fine brush, but she’s never used the inks and the script liner brush herself – until now.

she said she wanted to make “teeny little marks” on her pot, and set out to paint it in great detail.

we had such a great and quiet little art making session… it’s almost like the intricacy of the marks we made brought out a really mellow mood in us both.

as an art therapist, i often choose materials for clients that are a metaphor for what they are experiencing or that are like a holistic artistic prescription for what emotions they’re needing to work through. i often present materials to my daughter based on her energy level and feeling state, or to provide balance for what she might be needing in that moment. this art activity reminded me how materials can elicit a response – when N works in a small scale, she tends to get quiet, and when working with large, broad strokes, her energy tends to match.

what have you noticed about how materials affect your little artist(s)?

i always try to follow N’s lead when it comes to the art projects we do around here. her natural inclination lately has been toward the realm of still life drawing.

the other day she picked up a pen and drew on the back of a cardboard notepad, and then came and showed it to me. she said, “these are all of the tummy-symbols of the care bears. it’s so much fun to draw what i’m looking at!”

love-a-lot bear wasn't available for the photo shoot. he might be busy under the couch.

so, of course, the following day momma whipped up a pretty bowl of fruit for N to draw — i mean, why not start out in a classic way? the little one was thrilled!

she wanted to draw a few objects by themselves, as well.

the apple

the tomato

a few tomatoes as a thank you to our neighbors who brought us some from their yard

next, N said she wanted to draw “a different bowl of fruit that i’m thinking of in my head.”

the bowl of fruit N pictured in her head

masterpieces!

we had such a fun morning! so sweet and quiet to draw together…

(so quiet that even i got in on the action a wee bit…)

all of our days are artful… but not every day includes an “art activity” to share with you, per se. here are some of the creative and lovely things that have been happening around our house thus far this week that are worth a visual share…

chalk drawing al fresco

mushroom spotting

portraits in frames

momma's inked rocks in process

impromptu pen drawing on the grocery list paper

gathering flowers & herbs in the backyard (with matching pedis a la momma)

coloring mandalas

"hey mommy, i made a bear out of rocks!"

chillin' with a ladybug

flowers & the potential of unpainted wood

take time to notice the small things & happy creating!

there’s nothing terribly inventive about making little creatures out of tiny (or big) fingerprints, but there’s always something irresistibly cute about it!

inky

we usually send out nearly 200 paper holiday cards each year, but this year, out of respect for our earth (and limited budget) we are creating a digital card… but then we realized that we needed a few little cards to accompany the few handmade trinkets we’re crafting for family members. so, handmade cards on recycled paper is the way to go! i got out my beloved colorbox ink in cyan and let the little one go at it, putting her little fingerprint on our cards.

then, with my beloved sharpie (can you tell these are materials i adore?) i drew the most minimal features to make her cute prints into little bluebirds of happiness.

bluebirds of happiness!

with a brush tip sepia faber-castell artist pen, i randomly sketched in some branches.

then i used the same cyan ink pad to stamp a script “joy” on the insides of the cards (stamp from my beloved paper source – oh huge crush!) and wrote little notes (and let N sign her own name to a few) for our loved ones. a sweet, personalized wintery scene to send!

i think red birds on white stock would be a lovely holiday card, as well! there are tons of other animals and characters that can be made with fingerprints – a fun idea for cards, gifts, and art in general!

then we had all of the (few) holiday cards we needed complete in an afternoon – now we just have to dream up a digital holiday card to create for all of our dear friends…