Accordion or Concertina?

Posted on July 18, 2016 by Dana Burrell

So what do you call it? Just wondering, but in my limited experience I believe the term most commonly used is accordion in the states and concertina in the UK. (An accordion to me is a musical instrument even though I’m in the states.)

I’ve been fascinated by concertina books for years, first with this book by Suzanne Hughes, and then with books like this one created by Lynne Chapman. (be sure to click on the full panorama at the end of her post.)

Then a friend turned me on to Ed Mostly’s blog, Mostly Drawing. Not only does he post beautiful artwork but he’s experimenting with book arts. Ed created a concertina book with overlapping covers for drawing support. I urge you to read this post as I could never explain his methodology as clearly as he does.

I was so intrigued I created two models with remnants from previous efforts.

Yeah, my books have issues. The folds don’t line up, the hinges could be wider, but all in all I’m quite pleased.

Ooops! Forgive the cat hair.

AND………. I kept the one with orange end sheets and sent the blue and green flowered one to my friend. Together we’ll see if they’ll work for us!

No, no… thank YOU!

Dino-mite!

Posted on July 15, 2016 by Dana Burrell

I can’t remember which of my friends sent me this meme but they definitely knew my love of paleontology and dinosaurs, both real and plastic.

Plastic is made of oil.

Oil is made of dinosaurs.

Plastic dinosaurs are made from real dinosaurs.

No… oil was formed long before dinosaurs lived. And besides, this dinosaur is made of gouache!

Dino-mite!

As Long As I’m Dreaming

Posted on July 8, 2016 by Dana Burrell

I’m into week four of my summer gouache adventure.

My original thought was to use gouache exclusively for a month but that just wasn’t to be. I often work away from home, sometimes in a café, and my palette’s just too large to carry with me all the time. I have a smaller empty palette at the ready; I just need to stop procrastinating and fill it!

I’m loving Mary Ann Moss’s OMG! class videos and she’s given us plenty of sketching subject ideas but so far my pages have been inspired by my fellow classmates. Case in point, one artist painted her favorite sparkling water… I joined in by painting mine!

Daler-Rowney Pro White… I couldn’t have lettered without it.

Oh No!!! I’ve misspelled the type of mango! Luckily, I had made a practice page before I lettered. The base is acrylic paint… plastic, right? Could I wash off my transposed letters?

Oh Yeah! …….. whew… a save.

Time for more experimentation. I’ve finished each of my sketchbooks with a self portrait, sometimes in ink, sometimes in watercolor, This time it was all about the gouache!

And then a favorite painting reduced from 8 foot square to less than 8 inches square in my journal!

I could live in this painting.

As long as I’m dreaming…

240 Years of Independence

Posted on July 4, 2016 by Dana Burrell

13 stars and 13 stripes.

Happy Birthday USA!

Frederick Franck’s Big Ten

Posted on July 1, 2016 by Dana Burrell

I’ve been a huge fan of Frederick Franck ever since I discovered one of his books, The Zen of Seeing: Seeing Drawing as Meditation. This book has moved with me many times; the spine and cover are quite faded in spots.

The contents will never fade; they’re as relevant today as they were when they were written. I’m not the only fan, just the other day a friend shared Franck’s ten commandments from his long out-of-print book, The Awakened Eye. As with all interesting quotes, I documented them in my journal!

Like Frederick Franck, I believe everything and anything is worthy of being truly seen, even for a few short minutes.

If you’re interested in a text version of these ten commandments or learning more about Frederick Franck and The Awakened Eye please check out this wonderful website. There’s a lot to explore!

OMG! Gouache – Week 2

Posted on June 27, 2016 by Dana Burrell

Twice a week we get more videos in Mary Ann Moss’ OMG! gouache class. She presents us with so many ideas and techniques it’s hard to know which one to try first.

Ya just gotta dive in!

Who knew there are yellow and red striped peppers? I guess we all do now. This little guy went through so many layers… ugly, ugly, ugly and then… Boom! Done!

But too much blank space… one of the ideas was to use gouache when lettering. But what if I ruined it? …and after all that work!

Sometimes you just have to go for it.

Btw… remind me what a pain it is to paint background around an object! I used matte acrylic craft paint from Jo-Ann. Cloudless. Yum!

I now have a small selection to use instead of wasting my good gouache on backgrounds.

Next I was inspired by a favorite batik pattern… ooops! The full tortoise in the lower right is the correct pattern. I forgot the second line on the shell for all the others. And yes, I painted the entire page first with acrylic before I even thought about gouache.

I thought I was brilliant but in fact I was too smart for my own good. I wanted to keep the paint nice and juicy so I kept a slightly dampened sponge in my palette and tucked the whole thing in a zip-top bag. It must have been way too humid because my M. Graham Sap Green seemed to be growing MOLD! A “science experiment ” as Roz Stendahl says. Ugh! Just a small square of sponge now and no more plastic bag! It must have been the honey M. Graham uses to keep the paint soft and moist.

Today was hot enough for me to pull out my mother’s old silk chinese paddle fan. As I cooled myself I admired the hand-painted bird and flowers. Could I do that someday?

Why wait!

I’m off to re-watch the videos to see what I might want to try next… I’ll just be here playing. Have a great day!

Summer’s Here

Posted on June 24, 2016 by Dana Burrell

… and the time is right for dancing in the street.

‘Tis the season for outdoor concerts ! Lots of dancing on the green giving me the perfect opportunity to indulge one of my favorite activities… people watching.

Black PITT Artist pen F in an inexpensive Daler-Rowney pocket sketchbook (3.5″ X 5.5″).

I like to travel light!

Quilts For Pulse

Posted on June 20, 2016 by Dana Burrell

#QuiltsForPulse

I started my artistic endeavors with quilting and although this blog is mostly about my drawing and painting, I’ve never totally given up my love of fabric and quilting.

Late last week a call came out from our guild’s community service chairs. The Orlando Modern Quilt Guild had started a campaign to make quilts for survivors, family of the victims, first responders and if there were extras they would be distributed to the LGBTQ community centers in the Orlando area.

Was any one interested in participating? Yes! Years ago I’d lived in Orlando and still have a soft spot in my heart for it. Fortunately, others in our guild, Northern Lights Quilt Guild, wanted to participate! A plan was hatched to create our own quilt comprised of various sized heart blocks. 12.5″, 9.5″, 6.5″, and 3.5″ blocks will fit together like one big jigsaw puzzle!

I worked out my plan in my journal… my external brain 🙂

ROY G BIV… red orange yellow green blue indigo violet, Rainbow colors!

For my blocks I decided to change up the color sequence by using the indigo-violet as the background and using a violet-pink for the final strip.

Measurements:

12″ block – 12.5″ unfinished:

6 – 2.5″ X 12.5″ strips (one of each color)
2 – 6.5″ square background
4 – 2.5″ square background

9″ block – 9.5″ unfinished

6 – 2″ X 9.5″ strips
2 – 5″ square background
4 – 2″ square background

6″ block – 6.5″ unfinished

6 – 1.5″ X 6.5″ strips
2 – 3.5″ square background
4 – 1.5″ square background

Let the cutting, sewing and pressing begin!

I don’t want to waste fabric… I think I’ll be able to get some half square triangles if I sew another line.

A little more cutting, pressing and sewing and I have a finished block!

… and extra blocks too! I later discarded the smaller ones, they were too small to easily expand.

Once I cut the half square blocks down to size… 3.5″ square… I had a nice selection.

The extra blocks even make a few nice pinwheels.

I can’t wait to see the blocks made by the other members of the Northern Lights Quilt Guild. Thank you Niña, Sarah and Candy… We’ll soon have a beautiful quilt stitched with love!

OMG!

Posted on June 20, 2016 by Dana Burrell

G! … as in Gouache!

I’m taking another Mary Ann Moss class… OMG!… this time it’s all about gouache, an opaque water media very similar to opaque watercolor only more so.

This first thing I learned was that it’s pronounced g’wash… rhyming with squash.

Fair warning… lots of photos ahead!

I bought a lovely selection of Schmincke gouache selected by artist, Roz Stendahl and to that I added a few tubes of M. Graham gouache. I squirted it into pans and arranged my palette.

When closed the palette latch is a little loose so I made a band out of 1.5 inch elastic. I love the turquoise!

I started playing first by adding white to get tints and then seeing if my pens would write over the matte surface.

Hmmm… I wonder what secondary mixes I can get with my selected primaries?

Ah… nice! But what do I mix to get the brightest hues?

I’m still finding it hard to judge how much water… or rather, how little water to use. My gouache blocks on this spread have lots of streaks. I wonder once I conquer the water issue if I’ll also get rid of the streaks, but for now I rather like the wabi-sabi look.

Great practice but now what? Well. I decided to draw my Friday. My black Uni-ball Vision wrote like a dream but my white Signo? Not so much. After a few issues with hard starts and skipping I learned to use a light hand. It’s a nice arrow to have in my art quiver.