Almost half way to 100

Still working on the little 4x4's.  My aim is to finish 100.  Some of them have been a little bigger than 4x4 but they are in the count so far, may or may not stay in the series.  Here are a few more...

5 more to be at the halfway mark.  And I'm still working on the black and white workshop so the last half of the 100 is going to take awhile.

Dailies, Black and White and Spider Lake

My annual art retreat at Spider Lake... thank you brother Charlie and Vernell.  Terry and I do appreciate our time here so much... This is the view out the door to the deck.

I've been doing my dailies; now I'm aiming for 100.  Here are a few I've recently finished...

And I started an on-line black and white workshop with Jane Davies.  Here are a few collages from the first lesson...

Making art and enjoying the water … that's our week.  This year I'm only enjoying looking at it.  Good swims the first couple days but then I injured my big toe and have to stay our of the water.  That's what I get for not paying attention.  Slipped on a slippery step coming out of the lake.  Oh well, lesson learned and I can still enjoy looking at the water, listening to it lapping on the shore and hearing the loons that come to our bay to visit.  Life is good.

Dailies Continue and Now Some Black and White

This is the last of the July dailies; however, I am still doing them.  A friends thinks I could easily do 100.  Easy for her to say but worth trying anyway, especially given that I'm almost halfway there. Here are August 1, 2 and 3.  but from here on they will just be numbered so these are 32, 33 and 34.  I may not do one every day and some days I may do two or three but I will keep going because I love doing them and I have tons of old ephemera.

 Meanwhile, I'm taking a Jane Davies on-line workshop... Working in Black and White.  That started August 1 and here are the first three days of lesson one.... grey scale and black and white collages.  I like committing to doing one piece every day and I prefer doing it first thing.  That way I am free to do more clutter clearing or painting or rearranging or whatever and I can still feel like I've accomplished something.  Especially given that the clutter clearing seems to be a never ending job.  I have managed to take 6 huge bags of trash to the curb in the past few weeks.  That's progress!

For this first lesson we painted several sheets of drawing paper black, then more sheets painted varying shades of grey.  I did all right with the black, fairly simple.  But the varying shades of grey were suppose to be solid grey, not variations within each grey.  That is not as easy as one would think.  Practice.  My reading this morning from Julia Cameron basically said if you want to be good at something you have to be willing to be bad at it first.  So.... here are my greys and three black and white collages made with the black painted paper collaged on to printmaking paper.

I'll be doing a black and white collage every day, maybe even two a day, until the next lesson.  Even then I may keep going with these until I do some that I really like.  Jane said just play with the collage and that's what I've been doing.