Happy February!

It's 71 degrees here today and it shouldn't be. It should be between 30-40.  I miss winter. 

But it is still February so instead of painting Christmas trees and snow I painted a bunch of Valentine Hearts.

 

And now It's also 2023 and I haven't posted an update in a long time so this is a quick bullet summary of what I did in 2022, besides grow marigolds.

So what did I do last year?

Some crochet: Another Project Linus Crochet Along blanket.

Some more crochet: This time tiny baby aliens with my own mods. I ended up making 4. They are a lot faster to make than their big brothers.

 

Started a new quilt: I saw these Plaid-ish quilts all over Instagram and loved them. The pattern is free and I have more fabric than any one person ever needs. I did finish piecing the top but I still need to quilt and finish it, hopefully this year.

 

Gardening: Lots of porch gardening, in addition to the feral marigolds.  The Celosia is my new favorite flower. They bloom and they stay 'bloomed' for months! I named this one Groot. It's just too obvious. Right?

Lots of different color Coleus, several Celosia of different types, Red vine, Morning Glories, and a Poinsettia.

Lots of watercolor art: Experimenting with paints, brushes and methods.

 Swatching all the watercolor paints I have.

 

Some bookbinding: Call it an art journal or a junk journal? I'm not sure? But it is just a collection of papers I'm painted.

 

 

But almost every day just filling this giant book with abstract acrylic art.

This is the first 100 pages of that big book of acrylic painting experiments.  There are also videos for the other 200 pages on my YouTube channel.

That's it for today. Not sure when I'll be back.

Thanks for reading.

Aileen

Painting and Reading

What have I been doing since May?
Let's see...

First, I got sucked into the Instagram Vortex.  That's one of my excuse for not updating my blog. I've been posting photos of much of the artwork I've been doing over the past several months to my Instagram account and neglecting this blog. Also, because I really haven't been doing much besides painting or reading books all summer. 

Second, I went on a reading binge (yes, that is a thing, at least I do it from time to time). I have spent July through November reading all 17 books (15 novels and 2 books of short stories) in the Jim Butcher Dresden Files series. And some other books, fiction and non-fiction, 25 in all since May.

Third, I've been tired, a lot.  I can read, and do some art, and a few other necessary things every day, but not much else. I thought it was just my migraine problem and the horrible heat of this past summer, ( I hate summer), but I found out at the end of August I had a thyroid problem. I'm on medicine now so that problem should improve over time.

But I do manage to do some little bit of art every day, even if it is just one more layer on an acrylic painting or some watercolor practice.


Shown below is a collection of some of my art of Summer 2018:

 

Thanks for reading.
Aileen Biser

Still having fun with Arts and Crafts

I'm still here.
Still finding time to do arts and crafts.
I've filled spare hours with painting, artwork, sewing and bookbinding.
But I just haven't stopped to write about it.
So, to start with...
 
I find myself sitting down and playing with watercolor paint a lot. Unlike acrylic painting with the constant fear of permanently ruining something with the paint, I can do watercolors virtually anywhere. All my acrylic painting projects are done in my craft room, usually with old cloths on. But I do most of my watercolors sitting at the kitchen table.

In January I was thinking about Valentines and set out to make some watercolor heart art.

.

In February I was busy making a watercolor mixing chart with the different watercolor paints I have been collecting over the past year. I just buy colors I like without any goal or plan in mind. This is the first time I've made one of these charts. It's a little messy.  I'd like to do three different charts; yellows and blues, yellows and pinks, and pinks and blues.

By March I was thinking about Shamrocks but didn't spend much time on that and moved on to just playing with watercolor paint in the form of colorful abstracts.  I've been doing a bunch of these, experimenting with different color combinations.

 

I often go back over the watercolor with some pen or marker embellishments. 

It's all just doodling to me.

In April I stopped long enough to make something for the monthly ArtSnacks challenge.

But I can't seem to make a really symmetric butterfly freehand.  If I'm trying to be a perfectionist I draw an outline of one side of the butterfly, trace it on to tracing paper, flip that over and transfer the mirror image outline to the other side. I didn't do that this time so I can't look at this without seeing all the asymmetric differences. 

So I scanned in the drawing, split the image down the middle and with some help from Photoshop created two different perfectly symmetric Butterflies from the original drawing. 

Thanks for reading.
Aileen