Directions for Creating a Possibility Poster
Choosing a colorful background.
Doing the poster work.
Katie’s eyes and gold pencil charts.
Katie and I invited our next door neighbor, AJ Hurst, to join us in creating these posters for the new year. Therefore, these 2013 posters were produced by a 15, 22, and 60 year old. These can be an art project with any age. I think even younger children would enjoy creating a visual of their hopes, dreams, and possibilities for the new year.
1. Take some time to write down your 2013 possibilities. What projects, intentions, goals, etc. do you have for the new year? Really throw your hat over the wall and write down those things that are always nagging the back of your mind but never get handled. This could be the year!
2. Pick a poster size and color. Our posters were 13 1/2 x 21 inches on colorful art paper. You could use white poster board, but, a bright color background seems to get the art juices rolling.
3. We took a photo of each other with a digital camera. Could have been with our phones. Transferred the photos to the computer and printed out a black and white copy to paste onto our posters. Last year my poster had a color photo of me. This year a black and white allowed me to do some creative coloring. Putting your face into your 2013 possibilities is a great place to start the planning from. After all, this is a visual of your intentions. I put my face upside down, Katie used just her eyes, and AJ not only used her head but several little full figures in various poses of herself.
4. Materials: photo copies, magazines, color cardstock, markers, color pencils, scissors, glue. I’m sure that 3-D items would work too. Whatever you wanted to put into your collage. The collage items will represent your goals, thoughts, themes for the year. I picked an overriding thought from the musical, “Les Miserables”, to headline my year: To love another person is to see the face of God. There are also “charts” on my poster that I can mark off as I accomplish them. My column of “the unexpected” is my longest column. The poster will also become a history of 2013.
5. Hang the completed poster in a place that will keep it ever present!
Possibilities for 2013! Some call these “dream boards”. I call mine a “possibility poster”. Fun art.
2013 possibility poster
Directions for making paper sculpture masks!
Basic directions for creating paper sculpture masks:
1. Use cardstock. Bright colors and black. Black cardstock is a great foundation for color pencil work and background for bright color attachments.
First decision: pick a sheet of 8 1/2 x 11 inch color cardstock. It is always fun to see what color different children pick. Cardstock can come in such intense colors.
2. Fold your piece of cardstock in half: will you be a long face (like a hotdog) or a wide face (like a hamburger)?
3. From one of the corners of your folded cardstock to the opposite, diagonal corner, tear or cut the paper. Tearing leaves an organic rough edge, cutting leaves a smooth sharp edge. When you open your folded paper you should now have a basic triangular shape. The beginning of a face!
4. Poke holes in your mask where you want the eyes to be. You can do this with a pair of pointed scissors by drilling carefully into the cardstock. With a little hole poked you now have room to insert your scissors or fingers and cut or tear an eye shape.
5. Paper and cardstock can CURL as well as bend, fold, twist, crinkle! Look at your left over pieces and also pick some other color pieces of cardstock to experiment with. They can be attached to your basic mask shape with a glue stick or hot-glue gun.
6. Get into your craft supply box and also decorate with feathers, glitter, rope, trim, etc. Colored pencils on cardstock create some great tapestry and texture.
7. When you are done you can display your mask on the wall or bulletin board with push pins. It is important to pin one side of your mask to the wall and then bend the mask a bit at the fold before you pin the other side. This gives a 3-D look to your paper sculpture mask. Don’t hang it FLAT against the wall. A 3-D mask is more interesting as light in the room casts shadows and accentuates shapes.
Art buddies forever! Me, Barb Edwards, and Roxane Pfister at our Sep 15th Garden Art Show and Sale.
We have known each other since before middle school in Idaho. We have travelled the road of college, family, and ART together. This year we all three turn 60. I say YEAH for the precious decade ahead and to friendships that last and last and last . . .
Posters and cards we sold at our Garden Art Show and Sale, Sep 15. Some still for sale!
Rox and I entered the marketing world of posters and cards at our Garden Art Show and Sale.
Introducing my portrait commission business with a portrait of my parents, Jess and Verna Humphries.
Garden Art Show and Sale, September 15, 2012.
The view, walking up the driveway to meander through the art show in the beautiful backyard.
- Left to right: Barb Edwards, Roger Motzkus, Glen Edwards, Jess Humphries.
- Under the canopy, waiting for the artists to chat: Anna and Susan Lofgren (left), Kay Collett and Jess Humphries (center), and my dear brother, DJ, (right).
- Happy art buyer, Carole Jensen, showing some of her purchases. Dear friend from our days in California.
In the ever changing economic landscape, I, an artist who still needs to pay the electric bill, am shifting my art life in the experiment of “staying alive” while joyfully and “boldly going where” I have not gone for a while. I am the proud teacher of 3 enthusiastic and determined students. One is a private lesson on Thursday mornings and the other two are taught jointly on Wednesday mornings. Although I am still doing the occasional illustration job, I have combined forces with my good friend and fellow artist, Roxane Pfister. We had the pleasure and work of presenting our art to friends and family on September 15, 2012 in a Garden Art Show and Sale. IT WAS LIKE A GREAT BIG HUG OF ENCOURAGEMENT as Rox and I contemplate going on the road with our art show. The event was held in the beautiful backyard of my parents, Jess and Verna Humphries, in the Holladay area of Salt Lake City. We learned some valuable lessons, like: NOT spending so much money on snail mailed invitations that weren’t as effective as we’d hoped, it takes time and a crew (mom, dad, brother, nephew, niece) to set up-so allow plenty of time, the initial expense of display easels and tablecloths is necessary for start up, and having a wide range of prices (including inexpensive posters and cards) is a good way to go. The weather was great (no wind to knock things around). We had a variety of “events”: silent auction, drawing for 2 free 6×8 oil paintings, artist chat (discover your PRIORITIES, establish a STRUCTURE, and NEVER give up-NEVER surrender), and my mom’s homemade wheat bread along with other light refreshments. The event, which lasted from 3 to 6pm, was a heartfelt sendoff on the art adventure road by those dear to us.
The fancy invitation. Yes, we are plucky and courageous.
Some of the outdoor paintings from the most excellent adventures.
Valley of Caves, along the Kolob Reservoir Road, May 29, 2012.
- Barracks Canyon, Mount Carmel, June 5, 2012.
- North side of Zion National Park, on a ledge a ways from Kolob Reservoir Road, June 29, 2012.
- Along that same Kolob Reservoir Road on the way to Zion National Park, July 3, 2012.
The Most Excellent Adventure Continued . . .
When the wind blows . . . at Bryce Canyon, holding onto everything with one hand and painting with the other.
- Then there are onlookers and curious questions on a public walkway. Brave artists go for the view rather than the natural tendency to hide.
- Taking your daughter along on a painting excursion to see the magnificent views you get to see. AND feeling the wind on the ledge.
- Of course there is that interval of painting (from 45 minutes to 3 hours) that requires some alternative activity to pass the time. Smart girl. She brought some reading material.
- Speaking of WIND. A common mishap in outdoor painting is having the wind grab your painting panel and throw it carelessly onto your palette and into your globs of paint. This time the paint hit the back of the panel. A near miss.
- Then there was the time we got lost. Thankfully we had cell phone reception and called someone who knew where we were and directed us out.
- Painting INSIDE a slot canyon . . . cold.
- Painting OUTSIDE a slot canyon . . . hot.
- And speaking of HOT. How do you cool down enough to paint? Here’s an idea.
- “Did a run-away horse come through here?” Really, you would never get that question in the studio. And suddenly you also have a piece of photo reference for horse and rider.
- If you have phone reception you are never away from the kids! “Where are you mom?”
The Most Excellent Adventure of Painting Outdoors
Often referred to as Plein Air painting, painting outdoors is always an adventure. The act of making art is, in and of itself, a piece of work: where to begin, which stroke next, what color, aargh-the model moved, etc. Painting outdoors intensifies the work load with heat, cold, wind, ants, gnats, mosquitoes, aargh-the light moved, etc. I was asked recently by a fellow artist, who paints exclusively in the studio, WHY I even want to paint outdoors. Two main reasons came to mind: 1. I love being out in the landscape. It’s a way to go camping for a moment (smell the trees, feel the wind, walk on dirt and rocks) without the work of setting up and taking down a full campsite, food preparation in the wild, and going to an uncomfortable bed dirty. 2. Seeing the landscape with my own eyes. There is dimension and color (especially in the shadows) that is lost in the translation from life to photos. I do use photos, of course, as reference to paint later in the studio. I am grateful for what is captured and disappointed with what is lost. Paintings I have done outdoors, or started outdoors, or had a small outdoor painting to refer to while taking it to a bigger size have color and energy that is not there sometimes when working solely from a photograph. Later, a third reason popped into my mind: 3. Why, the adventure, of course. Thought I’d share some of this year’s painting excursion moments with you all. Thank heavens for art buddies to paint with. Life is a rich experience.
Sears Gallery Opening Reception Tonight
This painting is titled “Abundance”. It is an 18 x 24 inch oil on board. I am taking it over to the Sears Gallery today. A spot has been reserved for it. Tonight from 7 to 9 p is our opening reception. Four artists: Craig Fetzer, Bonnie Conrad, Sam Lawlor, and myself are showing our works there until the end of August.
Results of my 5 x 5 Project
This is a 16 x 20 inch oil painting. The first of the five paintings I intended to do in five weeks as part of a 5 x 5 Project.
The Final Painting Begins for the 5 x 5 Project
Last night was the beginning of final paint application on a 16 x 20 inch painting of chickens. The first of FIVE paintings I will do in the next FIVE weeks. With a chuckle I begin with chickens. When I was 8 years old I drew a picture of a chicken on notebook paper while sitting with a friend on a cool, cement porch in one of America’s 1960ish suburbs in Idaho. My drawing was smeared and messy, but, I remember thinking, “That was fun!” So began my 50 year art career. The title of this painting is: “Some Left the Meeting at the X with Ruffled Feathers”.
My 5 x 5 Project
There are now FIVE weeks to “show time”. The last FIVE paintings that I sold left room for five NEW paintings to take their place for the four artist storytelling art show at Dixie College’s Sears Gallery in June. FIVE paintings x FIVE weeks = a new adventure in painting. I pulled FIVE ideas out of the idea pile and began last week to prepare them for painting. First I planned each new painting in a small drawing in my sketchbook. Secondly, I transferred the image to the painting surface. I did this by either by tracing an enlarged blueprint of my small drawing onto the paint surface or using a grid to redraw my design to size. Last night I began the painting. Yee-Haw! Of course, the quality of the painting will be the determining fac
tor as to whether it makes it into the show, but, the next 
FIVE weeks wi
ll be an “artist’s ride”!
Getting ready for a 4 artist show in the Sears Gallery at Dixie College in June 2012
I am now focusing on painting for an art show about “telling stories”. I tend to think “allegory” when I paint, so, this is a good fit for me. The title of a painting is part of the poetry of doing art for me. Just finished this one last night: A Happy Man Mending His Fences. 
Working with two young artists in Zion National Park. An Art Project that begins with a Black Line.
dilleenmarshwomanartistrenaissance 