Snow Days & Artist of the Week

My own See.Saw picture - Christine Miller - date, the great blizzard of 2011

Unprecedented! We have missed 4 days of school this week because of this massive winter storm that has stretched across the country! Talk about a long winter's nap!! I haven't been napping. It has been a wonderful time for me to work on several projects: weaving samples for my guild's overshot study group, taking the scans from my Sketchbook Project's book and making a digital version, goofing around on the computer, and playing with this art idea I stumbled upon (if you haven't been on this site, you have to go! Be prepared to burn some major time stumbling!!).

It's not a new idea, but I like what the artist has done, and he inspired me to try it for myself. I think this would be a great project to take into my art classes! Lots of grade school teachers do it to make butterflies and such - you put paint on one side of your paper, fold it closed, open it and you end up with these identical paint splotches on both sides. (I was so excited, I forgot to take a picture of my splotches before I drew my picture!) I used cadmium red pale hue, cadmium yellow, and cerulean blue watercolors. I also splashed some beautiful gold watercolor out of a Japanese pot. It didn't take me long to see the monkey, bird and camel in my drawing. The golden ribbony smoke came next, then I thought to add the Aladdin's lamp and the carpet at the end. It was fun! Check out the link in the post headline to see the original site I stumbled upon. It's the work of L Filipe dos Santos from Madrid, Spain - he calls it his See.Saw series. You can see more of his work here.