My Fine Arts class for this semester is… Bookmaking! Hurray!! I made my first three books last night. Last night. They were due… Last night. Okay yeah they were rush jobs. I’d been planning them for several days, but I cranked these babies out in roughly 3 hours.

I really shouldn’t do that. In fact, because I rushed, there are flaws. But you know, it’s better than having nothing. I will definitely be spending more time on my bookmaking than I did last night. (I know the pictures can be fuzzy.)

My books are 8-page “one page wonders”. They are approximately 2 3/4 in wide x 4 in high. I think. At least they were when I did my one and only measurement of them at the beginning of the project. After that I just eyeballed everything. I know… I’m terrible.

I designed them to be pocket-sized portfolios of my work. One for Paintings, one for Prints, and one for Drawings. Images on regular text weight paper (for paintings and drawings), and the print designs I actually printed onto vellum, which gives them a bit of translucense.. sy. Then I adhered all images to the pages of the book (made of white cardstock and considerably thicker than I would have really wanted), then I made a book cover out of black cardstock with a slight woven-y criss-crossy pattern to it to appear like the plastic casing you frequently find on real portfolios.

Unfortunately, I didn’t create the closure how I really wanted. (it’s got double-stick tape holding it down in that picture) I was going to thread a small piece of wine colored ribbon from both the front and the flap, and tie it together in a bow. I also wanted to write “Paintings” etc., on the covers of each, but the stamp I bought just isn’t big enough so I might have to buy some stamping supplies to do it nicely. (Or not. I’m putting enough money into it as it is!!)

I admitted to all my cheats!! lol What’s wrong with me?? But I like the idea of pocket-sized portfolios so much, that I may recreate them only spend 4x as much time on them. (Plus it was fun making them.)

During the democratic convention coverage last night I sat and did a little more with my canvases. I painted a new one black. I think I might implement my jellyfish design on it. I like the idea of black coming through. I put another layer of pink and clear on top of the purpley canvas, darkened the edges of the angelfish, as well as added slight coloring changes to enhance later. And my brown canvas will have a cute sparrow or bluebird on it when I’m done. Wee!!

And thank goodness for GOJO or else I’d have paint stains all over myself! I have a painting of a Puffin upstairs on the wall that I did when I was in 11th grade (I think.) I might get some giclee prints of it made, and some giclee aceo’s as well.. As well as get fine art prints made of my printmaking designs to sell, since original prints haven’t seemed to sell so well.

(I meant to post this last week, but my image uploader on WP wasn’t working. So after some troubleshooting – I had to deactivate one of the plug-ins – I got my media uploader to work correctly.)

The other week I went out and bought a stack of mini canvases to play with my paintstiks on. Michael’s was having a sale so I bought around 6 small, 3-4 med, and a stack of 6 5×7 and 8×10 canvas boards. I then proceeded to paint up two of the little ones with a base background coat. and I did some more work on the angelfish I’m doing. It’s slow-going but you can see the change.

I don’t know what I’m going to paint on the other canvases but we’ll see!

So my foster dog chewed up my sandals. My best sandals. *cry*
I went out to purchase some new ones, having a feeling I wouldn’t find much because it’s end of season and on top of that, I hate the thingie that goes between your toes. Ow. Yuck! I hate that toe thingie!

Whilst browsing around DSW I came upon some nice RocketDogs I got for cheap because of clearance! They’re real comfy, and just looking at them is sort of inspiring. It makes me want to buy more, and possibly investigate those slip on Vans.

On another note, I set up yet another etsy alchemy request to draw up my latest tattoo design. I’m never happy enough with my own work to do it myself, unfortunately. That makes me cry on the inside sometimes.

Also I changed the look of this blog even though nobody will notice. I got bored with the other look. But now that i updated my versions of stuff my ljxp and image embed-er aren’t working right! BLARG.

I can’t wait to doodle on my canvases some more with my oils. I’m gonna go buy more mini-canvases tonight. Wee!

I’ve never been too good at painting, but since I got a bunch of Shiva oil paint sticks a while ago I decided to mess around on some canvases I had lying around. I messed around a bit but since it takes a while for the paints to dry I only ended up with a base coat. haha We’ll see what happens with these.