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Plastercraft Houses 2020

/ Sarah Collins / Leave a comment

Okay, I only painted three Plastercraft Houses in 2020 – so far. After I finished the last two, I was looking through the box of houses that wasn’t damaged in the 2016 flood, and found the “Hot Rod Parts” building. Since I normally paint three houses at a time, I continue to look and found a second “Hot Rod Parts” building, and then I found a third “Hot Rod Parts” building. So, I decided to paint all three. One for my sister, who I started painting houses for many years ago. One for my other sister, who rescue the houses from the flood and one for me. They were surprise! Especially, since California Creations went out of business.

Art of Concentration: Day 14

/ Sarah Collins / Leave a comment

Let’s relax, create some beautiful pieces, and work on our concentration skills.

The Art of Concentration rules are:

  1. Draw lines on a page.  Straight line, squiggly lines, circles, squares, triangles, stars, it does not matter.
  2. Color every other section a different color.  Start anywhere.  Use any color.  Typical you will only have a black pen or a pencil, those are fine.
  3. If you desire, use multiple colors.  Sections of the same color can not touch.

Today’s line drawing:

AofC circles

The line drawing are create in Corel Draw which is a great tool for creating anything from scratch. I do not use Photoshop for these drawing, because it is not a photo.  After I am happy with the drawing, I export as a Bitmap.  It would be time consuming to create each section for coloring in Corel Draw.  Microsoft Paint is used to color the bitmap. If I wanted a gradient of colors in each section of the drawing, I would do that in Corel Draw.

Example 1:

Aof C circles color 1

Example 2:

Aof C circles color 2

Example 3:

Aof C circles color 3

All of the line drawing, done by hand, were done 14 days ago, and one was colored each day. It provided me time to work on other projects.

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Art of Circles

Click here for a PDF version on today’s line drawing. You can also download any of my line drawing from the Coloring Page.

Art of Concentration: Day 12

/ Sarah Collins / Leave a comment

Another spiral!  Why?  Because figuring things out, what works and doesn’t work is fun.  I have fun drawing spirals and making something of them.

Below is today’s line drawing:

AofC another spiral

I learned that using two colors with at line drawing was impossible.  Three colors would be difficult, not impossible, but fun. The first approach to coloring the line drawing was to color the individual square (or four point stars) with a different set of colors, but still following the rules.

The Art of Concentration rules are:

  1. Draw lines on a page.  Straight line, squiggly lines, circles, squares, triangles, stars, it does not matter.
  2. Color every other section.  Start anywhere.  Use any color.  Typical you will only have a black pen, or a pencil, those are fine.
  3. If you desire, use multiple colors.  Sections of the same color can not touch.

AocC another spiral color 2

You probably did not notice, but I tried to use a pattern for the colors.  Here is the pattern I choose for the second color drawing.  It is easier to show you than explain.

AofC color example one

The vertical and horizontal pattern was: pink, blue, and white.  Picking a pattern, made it easier to color without having the same color sections touching.

The results:

AocC another spiral color 1

With the hand drawing, I used the four colors: pink, blue, purple and gray, and changed to a darker color as it got closer to the center.

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Around the Spiral

You can download a PDF version of the line drawing from the Coloring Page, or click here.

Art of Concentration: Day 11

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Today’s Art of Concentration experiment did not go well.  Not well at all.  Below is the line drawing.  It is a nice line drawing made up of spirals, or swirls, or curls, whatever you would like to call them.

AofC swirls and curls

It is impossible to use only two colors in the drawing and still follow the rules.  Using three colors is possible, but difficult.  Spiral are meant to be continuous.

The Art of Concentration rules are:

  1. Draw lines on a page.  Straight line, squiggly lines, circles, squares, triangles, stars, it does not matter.
  2. Color every other section.  Start anywhere.  Use any color.  Typical you will only have a black pen, or a pencil, those are fine.
  3. If you desire, use multiple colors.  Sections of the same color can not touch.

The colored drawing came out nice, but there were several restarts.  That is what is good with coloring on the computer.

AofC swirls and curls color 1

PDF version of the line drawing created in Corel Draw is available for download on the Coloring Page or you can click here.

Art of Concentration: Day 9

/ Sarah Collins / 2 Comments

Today’s Art of Concentration drawing is more typical of the drawing I used to do in meetings and classes.  It wasn’t anything too complicated, just some lines and occasionally other objects.

Remember you can do these types of drawing on any size of paper from “Post-It” note size to letter size, or larger.  If you create them using ruled paper, you already have some lines premade.

The line drawing:

AofC flower mess

The Art of Concentration rules are:

  1. Draw lines on a page.  Circles, squares, squiggly lines, it does not matter.
  2. Color every other section.  Start anywhere.  Use any color.
  3. If you desire, use multiple colors.  Sections of the same color can not touch.

The first object created was the flower and than squiggly lines added.  Notice the top left of the circle in the middle of the page.  There are more than two section that are touching.  The rule “Section of the same color can not touch” will not work here.  To solve that dilemma, I used multiple colors.

AofC flower mess color 1 The flower petals were done in a deep red and white.  The center and background was done in black and white.   It doesn’t even look like a circle.  That is why I named today’s hand drawing “Squid”.  Looking at if after is was done, it looked more like a squid then a flower.

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Squid

Squid was done on a black Studio Series Artist tile using Sakura gel pens.

The line drawing was done in Corel Draw and exported as a bitmap to color using Microsoft Paint.  I decided to use three colors and black on the second drawing with white line.

AofC flower mess color 2

Click here to download a PDF version of the line drawing.  All of the line drawing are available on the Coloring Page.

Art of Concentration: Day 8

/ Sarah Collins / 2 Comments

I must be crazy for drawing so many lines on a page and than coloring them.  And, on top of it all, doing two drawings.  I must be crazy.  However, they were so much fun.

That is probably another rule of Art of Concentration – have fun.  Enjoy what you are doing.

The Art of Concentration rules are:

  1. Draw lines on a page.  Circles, squares, squiggly lines, it does not matter.
  2. Color every other section.  Start anywhere.  Use any color.
  3. If you desire, use multiple colors.  Sections of the same color can not touch.

The first drawing was a small drawing.  It has a simple flower in the middle with a bunch of lines going through it.

AofC flower x-treme

There are some many colors that could be added to this line drawing.  The first example started out as a simple black and white, but I could not leave it as that.  The gray background the flower jump off the page.

flower x-treme color 1

The colored version is very busy, it draws your eye all around the drawing.  It reminds me of a out country kitchen pattern.

flower x-treme color 2

Below is the hand drawing of the x-treme flower.  It was done on a Studio Series Artist tile with Faber Castell Pitt Pens and Crayola markers.

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Boxed Flower

Even though this Mandala started out as a sketch, I thought I could not do it justice on paper, so I put it in Corel Draw, increase the size to 8.5″ squared, and drew circles to the extreme.

AofC Mandala

From the center, a beautiful flower appeared.  There are so many way this could be colored, so many possibilities.  After creating a bitmap and using Microsoft Paint to color it, below is the results at my first attempt to color the Mandala.  The black background made the color more vibrant.

AofC Mandala color 1

AofC Mandala

PDF versions of the today’s line drawings are available on the Coloring Page for downloading.  Starting with today, I will put the newest drawings at the top of the page.

Art of Concentration: Day 7

/ Sarah Collins / Leave a comment

Sometimes, with art, you need to break the rules to create amazing pieces.

The Art of Concentration rules are:

  1. Draw lines on a page.  Circles, squares, squiggly lines, it does not matter.
  2. Color every other section.  Start anywhere.  Use any color.
  3. If you desire, use multiple colors.  Sections of the same color can not touch.

The extreme line drawing.

AofC x-treme

Rule three does not work for black and white drawings.  If  you follow the line from the bottom right corner to the center, there are occurrences of one section touching two sections.    It may be more obvious on the black and white example below.  Even though the rule is broken, you still can get lost in the drawing, or dizzy.

AofC x-treme color 1

To follow the rule, I used multiple colors on the one below.

AofC x-treme color 2

This is the original had drawing done on a black Studio Series Artist Tile with Sakura pens.

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The X Divides

Click here for a PDF version of the line drawing.   It is also available on the Coloring Page.

Art of Concentration: Day 6

/ Sarah Collins / 2 Comments

The ability to create something beautiful is a wonderful experience.

The Art of Concentration rules are:

  1. Draw lines on a page.  Circles, squares, squiggly lines, it does not matter.
  2. Color every other section.  Start anywhere.  Use any color.
  3. If you desire, use multiple colors.  Sections of the same color can not touch.

What started out as a page with a mess of lines, can turn into something beautiful.  Here is the line drawing from today.  If you look closely, you will see some circles.

AofC circle mess

First, the line drawing was colored using just black.

circle mess color 1

Next, I colored the line drawing using four colors.  Remember the rule, the same color can not touch each other.  If the colors were placed differently, it could had a completely different look.  See how different it looks from the black and white version.

circle mess color 2

Here is the hand drawn version:

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Circle Mess

Sometimes, when the black lines gets close, you will need to assume the blank space between the lines, e.g. lower right corner.

Click here for to download a PDF version of the line drawing.  PDF copies of the line drawings are available on the Coloring Page.

 

2017 Christmas Card

/ Sarah Collins / 1 Comment

It is the Christmas Season!  All the presents are wrapped and all the cards have mailed; it is time that I share with you my Christmas Card of 2017.

I usually start thinking about my Christmas Cards around July.  If I wait until Thanksgiving, I sure that disasters will strike and I would be force into buying Christmas cards from the store.  This year the ideal was a Snow Globe Christmas card.  I researched the ideal and knew it was possible.

But, I didn’t really want to put a piece of plastic wrap or it’s equivalent on the card.  And, than I found Jullibean Soup’s Large Circles by Hampton Art.  It was a quick Click and Order from Amazon.  Once the circles came in, I started to work on the card.

I thought about designing a village scene to put inside the snow globe, but I wanted a little deep.  Then it occurred to me; I have polymer clay, I have cutters for snowman and trees.  The card was coming together.

The snowman, trees, and snow were made with Sculpey Polymer Clay using a setting of 3 in the pasta machine and cut with “cookie” cutters, bake and covered with sparkle varnish.  (Which was the first mistake.)  However, I need to draw the face and buttons, and color the hats on the snowman.  I got out may Sharpie pens and colored the hats.  They looked awful.  I should not have varnished the snowmen first.  What was I going to do, paint all the snowmen?  Nooooo!  I had just recent purchase a set of Chameleon Pens, which worked with beautiful results.  It even covered where I used a Sharpie.

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Since the Snowman were coming together, I could now design the inside of the card.  This was done using Corel Draw.  I probably spend too much time making snowflakes, but I was having so much fun.  I hope the shading on the snowman gives it some dimension.

2017 Card Snowman

At Office Depot, I found dual color cardstock.  It was light blue on one side and white on the other side.  This was perfect for my card.  It would give me the blue sky I wanted behind the snowman scene on the front and white on the inside.  I found the snowflake paper at Hobby Lobby.  I found some nice light blue glitter paper at JoAnn’s and had the silver paper left over from last year.

The Jullibean Soup circle comes with adhesive around the circle, so it was not necessary to stick it through the first layer of paper and glue everything down.  I used Silhouette Studio to design the silver snow globe and the cut for the top paper layer.   Everything was cut using my Silhouette Curio.   I was really dreading gluing it all together.

More research.  I found this wonderful blog that talked about ways to glue paper together.  Did you know you can put cheap plastic wrap between two piece of paper and use a hot iron to fix them together.  I didn’t use plastic wrap.  The blog also talk about Xyron Creative Station for sticking paper together.  This is the best machine I have bought all year.  It did exactly what I expected.  It basically creates stickers when you roll your paper through the machine.  Afterwards, you just peel it off and stick it where you want it.  It even handled the delicate “Merry Christmas”.

To assemble the card:

First step: print the inside of the card on cardstock on the correct side of the paper and cut everything.  Run the snowflake paper, the silver snow globe, and the Merry Christmas through the Xyron Creative Station.

Second step: stick the snowflake paper to the correct side of the card.20171102_153614

Third step:  Use glue dots to fix the snowman, trees, and snow to the card.  Top with snow.  (Second mistake.)  After sitting in a box for several weeks, the trees and snowman started to come loose.  The problem was I did not use permanent glue dots for those items.  I had to gently open up at least half of the cards and redo the inside.  I am glad I switched glue dots during the assembly.

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Fourth step:  Place plastic circle on tope of snowman and snow.

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Fifth step:  Place silver globe around circle and add Merry Christmas.

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We have a finished card.  Well, almost.  It needed something else.  I used glitter glue to around the border to give it more sparkle.

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I put the card in an envelope that I stamped with snowflakes.  Both, envelope and card was mail in a bubble mailer.  Any thicker and the card could not be sent First Class mail.