Happy Easter Everyone! Now I must away to keep the children filled with sugar from destroying the world.

I worked hard this morning to get all the 8 x 10's packed up and ready to be mailed out. I also got some of the daily creatures ready to go as well. I wasn't able to get them ready in time for the postman today but I will be delivering them there tomorrow. YAY! Always nice to get something finished. 

On a good note, while I was moving some things around to get the new rat house set up I found both the gems I was looking for and the remote to my stereo! YAY! Now I can fall asleep and wake up to music.

That's right the winner of today's drawing will be getting a book. My mom gave me a coupon to use for a free one and I decided to pick up a couple more with some other online coupons getting the cost decent for an online printed book. This is a short run book. Limited edition of 4 with one artist edition padded cover I'll be keeping. One book is going to my mom for a gift one day (forget you heard that mom.) One will go to the winner here. I will make the last two available to purchase by the public with the funds going to support the project so we can do more fun goodies like this. All books will be signed with the edition number inside the cover. Digital artwork as well as layout and design still counts as art and after working for hours on this I decided I'm done creating for the day. Yay for you! Now back to being sick.

Congratulations  Subashan you are the winner of todays wearable creature art! YAY for you :) 

And yes I know I'm missing yesterday's blog. I'll be posting it later today...

Feeling sick. Ash threw up on the bathroom floor and on herself. I couldn't find anything in this splotch that Kaleb made so I  went a little different direction with it. It's really hard to think of anything uber original when your sick. I decided to make the splotch into a landscape and add the boat and figure. All the coloring is original only black ink was added. 

So 4 atc's can fit in a 5 x 7 frame. Respectively, a 5 x 7 can be cut into four atc's. I opted to cut some 5 x 7 splotches Kaleb had done in preparation for the kickstarter project last fall into atc's instead of trimming them down to 4 x 6's like day 69. 

The style of this card is inspired by an illustrator I traded some cards with on Illustratedatcs.com, a juried trading group. Her name on the site is Kimbat. She puts a nice thick outline around the exterior boarder of the piece, leaving a nice variation in line thickness throughout the piece. I like the way it adds to the separation from the background. 

I moved a bunch of images onto an external drive but my computer is still lagging out pretty bad. It may be my browser... last time it was the browser acting up. Wish I new a little more about macs. I fell asleep while the rainbow was spinning last night and had to post this in the morning. I did finish my last 8 x 10 last night and will be contacting the supporters soon to find out who wants which one. Wish me luck!

So I find a positive goal in the idea of acquiring managing skills for mediums that can look like charcoal or graphite, but last considerably longer and are not as susceptible to touch. Seeing art not surviving longer than me is unsettling at times. There are some pieces I have made in the past that could not handel the conditions required of them. Using Ink and Acrylic paints the same look can be achieved and the piece can withstand a considerably larger amount of life with less protection. 

Please pray for my friend Misty who is suicidal and soul searching, that God would meet her where she is and give her peace that He has provided a way out no matter what we have done in the past. 

Ashley had a fever over 100 degrees this morning so we stayed home. I also had a migraine so it was a day for staying in bed. Kaleb was not a fan of this idea, seeing as his energy overflow could power a small european country, but we managed. The green area is the painting I did yesterday with the full force green iridescent accent paint. I used it like a splotch and made this. I would have liked to put things into the gold background but the paint was taking too long to dry and I fell asleep (which is why this blog is late.)

Testing out some fancy "Accent" paints that were donated to the project. The paint came very separated in the container and I wasn't sure what they were exactly, how they would act, and if they were salvageable. It took a while to mix the paint but it went well. I painted some on a blank atc to experience it. I then tested to see if it was water soluble. Despite the separation in the paint it seems to be water based  I thinned down the paint and covered a splotch I had started a few days back but couldn't get into. The effect was nice. Next was to see if I could draw on top of it... once it dried. The thinner the paint (more water per part) the faster it dried. Portions of the first test strokes still aren't fully dry. Generally with watercolor and gouache it's the watery area's that take longer to dry. 

I drew on top of the splotch and enjoyed the look. As with other water based paints when drawing on top with ink the paint will start to dry out the tip of the pen. I may have burned through a nice pen on this one but I'm okay with that. This is my first reversible card of the second half of the project. Plus with the paint's iridescent quality I could see this as close to a foil card as one could get. It's that special card in the pack your hoping to get, all shiny and rare. Reminds me of the old days when I collected X-men cards.

I added a bit of full on white Accent paint to the background areas for a bit more separation between the foreground and the back. Because of that, this card is still drying. Going to photo it anyway. If I was to name this card I would call it "Ear talking smack. Chin talking back."

Have a great night and thanks for reading!

Name: "Lomu" It is said you may find him near a cliff or cave

I came to the realization today that I am increasingly absentminded. I was doing something, probably emailing or art, when I realized it. I searched for the definition online and was satisfied with Wikapedia's version, but was sucessfully off down the rabbit whole clicking link after link. Before I knew it I was no where near accomplishing anything and a mile from where I started. I found "The Absent-Minded Beggar," a poem by Rudyard Kipling to be engaging. I also found a considerable relation to the term mind-wandering that exceeded  absentmindedness in relation to my experiences. I suppose I'm a hybrid absentminded mind-wandering artist.  I think this is what I've been experiencing. To the extent, on occasion, that I can not maintain my own sentence during a conversation for loss of thought train. 

I can't imagine current culture and the demands of life accentuate the dilema. We are constantly bombarded with a million different forms of communication and are expected to engage them all nearly instantaneously. Add in various other external and internal demands and we cap out on what our brains can ingest and compute in an organized fashion. 

If I was to relate my brain to a computer, as the files compound and the resources grow thin the entire process begins to slow. If this isn't rectified by cleaning out some files, unnecessary programs or correcting other issues the computer could one day just stop. I feel about on par with my computer. Sometimes things run very nicely, lately though it is common to experience delays that make me loathe spinning rainbows. Especially when working on the days picture. I know how to help my computer. My brain is a different story.

Congratulations Tiffany L you are todays winner! It is now up to you how to name this creature. Please remember that The Lorax is under copy write and not to me; however, I don't have a problem referencing The Lorax in the biography of the character as a relative should you choose to go that direction. I look forward to hearing what you decide!
Speaking of which I'm actually listening to the Lorax while writing this blog. The songs are catchy and I'm a huge personal fan of Seuss.

Today was a good day for catching up on kickstarter. I started early while Kaleb was still sleeping. I got about 2.5 8x10 splotch creatures created. They are very different. It's amazing how diverse the are. I think Kaleb and the process have a lot to do with that. I hope the supporters like them. Based on the pledge options two people would get to choose and after that the others are surprises.  I guess I could show you them after selections come in and, should the mystery winners be checking in, they will have to wait to see which one arrives. 

While working on the 8 x 10's I picked up the mail and got some new goodies to test out. I figured you would be my guinea pigs, but seeing as I already have a guinea pig (and he's darn cute) it was probably not the best idea. Right now I'm letting the glue dry to see how I can clean it up and photograph it. I may be waiting until tomorrow to show you. Basically I got black circle pendant settings similar to the one used in day 64 & 65 but black (which is nice against the ink) and some circle glass domes that go on top of the piece as protection. They are a replacement for the acrylic glaze which is problematic and may yellow with time and sun exposure. The glaze just doesn't last long enough and my friend from Portland suggested getting some of these. I had no idea how to attach the circles. They aren't self adhesive and how do I get no bubbles and GLUE EVERYWHERE so... we shall see what happens and if anything is winnable at the end of the day :)

Later that day...

So It came out much better than I had thought considering, well you know. There are a few bubbles under the glass but they are hard to see. It has a really nice finished look and it's done already which is cool.