Journaling Hands

I was impressed with artwork I saw being made for a mail art swap on atcsforall.com of hand shaped images. I was immediately drawn to the idea of having art that isn't the basic rectangle or square shape most paintings seem to be. Also, hands are so expressive. This leads well into artists expressing themselves. I was too late to join the swap, but decided I should still use the idea as inspiration for a personal project. Last year, I took on the challenge of scrapping every day of the year with a photo. This year I thought a hand shaped page every month for a journal reflecting on my year would be a neat new angle. I'm still working on March, but here are January and February. I included the back of February to show where all my journaling goes. I love the idea of the pages being so personal as to have the shape of the hands that make them. And I'm making myself handwrite all the journaling instead of typing. Again more personal, even if my handwriting is nothing to brag about.

January

February

February back

ATC Saturday: Facial Emotion Swap

Another swap.

Disgust

Clueless

Joy

Fear

Art Doll Swap

I was so excited to see a swap for art dolls on ATCs For All. I love making jointed paper dolls. As much as I enjoy making them, trading art dolls with other artists sounds like even more fun. Here are my 4 dolls for...

Nanner's Oddball Art Doll Army

Let me introduce you to Rococo. Rococo is a gargoyle who comes to life at night. One evening he rescued a bag of drowning kittens who have since become his little buddies. The arrangement is perfect as Rococo turns to stone once the sun comes out and cats like to sleep all day. My inspiration for Rococo came from a gorilla named Koko who speaks sign language and loves kittens.

The next oddball is a firefly fairy. She glows in the dark.

And finally I have a steampunk pair who mostly just look like cowboys. I have this whole story worked out in my head for these guys involving racing around the galaxy with their bootleg hootch but this is what you see.

Molly Moonshine is the brains behind the operation and captain of the ship. (Use you imagination on the ship. ;) ) Molly has a fazer riffle.

Bart is the muscle behind the operation. He has an obsession for gambling and Molly. Bart has a hat he can wear when he chooses and a fazer pistol. And a really cool handlebar mustache.

Facial Expressions

Just having some fun with my son. Ben wanted some black and whites of his silly expressions as he has seen in one of my artist reference books.

A fun activity!