Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

This is the first graphic novel I've ever read.  The author tells the story of her childhood growing up in Tehran between the ages of 6 and 14.  She witnessed the overthrow of the Shah, the triumph of the Islamic Revolution, and the war with Iraq.  It is both a personal story and a political one, and I found it an interesting way to tell her story.  It was my 17th book for the New Author Challenge 2010.  I rate it 3 out of 5.

A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley

Iowa farmer Larry Cook decides to pass his 1000-acre farm to his 3 daughters.  When his youngest daughter Caroline questions whether that's a good idea, he cuts her out altogether.  Everything spirals downhill as suspicion and accusations fly and terrible events of the past are remembered.  This is the first book I've read by this author, and I really enjoyed her writing; I will read other books by her.  It is my 16th book for the New Author Challenge 2010 (my goal was 15 books, but I will continue to report on books I read by authors who are new to me).  I rate this book 4 out of 5.

Retriever Training

Buddy isn't quite 6 months old yet (next week) and he already weighs 65.5 pounds! Our last lab weighed that when he was full grown (he was a little on the small side, but still . . .).

We started obedience class with him last week, and he's coming along. Yesterday we had a couple of friends come over, and he DIDN'T jump on them - YAY! They were both ready to knee him - hard - in the chest, but they didn't even have to. He's still a long way away from being ready to have a kitten in the house though (darn it!).

Sunflowers

Sunflowers are such a happy flower. I frequently drive by a field of sunflowers, so last week I stopped to paint them. This is more of my impression of my happy feelings about seeing the flowers than a photo realistic painting.

This is the first page in a journal I made earlier this year using Strathmore series 500 (Gemini) 140 pound cold press watercolor paper.

I sketched a few flowers in pencil. After putting in a wash of sky, I couldn't see the pencil anymore and decided I didn't really need the pencil marks - does that count as a lead-free sketch? LOL!!

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

This story deals with the isolation that is common to people no matter what their income or race or status.  It centers around a deaf-mute, John Singer, in a southern mill town in the 1930's, and the various people who are drawn to him:

Mick Kelly, a 14 year old tomboy who loves music.
Dr. Copeland, a well-educated African American doctor.
Jake Blount, an alcoholic carnival worker and labor organizer.
Biff Brannon, a cafe owner and silent observer of his patrons.

The book was very well written and I rate it 4 out of 5.  It is my fifteenth book for the New Author Challenge 2010 (my goal was 15 books - so I met my goal!) and my book club's current month's selection.

Work in Progress on My Year-Round Garden

A couple of people have expressed interest in seeing a few work in progress photos of the quilt in my previous post (here).  So I thought I'd share a few photos and some of my thoughts about this quilt.  As I mentioned in my previous post, I designed this in Ellen Lindner's Design Your Own Nature Quilt class.  Our first step was to select a photo for our quilt.  Her motto is "be inspired by your photo, not owned by it."  This is my inspiration photo:

As you can see, I worked pretty loosely - I was certainly not owned by my photo!   I took the photo at Butchart Gardens in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, in 2004.

Once I had a working sketch, I started to select fabrics for the background.  I knew that I wanted the foreground to look like greenery and the background to be dark but indistinct.  I wanted two of the spiky plants that you see in the background of the photo, but they needed to be lighter in color so they would show up on my dark background.  I wanted a larger variety of flower colors than in my photo, but I didn't really want any white flowers.  So here is my background with the spiky plants in place and some flowers off to the side.

Once I was satisfied with my background, I started placing flowers.  Basically, I kept moving them around and rearranging them to get them to look both balanced and random.  I would upload a photo to our classroom (a yahoo group) and Ellen would make suggestions.  Sometimes the suggestion would just be to move one flower slightly up or down so that it wasn't in line with another one; other times it was about how to shape a flower so that it looked right.  Ellen's suggestions were invaluable, and so was looking at the photos.  I could often see things on the computer screen that I couldn't see in the quilt, so that's a tip I'm going to have to remember for future design efforts.

Once I was satisfied with my placement, it was time to stitch everything down.  I used a combination of glues, fusible web, pins, and my fingers to hold things in place.  All of the stitching was done with the batting and backing in place, so it was stitched and quilted in one step.  Here it is after quilting and before squaring up and binding:

My Year-Round Garden

I designed this quilt in Ellen Lindner's Design Your Own Nature Quilt class. I really enjoyed the class and learned a lot. Ellen has a very good teaching style - making lots of comments and suggestions but ultimately leaving decisions up to the student. I recommend this class and will take other classes from her.

Artful Journaling Explorations - Butterfly

I used tissue paper to create the texture in the background of this painting, put on while the paint was wet. I painted this from this photo I took several years ago while visiting good friends in Tennessee - the lilac bush is in their back yard:

Shanghai Girls by Lisa See

Sisters Pearl and May Chin are beautiful girls in 1937 Shanghai, living it up and having the time of their lives, until their father loses all their wealth and can't pay his gambling debts.  He sells the girls to brothers who have come to China from Los Angeles in search of wives.  When Japan invades China and war breaks out, the girls set out on a journey to America.  It is a pretty good story, but I was disappointed in the way it was written.  The entire novel was written in first person present tense (Pearl is the narrator), and it seemed to be just a listing of events (almost "this happened, and then this happened, etc.").  And the author spent more time telling us what happened than showing us.  I didn't used to understand the difference until I read this blog post by Vivian Swift.  I rate this book 3 out of 5.

Project Journal Infiltration by Roz Stendahl

Roz Stendahl wants people to sketch her in their journals.  I wish I lived in Minneapolis so I could - of course, since my son and daughter-in-law live there, I may have the chance sometime. See details at this link.

Artful Journaling Explorations - Misting

For lesson 9, we learned how to soften and blend the paints by misting on water - I LOVED the technique!

Artful Journaling Explorations - Elephant

I did the elephant with a gel pen and waterbrush for lesson 8 (we've been exploring different techniques and tools in this session).

Artful Journaling Explorations - Applesauce

For lesson 7, we were exploring the use of non-traditional tools to make art. I started by cutting some apple shapes out of foam to use as stamps. I painted them with watercolors and stamped them on the page (after trying on a scrap paper first). I did this a few times, but wasn't very happy with the impressions, so I added some more paint to the page with my waterbrush. It was just a blob of red, yellow, and green, so I took a bamboo skewer dipped in brown paint and added the lines and dots to define individual apples. Then I stamped the one apple by itself. I added our cook pot behind the apples and used my signature color (Cobalt Teal Blue by Daniel Smith) to paint a counter top (artistic license, since our counters are not this color). I included the statement about smell as another sense since I usually forget. The outlines on my apples are much heavier than I would normally like, but it was fun exploring the use of other tools on the page, so I'm satisfied with it.

Lucky for me, DH is doing all the work of cutting up the apples, since they are in pretty bad shape! I help once that part is done. I didn't take a photo of the apples - they're in buckets, so more artistic license was used with the arrangement.

Artful Journaling Explorations - Creativity Map

In an effort to become more creative, I have created this chart for lesson 6. I will color in a square each day that I do something creative - it can be sewing, painting, drawing, etc.
I made the page on August 8th. I couldn't remember whether I'd done anything creative on the first 3 days of the month, so I left them blank. As of August 22, I've managed to color in every square after the 8th.

Artful Journaling Explorations - Word Art

I created this for lesson 4 on word art.

Paco's Story by Larry Heinemann

Paco was the only survivor of a massacre at Fire Base Harriette, a location that was supposed to be safe.  He is left for dead for 2 days before he is found by a medic from another company.  Once Paco returns to the US, he takes a bus as far as his money will take him, ending up in a small town in Texas.  He gets a job as a dishwasher, working for a WWII veteran.  He is haunted by his memories of Vietnam and the ghosts of his dead comrades.  We don't learn anything about what Paco was like before the war or whether he had any family or friends to return to.  It is a very disturbing story about how badly returning soldiers were treated and how little support there was for them.  This was my 5th book for the Vietnam War Reading Challenge, and my 14th book for the New Author Challenge 2010.  I rated this book 3 out of 5.

Gesso Resist

For lesson 3 in Artful Journaling Explorations, I used white gesso to paint a pattern on watercolor paper (which I took from a piece of patterned paper). After the gesso was completely dry, I used watercolors to paint over it and the gesso resisted the watercolors. Then I cut a hole in the page where the daisy is (which I painted in my first lesson). So this page serves as an overlay.

Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks

This is a historical novel set in a tiny village in England in 1666, which was a year of the Plague.  As the plague begins to spread, the rector convinces the villagers to quarantine themselves to keep it from spreading to other villages.  The rector's maid Anna is the narrator, and she becomes a healer of sorts, working alongside the rector's wife.  As the plague continues to spread throughout the village, no one is unaffected.  It is a time of superstition and witch hunts.  It is a very compelling story and very well written.  I rate it 5 out of 5.

Lucky

We lost our cat last year after having him for 16 years; I decided to paint this memorial to him for Laure Ferlita's Artful Journaling - Explorations class. He used to love to sit in our dining room window and look out.

Ghostwalk by Rebecca Stott

When historian Elizabeth Vogelsang is found drowned, her son Cameron Brown asks his former lover Lydia Brooke to finish Elizabeth's manuscript about Isaac Newton.  Elizabeth had been researching Newton's involvement with alchemy as well as several mysterious deaths that occurred in Cambridge during Newton's time there.  Lydia agrees to finish the manuscript and is drawn into Newton's world.  Cameron is a neuroscientist who has been targeted by animal rights activists, and this adds to the suspense of the book.  I found the book to be well written, and I enjoyed it, although some of the sections that were supposed to be Elizabeth's manuscript got a bit tedious.  Lydia was the narrator of most of the book, and she was writing it to Cameron, which was a different voice than I'm used to, but it worked.  I rate it 4 out of 5.  This is my 13th book (out of my goal of 15) for the New Author Challenge 2010.

Buddy

Taken 7/16/10 - more retriever training. Don't worry - it isn't a live bird - it's a retriever dummy.

Buddy with Duck Decoy

Taken 6/12/10 - training with duck decoy.

Explore

I painted this for my first lesson in Laure's Artful Journaling Explorations class, using my photo below for my inspiration.

Buddy the Water Dog

He's like a kid playing in a sprinkler, only it's a hose. I can't believe how big he's getting already - he's not quite 4 months old, and he already weights about 43 pounds. He's going to be big!

Artful Journaling Foundations - Butterfly

This was our next-to-last lesson and I chose to paint from the video provided since I loved the butterfly. I'm quite pleased with my results. I just can't say enough how much I've learned from Laure's classes and how much I've enjoyed them.

The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

The Things They Carried is a set of related short stories, most of them about the author's service in the Vietnam War.  Many of the same characters appeared in the stories, but each story could stand alone (although they were related enough that you wanted to read all of them).  My favorite story was On the Rainy River which told about the author receiving his draft notice and struggling with the decision of whether to report for duty or go to Canada.  Many people believe that going to Canada was the cowardly way out, but I've always believed that it took great courage to leave behind your home, family, friends, your entire way of life, knowing you could never return.  This story showed just how difficult a decision that was for young men during this time in our history.

In Spin, the author states:

"Forty-three years old, and the war occurred half a lifetime ago, and yet remembering makes it now.  And sometimes remembering will lead to a story, which makes it forever.  That's what stories are for.  Stories are for joining the past to the future.  Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can't remember how you got from where you were to where you are.  Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story."

And in Good Form, the author explains the differences between "happening-truth" and "story-truth.

I haven't read very many books about Vietnam, but of those I've read, Tim O'Brien is my favorite author.  This is my 4th book for the Vietnam War Reading Challenge.  I rate this book 5 out of 5.

In The Image by Dara Horn

I found this book to be quite enjoyable and also quite different from most books I've read.  Sometimes it's hard to describe a book, so I'm going to resort to part of what is written on the back cover:

"In the Image follows a young New Jersey woman, Leora, through the death of a friend in high school and on to college, career, and falling in love.  Simultaneously, it traces the story of Bill Landsmann, her lost friend's grandfather, back through several generations of experience in Amsterdam, Austria, and New York's Lower East Side."

This is my 12th book for the New Author Challenge 2010.  I rate this book 4 out of 5.

Artful Journaling Foundations - Page Design Part II

We were to take the same elements from our previous lesson (here) and change several things. This page is horizontal; the previous one was vertical. Most of my images have no borders on this page; most of them did have borders on my previous page. This page has a border; the previous one didn't. And 3 of my images bleed off the page here; none of them did on my previous page.

Artful Journaling Foundations - Page Design Part I

Working on page design - combining at least 3 elements on a page. I have a fondness for grids, so that was how I decided to do this page. All of the elements are from photographs I've taken in Colorado over several summers.

Artful Journaling Foundations - Peppers

For this lesson, Laure provided several photos without backgrounds. We were to choose one to paint and add our own background. I chose the peppers because I love them.