Florence Turnour's Blog

It took us a little while to settle because there seemed to be cars in the view from every bench. Then we realized we were just looking the wrong direction. Here are some close-ups. And, here's a piece of my warm-up sketch. Thanks for looking!

My kids didn't have sweatshirts, so this trip was shorter than planned.  This drawing is from the Seal Beach peer. There were lots of nice shops on Main Street that I would like to draw someday. Want to come with me? Here's my warm-up sketch. Thanks for looking.

Sometimes it looks like there's nothing of interest to draw, but actually there is. Thanks for looking.

I started a Craftsy class with Marc Taro Holms, author of the Urban Sketcher  book. I watched the first lesson in Starbucks near my kids' school. The assignment was to do one-line drawings of scenery, with the intent of documenting one's travels. I was not traveling. I was sitting in Starbucks. So I drew what I could see. I forgot a few times that I was just doing a one-line drawing, not a blind contour, so the cars are looser than they would have been, but there it is. I'm hoping to get out into the world a bit tomorrow morning, and try again. Thanks for looking.

I printed on my Gelli Plate some greeting cards the other day, and it took me quite a few tries to figure out how to get coverage all the way to the edge without getting the back and inside of the card dirty. Here's how I did it. Step 1. Ink the plate. In this picture, I only inked about three quarters of the 8"x10" plate because I was making 5"x7" cards. I placed a stencil (black) onto the paint (pink). Step 2.  Cover the part of the plate that you don't want to print. For me this included the part without paint on it. I used a sheet of deli paper. Step 3.  Fold the card, and place the card on the deli paper, back side down, so only a small part of the back of the card sticks over onto the paint. This will allow the print to wrap around to the back of the card slightly.  In the picture, I zoomed in on the top corner of the card, so you can see the slight overlap onto the paint. The front of the card is face up in the photo. Step 4.  Unfold the c...

I took Julie Balzer's Make Your Own Junque Journal on-line class and made two journals. I loved this project.  It's so great to use up a bit of my huge stack of printed papers, and to find a home for some fairly finished artwork that I did as part of various on-line classes. For sure this is just the beginning of a new adventure in book binding for me. In the class, they encourage us to video a "Flip-through" of our journals to other participants. I made this little video showing off both books. Here are the on-line classes and teachers I mentioned in my video, in case you are interested in checking them out. Julie Fei-Fan Balzer's Make Your Own Junque Journal on-line class Carla Sonheim's Gelli Plate Plus Carla Sonheim's Cats Creative Jumpstart 2016  workshops from Birgit Koopsen Michelle Ward Julie Fei-Fan Balzer Dawn Woleslagle's Watercolor for Card Makers, Intermediate Techniques Thanks for looking!

We have a 3D Printer. It's a Makerbot 2, if that means anything to anyone. Here's a vine I took of my cutter and the 3D Printer side by side working away. On Sunday, I drew some fish with a pen on paper. I scanned them into Photoshop, and edited them a bit. Here's one. I changed it into a vector graphic in Illustrator. Then it looked like this. Next I exported it into a 3D drawing program called Sketchup, which I got for free on the internet. I thickened the fish into a 3D model. I exported it to the appropriate format for 3-D printing and sent it to the printer.  It took about 2 hours to print, and cost me $0.87 in plastic. Voila! It's for block printing. I attached a knob to the back with velcro so that it would be easier to pick up without getting paint on my fingers.  Then I used a brayer to roll on block printing ink for fabric and printed my fish on a piece of cotton. How much fun is that? I'm rather excited. I'm going to make a cat and...

I'm taking Julie Balzer's Junque Journal on-line class , and in it I'm taking much of my artwork that's been lying around the house and binding it into a book. The book will have lots of room to add more art, and be my working art journal for some time.  I have assembled 10 out of the 20 pages that I need so far.  Going through all my prints and papers made me really want to get on that Gelli Plate, so yesterday, I took a break from page making and did some printing. I cut three new stencils for this session. I drew the cat above in marker and then scanned him into Illustrator to make the stencil. I made a small one to use on ATC's, and a large one, because I wanted room to doodle on him. Both the stencil and the mask came out well. In the image with the small cats above, I used both.  My other new stencil was a real pain to get off the cut matt, when it came out of the cuter. The spirals uncurled like little snakes and kept getting tangled and stuck to the...

I haven't had time to do many of the exercises in this on-line watercolor class , but I've really enjoyed watching the videos. In one of the videos, Dawn uses a wet on wet technique to add color, and then paints in the background to highlight the shape. She did this with some leaves with spectacular effect. I thought I'd try the technique on some fur. Here's the result. Thanks for looking!

Today I donned the face mask and took to the garage to spray paint some papers for collage. I used the same stencils I've been using on the Gelli Plate, which I cut on my electronic Silhouette cutter. I still need to learn how to strategize to get patterns where I want them with the spray paint, but I managed to get some prints that I like. I also did some experiments with one of my face stencils. I didn't have a goal when I designed the face stencils. I'm hoping to come up with a collage idea in which it makes sense to use them. Thanks for looking!