Deborah Velásquez

Friday, May 4, 2012

Word Path • Borrowed and Shared

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Everyone has a word path. One word leads to another.

Word Paths have been a Friday feature showcasing possibilities in written words, creative process and artistic pieces from the beginning of my blog You can go here, to my first post on this project and see how it all started.

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Today I have decided to share quotes from one of my favorite go to books. Peggy Hadden's book The Quotable Artist is such a fun book to have and to give as well. It is full of quotes from artists and art admirers. You get to hear their thoughts and peek into their soul. From Cézanne, O'Keefe to Klee you get shared words, inspiration, advice and sometimes a good giggle. If you are an artist pick up a copy, if you know an artist give them a wonderful gift.

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Here are My Borrowed Word Paths for Today from

The Quotable Artist by Peggy Hadden

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I chose these nature quotes to share because am currently participating in The May Flower Challenge. Each day you post your flower creations, whether it is a doodle, drawing, photograph, collage or painting. Flowers bring you close to nature, so the Word Paths found me sort to speak.

Happy Weekend • Spend Time with Nature • Enjoy the Language of Words

Thank you for stopping by.

May Flower Challenge • Red Sunflower

Red Sunflower for May Flower Challenge • Day Four

Red Sunflower for day four of The May Flower Challenge . Each day you can post your flower creation, whether it is a doodle, drawing, photograph, collage or painting. This challenge has been started by Lori Moon, fellow blogger, talented photographer and jewelry artisan. Sign up and join in on the flower fun. Can't wait to see what you create as well! Please note: You do NOT have to participate every day. Play along on a specific day each week or only once - whatever inspires you. Join the challenge, here, it is going to be fun.

Make sure to visit the other artists who are participating in the challenge at Lori Moon's website. I love challenges like this because it helps build reference material for your body of work, it adds to your sketchbook, portfolio, motif library if you are a Surface pattern designers and so on. Make it work for you.

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My Red Sunflower is part of another old project I have resurrected in order to finish. It so happened to have my red sunflower sketch in it, so how appropriate for the May Flower Challenge!

I love flea market and antiquing finds. I came across a few small school chairs for children and knew immediately that I needed to re-purpose them some how. I wanted to make this for my youngest son. I pulled the chair apart to start my re-purposing, painting and decoupage project.

Here is the skeleton of the chair with back and seat removed.

I played around with some original drawings and art papers I had in the studio. I made a copy of my sunflower sketch used in The Sketchbook Project 2011. The Sketchbook Project is a traveling library of artists' books created by thousands of people from across the globe. After the sketchbook travels on exhibition it sits in the permanent collection of the Brooklyn Library in New York. Here is a video which explains the project.

Playing with artwork and art papers.

I took the chair apart to work on the back and seat separately.

Back

Seat

I copied the original in all sizes large and small. I cut the pieces I would use to adhere to the chair. The larger background pieces were cut very close to the edges of the back and seat. I traced the shapes to define my edges. The wood was then sanded down on both pieces and I painted them black. I wanted the sides and bottom to show as black as the background in the art paper had a black in background. Then I Mod Podged the pieces to the wooden back and seat to give you have what I have shown you above.

This brings us to what is left to do!! I have to finish by painting another coat of Mod Podge on the back and seat and I need to paint the skeleton metal base of the chair black. To be honest I have no idea where the screws are to put it back together again! Wish me luck! I will post a photo of my finished chair. The weather is getting better, the rain has stopped, now it is time to get outside and get painting!

Thank you for stopping by!

Please do not use anything without permission or without making note of the origin on your blog or website

Thursday, May 3, 2012

May Flower Challenge • Mad for Orange

Painting completed! Able to finish up the work I started and shared in yesterday's post. I completed a goal I mentioned in my bio, which was to finish old projects, one down so so far.

A favorite color of mine is orange and I thought it would sit nicely in this colorful mix.

Just the warmth needed. Love it, it is just striking. I blogged about orange as a favorite color here, have a look.

I left off while I was playing with the color palette. I pulled some inspiration from my closet, cool paper and two vintage finds, the earring, and the cup. I was so thrilled with the orange flower that inspired me to paint a few more. I went ahead a created the trio for today's May Flower Challenge

Flowers for May Flower Challenge • Day Three

Mad for Orange for day three of The May Flower Challenge . Each day you can post your flower creation, whether it is a doodle, drawing, photograph, collage or painting. This challenge has been started by Lori Moon, fellow blogger, talented photographer and jewelry artisan. Sign up and join in on the flower fun. Can't wait to see what you create as well! Please note: You do NOT have to participate every day. Play along on a specific day each week or only once - whatever inspires you. Join the challenge, here, it is going to be fun.

Thank you for stopping by!

Please do not use anything without permission or without making note of the origin on your blog or website

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

May Flower Color Challenge • Abstract Floral

Abstract Floral in gouache by Deborah Velásquez

Abstract Floral for day two of The May Flower Challenge which started Yesterday. Each day you can post your flower creation, whether it is a doodle, drawing, photograph, collage or painting. This challenge has been started by Lori Moon, fellow blogger, talented photographer and jewelry artisan. Sign up and join in on the flower fun. Can't wait to see what you create as well! Please note: You do NOT have to participate every day. Play along on a specific day each week or only once - whatever inspires you. Join the challenge, here, it is going to be fun.

As I started to plan for the challenge I decided to look for flower inspiration in my sketchbooks, tear sheet folder as well as my gardening books and mags. I use a lot of flowers in my work so there is inspiration a plenty at my house. I then remembered something I wrote on my blog bio mentioning how I would be finishing work and projects I had started but never got back to. Well I was lucky enough to find this flower drawing in one of my piles and voilá I can fulfill start working on that goal!

I rushed back home this morning after dropping off the kids at school and got to work. I grabbed my trusty gouache and got to work. Here is the progress I made today.

Playing with the color palette. Thinking I should expand on my usual green, blue and black palette style. I gravitate to these colors always and always have. Ummm. Running out of time so I will need to come back to this piece I will post the finished piece when done.

Cropped section of the painting makes for an interesting design. Love it!

Brushes set out to dry. Can't wait to get back to the painting.

Thank you for stopping by!

Please do not use anything without permission or without making note of the origin on your blog or website

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

May Flower Challenge • Marbled Echinacea

The May Flower Challenge starts today. Each day you can post your flower creation, whether it is a doodle, drawing, photograph, collage or painting. This challenge has been started by Lori Moon, fellow blogger, talented photographer and jewelry artisan. Sign up and join in on the flower fun. Can't wait to see what you create as well! Please note: You do NOT have to participate every day. Play along on a specific day each week or only once - whatever inspires you. Join the challenge, here, it is going to be fun.

I went back to the Art Center's studio to work on part two of my silkscreen class and was able to pull some lovely marbled echinacea pieces. I am thrilled with this process and I absolutely love the marbled multi-color effect. I did use the echinacea motif in yesterday's post but that was colored on the computer. What I learned was that this marbled effect would not have come to mind while using the computer, it happened hands on by playing around with the ink. So as I said before I will continue to use both mediums and find that balance for my surface pattern design work.

At work at The Arts Center

Hanging work at The Arts Center

Thank you for stopping by!

Please do not use anything without permission or without making note of the origin on your blog or website