Stamped zebra

Creative inspiration for day 3 at Milliande's Art Community for Women involved carving my own stamp.  Zebra stripes are pretty easy to make, but really, I don't want a zebra stripe stamp in my permanent collection.  Even a potato was more than I wanted to invest in this exercise.  What I did was cut the stripes out of craft foam, put tacky glue on the back, and stick them onto an acrylic block.  I Used Versamagic cloud white to stamp on black paper, and archival black ink to stamp the same stripes on the white journal page.

I cut the zebra out of the black striped paper, and defined his features with a white pencil.  He looked lost all by himself, but that was what I wanted - it seemed to echo the theme of the zebra struggling not to blend in too much but not stick out too much either.  I am starting to really relate to this zebra.

zebra mandala

Apparently the zebra is going to be the theme for the whole month, not just yesterday. Day 2 of the journalling process directed by Milliande: make a zebra mandala, then copy it, cut it up, and use the cut bits on the journal page. I'm sure it is no surprise that my mandala did not come out very round. After I finished it, I thought it would be easier to cut up a solid sheet of doodles, so I squared it and tiled it, and printed a full sheet of patterned paper.

 

(Click to see full size.)  You can see nearly a half sheet as the background on the right, and I cut up the other half to make the figure.  The text reads:

In my comfort zone, I'm nearly invisible, but when I come out, I'm like a zebra at a rodeo.  I don't want to stay hidden, but where do I belong?

The tiny zebra heads were cut from the mandala which can be seen in the upper right.  The rope motif is in the mandala, too (rope being suggestive of the rodeo, I hope).

There is a lot of white space on this page, but I didn't feel adding more stuff would necessarily make it better, just busier.

Zebra

I read about this art journalling project over at Milliande's Art Community for Women, and I thought I would give it a go, even though I'm a little late to the party.  The provious prompts are going to be up for a while, so I can do this as I like.

Since this is a creativity process project, and not a "make something beautiful" project, I felt free to play, and not overthink the end result.

The theme for the first day is "Zebra".  I thought about zebras, and black and white.  Then I remembered that old riddle "What's black and white and red (read) all over?" and I just started drawing on the newspaper.  I then cut out the newspaper zebra and glued it into my book and added leaves and grass and just kept adding stuff until I felt I was making it worse, not better, then I stopped.  I suppose in an ideal world, I stop before I make it worse.

It's fun to see other artists' interpretations of the theme too.

 

From the Heart Blog Hop

 

I struggled to find an appropriate focal image for this card, but when I put the little charm on instead, it just worked for me.  It's as if paper isn't good enough, that love requires the permanence of metal.

It's a joy fold card, although it is listed in the Technique Junkie library as a Flap Fold card. This is really a linky

hop - there isn't a specific sequence, but all the participating blogs have the same linky, so you can just click the image of the card you want to see next from any blog in the hop.  It's pretty cool - try it!

self portrait 4

This is probably the worst one I've done so far as far as the quality of my drawing goes, but it says a lot more about me than any of the others.

The thing is, I actually own this Star Trek uniform.  I used to wear it all the time (as a member of the Starfleet fan club).  I always wanted a portrait of myself wearing the uniform, but I never got around to it.  I suppose it was inevitable that this should leap onto the paper.

Self portrait 3

I'm loving this technique!

Don't ask me why my hair is tied to a tree branch, I'm still trying to figure that one out.  It must be something subconscious.  If you have any theories, please share!

I think I will do all my swap self portraits this way, and keep the zetti (unless Cheryl really wants it!).

Previous self protraits are here and here.

Self portrait 2

This time I tried doing myself in a zentangle.

It was a lot of fun - I think I will have to do more of these. 

Challenges:
Off the Wall - black, gray, white
Paper Play - clean and simple
Cupcake Craft - white
Paper Playtime - faces
Shabby Tea Room - 11 elements (digital underlayer, doodling on face, and 9 zentangle patterns)

First self portrait ATC is here.