MCBA Visual Journal Collective.

Last monday night I went down to the Minnesota Center of Book Arts (MCBA) to meet with the Visual Journal collective for their monthly meeting (link will take you to Roz Stendahl's blog about the meeting; she is the group's leader). I have been going to meetings since the beginning of the year and I throughly enjoy the group and the chance it gives me to draw something new once a month - oh - and the kick in the pants it gives me to draw as much as possible during any regular week.

Last week we had a special speaker, Karen Engelbretson, who is a local graphic designer and botanical artist. She talked to us about drawing botanicals as well as using our art on stuff, rather than just having it sit in journals or sketchbooks.

As always it was a good time. These pears were each done during a five minute sketch that night using a sharpie pen.

The first in a line of owls.

This year in my classes as I have been doing demonstrations and examples, I have been repetitively using an owl as my subject matter whenever possible. This started by accident and since noticing my tendency towards owls, I have just embraced it and have been very intentional about my choice to use an owl.

This has created a body of owl work through the school year. I think the most interesting part has been using an owl as a subject or theme across a wide variety of mediums.

In a simple effort to try and post more, here is the newest in an upcoming parade of owls as I bring home my examples and projects to pack up for the summer.

This owl was created this week as I began a unit on block printing with an introductory project. The print block is small, 2 x 3 inches, and carved out of and easy cut rubber sort of product. So it is more of a stamp, but it is printed with water-based speedball ink on regular white paper.

Virtual Paintout - Canary Islands

I have finally finished another Virtual Paintout image after only beginning images the last two months. This month's location is the Canary Islands. I have picked out several more map views and hope to do another later this week.