Diane Chen's Blog

Weekday Sketchcrawl - 8/12/11

2011-08-12T16:59:00.000-07:00

The San Diego Sketchcrawlers (Weekday Edition) met today in Balboa Park - where else? Our group consisted of Rachel, Kathy, Linda, Stephen and myself. We met in the Zoro Butterfly Garden, which is tucked away between the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center and the San Diego History Center. The garden started out as a sunken stone grotto that was designed as a nudist colony during the 1935 California-Pacific Exposition. You can find more info about the garden at the Balboa Park website and the San Diego History Center. Thanks to Rachel for the history and links. It is now a butterfly garden with plants and conditions conducive to the life cycle of butterflies. It was a lovely cool morning there. Most of the pictures have larger versions if you click on them.

The garden is full of walkways and places to sit and sketch.

There are a lot of huge trees.

A big mural.

And a river of stones.

One thing I noticed is that the pipes that they used for the railings have cool curvy ends.

Of course, since it's a butterfly garden, there are lots of flowers everywhere. Here's a buddleia.

Passionflower.

Some kind of yarrow I think.

And even a heliconia, though I don't think the butterflies can feed from it's flowers.

We settled in to do our sketching.

After it started to warm up, the butterflies came out. The only kind I saw were Monarch butterflies, very eye-catching. I chased them around for a while and managed to get a few pictures. I don't know what kind of flower this is, but it was the only kind I saw them on, even though there are many other flowers in the garden.

Sadly, it was soon time to pack up and leave. Here are pictures of the artwork we did. Linda and Rachel did more than one, so I had to take 2 pictures.

The tomatoes are the remains of a bag I brought of homegrown tomatoes from my neighbor that we snacked on. As you can see, Stephen brought his ukulele and serenaded us a little. Here is a closeup of one of Linda's pages.

And Rachel's ink sketch. She is in the midst of doing an ink sketch a day for 75 days. Go Rachel!

I caught a quick picture of Stephen adding shading to his sketch of the big tree.

There was a tree stump that is cut to make a nice place to sit, so first Kathy sat there for a picture.

Then of course everyone else had to pile on.

Then Stephen and I switched places.

A lovely time was had by all. I'm looking forward to the next time we can get together.

Go make art! Sketch something! Paint something! Anything!

Weekday Sketchcrawl - 5/6/11

2011-05-06T14:54:00.000-07:00

The weekday sketchcrawl group met today at the Balboa park rose garden. My previous post has a bunch of pictures of the rose garden and some of the beautiful roses. It turned out to be another beautiful day in the park; the sun was warm and the shade cool with just a bit of a breeze.

There were 4 of us this time. In this picture are Leon, Rachel, and Stephen. Turns out it is Stephen's Birthday today - Happy Birthday! I was somewhat late owing to a disagreement with the local snails as to the future of my petunias.

Leon is very quiet and lurked at another bench. Turns out he was sketching us surreptitiously and then had the nerve to complain that we made his sketching more difficult by moving around! However, he persevered and had a nice result.

Rachel made some itty bitty sketches all on one page.

Stephen sketched with his bamboo pen and sumi-e ink and seemed to spend most of the time waiting for the ink to dry.

I made an ATC for day 34 of my ATC-A-Day project. Then there wasn't much time left but I sketched a little bit more of just the garden.

I forgot to take a picture from exactly my viewpoint (duh!), but this is close to it.

A great morning sketching! Now go make art!

Balboa Park Sketchcrawl 4/16/11

2011-04-17T01:32:00.000-07:00

Saturday, April 16, there were just 2 of us sketching in Balboa park from San Diego Sketchcrawlers, myself and Andy. This is only my second time sketching "on location". We met a little after 10 and were planning to sketch in the desert garden but it was rather warm so we retreated to the pergola of the rose garden. This is on the east side of Park Blvd across from the Natural History Museum and the Science Center. Here is a good map of the main Balboa Park area. The roses were exploding all over the garden. It was so beautiful there and of course it smelled divine.

I forgot to take a picture of the museums from this angle. But not to worry, Andy made a beautiful sketch of the flowers with the museum in the background. She really caught the character of the museum building.

I did a few sorry sketches in my sketchbook, of which this is the only one I will show. I know I shouldn't make excuses, but I realize now I really shouldn't be trying to do watercolor on drawing paper, no matter what the sketchpad label says. Most of the rose varieties were identified, but I couldn't find the name of this one.

I decided to make an ATC for my ATC a Day project as I had brought some watercolor paper blanks. I picked out a rose named Chihuly to use for my picture and sketched a little border around it. Thanks to Andy for suggesting the border, as I usually make a hash of backgrounds.

I took tons of flower photos; here is a picture of one of the Chihuly variety roses.

After Andy left about 12:30, I stayed a little longer in the rose garden and then went over to the main area of Balboa Park by the museums and botanical gardens. Saturday was the 31st World Wide SketchCrawl, see here for more info. I only found out about it from Rachel the day before so I thought I would make an effort to sketch more. I took lots of photos and sketched the top of the Prado theater (playhouse) from near the reflecting pond. Poor building, it would collapse if it was anything like my sketch.

I went back over to the rose garden and decided to sketch a pretty pink-lavender rose "Blueberry Hill".

I need to get a sketchbook with real watercolor paper, it's hard to do watercolor on this regular drawing paper. I just put a light wash for color. Here is a photo of one of the buds.

I walked around the rest of the rose garden and I fell in love with a rose called "About Face". The insides of the petals are a pale peachy yellow and the outsides are a darker ruddy peach. They are so beautiful, they look like they are glowing. This photo doesn't even begin to do it justice.

Just before I left I had someone take a picture of me in front of the pergola:

When the sketchcrawlers met on April 1 (see a video here), Rachel mentioned a suggestion from someone to cut off the top of a sock and wear it on the wrist of your non-dominant hand to have something convenient to use to clean off your brush while painting with watercolor. I thought it sounded like a good idea, so I tried it out and I like it. Here is a picture. The end of it is just outside of the photo; it doesn't even go half way to my elbow. It's especially handy if you are painting in a situation where you need to hold either the palette or sketchbook while working, so you have no way to hold a paper towel or rag.

Go make art!

K.C. Willis Collage Camp!

2010-07-23T10:18:00.000-07:00

This past Wednesday I took a fantastic class at The Urban Barn in Escondido: "Collage Camp" taught by K.C. Willis. I had a great time, learned a lot and laughed a lot. Visit her website Lipstick Ranch. The Urban Barn is a great place for a workshop like this, with a huge back room with a roll-up door big enough to drive a truck in, so it was very light and airy. KC brought lots and lots of supplies for us to use; all we needed to bring were scissors, glue and some embellishments. She also brought some kits, "KC in a box" that includes her DVDs, so I got one of those too. I'm looking forward to watching them.

Here's KC setting up before class. You can see a little bit of the fabric pile we had to choose from, and she brought lots of samples for us to look at for inspiration. In the background you can see some of the cool old furniture that The Urban Barn specializes in carrying.

KC talked about how she got started making the fabric collages and how she grew her business into the successful one she has now. She is a great storyteller; it all was quite fascinating.

Her instructions were really good. Considering I had no idea what the class was about, I was pleasantly surprised that I didn't spend any time sitting there wondering what the heck I was doing there! One thing I hadn't realized when I signed up for the class is that it involved (gasp!) using a sewing machine. But I survived with the help of KC and Christine, who's machine I used.

We started with raw canvas, attached pieces of fabric front and back, then kept adding more layers of fabric with glue and/or sewing machine. The images are on fabric using T-shirt transfer paper. All the fabrics and lace were stained to one extent or another with coffee to make them look old. She had some fantastic "birds nest" paper, some corrugated cardboard and some paper with some stiff fibers running through it. This added another interesting dimension to the layers. The most fun was giving the edges of the fabrics and also the paper a burnt look with a paint stripping gun.

Another thing she had were "clumpies", the tangled mess of threads that end up in the washing machine when washing torn fabrics. We used blobs of clumpies as part of the embellishments; very cool.

My friend Davielle was in the class too, and we happened to pick the same image to work with. Here is a picture at the end of the class showing our two projects side-by-side.

After class, Davi invited us to her lovely house where we had a nice relaxing dinner and chat. I had thought I would finish it right away after I got home, but I got somewhat stalled on the embellishments and also the quote. Indecision, indecision. When catching up on my email Thursday I noticed coupons from Michaels so on Friday I went and loaded up on stuff - Sharpie paint pens, some rub-ons, but most importantly flowers and jewelry embellishments to finish this and also in preparation for KC's class in February, a 2-day fabric book class at Urban Barn, which I'm already signed up for.

So today I had great fun finishing the project! I'm really happy with it; now I have to watch her videos to see how to prepare it to hang on the wall. I'm tempted to just grab some little nails and nail it right to the wall!

For more pictures (as usual I forgot to take enough pictures during class), see my good friend Sally's post here:

http://sillysalcreates.blogspot.com/2010/07/kc-willis-rides-again-at-urban-barn.html

And also this post from Jackie; without her efforts, the class might not have happened:

http://theartinyou.blogspot.com/2010/07/kc-has-left-buildingthank-you-very-much.html

Thanks Jackie! Thanks to Urban Barn for providing the setting. And thanks KC for a fabulous class!

Matchstick house project

2010-06-24T19:01:00.001-07:00

Last weekend I went up to Orange County to have a get-together with some artist friends that live up there. My friend Tracy put together a little project that we could do quickly - a matchstick house. We started with little pieces of cardboard that we covered with old papers. The house part has a triangular top on it, but then there's a larger triangle piece we also covered with paper. Then we put the matchsticks on - they are from the long fireplace matches. Tracy thoughtfully had a variety of sizes already cut. Then they got torched a little with a creme brulee torch.

Here is a picture of the samples Tracy brought; they show the progression of making the house.

Then came decisions as to what to add to it - little flowers, seed pods, etc. Another friend had brought some stamps so I found a heart stamp I liked. We didn't quite have time to put all the stuff on so I brought it home with a few things I wanted to add.

Those who know me know I like to have a little color. I took Tim Holtz distress inks and added a little color in the background and on some of the sticks. Of course then I was kind of on a roll and didn't think to take intermediate pictures, but I added the things I had already planned to add and then stalled. What next? I added some bird seed in the lower right corner, but didn't know what else to add. So I started pulling out possibilities. Here is the house surrounded by things I was trying to decide from.
I decided it need just a little bling so I added the fairy charm. I had a bird's nest charm, but it looked more like spaghetti and meatballs so I added some dark brown alcohol inks and then some paint on the eggs. I like the Tim Holtz hardware & picked the circle tag that says Listen - it spoke to me more that day than Wander. Then I was still in a dilemma because I only had small heart charms and I wanted a heart on the top too. So I got out my package of PaperClay and made a little heart, stuck it in the toaster oven till it was dry and painted it with acrylic paints. Voila! I was finally done. This was a very fun project! I made it more complicated than it needed to be with the addition of the PaperClay heart, but it was still fun. Thanks Tracy, Stephanie and the others, you know who you are!

It's half past 2010 already!

2010-06-23T23:57:00.002-07:00

With the Blog Hop for US Artquest's design team happening this week, I hopped around the blogosphere checking out the cool projects and left comments at the appropriate blogs. Several of the artists were kind enough to come visit my blog and left some kind comments. I realized I only blogged once for the whole year of 2009 and not at all yet this year. I will admit I've been very depressed for quite some time and just haven't felt like pretending everything was OK. Through the miracle of modern pharmacology, I've been feeling a lot better for a little while now. Too bad I had to diagnose myself and go tell the N.P. what to prescribe for me - but that's a different rant.

I've been taking lots of great classes the last couple of years in various things, but the best have been the painting classes from Chris Cozen, who is a member of the Working Artist program with Golden Acrylics. She lectures and teaches around Southern California - if you get a chance to take any of her classes, I highly recommend it!

It's not like I didn't enjoy the other classes I took, but I am drawn to painting and collage, so I'm going to try to focus on that - we'll see how that works out, haha! Me and my multitude of hobbies!

I'm also taking online classes from Julie Prichard and Chris Cozen that have been awesome. I have learned so much from them. The classes are Color: Beyond the Basics and Complex Collage; both under Project Deconstruction. You can get more information and sign up here.

Here are 2 paintings I created in classes with Chris and actually finished to my satisfaction - a first for me.

and

The first one started as an exercise in analogous colors. Of course since I love purple, I had to start with Quinacridone Magenta and Dioxazine Purple! The tan colors are actually gold, so they pop a little in real life. When I started the background for the second one I felt I should work outside of my comfort zone a little and started with various colors of yellow and Quinacridone Nickel Azo Gold. The orange rectangle with lighter spots is a piece of really cool paper that Chris brought; wish I could find more like it! The pictures are of my mom and dad (and uncle in the 3rd picture). I'm happy with both of these paintings because they seemed to flow together right from the start, thanks to Chris's expert teaching skills!

Mornings at the park

2009-10-24T21:19:00.000-07:00

I take my pug Chloe to the nearby dog park (at Harry Griffen park in La Mesa) almost every morning. Sometimes we walk around the park for a while before going into the dog park area. There are often very interesting things to see. There are a couple of Blue Herons that hang around the park, even though there is no water there - we think they probably live at Lake Murray. Why do they hang out there? They hunt the gophers! It gives you a whole different perspective on the herons when you realize that they hunt mammals, not just things like fish and frogs! Just a few days ago, one of the herons realized that the view from on top of the cars is perfect for scouting out areas with active gophers. We were all quite startled to see the heron that close to people! He stayed there for about 10 minutes and then flew down to an area in the grass where there were some fresh gopher mounds and began stalking. I haven't yet seen the exact moment of the kill, but I have watched a heron fussing with a dead gopher until it was positioned just right to be swallowed.

One day during the hot summer, the morning was extremely foggy. I was walking Chloe through the area at the park that is kind of a native plant/wilderness area (I use the term "wilderness" very loosely). Everything was covered heavily with dew and there were an amazing number of spider webs that were quite visible from all the dew clinging to them.
These 2 webs were huge, between two bushes that were about 4 feet apart.

This web is hard to see, but the spider has been going around the web collecting the drops of dew. You can see there are a few thin vertical strands of web to the left of the spider with no dewdrops. I watched this guy going around the web to get rid of the dewdrops. I don't know what happened to the drops. I know they are quite small, but he collected so many I would have thought he would drown.

The one thing I couldn't get a picture of was the hummingbirds that were drinking the dew off of the webs. One was very close and I could see the dew disappearing as it flitted around the web. That was really fascinating to see!

Art Book Review

2008-08-17T15:23:00.000-07:00

Altered Surfaces: Using Acrylic Paints With Gels, Mediums, Grounds & Pastes by Chris Cozen

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
From my review on Amazon. If you are an artist interested in the enormous range of possibilities of acrylic paints, this is the book for you! Even if you are experienced with acrylics, you are guaranteed to learn new things from this book. As a part of Golden Acrylic Colors' Working Artists program, Chris Cozen has an astonishing knowledge of acrylic paint and how it behaves.

This deceptively slender volume is packed with information, while still containting enough basic information that a beginner could easily start with this book. As the title suggests, there is a lot of information about acrylic mediums and grounds (sorely lacking in many other books), including some of the new products released recently by Golden. Molding paste, crackle paste, pumice gel, fiber paste, clear tar gel and glass bead gel are just a few of the items she covers. She also describes how to achieve the look of encaustics with acrylic products, something I plan to try soon!

This is one of the best sources of information for artists interested in expanding their horizons with acrylic paints. Not a substitute for a class from this inspiring teacher, but a good reference guide and source of ideas.
View all my Goodreads reviews.

New businesses! Busy me!

2008-08-08T13:04:00.000-07:00

Now I'm part owner of 2 companies:
1) Pugnacious Stamps and Designs, LLC. This company was started by myself and my good friend Melissa Forsyth and her husband Reggie Sampaga. We are going to be selling lots of good stuff at stamping and scrapbook conventions, plus we have been planning a line of rubber stamp images that we hope to have in production later this year or early 2009.

2) The Rubber Cafe. This is a rubber stamp company that has been around for about 10 years. I did the website for the original owner about 5 years ago. Recently life has been interferring with her ability to run the business; she hasn't done any real marketing and advertising for several years - she's just too busy! So my business partners and I decided to buy it from her. Last week we drove to where she lives, made the purchase, loaded up stuff in a truck and drove it back down here. It's now in Melissa and Reggie's garage! We also have even had an order already!

All these big changes are very exciting and scary too!

The website for The Rubber Cafe is www.therubbercafe.com
We plan to re-organize the catalog and update the line with more great stamp images.

Book Review: Moon Called by Patricia Briggs

2008-08-08T12:28:00.000-07:00

Moon Called by Patricia Briggs

Rating: 5 of 5 stars
OK, maybe "It was amazing" (as Goodreads defines 5 stars) is an exaggeration, but I enjoyed this book enough to re-read it, which doesn't happen often. This is the first book I've read in the genre of "contemporary supernatural [romance]".

I greatly enjoyed the book. The "rules" for the supernatural beings (primarily werewolves, but others are included) are believable and consistent, with social rules, and stuff like that.

Lots of action, enough romance to be exciting and keep you guessing (it's not the primary reason for the story).

The characters are believable and well-defined. She does well with the narrative first person form of the book. I've since read everything else I could find by her and she has become one of my favorite authors.

Highly recommended.
View all my reviews.

One World One Heart Winners!

2008-02-15T10:32:00.000-08:00

[Drum Roll]
The winners are:
Singing Cat: Sam
Mrs. Moon: Sherry
Eyes: Craftyhala
Dreaming Woman: Bethel of Bethania

Congratulations! I've contacted everyone & gotten addresses. I will mail the magnets Monday, as today and tomorrow I know I won't get a chance to go to the Postal Orifice.

Woo Hoo! I also won two, count 'em, two giveaways! They are from Catherine at http://thisgirlremembers.wordpress.com/ and from Becky Vigor at http://artofzinkibaru.blogspot.com/ (the "fire" jounal).

How exciting! I will post info as I get the items.

Art & Soul at Asilomar!

2008-02-11T00:13:00.001-08:00

I'm getting excited about going to the Art & Soul "Mini" art retreat in Asilomar in April! I'm taking a 2-day nature journal class from LK Ludwig, and a class called Flourished Layers from Traci Bautista. It's going to be so much fun! I have to get busy and start making ATCs to trade - eek! It's a little scary as I don't know anyone else who's going and I don't really feel up to the level of what I see in the workshops. Actually it's really scary and intimidating! But I'm trying not to think about those feelings and concentrate on the anticipation of learning from all the other artists that will be there, and all the new friends I'll make.

I was looking at the classes for the Art & Soul in Hampton in May. I'm not going, but if I were, I don't know how I would decide on what classes to take! There are so many fantastic classes! I'm hoping I'll be able to go to the one in Oregon in the fall, but it's too early to know.

Art Unraveled in Phoenix (August 3-10) will be opening registration later this week. I'm sure I'm going to go since it's only about a 5 or 6-hour drive from here, but I'm not sure for how many days. I'd like to be there all week! Again, there are so many great classes, it's going to be hard to decide what classes to register for.

I just got LK Ludwig's book about Nature Journaling, and I plan to read through it as carefully as possible before the retreat.

Meanwhile, I had better get back to cutting paper for my class on Wednesday, or I won't be getting much sleep Tuesday night!

What a busy week!

2008-02-08T23:19:00.000-08:00

I realized I haven't posted in a loooong time, so now I'm overdoing it as usual. This week has been very busy; Saturday I took a class with Kelly Kilmer (About Face) at The Stamp Addict. I was quite late for class because the night before I was at a friend's house designing cards for future classes and didn't get to bed till 3 AM. But it was a great class anyway!
Wednesday night a friend (Lisa) and I helped another friend (Melissa) with a card-making class for a women's group at The Rock church in Point Loma. We weren't sure how many people there would be, perhaps as many as 30; so we prepared for 40, just in case. We only had a short period of time to help them make all 5 cards, so we were lucky we had just under 20 people there. It was just the right amount of people. We barely made it in time, but it was fun and everyone seemed to enjoy it. The owner of The Stamp Addict donated all of the paper we used in the class so with the 3 of us donating other supplies and our time, it was a great thing all around. We hope to do it again somewhere else. When I remember to take pictures of the cards we made, I'll post them too.

Next week on Wednesday I'm teaching a card-making class at The Stamp Addict. It's called Not the Usual Sheepish Cards. You can see the information here: http://www.thestampaddict.com/2008_02/sample_sheepish.htm. There's a fourth card on my Flickr site, and we'll be making another card of which for some reason I have no picture. Anyway, I haven't even started cutting paper for the class yet, so that should keep me busy this weekend! Also my friend Melissa has a shoulder problem and is teaching a class on Tuesday so I will probably be helping her to cut paper for her class. Here is a link to her class information: http://www.thestampaddict.com/2008_02/sample_Hero.htm
She makes awesome cards, I recommend her classes!

Cheers!
Diane

One World One Heart

2008-02-08T22:54:00.001-08:00

Hi everyone! I'm excited to join the One World One Heart Giveaway for the first time. Please see http://oneworldevent.blogspot.com/ for more information and a list of others participating. In the words of Lisa Oceandreamer, the originator and host of this event, "The original idea behind this giveaway event was to bring bloggers together from around the world who may never ordinarily meet. It closes the gap of the blog community and enables us to interact, discover new and wonderful people, and in the process possibly win a prize or many prizes along the way. [...] This is more than wanting to win something.......that is only the means.......in the end it's about finding kindred spirits. Someone may be fairly new to blogging, not sure how to navigate, find others and have others find them....Some are long time bloggers and in some cases well known in the art community. Whatever the case it brings all of them together. This is an INTERNATIONAL event that has and had participants from the US, Canada, France, Sweden, Germany, Finland, Malaysia, Brazil, The Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, Scotland, Ireland, England,Wales and more. It transcends geographical location, socio economics, political affiliation, religious beliefs......it's a coming together like the giant community we are on this planet. If only it took a simple giveaway to create PEACE everywhere, in the mean time here we give from our hearts."

Thank you Lisa!

I have 4 magnets made from dominoes that I will be giving away. I made them using rubber stamps and various paints, inks, etc on regular resin dominoes. They are coated with a protective coating so they are waterproof and scratch-resistant. They are all approximately 1 inch by 2 inches by 3/8 inch thick with a magnet on the back.

I will mail them anywhere in the world (from my home in the US) using US Priority Mail or US Global Priority Mail. If you have a preference for which domino, let me know. I will be picking 4 winners from the entries I receive, as randomly as possible. Please note I am still trying to figure out how to take good pictures of things - the colors of the second one - Mrs. Moon - while bright, are not as frightening in real life as in the picture! Tee hee!

All you have to do is post a comment to this blog to be entered in the drawing.

Cheers!

Diane Chen

Picture of China snows

2008-02-08T21:31:00.001-08:00

Picture of China snows, originally uploaded by PurpleDiane.

This picture is of my husband's hometown, Hangzhou. More snow than ever! This picture is beautiful, but it's been a big disaster coming right before the [questionably named] Spring Festival, that started yesterday.
By the way, Happy New Year to you all!
PS. I got the photo from some news agency; sorry I don't remember which one.

Classes, and more

2007-11-12T00:46:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago I had more classes from Chris Cozen - great acrylic techniques! Most of it was play to get familiar with the techniques, so there isn't anything actually finished, but I might put some photos of my samples up on Flickr.

Today I had my Christmas ornament class at The Stamp Addict. It went really well, everyone seemed to have a good time and made some beautiful ornaments.

One of the most enjoyable aspect of teaching is seeing the different results that the students get. It's easy for me to get into a "rut" with colors or methods once I find something that I like. But when the students come in without pre-conceived ideas of which colors to mix (or not to mix), the results can be very unusual and often even more beautiful.

Art Stuff

2007-10-07T20:10:00.000-07:00

I have too many art interests! Right now, while I love stamping still, I’ve been focusing on mixed media, with gourds as a random distraction. Some of my favorite teachers are Kelly Kilmer (mixed media magic), Chris Cozen (Golden Acrylics wizardry), Dianne Connelly (amazing gourds).

I’m also getting out my Luminarte Polished Pigments (from their Primary Elements line) for more Christmas ornaments, because I’ll be teaching an ornament class in November at The Stamp Addict (tentatively scheduled for the afternoon of Sunday, November 11). I’m sure I’ll be posting more about that in the near future as the ornaments start to take over my house!

Gee Whiz - My Very Own Blog!

2007-10-02T12:57:00.000-07:00

I'm finally joining the Useless Information Age!
Once in a while I might post something interesting. The rest of the time I will do my best to bore you all to tears.
Cheers!
Diane