Hmmmm....more Asian Art

Hmmmmm......another Asian Themed project. Two birds with one stone as they say. This is suppose to be my project for the February Book Club Week Three...Traci Bautista's Book, Collage Unleashed. We were to use photo copies as a background base, I rubber stamped images. Then we were to glaze over with heavy bodied acrylics. I wasn't sure what that was, so I used my matte gel medium, then painted onver with three different acrylics in a wash, applied some copper acrylic paint, adhered some of my Asian tissue and more gel, then voila...( oh, that's French) attached the little umbrellas. It needs some words or other flourishes. I'll let it dry and think about it some more. The embellishments are from my Asian Za Lotta Grab bag. It goes with the music.

I love color. I think I have a “feel” for color. At least on paper or in a project. ( I won’t discuss my early dorm room décor here,….and I moved out of the dorm room …a long time ago…but that’s another story.) I love to come up with color palettes. I love fabric stores, yarn stores, and paint chips. I want my house to be purple or blue, but we have boring faded yellow siding. SIGH. But it’s home. I digress again. I think with color I can have various moods. I can be bright, vintage, shabby, gloomy, moody, cute. It depends on what has caught my eye when I last shopped at the scrapbook store for decorative paper, or the fabric store remnants or the rummage sale vintage linens, yard goods or clothes. I have always been in love with blue. As a little kid I saw blue wagons at the store. ( you know the little red wagon, only this one was blue. ) My folks got it for me for Christmas. Then one year it was blue ice skates. I know they had to hunt high and low at the store for them.. I miss them, my folks, the blue wagon and the blue ice skates. But what I don’t get is why they painted my room yellow. Sigh….they never did explain.

Now I have to argue with my dh about what color things should be. Doesn’t he know I’m suppose to get to pick out the colors of everything.,(LOL) ok, this is minor in the whole life scheme of things.

My understanding of the color wheel is a fairly recent phenomena in my life. And I love it. I do consult it quite a bit when thinking about color choices. I use it as a guide, it is not stone. My favorite color has evolved from blue to expand and include all the colors on the color wheel from blue - red in a clock wise rotation around the wheel….blue, blue violet, violet, red violet, and red…and all the hues, tints, values , and shades that lie there in. But really, there is no bad color.

A fun project for the Zne Design Team

This month I had the opportunity to review the Za Lotta Grab Bag, available in the ZNE store. ( Only $8 with postage) The grab bag is a great collection of asian trinkets, dodads, background papers and images that will be great for your altered art projects. Check my other posts here for Asian Art, I have some ATCs that I posted last week.

This was fun to put together, out of the box for me, Asian Art is a new theme for me. All of the embellishments and images are from the Grab bag. I provided the red paint to a small wooden shrine from my dollar store stash. I was a little worried when I started it, it seemed "clunky". But I am pretty pleased with the finished project. Back to the drawing board to see what else I can come up with from this cool stash of Asian Stuff.

Asian Art on the ZNE Network

I remember fish stories. When I was little , say 5 years old, my dad would take me fishing at a pond in a neighborhood park that had been stocked with little sunfish and bluegill. I fished with a bamboo pole, and a little tiny hook and a worm. Dad would put the worm on the hook. One day a fellow was wandering around the pond with a magic fishing pole. He said you would catch a fish on his pole everytime you said Coca Cola. He let me try out his fishing pole. If you caught 5 fish he would give you a button, which probably said something like " I caught 5 fish with the magic coca cola fishing pole. I caught 5 fish and got a button. I just remember that day. When I see fish art, it makes me think of that day with my dad.

I liked doing things like that with my dad. Missing him lots.

This atc has an asian flair and a fish. When I see fish in art, I always think of my dad and that trip to the park. This atc is made with some asian background text, and collage ephemera from the ZNE store. Check out the ZNE Design Team site.

I'm working on some asian projects for something special coming your way over on ZNE. Don't miss out. It is still a secret until March.

More teasers to follow.

ZNE Design Team - Asian Art

New and exciting activities are happening over on the ZNE Scene. Be sure to check it out. As you know I am on the Design Team for year 2 and hope to do a creative job for them. They are a great group of artists to work with. My assignment for March is to do a product review. I don't want to give away all the details until they are released in March, so here are some
ATCs to spark your interest.

First I have no knowledge of any Asian language, and I am going to trust the source of these materials. Take a peek at my first ATC which has images from a graphic novel, funky asian, decorated pink tissue, and lettering from an asian newspaper, and then the same ATC altered with Photoshop Elements.

More to follow!!!