More July ICAD's

Day 45 - Wabi-Sabi

This first one is for the prompt Wabi-Sabi - a concept I was not totally familiar with.  I think it was a prompt a couple of years ago, but I didn't remember what the definition was so I had to do some investigating.  Essentially, from what I gather, it means embracing the imperfect.  So I chose to draw one of my lemon trees that I had grown from the seeds of some lemons a couple of years ago.  This particular one had started to branch out then promptly began losing leaves.  Since I drew this, we put all three of them outside and they seem to be doing much better.  Of course, they cannot stay out year-round, so we'll see if I can keep them alive inside for the winter.

Day 46 - Amethyst

Someone had recently posted a picture of their eggplant plants and I loved those amethyst flowers and decided to use them for this prompt.

Day 47 - Turnpike

There is a meme about NJ where the question asked is "What Exit are You?" referring to the turnpike and Garden State Parkway that run north and south through just about the entire length of the state.  The trouble with that meme is that there is are generous portions of the state where either of these roads is not easily accessed.  And the other negative connotation is that along these roads, there is nothing but industry.  Well, we are called the Garden State for a reason.  There is much diversity here and a lot of natural beauty.  So my turnpike had lots of colorful exits where you could find lots of wonderful things to see and do.  

Day 48 - Topographic

A topographic map of some fictional islands.

Day 49 - Billboard

Bill Board has a brother that people call Surf.

Day 50 - Escape

Day 51 - Number

Seven and two are our kids favorite numbers.

Day 52 - Friendship

This is a drawing I made of a logo/tattoo for our Table 7 group.  The nine fish are all connected at the center with 7's.  The red bands show marriages.  The blue and pink bands are children from those marriages.  And the hash marks are the number of grandchildren.  There will be another grandchild for one of the couples this fall so it will continue to grow.  (Now if I could just talk someone into actually getting this as a tattoo..... it'll never happen.)

Day 53 - Note to Self

The pineapple is cut from another index card I was experimenting with.

Day 54 - Shadow (Off prompt)

Instead I went with a gouache background and some windows cut from audition cards.

Day 55 - Pendulum

This idea created a lot of work and I decided in the end to scrap most of it.  This is a Life Color Pendulum chart.  I typed up all those "tabs" and since I couldn't get them to fit on the card, I went another direction....

Day 56 - Spin

It was fun using my gouache watercolors to make those spirals.  And then I added a little spinner

Day 57 - Kite

Drawn from a picture taken at the LBI Kite Festival with

Day 58 - Lime Green

Featuring woven washi tape.

Day 59 - Skeeball - Off Prompt

Some finger painted flowers with watercolor gouache.

Day 60 - Accordion

A one-staple collage of accordion pleated cupcake liners.

Day 61 - Symphony

Can you hear the Supremes?

Round up to come.

Catching Up on ICAD

Just continuing on with the prompts.  I have been keeping up day-to-day, just fell behind on the posting.  Here we go......

Day 31 - Mismatched

Day 32 - Caramel

I found a recipe for 1 pt. caramel cookies and made them.  They were delicious.  (Actually still have some.)  The recipe can be found here.  

Day 33 - Ogee

I took the ogee pattern and made my own flag in preparation for the 4th of July.

Day 34 - Constellation

The Crab (Cancer) Constellation seemed appropriate for this day as it was the first day of HWNSNBP's unofficial crabbing season.  (That is catching blue claw crabs, unlike that pictured.)

Day 35 - Pine Tree

Well, I think I combined the prompt of the day with something else entirely.  Though you will see that there are pine cones on the pineapple.

Day 36 - Thesaurus

Completely for fun!

Day 37 - Botanical

This was a little bit of a cheat as I had been playing with this card whilst doing the ribbon in June and set it aside thinking it might come in handy in July.  

ICAD Rainbow Ribbon Complete

When I planned this out I didn't take into consideration how far I would have to work ahead with the ribbon as it sometimes didn't stay on one card/level.  I think the longest was 10 days ahead, which really didn't affect me a lot because by the first week, I had a rhythm going with switching off the pencils.  

I chose to use colored pencils for the ribbon because of the quality of the index card paper.  I had been doing the rainbow ribbons in an art journal with markers and they blended well on that paper, but the index cards just soaked up the ink making blending kind of impossible.  The next choice was which pencils to use and I opted for a set of somewhat inexpensive pencils as I would be using a lot of them continuously and didn't mind running those down.

The 3" x 5" index cards proved to be a bit of a challenge with space left to use after the ribbon.  I didn't want to go to the 4" x 6" cards because I didn't want to have to color more ribbon.  It was a trade off that worked out okay.  I stayed on prompt and think I did a pretty good job with my interpretations.  

I am glad that I only did this for the first month.  Halfway through, I was beginning to doubt that it was a good plan, but after investing all the time to that point, there was no way I was going to abandon the plan.

Right now the cards are all temporarily taped together on the back with painter's tape until I take the time to replace that with clear packing tape.  Another thing I realized was that the index cards are not exactly the same size.  The differences are very slight and hardly noticeable, but taping them together made them obvious to me.

I'll be working on just the prompts for the remainder of the challege - no more theme.  

ICAD Week 4 plus 2

Here is the last full week plus that last two days of June ICAD.

Day 22 - Bicycle

Day 23 - Poem

The poem is "Color" by Christina Rossetti.  The verses may be a little out of order.

Day 24 - Music Box

Inspired by a musical jewelry box we gave Rachel for her first birthday.

Day 25 - Rose

A simple spiral makes the quickest bouquet.

Day 26 - Tinker Toy

Day 27 - Corduroy

Day 28 - Architecture

Arched doorways and windows.

Day 29 - Terra Cotta

Day 30 - Lemon or Lemonade

I'll show you the whole month in the next post.

ICAD 2019 - Week 3

Some of these prompts from this week, and next week from what I have seen, are getting harder to fit into the space that I left myself around the ribbon.  But I will persevere.

Day 15 - Storm 

It was quite windy the day I was doing this and the clouds were scooting across the sky.  I hope I captured that feeling a little.

Day 16 - Chandelier

Not exactly like the crystal chandelier that my grandparents had in their dining room.  A little more modern..... and colorful.

Day 17 - Wood

Cross sliced sections of logs and twigs.

Day 18 - Yearbook

I wanted to incorporate the name of my high school yearbook "Valorem" into my card for this.  But I didn't know, nor could I find out what the word meant.  There is a definition that I found, but I couldn't connect it to yearbook.  So I went in another direction with a superlative.

Day 19 - Yellow

Some highlighted yellow flowers amongst others.

Day 20 - Vitrina (Display Case)

I had never heard this word before.  Nor had many of the ICADians.  I now know that it refers to a display case of some kind, probably similar to the china cabinet that my grandparents had.  I chose to go another route with the word DISPLAY - such as that of a peacock.

Day 21 - Guitar

It was my intention to try a tessellation of guitars and this is somewhat getting there but not quite I fear.  I really did myself in by making them so small.  It had me cross-eyed by the time I was done.

As much as I am enjoying this challenge, I am looking forward to finishing up with my rainbow ribbon.  Like I said in the preface, it leaves little room for working with the prompt.  July should be much more about the freedom of creating.  

ICAD 2019 - Week 2

As I mentioned, I'm working ahead on the ribbon portion and I've found that it's absolutely necessary as I didn't take into account the parts of the ribbon from future cards that are also on present cards.  Since the rainbow has an order to it, I can't just start randomly with a color - one has to flow to the next card.  So I've had to set them all out to see just how far in advance I have to work to get a particular card done.  In one or two cases, I've had to work a week out on the ribbon.  Live and learn!

Day 8 - Goggles

Day 9 - Macaron

Day 10 - Sapphire

Day 11 - Palm 

Day 12 - Tapestry (which turned out to look more like a rag rug to me)

Day 13 - Balcony

From The Balcony of the Casa Rosada - Evita

Day 14 - Thread

Faux embroidery.

I had a real crazy thing happen to me last Saturday.  I had been working on my goggle card the night before as I've been trying to do, and was tired and left it on the table overnight.  When I woke up in the morning, it was where I had left it, but there was a word written on it that I cannot, for the life of me, remember putting there. It has nothing to do with the prompt whatsoever.  HWNSNBP swears, and I believe him, that he did not do it.  So the question is, who did?  It creeped me out so much it took me all day Saturday to want to get back to finishing it.  

I'm seeing FARCE but I don't know why it's there.  Strange.