"growing" collages

Digital collages, 6x8".

So the past few weeks have involved a lot of driving around meeting horses that are for sale. I'm desperate for a new therapist (the horse, in case that wasn't obvious).

I've found the right one, though, and she'll be arriving next week! Eeee! I'm sure I'll have lots of photos to show you when she gets here...sorry :)

Anyway, the other project this week was getting a building put up to store hay. Miss Boo was on bagged hay pellets instead of baled hay so we didn't really need much space to store them and now we need a place to keep a couple tons of hay. While the guys were here working on the shed I was working on collages since they're easier to set aside if I needed to pop outside when there's a question about something.

Incidentally, I titled them "Growing 1, 2, and 3" because it seemed appropriate for both springtime and a time when our family is growing. :)

magnolias

I was recently contacted by somebody wanting to know if I do custom work. I don't, really, but she was interested in a magnolia drawing that she could have tattooed on her shoulder. I thought it sounded like an interesting project (and I do love the magnolias) so this is what we came up with. The drawing itself is about 5x7" and I think it's on an 8x10" sheet of paper. I haven't tried drawing this many things that small in years!

The bottom two flowers are the big southern evergreen magnolias from the tree at her house and the other two are from my smaller magnolias that drop their leaves. I like that it feels like a collaboration and has things that are meaningful in it. I humbly requested a photo of the finished tattoo so I'll post it when I get it. I just sent over the drawing a couple of days ago so it might not be right away, though.

Anyway, it was probably a good learning experience for me about doing custom work and commissions...not sure if I would do it again but I would at least know how to do it :)

quilt

Hello all! I'm dashing off to go to a friend's baby shower out of town and I thought my little quilt I made for her turned out cute. This is before I washed it so it's a tad wrinkly in these shots and let's just say I'm not a quilter at all so you won't be seeing any close-up photos :)

Anyway, hope your weekends were all delightful! I've got another project to show you but it'll have to wait until I get back, I guess.

more books

When my mom was visiting last week she brought over some books that she had found in their basement. If I've ever grumbled about how my parents had books that I wanted to use for art purposes, these are (almost) the books I was looking for. The ones I remembered were in my grandpa's shop/garage and were all old train books. Oddly enough, these are train books from my other grandpa. Like I said, there's railroads on both sides of my family - q.e.d. :)

As far as I can tell, he bought them from somebody at a garage sale or something - Fred Ackerland was the original owner and Robert Houx was my grandpa. Fred Ackerland (or is it Ackerlund?) must have been a teenager or so because there's a ton of random stuff stuck into the books with him practicing his signature. Isn't there a certain age where you are really interested in making your signature look cool?

Anyway, I've only just started scanning things out of these but I thought you might enjoy a small selection. I love that my grandpa left them all in there too.

Oh, and the Ryan Hotel is still there :)