GOOD Art Challenge: Update 8

Also, despite the rain, I went on an adventure. All in the name of GOOD! Today was such a good day.

2. Take a street art walking tour.
30. Take your camera with you on a walk and record the experience.
So... there really isn't much street art in Mountain View. I see a lot of tagging along the fences while I ride the Caltrain, but nothing interesting. There was one really cool piece I used to see all over that was a tag, but also a hand, and a face, all in one. I never got a picture of it, and I haven't seen it in awhile.

I thought about this a little more, and decided to focus on unassuming "street art". Namely, all the spray paint and regular road paint you see on the streets. The road paint (what is it actually called?!) you interact with on a daily basis: when you drive, when you use crosswalks.

 
The other marks people see, but don't really see. These are the ones made by the utility company, usually when there is construction. They mark various cables and systems that lie under the ground. I think they are so interesting. They seem like lines and arrows but they convey so much information for people who know the code. They also hint at a hidden network that you never think about.

I also wanted to document this mysterious collection of squares on the road along the Caltrain. I would see it every morning on my way to work, and it took me forever to figure out what it was. One day I saw it in action - I thought it was really exciting. Yes, I'm a dork. Can you guess what these are for?

Finally, I started noticing all the different textures of the features of the sidewalk. All those utility boxes (or access points?).

Anyway. I took over 100 pictures, but instead of posting them all here, I placed them in a Picasa Album. Also, I have learned that if there is one surefire way of making yourself look crazy, it's standing in the middle of the road taking pictures of the street. Especially when it's raining.

GOOD Art Challenge: Update 7

More GOOD items crossed off my list!

1. Visit a museum or a gallery.
17. Support the local arts scene by going to a local festival, music event, art show, play, museum exhibit, etc.
The Sunnyvale Lace Museum's Semi-Annual sale ended today, so I stopped by. I love this museum. It's such a fantastic bit of local color located unassumingly in a strip mall. It's kind of hilarious.

I discovered it maybe a year ago? and drop in every once in awhile. It's been on my mind lately because I really want to learn tatting, and I know this is place to go. The inside was pretty quiet - I think the rain was keeping people away. I snapped a picture of the sale surreptitiously.

I looked through the bins, didn't see anything that immediately caught my eye, and then migrated back to the gift shop part of the museum, discovering tons of lace books. Glorious! Looking through all the tatting books, I selected the most thorough shuttle tatting book they had, and brought it up to one of the museum volunteers, asking for advice. She directed me to the resident tatting expert, who advised me to steer clear of shuttle tatting and start with needle tatting. Interesting. I was not aware that needle tatting existed. I thought you did it all with a shuttle.

Apparently, you can make the same designs in needle tatting as with shuttle tatting, but needle tatting is much less complicated and easier. "Easier" is a four letter work in my book - bring on anything complicated and challenging! Perhaps she could sense my skepticism because she immediately went into the back room and brought out her tatting kit and gave me a demonstration right then and there. It was amazing. She tatted away at lightning speed and instantly it became obvious why needle tatting would be preferable and quicker. I was sold. She hooked me up with a good beginner's book and needle, talked to me about different thread options, gave me some great websites for resources and patterns, told me about a needlepoint shop in Burlingame that's apparently going out of business (hinting that I should go buy up their discount threads) and invited me to the Thursday afternoon "Stitch and Bitch" at the lace museum. It was a little overwhelming! Very nice though. And now I'm all set and ready to tat!

GOOD Art Challenge: Update 6

One week left of the GOOD challenge.

14. Check out an art book at the library.
This is such an easy challenge because I live in the art section at the library. My most recent check-out is the library's only book on tatting: Tatting, Patterns and Designs by Gun Blomqvist and Elwy Persson.

Tatting is working it's way up on my projects list - it's a form of lace making comprised of loops. I just got a shuttle and some cotton, and hope to teach myself how to begin in the next few weeks.


22. Finger paint.
The modern day form of finger painting is surely tablet drawing. Or touch screen drawing. If you take that into account, I have been finger painting up a storm lately ever since I got the Draw Something app. It's a touch screen version of pictionary. You can play with your friends, and the best part about it is that you can see not only your friend's finished drawing, but the whole process of the drawing in the form of a video. It's so entertaining! I can't believe some of the detail and time my friends (plus random people form the internet) put into this game. One person drew me the most amazing drawing of Tupaq - I don't even know who this guy is, but I guessed it correctly. Here are a selection of my finger paintings! Can you guess what the words were?

GOOD Art Challenge: Update 5

Another GOOD Art project!

8. Make a self-portrait.
16. Make a collage.
Although the idea of a blind contour self-portrait was really appealing, I decided to make a silhouette collage inspired a pin. (Hmm... maybe I "liked" the pin and didn't actually add it to one of my boards... I'll have to research this later.)

After several hours working in Gimp, I produced this:

GOOD Art Challenge: Update 4

Part two of the GOOD challenge updates from this weekend!

6. Sign up for an art class.
I signed up to teach an art class this month. Definitely counts. This weekend, I taught a cross stitching class via Workshop Weekend. I've never formally taught any craft, so this was a completely new experience for me. There ended up being 7 people in my class. It was a little hectic, and too short, but I learned so much from teaching and had a blast. Hope my students did too! I know a ton of ways to improve my lesson and hope to have another opportunity at another Workshop Weekend, or even through Skillshare.

Cross stitching isn't something most people want to learn. It's not quite cool, it doesn't have a hip following like knitting does. But it's easy, accessible, and you can make some great pixel art from it. There are so many possibilities. It's by far my favorite craft. I tried to garner interest by calling it a "geeky" cross stitching class, and providing my students with old video game characters to stitch and turn into pins. I assembled a variety of patterns I mocked up in Excel from Space Invaders, Super Mario and Pacman. I can post my pattens later, but here is one of the finished pin demos.

3. Take a photo.
Now that I have a phone with a nice camera, I am taking photos constantly. The challenge for this one for me was to pick which photo I wanted to count. I settled for... a few.

First, was the Berkeley Bowl West shrine. I made an offering... can you pick it out?

Here's a close up:

(Pin demo #2 from my class!) And for good measure, I'll throw in a picture of the produce section...

Oh Berkeley Bowl West. I miss you!

GOOD Art Challenge: Update 3

I accomplished a few more items on my GOOD challenge list this weekend! Breaking this into two posts so it won't be too long.

18. Make a card for someone you love.
5. Create something handmade and give it to someone.
One complaint I have about the GOOD list is that it's redundant. But since this falls into either category, I'm counting it for both! It was my good friend's birthday this weekend, and I made him a card. I think that counts for this challenge. Can you guess the theme? The front:

His guesses: a razor? (clever! but no.) Business card holders? (uhh, for a birthday?) Now open it up...

Three mystery pockets! What's inside? Open up the flap... (by the way, I'm super happy with the way these flaps turned out! yay vellum and accordion folds.)

To find a series of scrabble tiles! My friend is an avid scrabble and anagram enthusiast, so I thought this would be fun! I was inspired by two projects on Pinterest: here and here. Do you see what was on the cover? Scrabble tile holders! My friend, after solving the puzzle:

11. Sketch somebody and give them the picture.
This challenge frightened me slightly. I draw abstract things or stylized people (read: stick figures), but I don't have the skills to sketch anyone and I would never want to give someone the finished product. Enter: blind contour drawing. Blind contour drawing is where you draw something without looking at the paper. Your pen is also not allowed to lift from the paper, so your drawing is made up of one continuous line. It's fun. And, as I discovered this weekend, hilarious. I've decided it's not only a great party game but it's also my new favorite party game.

The steps of this new game go as follows:

• You pair up with someone, and each take turns drawing the other in marker. On your turn you make two drawings of your partner.
• The first drawing is a blind contour portrait. You have three minutes to make this drawing, but you can stop early if you finish before the time is up.
• NO LOOKING at the blind contour drawing! Put the page aside, face down.
• Now you draw a second portrait of your partner. This time, you still have three minutes, but you're allowed to look at the paper and lift up the pen. 
• When the time is up, you can do the reveal! First, the regular portrait, and then the blind contour portrait.
• Hilarity ensues!!
• Switch, and now the artist becomes the subject and vice versa.

I think it's good to have time limits, because you can't agonize about making a perfect drawing. The time limit takes some of the pressure off and adds a fun speed element. You could do less than 3 minutes, even. I also made the rule of drawing in marker, because then you can't erase, so you just have to go with whatever you put down. Again, another way of reducing the pressure of making sometime perfect.

Before we started, I asked my friend what he thought the outcome would be. He said that the blind contour portrait would probably look terrible, and the regular portrait would be the better one. I've done this before, so I knew (at least in my opinion, for people who don't regularly draw) the reverse is true. Well, you can be the judge. The regular portrait I drew of my friend:

Haha! Not sure what happened to his nose, and mouth. ("I didn't realize my nose looked like a shoe!") And now the blind contour drawing:

These drawings are so great! It's definitely weird but it has this stylistic, artistic feel to it. It reminds me of Picasso. And the lines feel so much more natural than in the drawing where I consciously set out to make his portrait. I had no chance to overthink the shapes.

Of course, my friend wanted to have a go with it and took a turn drawing me. So, dear readers, if you've ever wondered what I look like, the suspense is over. The regular portrait:

I guess I look like an old man? And, the blind contour:

HAHA. We laughed so hard, we were literally crying for 10 minutes. Oh god. I have never seen my friend laugh that hard in his life. The top drawing was apparently so bad, it was sentenced to destruction in my recycling bin, but I made a scan of it first so it will live on on the internet. The second one is priceless. He made the unfortunate choice of deciding to draw my teeth because I was smiling a lot, and apparently my teeth drip diagonally down my face. I also like how my nose apparently bears a striking resemblance to a spaceship. It must be true, because it's in both pictures.

This is making me want to adopt a drawing challenge for April. I can also image lots of great contexts for blind contour drawings. You know how sometimes people sketch others on the bus or train? Imagine if it were a blind contour portrait. Imagine if you received the one above. Hahaha.

GOOD Art Challenge: Update 2

Another update for my GOOD 30-day challenge. Let's knock out some of the drawing tasks!

9. Doodle for 10 minutes straight.
I could have done this for another 10 minutes, easy.

28. Close your eyes and draw for 5 minutes.
This one was much harder, and (unsurprisingly?) came out a lot different than I thought it would.

GOOD Art Challenge: Update 1

Did you know March is National Craft Month? I don't know who decided this, but I wish I had known ahead of time so I could properly celebrate. I guess there's still a few weeks left...

Anyway. Here is my first update on the GOOD 30 Day Art Challenge. What have I done so far? Not much! Life has been busy. But here are a few things I think I can count towards the project:

24. Add an art blog's RSS feed to your reader.
I do this one constantly. It's great when you find someone who's creative and blogs semi-regularly because it's like a little dose of inspiration every time they post. I'd like to share some of the blogs/sites I have on my reader.

First is Shaun Kardinal. Shaun is an artist who makes some really beautiful and interesting embroidery work. He embroiders geometric shapes and patterns onto pictures and common objects (like postcards and TV guides). Really cool stuff, reminds me of spirograms.

Next is Allison Patrick, who maintains a blog called the "3 R's". She does a lot of projects that relate to creative reuse and recycling, which have a special place in my heart. She also make creative lamps and has a store on Etsy.

The last feed I'm going to mention is Jeannie Huang's design blog, "Jeannie Jeannie: Design Finds for the Creative Eye". She's an awesome curator, and I have to resist the urge to pin everything she posts on my Pinterest boards. Here's a recent favorite of mine (food Pantone squares!).

I love discovering new artists and sources of inspiration, so please share any great sites you follow in the comments!


26. Send a friend a link to your favorite artist's work.
Since I'm sharing some of my favorite blogs, I figure I should share some of my artists too. These artists are two that constantly inspire me and I hope will inspire you as well.

First is Andy Goldsworthy (wikipedia, site). I first discovered him in college when I was trying to find an artist to use as inspiration for a design project. I had to design a pen in the style of another artist. I ended up going with Uglydolls - maybe not an "artist" per say, but they have a very distinctive style. Funnily enough, one of my classmates did choose Andy Goldsworthy and froze a pen in an icicle.

Anyway, Goldsworthy makes art out of nature. His work has a real sense of humor (at least to me) - he creates these very unnatural patterns and structures out of natural objects. Looking at his stuff always makes me laugh (can you imagine coming across something like this on a hike?!), and therefore makes me happy.

His website has much fewer pictures than a google search will bring up. Here are some great ones:

One last Andy Goldsworthy story! I lived in the Presidio of San Francisco at the same time he was installing his piece, the Spire (not one of my favorites, unfortunately). At that time, he was apparently hanging around the Presidio and making all these little installations along the trails. Wish I had known! I heard about the piece towards the end of its construction and went up to see it, jumping over the fence since it wasn't quite finished. I saw the spire and was a little disappointed, but I also saw all these little log pieces balanced on top of each other. Perhaps he was playing around with them? Made my day!

Favorite artist #2 is Yulia Brodskaya (wikipedia, website). She does a bunch of illustration and print design, but the most jaw-dropping awe-inspiring work of hers is her quilling. I was never interested in quilling until I saw these photos.

Can you believe this was made with little strips of paper? Such amazing texture and detail! I'm having trouble copying images from her portfolio, but I implore you to check it out here. Below are some more pics I found on google:

I don't even know how some of these are possible. Simply incredible. Have any artists that particularly inspire you? Feel free to post links in the comments!

Oregon Trail Cross Stitch

I have a new webpage! This post has moved here: http://www.allykraus.com/wp/2012/03/04/oregon-trail-cross-stitch/

GOOD 30-Day Challenge: Art Every Day

from GOOD.is

I can't resist a challenge. Especially 30-day challenges, and especially art. While my track record with such challenges hasn't been the best (see here and here!) I'm compelled to take on this challenge from GOOD: make time for art in your life. This is especially important to me recently because I've been so busy I haven't had time to make as much as I used to.

One thing I like about this challenge is that they give you 31 things for the month of March, but say you can do one a day, or them all in a week - just as long as you finish as many as you can in a month. In the past, I've tried to make one thing every day and some days it was near impossible. I like this flexible approach - let's see how it goes! The 31 things (I'll cross off and link as I go along!):

1. Visit a museum or a gallery.
2. Take a street art walking tour.
3. Take a photo.
4. Research an artist.
5. Create something hand made and give it to someone.
6. Sign up for an art class.
7. Create a floral or stone arrangement.
8. Make a self portrait.
9. Doodle for 10 minutes straight.
10. Frame something you have been meaning to frame.
11. Sketch somebody and give them the picture.
12. Create a font type for your name.
13. Create a business card.
14. Check out an art book at the library.
15. Break something. (You have to destroy in order to create!)
16. Make a collage.
17. Support the local arts scene by going to a local festival, music event, art show, play, museum exhibit, etc.
18. Make a card for someone you love.
19. Make an inspiration board (moodboard) for a future project.
20. Draw some chalk art on the sidewalk.
21. Make origami.
22. Finger paint.
23. Illustrate a song that inspires you.
24. Add an art blog's RSS feed to your reader.
25. Draw the best part of today.
26. Send a friend a link to your favorite artist's work.
27. Create a place in your home to store your create supplies.
28. Close your eyes and draw for 5 minutes.
29. Draw yourself as a cartoon.
30. Take your camera with you on a walk and record the experience.
31.  Create an artist's workspace in your home.

I'm Teaching a Cross Stitching Class!

I'm so excited - I'm going to be teaching a class at next month's Workshop Weekend in Oakland at TechLiminal!!! My class is on cross stitching. Cross stitching is probably my favorite craft - there is so much you can do with it. It's easy, it has a great texture, and it lends itself well to pixel art. In my class, I'm going to draw up patterns for some popular 8-bit and video game characters and objects. Any suggestions?

More importantly - what is Workshop Weekend?! It's a weekend of DIY classes, where you can learn anything from cross stitch :), to building robots, to using EL wire, to making stop animation films. You pay a one-time admission fee which covers the entire weekend, and then can take as many classes as you like, just paying for the materials in each class. It's awesome, and the lineup for this weekend is really good. It will be March 17th and 18th, and my class is on the 18th. Please drop by and say hi if you plan on coming - I'd love to meet you!

My experience with WW started last year, just after Maker Faire, during their inaugural weekend. Back then, the classes were scattered all over the Bay Area, and you signed up for individual workshops. I did a Sewing with Electronics class that literally blew my mind - I had no idea sewing with conductive thread and LEDs was so easy, and it opened up worlds for me. (Actually, Katie Dektar is doing her workshop again under the title of "Sewing Circuits" - I highly recommend it!!) I'm thrilled to be teaching this time around. Another class to keep in mind is Patrick's Millefiori Jewelry class - he's a friend of mine and makes really interested science themed pieces - super creative.

electronics sewing class from last year! can you spot me?

To prep for the class, I'm planning on designing a how-to sheet for cross stitch, including some tips that I've learned along the way to make your stitches look amazing and professional. I'm also going to stitch up samples of the patterns I pick, and I welcome any suggestions/comments/preferences on which ones work the best.