Construction Paper Art

These images are symbollic of my life, in a way. The first image represents family as a tree deeply rooted in good soil. The next image represents me (my branch of the tree) and music being something that helps me grow. The last image is two trees growing towards each other (me and my hubby) and bearing fruit (baby!).

Symbolism Art Project

Task: Create symbollic artwork that represents your life (e.g. your family life, your spiritual/faith journey, etc.).

 

Time: 30 minutes

 

Materials:

- Square white paper, stiff. (this was watercolor paper)

- Construction paper in various colors.

- Glue stick

- Scissors

 

For best results, draw your design in mirror image on the back side of the construction paper, then cut it out. When you paste your colored paper onto your white paper, the pencil lines will all be on the back so it will look clean on the front without any pencil indentations or eraser marks.

Christmas Tree Angel

I decided to make a new topper for our new 9-foot Christmas tree! I wanted to make either an angel or a star, and since a star needs to light up and that's really complicated I decided to make an angel out of random stuff in my craft room.

First I took a long strand of raffia string (I decided this looks like rustic angel hair) and folded it back and forth, then stuffed it through a large wooden bead (which sort of looks like an angel's head, if you have an imagination like mine). Then I twisted a piece of gold rope against itself (this is the crown or halo), cut it and hot-glued it on top and trimmed the raffia to look like hair.

For the body I made a cone out of white craft form. For wings I used a pretty piece of ribbon which I threaded through a hole in the back. I then bordered the hole with pieces of the same gold I used for the halo-crown to hide the ugly hole.

Next I got out a bunch of coordinating white and gold trim and lace and decided to figure out how to decorate the body to make a dress. I made a bit of a mess.

I started glueing pieces of lace over the white foam, starting with the bottom piece so the upper pieces would overlap like layers of a skirt. A strand of white "pearls" became a necklace for the angel.

Here is the finished angel, as an ornament. I need a ladder to get her up on top of my tree!

Green Christmas Tree

This tree is made from paper that I grabbed from the recycling bin.

1) Make a lot of cones (out of paper) with a similar size
2) Create one large Cone (out of paper) to use as the trunk of the tree
3) Begin attaching (via glue, tape, or staples) the cones to the trunk working your way up. Use the larger cones for the bottom and the smaller cones at the top
4) use any additional paper to make decorations such as stars, hanging balls, or streamers.

-Rini
Material: Paper, tape (because that was what i had on hand)

Willow on the Water

I finished this painting on July 3, 2009. Then I gave it to my sister because she likes pink and green.

It's a willow tree on the edge of a little green river with a forest on the opposite bank. I liked the pink accent color against the greens so I added some flowers. I liked how the forest looked even before I painted the willow on top of it; maybe I will do another painting sometime just of a forest.

We raided Ulduar the night before, wiping for three hours while trying to kill Thorim on Hard Mode.

I set up my little easel in front of my second monitor and painted while raiding. I was healing (look, it's Grid!) but I don't think I let anyone die. Raid leaders talk a LOT, which meant a LOT of downtime between boss fights while they discuss strategy... which meant a lot of time for painting!

Painted Trees

When I tried my first paintings on canvas it was because I found some canvases on sale. Normally I just use my acrylics to paint little wood boxes, plastic blasters and Jedi comlinks, little things like that. So for my first painting on actual canvas I decided to try and learn from one of my favorite artists, Eyvind Earle.

I started painting the background and just layered on the green then mixed in some black and came in from the edges with strokes to look like grass or vines.

After getting the background the way I wanted it and letting it dry, I found a picture of an Eyvind Earle painting online and basically tried to copy the look of the tree without getting quite as detailed. His lines are too painstakingly perfect for my amateur ability so I took a more impressionistic approach and focused more on getting the idea of the shadows and highlights conveyed. I like how it starts with a silhouette but adds the contrasting white highlights to give the tree some depth. I noticed that a lot of amateur artists are doing the black tree silhouette-on-a-colored background thing right now. It's easy and can look great in a modern room. I am still trying to figure out where to put it in my new house.

I received a request from a friend to do a tree painting for her after she saw the first one I did. This is what I came up with based off of the following criteria she presented me with:

- whimsical like the Eyvind Earle-style tree
- mysterious (not obvious) background
- light-colored background but not too light
- "green is good"

I started this one by painting the background. I liked how subtle vertical stripes fading into the background color can look like trees in a fog, so I started with fat green vertical stripes blending into a yellow background and then painted over them with another layer of yellow.

Next, I added in the grass in several layers of shades of green but decided that the grass really should be the foreground, so after painting on the tree silhouette I repainted a lot more grass over the bottom of the tree. The nice thing about painting grass this way is you can keep adding on as many layers as you want and it just gives the illusion of more depth.

It's now hanging on the wall in my friend's home up in Victoria, BC!