Illustration Friday: Tango

In her heart, she danced...

Illustration Friday: Plain

Illustration Friday: 100 Percent

We all reach, reach, reach--to be 100% ourselves, the whole of what we can be...

Illustration Friday: Backwards

Estelle no longer needed to continually glance over her shoulder, looking backwards into the past that she feared would catch and engulf her; she finally felt she could look forward as she strode through life...

Estelle, Original mixed media painting by Karen Smithey on 8"x10" gallery stretched canvas

Illustration Friday Alphabet

Letters, letters, letters! They swirl around me in my dreams; I fight my way through them, a sea, a soup, a fog of letters; struggling to organize them into something meaningful and peaceful and powerful...

(As an aside, I posted a tutorial on acrylic emulsion transfers yesterday--take a look!)

IF Emergency

Awakening from a dream, Enid looked around and saw a nightmare. She was surrounded. It was all over.

IF Missing

I feel like I've been out of action forever.

Katie's feeling better, although the trip to go school shopping wore her out on Friday and she ended up in tears on the long ride home...So I'm out in the studio today for a little while.

This is the first time I haven't posted an Illustration Friday on Friday in, well, forever, I think. But I was determined to start something new when I came out to the studio today, and just now, when I logged on to Blogger, I realized that the piece is actually IF's "Missing." Not sure which of the two versions I prefer--let me know what you think, if you have time, either via a comment or by participating in the poll in the left sidebar of the blog--

Illustration Friday Moon

Ever after that night when his pipes wailed down the mountain side, for time out of mind, a slivered moon hanging in the bronzed fall sky was known as a piper's moon...

Illustration Friday Camouflage

Another one of the collaged and stitched monoprints I've done--The muted-ness of it makes me think of the world that Lois Lowry wrote about in The Giver
--colorless, without texture or surprise. (Wonderful book, by the way--find it in the young adult fiction section).

Once I'd made the monoprint, I collaged cut pieces of magazines on top of it, gave it a wash of watered-down white paint, then handstitched the whole thing together.

Illustration Friday:Suits

Ikept thinking about suits of cards--this is the Two of Gypsies.

Illustration Friday Paradise

I love what I wrote--

I'll live under the sea
in a forest of anemones
where I can feel the ocean's gentle swells and
ride the furious waves,
where the cold of the depths balance
the heat of my heart's desire...

But I'm not happy with any of the ways I tried to incorporate them. I'm looking for help, folks! Any suggestions are welcome...

Illustration Friday: Cars

Illustration Friday Citrus

This is an experiment. I haven't decided whether I like it or not; I may work on it some more. I'd like to try something more graphic.

The pictures of the pickers is an actual snapshot of men working at a citrus ranch here in the Central Valley in 1895. I have a wonderful old snapshot of a little girl, big bow in her hair, sitting on a ladder in an orange orchard, but could I find it this morning? Nope. I need to scan everything and then tag each photo, I guess. Then I'd be able to pull things up by keywords...

Illustration Friday: Polar

These seem to get tougher every week! Took awhile for me to get polar bears out of my head and think of polar graphs and coordinates.

Illustration Friday: Fortune

Dug out this old scrapbook I bought last year at a second-hand shop--had some great photobooth-type pix and other ephemera. This girl looks to me to be on the brink of something big! I hope all her dreams came true and good fortune came her way...

Illustration Friday: Green

Spent some time last evening messing around with digital watercolors and made this lovely green experimental piece--when I came out to the studio this morning, the computer had evidently hiccuped during the night, as it was GONE.

Here's another. This one is digital from the get-go. Usually I start with a scan of one of my collage backgrounds--not today!

Today I want to work some more on the PS book by Katrin Eismann...

Illustration Friday Snap

My offering for this week's IF challenge--I actually made this piece some time ago--it was one of the first pieces I sold, if memory serves...

The vintage black snaps running down the side were really the finishing touch.

Illustration Friday: I Spy

Illustration Friday: Total

Couldn't get the image of a box of cereal out of my mind, at first! As usual, I created without knowing exactly where I was headed, just the guideline of "total" to steer me in some direction. Maybe at 43 I'm starting to feel mortal...

IF Wired