ECHO Echo echo.....

I'm kind of house-sitting in Anthem, la-dee-dah; my biggest job is to NOT kill the plants. I think I successfully pulled a couple gardenias through a few days of 102, fainting violets, indeed.
Otherwise, my job is to produce frosty recreational beverages (we call them FRBs for short. It's our survival mechanism for surviving triple digits ourselves) served out on the patio and watch the sunset.
Such trauma.
In between, I'm trying to make sure my little farmette survives the heat, too. I thought how could I possibly have time to be creative? I'm hardly sitting still. Doing a lot of driving around. Here I am thinking I've been slacking.
And yet...!
For your enjoyment, I've a surprising bunch of stuff here. It's kind of all over the map, so I'll start with the work I did for my own challenge blog, the TwobyTwobyTuesday.
The word for the week is, "Echo."
First, the portraits. I had to hunt far and wide to find a picture of a face in a magazine that would work for this. In the concept of "Echoism," a person who has a more symmetrical face is considered more appealing. Split the face down the middle and create mirror images of each half. It's an exercise I remember doing in sixth-grade art class (I was ten.).

Myrna Dow
Winner, PPFA Contest
And unwitting portrait
Participant

Sigh, I'm not ten anymore. I think I did a better job back in grade school. It was hard working on such a teenie scale.

If you visited last time, I put in a teaser for my other answer. This is that project in its entirety:

I took the tangle "Echoism" across the entire page in my journal, created six two-inch tiles, mixed them up, drew each one, then put them all back together again. That was more fun.

While I was at it, I did a more traditional piece, same method, just one pattern:

In my garden, I've been nursing an amaryllis bulb for two and a half years. You know, the ones you pick up at Christmas and force to bring bright colours into your home in the dead of winter? Well, normally, they are quite happy in desert surrounds, so armed with that knowledge, I planted the bulb out in the garden after it bloomed. That was winter, 2014. This is now.
Isn't she pretty?

Which inspired:

I took a photograph of the string and I give it to you all for your drawing pleasure. You will find it under a new page titled, "G2H." You'll see.

Now, onto some challenges.
Last week's IAST was to honor Mom. Adele started us out with a big "M" and the instructions to fill it in. These are supposed to be "Hollyhocks." Hmm.

This is my doodling for the EIM, the word being "Three-Dimensional." I'm a "flat art" artist, always working two-dimensionally. I picked a variety of ideas for creating the LOOK of that third dimension.

I couldn't wait to give the new-to-me tangle, "3-D Room" by Dami Tang a workout and I took my chance on the Diva this week, where I gave it a more controlled grid to fill:

The call was to use more black. I used a LOT of black last week. All I wanted to get out of this week was high contrast; didn't want to over kill it. It's interesting.

I think that brings me up to date. Be sure to check out the various pages across the weird wide web, I'm sure you will find inspirations in abundance.
Have a brilliant day! c

This is Your Brain

This is different. I started this week's goodies LAST week. It's quite unlike me to not procrastinate.

First, a carry-over for the IAST:

IAST 143

My scanner went to that great technology graveyard where so much has gone before....so it's a bit dark.
C'est la vie.

Then, it was on the search for....BRAINS!

It's the word for this week at EIM. Oh, the choices were plentiful!
I was going to go all-out Zombie, which would have required a LOT of thought as I'm not really into blood and guts. My favorite cartoon occasionally swerves into the territory, so I have to share this by Doug Savage:

Thusly, I can skip over the Zombies and move onto the choices I did go with:

We have: Stephen Hawking, brain extraordinaire, Brain from Warner Brother's "Pinky and the Brain," Einstein's Equation to describe Special Relativity and the image from the public service message from the Partnership for a Drug-Free America (1987 version). You know the one, where they fry the egg? "Any questions?"

Over at La Casa Diva, it's a duotangle tango, this time with "Drupe," a floral, and "Poke Root." This reminds me of cherries and blossoms in bloom, a visual Haiku. It's a dedication of sorts to beautiful individuals that we have held dear, how loss and life are intricately intertwined.

I ended up shading it, but I like it better without, in it's "elegant simplicity." I was also going to just Photoshop in the black, but chose to draw it in with my trusty Sharpie. It's not quite so neat, but it was the right process, nice and slow.

Lastly, I have this:

I did this for the TwobyTwo. You'll have to tune in next week to see what this could possibly have to do with "Echo." Head over to that blog tomorrow--Tuesday, natch--for the challenge post.

Be sure to check out all the associated blogs! And have a brilliant day!

Sometimes...

I'm only going to propose ONE image for the EIM this week. It's a long convoluted trail, so I'll take you on the tour.
I was going to try Peter Gabriel's "Shock the Monkey." I wanted to do something for BIG last week with the claymation from his video, but that didn't happen. Neither here. Then I went to the idea of "see no evil, hear no evil..." That wasn't working for me, either.
Then, lo! And behold! Mr. Gil started the day off singing the ever classic, "Auntie Grizelda" by the Monkees. He loves to sing the obscure and nonsensical. It's tough anytime, but particularly before I've had my coffee. I went looking for the very annoying, er, ah, charming video and I was surprised to find this instead:

Meet Auntie Grizelda from "The Lorax," the animated movie of the Dr. Suess classic. I guess she's a bit of an evil character; I've not seen the flick. See no evil, indeed.

(Life was rough enough when I knew about one Auntie Grizelda. Now I find there are TWO!)

All righty then...let's move along, shall we?

The Diva posted the challenge to use "Crux," by Henrike Bratz. I like grids, so I wanted to push it a little bit. I've also been trying out "Sketching Basics, One Point Perspective," by Ruzaimi Mat Rani. (He has a blog that illustrates his drawing, too). I thought this might be a good place to do some perspective work.
HA!
HAHAHAHAHAHA!

The Crux of the Matter

I better keep thinking to a minimum.
What it did do is cause me to really, really pay attention to what I was doing, which is quite the point, right?
It's the same reason why I like using black artist paper with a white gel pen. You really have to pay attention so you don't smear the paint AND you have to take it slowly to get the paint to flow. I chose this combination of art materials for the TwobyTwo:

Wood

The left-hand side is dominated by the tangle, "Wud," by Joni Feddersen while the right-hand is a depiction of the detail on an amphora found in Spain last week full of Roman-era coins. They go together for no other reason than I was still working on "stripes" for the LAST Diva challenge. Of course, now I can't find the image of the vase that I used for inspiration. Drats.

That's pretty much it for me today. From here, it's therapy for my wrist (having a little bit of challenge with the fracture they couldn't fix, dealing with the pesky insurance issues with that (Robin at United Healthcare, YOU are amazing!) and filing not just one, but TWO separate and completely different police reports (oh, we have been having SOOOO much fun here!). Sometimes....you just gotta Shock the Monkey.

The best news: we are healthy and happy. Not much else matters. Be sure to check out the glorious artwork to be found at these other blogs--you could spend HOURS comfortably with new-found friends across the globe. Have a brilliant day!