arlblog

sunset over the trees, taken july 23, 2010, 8:27pm.

me: “quick, come out here and look at this fantastic sunset!”

son: comes out and looks up.

me: takes pictures click click

me: “it’s like mother nature is saying, ‘look what I can do!’”

son: “well, I see mother nature when I watch two birds chasing a bug. but sunsets are like ballet to me,” turns around and goes back inside.

I bought my son a 30¢ arrowhead at the Four Mile Historic Park gift store on the 4th. on the way home, he held in, rubbed it, examined it, and talked about it. and talked and talked and talked. he came up with a number of ways to use it, then asked me, “what else can I do with it?”

I said, “you could put it in your pocket as a good luck charm. every time you feel worried about something, put your hand in your pocket and feel the arrowhead to help you feel better.”

he sat in thoughtful silence the rest of the drive home.

that night, as with every night, he was sitting in bed in his pajamas writing his sentence. that’s the deal–write one neat sentence every night to practice your handwriting. I came in to tuck him in, and he asked me, “what’s your lucky thing?–and don’t say ‘me’ (meaning himself)” and I peeked at his notebook where he had started a short list of lucky items. I was indeed going to say that he was my lucky object. am I really that predictable?

his list said:

Lucky Things

1. Lucky Pen

2. Lucky Small Pointy Rock

I felt a little panicky when I realized I have zero lucky objects. I racked my brain, trying to think of lucky key fobs or lucky rear view mirror hangy things, but came up blank. I told him I felt very happy in my white sweats and my brown sneakers but that I didn’t really have a “lucky thing” that I kept with me for good luck.

I walked out of the room, feeling a little sad that I didn’t have a good answer. then it occurred to me. I went back into his room.

“look,” I said, sitting on the edge of his bed, “I believe that by trying to be the best person I can be, that’s what brings me luck. that’s why I don’t have an object. it’s just the way I live. I feel that I just have to work toward being better every day, and hold a picture in my mind of good things happening to me, then good things will happen. I know that it works; I’ve witnessed it.”

and I left the room, feeling much better about my answer.

a few minutes later he came out and asked how to spell “believe.” I told him and he ran back into his room to finish his writing and go to sleep.

I didn’t think anything else about it until I saw this in his room the next morning, he had scratched out his first list and written something new:

what kind of art do you like? I tend to like strong patterns, found-object-art and stuff with faces, words or letters.

I grabbed some business cards at cherry creek arts festival yesterday to share with you. in no particular order.

organic pink lady

website
etsy

sweet, bright, cheerful small paintings. would be lovely in a series on a sunny wall. or notecards, which she sometimes sells on etsy.

okay miss organic pink lady, you are definitely one of the nicest people I met all day.

chris vance

website

large and small paintings that mix balanced palettes with blobby shapes, sometimes with cartoon characters. by outlining the shapes and objects on the page, he turns the paintings into illustrations.

rusty leffel

website

one of those b&w “everyday life” photographers graced with the ability to snap the perfect photo effortlessly. in listening to him chat with visitors, it sounded like he was just as surprised as anyone that he kept getting these great shots. I love this kind of photography.

deborah rael-buckley

website

large ceramic sculpture. but not that goofy “what’s that supposed to be?” type of sculpture. the ones I saw were about 4.5 to 5 feet tall. sturdy, thick ceramic, in bright colors but not crayon-bright. she uses a beautiful palette that reminds me of faded blue jeans.

katy kidd

website

acrylic on acetate. bright, tightly cropped, almost abstract close ups of mundane objects, which are sometimes floating, in oversaturated colors.

cori dantini

website
etsy

delicate illustrations with flowers, birds and girls. strong asian influence, beautiful soft colors.

ifobot

website

if you’ve thought a piece of metal or trash looked like a body part, you might be a fobotologist.

ray maseman

website
etsy

illustrations that tell stories. soft yet graphically strong. fine detail reminiscent of old timey childrens’ book illustrations. I overheard him talking about teaching a class, maybe about printmaking?

justin dobbs robinson

website < supposed to be justindrobinson.com but there’s nothing there.

mixed media, large format. very lumpy paintings. sometimes he paints directly onto canvas; other times he assembles stuff onto a canvas and then paints.

wendy & marvin hill

website

watercolored block prints with a sense of humor. sort of “tarot card” ish.

lisa wharton

website

illustration, cool handwriting, cute website

chris roberts-antieau

website

absolutely my favorite artist from the show but I can’t find anything online to really show you how great her work is. think lynda barry meets the simpsons on a framed quilt.

anthony hansen

website

recycled car parts. big and chunky. I’d like to start over and do what he does.

mark winter

website

another found object/car parts sculptor. I love this kind of stuff.

SATURDAY • day one, march 20, also the vernal equinox: be crafty. make something with popsicle sticks. fold a napkin. anything you want. at least buy some fruit and artfully arrange them in a bowl.

SUNDAY • day two, march 21, arleigh day eve: wear something gaudy. you know what I mean.

MONDAY • day three, march 22, international arleigh day: tweet a pun with hashtag #arleigh or put it here in the comments section.

TUESDAY • day four, march 23, anticlimax day: wrong-purpose something. like, drink coffee from a measuring cup. or use paper clips as earrings.

WEDNESDAY • day four, march 25, what were we celebrating again?: nerdy glasses or a goofy hat. bonus points for both!

THURSDAY • day five, march 26, surf: pick a random word, then get on flickr or google images or etsy and see what happens. try fuzzy or banana.

FRIDAY • day six, march 27, : make a smiley face with the food on your plate. take a picture and post it!

p.s. all images snagged off the internet without asking first. eh, what are ya gonna do.

this is a crossword puzzle that came with my Arleigh Calendar 1997; a few hints are self-referential ( meaning they refer to other pages in the calendar ). I hope you enjoy it. click the image for a PDF to print. or click here.

click for PDF to print

last december I gave you [printable cubes] using creative commons images from flickr. this year, I’m giving you a handful of fonts. they’re all freebies downloaded from the ‘net. I didn’t design any of them. but one of them is a font made from my handwriting–little ducky font.

so go to [this page], download the zip, and enjoy!

1. don’t try to make them with graham crackers. you’ll end up being teased by your husband endlessly. believe me, I know.
2. when you have to admit defeat, buy the already put-together gingerbread houses, $9 each at target.
3. always always always buy extra frosting.
4. and quit calling it frosting. it’s icing.
5. each piece of roof is 1 package of necco wafers exactly, so don’t eat or break any!
6. kids know what they’re doing. don’t be bossy.

here’s mine:

and here’s my son’s:

difficulty rating: ★★✩✩✩
if you’ve never used layers or masks, then:  ★★★★★

how to adjust someone’s eye color the arleigh way. I don’t know how the professionals do it, but this is the method I use. you will learn how to use a layer and a mask.

although I’m a photoshop purist, I admit to whitening teeth, healing a blemish or two, and adjusting eye color. for this demonstration, we will change my son’s eyes to red. just for giggles.

1. download [this lovely photo] by right-clicking (PC) or option-clicking (mac) on the link, and open it in photoshop.

2. open your layers palette.

3. make a copy of the background layer by dragging it to the little folded piece of paper next to the trash can at the bottom of the palette.

you now have two identical layers.

4. now select the lasso tool, and click the second box that allows you to add-to-your selection (see image below) and roughly select the eyes (see image below the image below).

5. create a mask. ooh, isn’t this exciting?

while the eyes are selected, click the square with a circle at the bottom of the palettes menu.

your palette will look like this:

but your image still looks the same, so…

6. hide the bottom layer, the “background,” by clicking the eye.

7.  now we’re going to use the mask to isolate just the eyes. make sure the mask is selected by click on it once.

8. select the brush tool.

9. choose the hard round brush. change the size as you need.

10. choose black to make the mask conceal, and white to reveal.

11. paint on the mask with the black to erase away the skin and whites of the eyes.

12. don’t worry if you accidentally erase too much. you can switch to white and brush it back in.  also, you can always come back to the mask and adjust it before you flatten layers.

this is approximately what your file should look like before you move to the next step:

13. now click the eyeball box to show the bottom layer.

this is what you should see. it won’t look like you’ve made any changes, but you have. honest.

14. choose the image in the duplicate layer. in layers palette, click on the image in the top layer, not the mask.

15. open hue/saturation adjustment menu. in your image pull-down menu, choose “adjustments” and “hue/saturation”

16. in hue/saturation menu, make sure “colorize” and “preview” are selected.

17. play around with “hue” and bring up the saturation a bit. it WILL look too saturated. that’s okay, we’ll fix that in a bit. click “OK” when you’re ready.

18. change layer to “hue”. going back to the layers palette, make sure the top layer is selected and click on the little “normal” menu, choose “hue”.

19. now we’ll play with opacity. (opacity is the lack of transparency. at 100% opacity, the hue layer is not transparent at all.) click on the little arrow and choose a different percentage of opacity.

like maybe 63%

note: this would be a good time to go back to the mask and paint black to conceal, white to reveal. remember to select the mask in the layers palette before you paint on that layer.

20. flatten. if you are finished with mask adjustment, the eye color changes, and the layer transparency, head on over to the layer menu at the top of your screen and “flatten image”.

21. and you’re DONE. your file should look something like this:

last december, I created these [printable cubes] as my “I don’t want to buy stamps” card.

you will need scissors or x-acto, and double-sided tape or a glue stick or something like that.

to print “2010″ simply print [this file] 4 times.

try printing your last name, or a word that expresses how you feel about the holidays. peace, family, joy, or maybe bah, humbug.

you may want to create your own! simply print the [blank cube], and get your crayons out! a great activity for kids.

the squares are 2.5 x 2.5″ if you’re feeling crafty and want to adhere photos or scrapbook paper.

I printed mine on regular printer paper, which works fine, but you might want to print the blank cubes on cardstock if you’re coloring with markers.

I hope you enjoy these.