Monday, December 21, 2009

Monday, December 14, 2009

Debbie... again?

Hey folks... any word from Debbie? Apparently she has three books and I haven't even got hers yet. Debbie, please send the books to me... regardless of whether you have done anything in them or not. Thanks a bunch... it would be nice to get this group flowing...

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Fish for Elvia



Hello Moly x 14! Hope everyone is well.
Here are my entries into Elvia's fish themed book. Love the theme, very fun. I hope you like them Elvia.
Am I still shipping to Debbie? Haven't heard anything in awhile. Let me know, I'm ready to ship and keep this party going.
Take care everyone!

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Surge of creativity...

I have felt a surge of creativity the past few days and have gotten 2 1/2 pages done in Claire's moly. Hopefully over my long weekend I can get my entries finished up and get the moly in the mail. Sorry I have taken so long.

Monday, October 26, 2009

UPDATES???

Hi Everyone. I'm just checking in to see how everything is going on the watercolor exchange. Typically, we should have a new book to work on every month, and it seems like things are just dragging along.

Is everyone still in?

thanks

Scott

Monday, October 19, 2009

3 Fish For Elvia's Moleskine




Here are 3 of my favorite fish to catch. I had a great time working in your book, and I will get it sent out to Michigan this weekend.

Saturday, October 17, 2009

Scoach's Travel Journal

This is my final entry. Sorry for taking up so much of your book. Hope you like it, took me long enough. Will mail this out to Debbie tomorrow.
This is my second entry into Scott's travel journal. I take loads of pictures when I travel.

Man it's been too long since I've posted. Thanks for being so patient Scoach. This is the first of three spreads that I will be doing for your journal. The other two are not ready for prime time just yet. I'll post them soon.

Sunday, October 4, 2009

Debbie Update

Hi Team MolyX14,

I just received an update on Debbie from her cousin in California. Unfortunately she was in an accident a while back and was hospitalized. I do not have any details, but her cousin tells me that she will be back home in Washington this week. Both send their apologies.

JLK

Thursday, October 1, 2009

Elements

I just noticed that there is now a whole moley x group dedicated to the five elements ... crazy! Good though for all of you who are stuck for ideas for my book!

Thursday, September 24, 2009

Debbie?

Hey Debbie! Where are ya? Moleys are going around... haven't seen yours in the mail yet ;)

Stacey and Elvia!!

Stacey- i got your book yesterday- it looks amazing! i can't wait to get started :)

Elvia- i FINALLY mailed my book to you! it should get there in 5-10 days
sorry again for being so late ;)

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Calling - Avifauna

So, I broke the promise that I posted on Sept 1st. However, my moly went in the mail today. It is on it's way to you. I forgot to scan the entries so that I could post them, so it will just have to be a surprise!

Elvia's Moleskine

Tengo gran noticias. El Moleskine llegó ayer en el correo. Es hermoso.

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

I promise!!

I promise that my moly will be in the mail this week. I have been lazy about getting it done. Not that my kids haven't been putting a demand on my time. I have been spending a lot of extra time trying to teach my 4yr old to read and identify words. Now they are in school and that is a whole new demand. I did get most of it done last night and will work on the rest today. I have also been at a loss as to what I wanted to do in Claire's moly. The five elements. Who knew that would be so difficult for me?

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Hello!



How is everyone doing? Finally I had time to finish this. I will be sending it to Scoach Friday morning.
Theme: fishes

Sunday, August 16, 2009

sorry.

Hello everyone,
I want to apologize all of you because I haven't had time to finish the watercolor paintings. I have been swamped with work since I am starting my own company but I will make time this week to finish. I promise that by Friday I will post the paintings and send the moleskine to Scoach. I am really excited about all of the posts and ideas everyone has for their molys and I hope to start getting everyones soon. Thank you for your understanding!
elvia

Saturday, August 15, 2009

i am finished!

watercolor moleskine exchange 14

(gouache,watercolor, collage,micron pen .005)

drawings inspired by the music of:
john adams: road movies
the microphones: the glow part II
bohren & der club of gore: black earth
fleet foxes: ragged wood
rachels: selenography
galen baudhuin: singing and playing guitar in the living room

Monday, August 10, 2009

almost....


moleskinex14-2, originally uploaded by avifaunas.

i'm almost done with my watercolor book entry! i'm not happy with the other two entries, i may just send it off anyway. i am a week late as it is...

book theme:
listen to music and draw whatever comes to you.
it is very vague i know, i wish i had thought of something less abstract!
i am also including a mixed cd of the music i listened too. it's up to you if you want to do the same ;)

Thursday, August 6, 2009

Change of theme...

Originally I was going to title my moly "A picture is worth a thousand words" and had the idea to have each person randomly pick a page out of a book and have them make their entries based on what the read on the page. I picked up a book, flipped randomly to a spot and read...then I flipped again and read...then I picked up a different book, flipped randomly and read. After doing this a number of times it seemed more like I was LOOKING for something instead of just trying to find a random page to 'illustrate'. I just couldn't get any of those good creative visions that I get before putting something on paper. However, what keeps popping in my head is an idea that was discussed when we were discussing themes. CSI. I have decided to go back and use this as my theme. I have a few ideas in my head and am ready to start working on my entries, so hopefully things will go faster now.

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Falling behind...

I seem to have fallen behind on my moly entries. I am going to be working this week on getting my moly entry done and in the mail so that I can start work on Claire's moly - which I received a few days ago.

Claire - your entry is fabulous - just as I knew it would be.

Monday, August 3, 2009

How to create a travel journal - ideas wanted







Here is my entry. I just addressed an envelope to Jennifer, so it is in the mail to you tomorrow. Hopefully, everyone is still psyched to get this rolling. Remember if anyone drops out, either mail the journal to the next person and tell everyone that you can't continue, or mail it back to the owner who can then take care of keeping the exchange going. These exchanges are great fun and a terrific learning opportunity. Best wishes everyone.

Sunday, August 2, 2009

My Theme - 1pm: 33 since 8am - The Illustrated Guide to Extinction"


Passenger Pigeon
Had to do one more before I send it out later this week.

I finally landed on a theme. I was recently at the Field Natural History Museum in Chicago. I saw a display there that was counting something, it moved from 30 to 33 while I was standing there. then I read that it was recording all the animals that had become extinct since 8am that morning. It was only 1pm! I thought this was a staggering number. I'm not normally the type of person that tries to send a message with my art, I'm just a girl who likes to draw. But I haven't been able to get the number 33 out of my head. I don't want this book to become a downer for everyone, it's just an interest of mine at the moment. Morbid right?

Please, have fun! I only have one request, please add a bit of information to your entry. Date of extinction, habitat, any little tidbit of info you find interesting. Oh, and yes, dinosaurs are fair game.

My first two entries are of the Thylacine or Tasmanian Tiger. I may do another page before I send it off. We'll see.

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Elements... done!


Hey All... got excited about my theme and got 'er done. Kinda screwed up the water page, but the rest turned out okay! I started out with more pages then we should but everyone else can stick to two or three... ;) On its way to you Stacey! How is everyone else doing?

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

The Five Elements

okay... I have finally thought of my theme! I am going with the 5 elements of ancient chinese philosophy: water, wood, fire, earth and metal. It leaves it pretty open to interpretation ;) I had just got back from fire practice and I am pretty much a water baby... and lately I have been experimenting with textures so this seemed like a fun theme. You could take them literally, or just incorporate one or more of these elements in your drawing... your choice! Have fun with it!

moly music theme

hey everyone!
i love all of the ideas for the book themes so far! i was just about to type about how i am having trouble coming up with a theme. usually i listen to music and draw whatever comes into my head. alas, that is my theme! for my book i'd like everyone to take the time to sit and listen to your favorite album and draw what the music inspires you to see. this can obviously be done with more than one sitting and listening to more than one album is okay too. please write down the artist, artists and/or albums that inspired your drawings. let me know what you think!
so we're using three pages front and back am i correct?
also elvia i will be sending my book to you, can you recommend a quick way to mail to mexico and send me your address please!
hope everyone is having a great day,
allyson

Monday, July 13, 2009

My Theme

I was thinking to draw and experiment with watercolors with my theme: fishes, any kinds of them one or many. Many of them have very different colors and some live in salty water, rivers, oceans, ponds etc. Some of them are ugly, or some we don't even know they exist. Or maybe you can draw your favorite fish.
What do you think?

Themes Themes Themes!

Woe is me for a theme. I still have not pinned down a Watercolor Moly. Went to two B&N's and a Border's and to my surprise they were both out! Sucks too cause I had a 25% off coupon for Borders. I'm still looking for places, but if I don't get one by tomorrow nite, I'm definitely going to have to get one via Amazon, which I'm kinda dreading right now :( I just hope it makes it in time!

As for my themes running rampant in my head, what about RAINBOWS? I was thinking we'd go the ROYGBIV route with each person gettin the next color and drawing anything they wanted as long as it was in their color sequence? Or maybe it could be a totem pole of something...i'm still liking the zombies idea, lol. But yeah, RAINBOWS ROYGBIV is still by far the leader of the pack, what do you guys think?

Alrighty, well, I'm off to go Moly hunting 2 towns over. I dunno how these places I'm hitting up don't even have a single one....in either size?!

Smoochies!

Sunday, July 12, 2009

Theme for my notebook

Hello Everyone. I have my 5x8 watercolor book in hand, and I would like to have this theme and see your great input: How to keep a travel journal. I am open to ideas about what you do artistically, what you travel with, how you make the time to journal on your trips, and how you combine watercolor with other media like ink, gesso, or whatever your favorite media happens to be. Use as many pages as you like since I love to learn from the people in these groups.

I'll get my book ready and in the mail around August 1.

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Glad to be part of the group............

Hi All,

I'm Jennifer Kraska and this will be my third group. Currently in Moly X 70 with Stacey and Portrait 5 with Claire. I live in Michigan where I work as an Industrial Designer. Currently I am the Design Manager for Cadillac Interiors. It's the most challenging and rewarding thing that I have ever done.

I think that my personal artwork is completely different from what I do at work. I draw cars during the day and birds & bugs at night. But lately people have been telling me that they can see the car in my birds. Years of programming I suppose. I'm not going to fight it anymore, just going to see what happens.

Think I managed to get into this group at the last second, but I'm sooo excited to be part of a watercolor exchange. These exchanges offer an excellent opportunity for good artistic challenge/growth.

I've decided to go with the 5x8 watercolor moly. Still working on a theme. Maybe something to with travel, we'll see...........

Sketchbook theme

So, in previous post comments I had toyed with having a CSI themed sketchbook. While I like the idea - I am not sure that I want to do that for my sketchbook - at least not at this time. I have been toying with another idea though.

I read A LOT...I always have a book in my hands. Authors like Tami Hoag, Michael Connelly, Faye Kellerman, Johnathan Kellerman, Harlan Coben, John Saul and Dean Koontz - just to name a few. My thought was to call my sketchbook - "A Picture Paints 1000 Words". What I was wanting to do was to have each person pick a book - preferably not something popular - and randomly flip through the book. Once you have landed on a spot, read the page and then draw what you see in your head. I would like for everyone to make a copy of the page that you read when you mail the book to the next person.

What do you think? Does it sound like a good idea? or a little too complicated?

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Hi All... and now me.

This is also exchange #3 for me. I am in x67 and portrait 5... both are fairly new groups and so far there are pretty cool. I am gonna have to make this quick as we are being invaded by flies and they are driving me nuts at the computer.

I live on a little island on the westcoast of Canada with a population of 4500 in the winter and 6000 in the summer... and I dare say a kazillion flies at the moment!
We are fixing up our boat to move on to, and plan to head off shore sailing with our two kids... hopefully next fall if all goes well.

I run my own business creating custom chalk signs. I am also a freelance illustrator/designer/artist, volunteer firefighter, mom to two little gals, wife, dog master, sailor, runner, aspiring knitter & jeweler... more hats than my closet can fit.

I love the ocean... that is my favorite place to be, either on it, in it, by it, or under it. Mountains and forests are pretty amazing too, but nothing beats salty hair and the wind in your face (and no flies there)! I am also a coffee snob, but that's for another day...

Ummm... thats about me in a nutshell. There may be more, but these... damn... flies...

Looking forward to this exchange! Watercolor is a fairly new medium for me.

hello moly_x_14ers!

hello all!
my name is allyson, i'm 30 years old and i'm in desperate need of inspiration!
i enjoy taking photographs and drawing and in a perfect world would love to do
both for a living. unfortunately i work two jobs and it's hard for me to get inspired and create
between eating, sleeping and working all the time. thus i've been turning out one drawing a month (if i'm lucky) and haven't been able to work on (or afford) to do much photography as of late. since school is not an option at the moment (no $) i'm pushing myself to learn new techniques and create more on my own. yet i am so uninspired, nothing is coming to me!! i think exposing my art to other artists and vise versa is a good start. i was so excited when i found out about this exchange on flickr. what a wonderful idea! i can't wait to see what we all come up with!

my interests at the moment are:
gardening, polaroids, tea, moleskine!, hobbits (i am reading th elord of the rings, can't stop thinking about it!), and website building

it's nice to meet you all ;)
cheers,
allyson

Exchange Ideas

After reading some of the feedback, how does this sound?

1. Order of exchange: Deb to Claire to Stacey to Allyson to Elvia to Scoach to Deb.
2. We will use the watercolor notebooks. At least 3 of us will use the larger size of 5x8, but whatever you like is fine.
3. We can paint 3-4 pages like in the other exchanges. Do you want to use the back of the paper?
4. Sign your work.
5. Do you want a theme for each notebook, a theme for the entire group, or just whatever inspires us at the time? I like themes for each notebook, but that's just me.
6. We can use July to paint in our own notebook and then send out our first watercolors to the next person on August 1. If we can stick to it, we would have our notebooks back to see in early January.

Sounds like fun.

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

This is Stacey, how can I help you?

Sorry about that. I was trying to think of something witty for a title, but that was all I could come up with. I work in Customer Service for our city's electric company and that is how I answer the phone for 8hrs.

I guess I will start out simple...
My name is Stacey. I will be turning 35 on Sunday! Happy Birthday to me!! I have two intensely interesting sons (ages 12 and 4) and on August 16th I will have been married for 2 years to a man I didn't really like. Of course I love him madly now! He always gives me a dirty look when I tell people that I really didn't like him when we first met.

For me, everything you just read is what my life is about 99% of the time. Growing up all I ever wanted was to get married and have 2 children. I did all backwards, but I still did it. My son Garrett was born in 1997. My son Warrick was born in 2005. I met my husband somewhere around 2003 - we worked together and used to sit right next to each other. We were both in other relationships and in 2004 I became pregnant. It is always weird to me that my husband was there for my pregnancy and after 'our' son was born, even though he is not his biological child. We began dating right before Warrick turned 1 and have been together ever since. When I am not at work - I am with my boys.

The other 1% of my time - which I have to eek out whenever I can...I like to spend creating. My husband asks me all the time, "Is there anything you can't do?" There are some thing like balance our checkbook, Algebra, and repair a car, but there are a lot of things I can do. My Maternal Grandmother taught me to sew when I was about 10 years old and I have been doing that ever since. I went through one period where I painted yard art signs. After getting married, I tried my hand at jewelry making. From there I moved on to drawing/sketching. There are two creative outlets that I like most: sewing and drawing.

Other than that - I watch way too much TV. I am a faithful CSI fan - my son is even named after one of the characters. I love to read. My co-workers always ask me what my book is about and my answer is always, "murder, mystery, kidnapping and cops" - my books always read like an episode of CSI.

Well, that was supposed to be a short little blurb about who I am. I tend to get long winded when I talk too. I am looking forward to this exchange as I am having so much fun in my other exchange (moly_x_70).

Hi Everyone

Here's a little information about me:

1. This is my 3rd moly exchange. I was in X9 which is finished. My book was called "Life Outside My Windows." I'm now about 1/2 way through X58 and that theme is "I went for a walk and......"

2. I'm an athletic director and women's soccer coach at a university in Indiana.

3. I love being outdoors looking at birds, working in our garden, going fishing, and of course going to soccer games.

4. Suggestion: follow the order on the blog page for our exchange.

5. Question: Are we going to use Japanese fold, small watercolor, or the larger watercolor for our exchange?

Monday, June 29, 2009

Hello everyone!


Hello!
I am so happy I am in this group. I am elvia montemayor form Monterrey Mexico.
I am 33 years old, I have a major in Graphic Design and I like art since I can remember, my mother is a painter and I learned a lot of things from her even though we have very different taste in art. I also do a little bit of freelance illustration which I have illustrated two children's books here in Mexico.
I am afraid of airplanes, I don't drink milk, I hate to look at pictures of my self, I am very organized, I love strawberries and my favorite dessert is creme brulee.
I got married last year, with my boyfriend of 12 years. We live with our 2 guinnea pigs: Betty and Veronica.
I discovered sketchbooks four years ago and I could not stop doing them since then. I love to paint with a lot of medias, draw and collage. I don't like to do my work on canvas just paper.
I am really excited to start I just need to think of a theme I would like.
my blog: elviaemontemayor.blogspot.com

INTRO - Debbstar!!!!!

Hi ya folks!

okee so here goes!
  • I'm a Pisces
  • I just recently moved and am still locating my art stuff, LOL
  • I think Martha Stewart is one lucky crafty goddess
  • My fave color as of late is bright sunshiny yellow.
  • Still need to get a watercolor Moly
  • I LOVE the new Sharpie pens on a Moly. They don't bleed!
  • I dunno what theme I'd like to apply to my Moly...gruesome self portrait-totem pole-under water? lol hummm, i think i like that idea actually. Or maybe illustrated versions of your favorite drawing space? what if we were zombies?
ok, well, that's me for now. Guess all that is left is determining the mailing order so it isn't too expensive and then do a send off prolly at the end of July? how's that sound?

SMOOOCHIES!


Ready, Set, Go.

Here's how it works.

http://www.flickr.com/groups/moly_x/discuss/72157604591328762/

Have fun!!