Creative Chrysalis
Artwork appears as if by magic to the onlooker, but inside the studio it’s not magic at all. Through this blog, you…
Creative Chrysalis
98 – Reference images for translation
illustration detail by Susan Polansky, with related reference images Reference images are crucial for translating a line drawing into a realistic art...
Creative Chrysalis
95 – Let me get this straight…
This design wall is made of two 4’ x 8’ Styrofoam panels covered with flannel. I won’t be able to work on...
Creative Chrysalis
94 – I Spy a Camera in the Window
My studio overhead camera set-up is not set back far enough to capture the width of quilt area that I’ll be working...
Creative Chrysalis
93 – Moving along
My thoughtful husband put an overhead camera set-up on my studio ceiling. My work takes a long time to go together, so...
Creative Chrysalis
92 – The Next Stage Begins!
I ordered a full-size enlargement from Staples Copy department and had it shipped to me as I'm not going anywhere to avoid...
Creative Chrysalis
91 – Going BIG!
My next quilt will be 3’ high x 11’ length. Truly a commitment, especially with the level of detail that is typical...
Creative Chrysalis
90 – Quilting Fear
I AM INTIMIDATED! "Of what?," you may ask. Of all the things I set out to conquer when first starting a project...
Creative Chrysalis
89 – Big Bang
Impact! Oversized “Flying Pins” by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen yell out and demand a look. This site sculpture wouldn’t be…
Creative Chrysalis
88 – Giving thanks
I depart from my usual arty posts to wish a Happy Thanksgiving to all! I cooked up a feast for my social-bubble…
Creative Chrysalis
87 – Primary focus
If I were looking straight ahead, my primary field of vision would be the blue area. I colored these areas to remind…
Creative Chrysalis
86 – Coloring fun
Just for the fun of it, I colored in a bit of a drawing. I really don’t know how to “paint” on…
Creative Chrysalis
85 – I want it all
I’m working on the center section, what will be behind the girl with the balloon, trying to figure out how to get…
Creative Chrysalis
84 – Ditch the Snake?
I spent oodles of time on drawing a snake slide, but in this version, I’ve ditched it completely, and, well, I like…
Creative Chrysalis
83 – Spot the difference
These two drawings remind me of spot-the-difference cartoons that always captivated me! There are many of the elements that I have shown…
Creative Chrysalis
82 – How’s it looking?
I’ve got a lot packed into this, but I can’t say that I’m happy with it. There is no flow in the…
Creative Chrysalis
81 – Kneading it to go away
You might be wondering what the silver thing is that is often on my drawings. It’s one of my favorite drawing, or…
Creative Chrysalis
80 – Barrel of fun
Back to using the background grid and drawing boxes to figure out how a barrel would look lying on it’s side. Because…
Creative Chrysalis
79 – Ruinous ruffians ruin ruins
Versions of what will be to the left of the girl with(out) the balloon. I liked the idea of a dog pulling…
Creative Chrysalis
78 – Beginning to see everything clearly
My balloon people will be in the front of my story, so they will be a bit larger than some of the…
Creative Chrysalis
77 – Of course you can have cotton candy
Here is another opportunity to have everything count – I could have both child and adult reaching up to the escaping balloon,…
Creative Chrysalis
76 – I’ll never get it back
The loss of a balloon is another idea that has been floating around my imagination. Child loses cheerful balloon, adult reaching but…
Creative Chrysalis
75 – Gotta get my hands on some fabric!
The amusement park is taking shape! I can start seeing colors in my head. After so much drawing I am really itching…
Creative Chrysalis
74 – Cap / guns
I’ve drawn a shooting gallery in my amusement park and now I’m working on characters that are passing by, a man with…
Creative Chrysalis
73 – Will they make the cut?
I like the idea of two people pointing and laughing at the bottom of the slide. I think it’s clearer that they…
Creative Chrysalis
72 – Sizing up a bully
How do I know how large to draw a figure? It’s back to boxes and the perspective grid. At the start of…
Creative Chrysalis
71 – Look hard enough and it will be found
Different versions of the same idea. Haven’t settled on the size or placement of the snake slide, but I’m figuring that if…
Creative Chrysalis
70 – Re-appearing images
Colors! Paint! Creative Play! Oh the fun of being in my studio! My artistic life allows escape from current events, but I…
Creative Chrysalis
69 – It’s not funny
I’ve got some idea of my snake slide drawn, so now what happens? I recall being slightly dizzy at the exit of…
Creative Chrysalis
68 – The muscle memory of drawing
My husband will repeat a tennis shot over and over to get the correct form into his muscle memory. While I wouldn’t…
Creative Chrysalis
67 – Bottled up meaning
I’m still on the subject of drinking and playing with how it will fit into my grand scheme of a plan for…
Creative Chrysalis
66 – Fangs and functionality
This slide functionally works. It’s size or something isn’t quite right, but good enough for now. I am pleased with the person…
Creative Chrysalis
65 – Ouch!
2 AM: Startled awake with a WTF moment! Last post I claimed to be getting better at recognizing errors with perspective. Yeah,…
Creative Chrysalis
64 – Playing with boxes
WHEN DRAWING IS DIFFICULT, GO BACK TO BOXES! The snake slide that I envision is a tough thing to draw. Not only…
Creative Chrysalis
63 – Making my recycle bin overflow
Man, I can really relate to this quote from Chuck Dixon, “Every artist has thousands of bad drawings in them and the…
Creative Chrysalis
62 – Re-thinking snake oil
Bottle…drinking…downward slide – connects in my mind to: insidious poison, sneaking, slithering, evil snake oil. But, snakes and alcohol are not all…
Creative Chrysalis
61 – Sitting ducks
I don’t want to say directly “shooting at people” but I do want to make this suggestion with a shooting gallery. I’ve…
Creative Chrysalis
60 – Same, but different
I continue to work out how my theme park will look by sketching out slightly different versions. One of my earliest sketches…
Creative Chrysalis
59 – Something more to add
I think I will add some giant murals to the sides of the funhouse/amusement buildings. They have to be done in a…
Creative Chrysalis
58 – Promise of fun
Frantic, flashing lights, colorful neon, bold graphics!, A promise of fun and excitement, luring people to spend money and wait on lines….
Creative Chrysalis
57 – It will be a quilt!
You’ve seen a lot of drawing, but have I mentioned that I intend to make the final piece of this project out…
Creative Chrysalis
56 – Wandering through the funhouse
A tighter sketch with some different additions – a menacing animal beyond the mouse hole reaching out its paw. Maybe a jail-like…
Creative Chrysalis
55 – Did you ever play Mousetrap?
Background ideas are formulating. I like the Mousetrap game’s ladder and basket and the diving board person. They kind of just found…
Creative Chrysalis
54 – Beware the whirlpool
The rolling barrel entrance to a funhouse began with my thoughts on getting sucked into the internet, how I’m drawn into a…
Creative Chrysalis
53 – What’s your position on this?
Position alters perspective, even more so when the type of perspective is distorted. Re-locating where an “attraction” is in my theme park…
Creative Chrysalis
52 – Finding your center
A lot of geometry going on here. it will be no easy thing to draw a funhouse entrance barrel convincingly. It is…
Creative Chrysalis
51 – Thoughts on fire
Detail added to the gingerbread house, adding some people and the Food Court signage. One of my biggest fears is fire, so…
Creative Chrysalis
50 – backdrop? More like gumdrop
Planning stage for some other buildings has started. A gingerbread house would be tasty – not only for its colorful appeal, but…
Creative Chrysalis
49 – Taking the paper training wheels off
I’m using a grid behind tracing paper for my drawings now. Newsprint was for quick sketches. Now I want to have a…
Creative Chrysalis
48 – Eye see!
Here’s some crucial info that completely escaped me until lately: People of similar heights standing on flat ground, arranged from closest to…
Creative Chrysalis
47 – 7.5 heads are better than one
The size of a human figure is often shown in “heads”. Height: 7 ½ heads, Width: 2 heads, Arm length: 3 ¾…
Creative Chrysalis
46 – Go figure: figure drawing recommendation
This is my go-to for figure drawing reference. The simplified human anatomy, along with details of expression, age, clothing, gender differences are…
Creative Chrysalis
45 – Maybe my biology degree has helped
As I plan the positions and appearances of the structures in my landscape, I need to think about people in the same…
Creative Chrysalis
44 – Please wait for assistance
I’ll keep some of the details that appeared in the sketching stage and include them later. I really like the “Not Dead…
Creative Chrysalis
43 – Where will everything go?
Now that I’ve decided to do a landscape view, and have more of an amusement park look rather than a solitary funhouse,…
Creative Chrysalis
42 – Stranger in a strange land
“Grok” is one of my favorite words. Thanks to Robert A. Heinlein for coining it in his 1961 science fiction novel, “Stranger…
Creative Chrysalis
41 – Using a perspective grid
This perspective grid is what I’ll use for my drawing. There are many kinds of simple grids available for free on the…
Creative Chrysalis
40 – The amazing art of Kim Jung Gi
The South Korean artist named Kim Jung Gi creates absolutely amazing drawings using unusual perspectives. Here’s his website: https://www.kimjunggius.com/pages/about-artist There’s links to videos…
Creative Chrysalis
39 – Panoramic drawing example
The artist John Lee granted permission for me to use his drawing in this post as a good example of the type…
Creative Chrysalis
38 – Perspective beyond the normal range of vision
You can get lost in all the information about perspective drawing that is available on Google. I had never used a perspective…
Creative Chrysalis
37 – Beauty in a mathematical grid
My previous thoughts on Perspective Drawing Art Instruction = math, angles, geometry = let’s not go there: Yes, classic math avoidance syndrome!…
Creative Chrysalis
36 – What you see is just an illusion!
How do you become a better artist, a better anything? Identify what needs improvement, then learn and practice.I need to study up…
Creative Chrysalis
35 – Facing invisible barriers
What do you do when you come up to a barrier? Do you shirk away from things that scare you, or do…
Creative Chrysalis
34 – Perspective is all about relationships
An imaginative world requires convincing size, shape and space in order to be believable. Photographs can give me the basics of how…
Creative Chrysalis
33 – Self-portrait perspective
Yes, this is a self-portrait – from 1979! (Don’t ya just love those big eyeglasses?) It’s a first attempt at etching. We…
Creative Chrysalis
32 – Quicksand of my own making
Somedays, everything feels like too much. I go into my studio to escape from complications of the day, and find myself mired…
Creative Chrysalis
31 – Drawing the line between scary and fun
Preliminary sketches – imagining how some ideas might fit together. These may not look anything like the final drawing for my quilt,…
Creative Chrysalis
30 – Diving into a pool of imagery
I’m beginning to think that I’m trying to do too much with one artwork. Better to have too may ideas than none,…
Creative Chrysalis
29 – Complicated possibilities
If I had one amusement house featuring all the ideas that I’ve thought about so far, it would be pretty jammed packed….
Creative Chrysalis
28 – “Nothing to see here folks, move along.”
Thinking on the collapsing space of a traveling carnival ride, I tried to stretch the idea to something else that works in…
Creative Chrysalis
27 – Pack and play
I’ve now searched the internet for amusement “dark rides” and funhouses. Some of them travel with carnivals, so they need to disassemble…
Creative Chrysalis
26 – How about a creepy Victorian house?
If I’m going to put all my ideas in one house-like structure, then the large, ornate, and often creepy look of an…
Creative Chrysalis
25 – Snakes and slides
The idea of a snake shaped slide is too good to pass on, so I’ve sketched out how it might look. Something…
Creative Chrysalis
24 – Exit by twists and turns
I like the idea of a slide in my new art work, but not sure how it works with the idea of…
Creative Chrysalis
23 – This way to the egress!
I’m trying to recall any experience I’ve had with amusement funhouses as I think of how to incorporate their structure with my…
Creative Chrysalis
22 – Photoshop Elements to the rescue
How do you figure out how a funhouse warped mirror image will look like? Photoshop Elements! There are all sorts of “Filter”…
Creative Chrysalis
21 – Wavy reflections in fabric
Here’s the sketch for the warped reflections of social media. Love the idea of this. OK, how will I do this with…
Creative Chrysalis
20 – Is eye candy a satisfying diet?
When I get bogged down with current work, I like to think about why I make art, and if I’m straying from…
Creative Chrysalis
19 – Memory fills in the details of reference
My photogenic family, looking our best!I remembered that we took photos at a boardwalk amusement hall in New Jersey. These might be…
Creative Chrysalis
18 – Distorted reflection
A hall of mirrors was never as good as it promised to be. Amusing, yes, but the quality of mirrors wasn’t good…
Creative Chrysalis
17 – Mining a vein of ideas
I’m onto the idea of a funhouse for my artwork. Maybe this piece isn’t as much about fear as I thought. I’m…
Creative Chrysalis
16 – Other pencil-like marks
Another thought on pencils while I’m at it. Woodless graphite sticks can be sharpened like pencils, but all of the graphite is…
Creative Chrysalis
15 – Pencil tribute
The Art Supply Providing the Most Bang for the Buck:the lowly pencil.Not the mundane, yellow #2 bubble-fillers (although those will do in…
Creative Chrysalis
14 – Pictionary scribbles
There aren’t many drawings in my journals. Sometimes I’ll do a pictionary-quick sketch to remind myself about what I was thinking; nothing…
Creative Chrysalis
13 – Feels good to get rolling
Feels good to get rolling on this project…I’ve spent plenty of time on the conceptual part of my next art quilt, which…
Creative Chrysalis
12 – Hypnotic rabbit holes
Thinking about entering the rolling barrel entrance of a funhouse, I can almost feel the pull of the brightly painted hypnotic stripes…
Creative Chrysalis
11 – Finding my way out
A funhouse is different from the dark ride I mentioned in my last post, – it requires you to walk through various…
Creative Chrysalis
10 – The dark ride of aging
One of my biggest fears is that of the human aging process. Getting older has its rewards for sure, but too many…
Creative Chrysalis
9 – What is reality?
For my next quilt: Topic: fearSetting: amusement parkStyle: believable reality Have you ever thought about different kinds of artistic reality? Photorealism strives…
Creative Chrysalis
8 – A book about color
When I’m not thinking about my studio projects, then I’m reading about art. Especially when contemplating new work, I’m constantly on the…
Creative Chrysalis
7 – Scary fun
One of my journal entries listing different aspects of fear brought me to the idea of amusement parks and the various ways…
Creative Chrysalis
6 – A list of ten things
The topic I want to explore with my art work is fear. That’s a nebulous concept. Preferring realism in my art, I…
Creative Chrysalis
5 – Waiting for ideas to float by
“Adrift’ was my last quilt. It was unplanned. I missed being absorbed by an all consuming project, but nothing was grabbing my…
Creative Chrysalis
4 – Commitment to success
I’m ready for commitment to an idea that is complicated, which is no surprise if you know my artwork. It doesn’t scare…
Creative Chrysalis
3 – Words lead to pictures
I’ve tried to make it a habit to write in a journal: sketches, random thoughts, whatever crosses my mind. It’s a safe…
Creative Chrysalis
2 – Does fear stop you?
FEAR…there, I’ve said it. Who hasn’t been nagged at by demons of fear? Looking over my journals for some creative inspiration to…
Creative Chrysalis
1 – Find out what I’m thinking
Art Work … there’s a lot of that required to make an artwork. Follow my latest project as I bring it from…
butterfly
14 – Butterfly has landed!
It took longer to finish up this quilt than I expected, though it wasn't the quilt's fault. Life just got in the...
butterfly
13 – So much greenery
The assembled quilt has been loaded onto my A-1 longarm sewing machine. Not only will the stitching hold down the fabric collage…
butterfly
12 – Where will the butterfly land?
Before quilting, I need to play with the position of flowers (I’ve painted a smaller second one) and butterfly on the painted…