2012/365 - Day 319

Wednesday Morning at Joan's and ATC

This morning Joan, Leann, and I got together to work on projects at Joan's house.

Joan worked on her pillows commission, Leann worked on a quilt, and I sorted Magic: the Gathering cards.

Some of my Magic: the Gathering cards, sorted into colors.

Tonight was the monthly Artist Trading Cards group's meeting.  The theme this month was "poetry".

My card used imagery I originally made in '05 from an eraser carving of Richard Brautigan.

The backs of my cards featured a scan of one of Richard Brautigan's poems. 

I especially love "Death Like A Needle".

These were the cards I received in trade.

2012/365 - Day 186

HOT weather and Magic: the Gathering

It was really hot and humid today.  My house has next to no insulation and none in the ceiling for most of the house.  In the late afternoon when the sun is on the front of my house (west) it is like an oven until the sun goes down and the outside of the house starts to cool down.

That being said...

Juana came over late this afternoon to look at M:tG cards that William brought for us.  She took quite a number of them -- yay!  Devon will get to go through the remainder and I know there will be cards she will be interested in.  Just before we played our first game Ruth came over to fill out the paperwork for her submissions for that upcoming exhibit.  I did nothing artwise today except soak up some very thoughtful and kind comments from Juana about my collages.  

I've said it before in the blog and I'm saying it again tonight...sometimes thinking and talking is just as important as doing/making.  It is healing.  It replenishes.  It connects and reconnects you.  Tonight was really good...and -- since M:tG was involved -- there were some damn goofy giggly times as well.

Juana took this many of the cards that William brought for us.

This is what Devon will get to look through -- plus a bunch of cards that are ready to go into the huge stash boxes.

Poor Twink.  It was 82 degrees in the house tonight -- even with the air conditioning running.  The air was so hot and heavy.  He was walking around complaining loudly and dropping down onto various floor surfaces to try to cool off.

Then he did an abbreviated version of his walking around on the table while we are looking through the cards thing.

He knocked over Juana's pile of cards...

...then headed over to my end of the table and plopped down and stretched out...looking at Juana upside down.

Good thing he's sweet and cute.

Then he got ready to pour himself over the edge of the table.

Poor guy...it's never been this hot in the house before.

And this is actually how long he is!  He is like a ferret.

Juana's Kithkin & Gargoyles vs my Minotaurs and Crows.  It got pretty epic for a while -- but Juana won at the very end.

It was a really good night.  Juana hasn't come out to play Magic in a while.  It is always a giggly blast.

2012/365 - Day 178

time for William to go

Wow -- time really flew!  I can't believe William has been here for almost a whole week.  Tonight William leaves for Maine via Canada. 

Today I got to see the Miniature Art Hunt table murals before I gave them to Joan for the Art House...I hadn't unrolled them until today.  These are some of my favorite parts:

 Also today William finished up the first 50 (of 100) of the "Penciled In" mini portraits we are collaborating on for Art-o-mat.

 Later...William gave me some specific pointers for adding shadow to the two collages I am working on...to show me how to (hopefully, if I can pull it off) make the creatures look like they are popping more on the canvas.

And then...after dinner we played a few more hands of Magic: the Gathering.

LOL -- William used some of my decks and with this one, the card he was waiting for was the very last card on the bottom of the deck.  (Which happens to me all the time...LOL)

Well -- it has been a great week, but it really really went quickly.  Hopefully William will have some time to visit again when he makes his way back from Maine to Minnesota later in the year...if he does, we hope to do a semi-big Arto-Session with Juana and other local Art-o-mat artists.

365 Day 229

Oh, I DO get distracted!

I don't have much to show for today except two tokens I made (on the computer so it took most of the day) for use with a couple of the Magic: the Gathering decks I have.

In case you don't know, Magic: the Gathering (according to the Wizards of the Coast website):

"In the Magic game, you play the role of a planeswalker—a powerful wizard who fights other planeswalkers for glory, knowledge, and conquest. Your deck of cards represents all the weapons in your arsenal. It contains the spells you know and the creatures you can summon to fight for you.

Trading card games like the Magic: The Gathering TCG combine collectable cards with a strategy game. You don't know what you'll get in a Magic booster pack. You just start a collection and trade with other players to get the cards you want.

The best part about a trading card game is that it's always changing. You design and build your own unique decks, and each Magic game you play is different. New Magic expansions are released a few times a year, and each new expansion brings new ways to stupefy and defeat your opponents."

It is also known (affectionately) as cardboard crack, due to its highly addictive qualities (for those of us who are prone to this sort of thing). I fall into the hopelessly addicted category. Today was a good example. I have been tweaking decks and making those two tokens literally ALL day and night. The only reason I stopped (for now) was to rush in here and make this blog entry before my self-imposed midnight deadline. See? It is a good thing for me to have a deadline...at least I was able to break away and take some photos and do a little research and stuff...something...anything...besides endlessly tweaking decks or alphabetizing cards by color, etc.

This is one of the tokens I made today...a 0/1 "white goat creature token". The wording comes from the Magic card it is meant to be played with.

I took the photograph a couple of years ago. This is Colin, a goat who lives at Kensington MetroPark. A very handsome and charismatic goat, indeed.










This is the 5/5 "giant teddy bear creature token" I made. Yes, this is Gloomy Bear and it is really cracking me up.













This is the back of a Magic card.













Like many of the people I know, I was first drawn into Magic: the Gathering by the wonderful artwork on the cards. This is Hurloon Minotaur -- my ultimate favorite character and the artwork that most says "Magic" to me. I love me some minotaurs!












I started the game being very creature-oriented. This is Balduvian Bears...another very iconic piece of Magic artwork for me. You know how much I love bears, too.






See how I got distracted from writing the blog post? Geez. Okay...back to it.

This is a sample of the cards in my "girly deck". The deck is full of creatures like unicorns, dragons, and elves.














This is the card I needed the giant teddy bear creature tokens for. Juana has a couple of these cards as well...I think she put one of hers in her "toys" deck. Now, if either one of us plays one of those decks and plays this card, we have giant teddy bear creature tokens we can use.

Unhinged: Water Gun Balloon Game

Oracle Text:
As Water Gun Balloon Game enters the battlefield, each player puts a pop counter on a 0.
Whenever a player casts a spell, move that player's pop counter up 1.
Whenever a player's pop counter hits 5, that player puts a 5/5 pink Giant Teddy Bear creature token onto the battlefield and resets all pop counters to 0.

"Unhinged" is a humorous parody set of Magic cards...a bit less serious-minded from the regular cards. Once in a while Juana and I throw a few of these cards into our decks.



I'm not exactly proud or embarrassed that I have (as of tonight) 47 Magic decks.













Here is a little more about Magic from Wikipedia: link.

Okay. That about does it for today...I have started to get a bit antsy, plus it is close to deadline time. I have "real" things to do tomorrow so I will most likely be able to be more productive...LOL.

365 Day 209 -- ooops missed my deadline!

we were having too much fun --

Juana came over this evening and we looked through a box of Magic: the Gathering cards that I got from eBay.


Then we looked at the variations I came up with for a new label for our collaborative Art-o-mat series called Penciled In. We ended up with this one.













Then we went to dinner at Mr. Thai in Northville, then we came back and I fed the cats and then we started playing Magic. We played two games and we were mildly aware of the time.

When we started playing the third game it still felt fairly early.

We were having so much fun that by the end of the game it was a shock to both of us that it was after midnight! I decided it was a good trade off and that I'd just write about what happened.

Before we went to dinner, Juana agreed to help me think up titles for three of my pieces that were accepted for an upcoming show in Detroit. So after we played the last game of Magic we had a piece of Zingerman's coffee cake and started brainstorming. Mostly we laughed and goofed off, but we finally arrived at suitable titles. Oh man...did we laugh!

And that is why I missed my midnight posting deadline.

365 Day 201

building a magical Magic-inspired beast/monster of my own













I got this one-eared horse statue at a garage sale last year for fifty cents. I knew I would recycle it into art at some point. I hadn't started doing anything with plaster cloth yet when I bought him.


















I just adore most of the gigantic, lumbering beasts in the game Magic: the Gathering. I want to combine the sort of Magic beasts I like with the creatures that are showing up in my sketch book for relief printmaking class.


Some of the Magic beasts are a little more cuddly-looking (to me) than others but they are all HUGE. Okay, they may not be as sweet and cute as a baby goat, but I still want to hug them.

I'm not sure what it is about them, but they give me these "give me your paw" / "let's sit and cuddle for a while and I'll tell you a story" feelings when I look at them.





I don't know exactly how to go about it or how I will end up painting this guy when it comes time, but I am diving in tonight with the horse statue as a base to build on.

I am trying to give him a new shape with aluminum foil and masking tape.














He is looking a little bison-y here.













Something is off...but I can change it later.












I think I'd like to put a layer or two of plaster cloth on tonight. I had to stop at this point to give my hands a break for a bit (crunching aluminum foil is tiring) and to take photos and blog before my midnight deadline.













Looking at this photo I think maybe he needs a little less chin area and more nose area...maybe make it look like he is holding his head a little higher...we'll see...










I like how the cat-creature in the background is like "wtf?" and the goat-creature is laughing.