The Fluffbucket Diaries

ICADs 58 (top) and 59; no prompt. Illustrator pen, metallic Sharpie.

Been on vacation. This is the best I could do. Had hoped to set aside more time for art. Didn’t do real well with that.

Thinking about the Billy Crystal line in “When Harry Met Sally,” when he tells Meg Ryan that she’s “the worst kind – you’re high-maintenance but you think you’re low-maintenance.”

Some writers have had issues with this line as a view of certain kinds of women in relationships. Understandably.

But it doesn’t bother me at all. Honestly, in my experience, it rings absolutely true with certain people – men and women. One of my aims in life is NOT to be one of them.

ICAD 57/61; no prompt. Illustration pen and Liquid Flair pen.

More swirly lines, this time with a red splash (and I could use better coloring pens) and a little different doodling within the doodling.

It’s amazing what one can do during a staff meeting.

I got two index cards done, I started a new drawing class online, and I lost 1.6 pounds in 2 weeks. (More on that in my usual almost-weekly fat post, which I probably will post tomorrow.) Otherwise, it’s been a crap day.

It’s been oppressively hot, the A/C is on the fritz, and I would prefer to spend my days creating art instead of doing what I do now to make a living. Plus there’s all manner of anxieties and bitter, angry spots forming clouds in my head right now.

So, I’m up late to finish some editing for work, and probably will stay up late so I can see if more art therapy will make me feel better.

ICAD 56/61; no prompt. Illustration pen.

Started a doodling course by Alisa Burke and did something with the first doodle instruction here. I had created another one on a larger card (4x6) using a Pilot G2 bold pen, but since I’ve been using 3x5s throughout ICAD, I made another one here for consistency, except I used an Artist’s Loft illustration pen.

I think I like using the G2 for these better. That said, I enjoyed this as much as I’ve enjoyed the neurographic art—except that staring at these makes me dizzy.

ICAD 55/61; Community newspaper scrap and metallic Sharpie.

I actually made this a while ago and had intended to do something more with it, but I’m behind again and starting to hit the wall on this whole project. And I looked at this and decided it was fine. So, here it is.

(Incidentally, Two Brothers in Elmhurst, Illinois, does make a fine pizza and has decent Italian food.)

ICAD 54; no prompt. Acrylic paint, Tim Holtz stencils, newspaper scrap, sticker.

Looking forward to a long weekend starting Friday. We’ll be at a remote cabin for a few days, which will put us out of cellphone range for much of the time. This means I’m unlikely to post the last of my ICAD cards till we get back. But I’ll still be bringing my art supplies with me — so with no work distractions, I should have time to relax with some art.

ICAD 53; no prompt. Acrylic paint; Tim Holtz stencils; collage cluster using tag punched from repurposed food packaging, scrapbook paper scraps, and a used postage stamp.

Found some stencils my sister sent me years ago and decided to play with them a little. I need practice with them.

ICAD 52/61; no prompt. Acrylic paint background, newspaper scrap, flowers doodled with Pilot G2 bold pens and fussy cut from blue sticky notes.

Fell behind on the cards this past week. I’m liking the streaky yellow backgrounds. I think I needed the brighter colors after going dark for so long on many of these cards.

There’s something heartening about walking in on the end of our parish’s daycamp with a gymful of kids chanting the Litany of the Saints.

It’s even more heartening to pick up the kid from said daycamp and hear her say it turned out “better than I thought it’d be.”

ICAD 51/61; no prompt. Gesso, followed by Crayola Slick Stix (watered and brushed), illustration pen.

I probably should have limited the doodling to the “flowers” and left the bottom of this card alone. This is my first attempt at some kind of watercolor/doodle abstract work. It’s not great, but I want to play with this a little more.

ICAD 50/61; no prompt. Acrylic paint and illustration pen.

Late with this post, I know. Felt kind of off all day yesterday.

Finally getting away from my beloved G2 bolds and realizing that a proper illustration pen (this one from the inexpensive Artist’s Loft brand from Michael’s) is the way to go with the doodling. Far less smudging and blobbing for my left-handed self.

I’m hitting the wall on a lot of things right now, including the index cards and the weekly weigh-ins. And I have a lot of venting I need to do, but it’s the kind of venting that goes offline into the handy art/junk/gluebook journal I’ve tricked out from a 50-cent composition book. Some, if not most, of those opinions belong there. If only more people would do that in this social media age.

ICAD 49/61; Sharpie, glitter pen; collage cluster made with acrylic paint, scrapbook and newspaper scrap, bling stickers, and a Japanese postage stamp.

I’ve been hitting the wall on the index cards lately. But I’m enjoying working in an even smaller format with tags and collage clusters. I made this cluster and planted it on a random doodled card from earlier in the challenge.

ICAD 48/61; no prompt. Acrylic paint background, sloppy mandala made with Pilot G2 bold pen and metallic Sharpies, scrap from a past Sunday paper.

Actually created the messy mandala on a separate card, then cut it out and glued it onto this one.

F and I created our first batch of shortbread this afternoon. I think we have another recipe to add to our list of baking standards.

Worth the 17 grams of carbs (per bar) and two sticks of butter (whole recipe).

Ted Lasso would be proud.

Padres-Nats game in gunshot delay. I’ve already seen one tweet complaining about how we can’t even watch a baseball game in “Biden’s America.”

Waiting for the first statement that this kind of thing wouldn’t happen if we only would arm the ball players.

ICAD 47/61; no prompt. Junk mail scrap, circles punched from an index card brushed with acrylic paint, PaperMate Liquid Flair pen.

We somehow ended up on a mailing list for some fireworks seller in a neighboring state, even though my husband hasn’t bought fireworks in ages. The one mailing we got this summer has yielded some decent art material.

ICAD 46/61; no prompt. Pilot G2 bold pen, Crayola Slick Stix, metallic paint pen.

Back to the neurographic doodling. Not thrilled with my coloring job, and clearly I need to reserve the Slick Stix for larger, less finely detailed stuff. But it’s something.

ICAD 45/61; no prompt. Blackboard paint, Crayola Slick Stix.

A little late with posting yesterday’s card. Decided to check out Crayola Slick Stix gel crayons. Love the feel of these, as well as the price point compared to other such crayons. I still want to try Neocolors and Gelatos when the budget allows.

Not that thrilled with this card—and I think I’m done with the blackboard paint series for a while—but I enjoyed the test drive on it.

ICAD 44/61; no prompt. Chalkboard paint; newspaper and junk mail scrap; and a chipboard tag covered in paint and metallic Sharpie, then collaged with scrapbook paper, snippet from an old Tom Clancy paperback, washi tape, and a Dollar Tree sticker.

Been playing with college clusters lately, especially after I realized that I have a TON of tags that I’ve punched over the years out of chipboard harvested from various food boxes. Decided to work one of these tag cluster things onto a background I created a few weeks ago. It seems to work.

I actually weighed myself Sunday, and hit this milestone then. But then I weighed myself again and ended up 0.4 pound lighter.

So, as of yesterday (that is, Monday), I am 232.6 pounds. That’s 50.4 pounds less than my starting weight in January, when I started cutting the carbs and putting myself under a doctor’s supervision to lose weight.

It’s been a stressful 2 months or so. I haven’t hit a Pilates class or done anything fitness-minded in that time. I need to do something about that. Otherwise, I just need to keep going.

My initial goal has been to lose 80 pounds; I’m going to stick to that goal for now, and then consider whether I should keep going with the loss or try to maintain. Don’t want to get ahead of myself.

ICAD 43/61; no prompt. Chalkboard paint background, Sunday newspaper photo.

It’s MLB All-Star Game Day. The player here, Brian Goodwin, isn’t in the ASG this year, but I love the joy in this image. I made several “baseball cards,” but I liked this one the most.

ICAD 42/61; no prompt. Black matte acrylic paint, extra-wide washi tape, daughter’s doodle on a sticky note.

No exciting back story here; just slapped this together, honestly. I do love being able to integrate my kid’s doodles into the art.

Playing with collage clusters using scraps, found words, old inchies, and postage stamps on tags punched ages ago from food box cardboard. Took a break from work to do one and recalibrate my still-tired brain.

When I feel like I’m spinning my wheels and overwhelmed even by index cards and inchies, I can crank out a couple of these and feel like I’ve completed something. Will repurpose these for ICAD index cards, the art/junk journal currently in development, or maybe mail art.