Day 86: Decorate Dessert

Title: Chouxsteroid

Assignment: Decorate a cake, pie or cookie.
Materials: homemade choux bun, spun sugar, whipped cream, black plate and board, powered sugar, fork for outline
Inspiration: I love cooking, but baking is a bete-noire of mine, due to the diabolically unpredictable nature of my oven. I decided to tackle two things I'd never done before, choux buns and spun sugar art.
Rather proud of how this came out, and how nice it tasted!

Day 85: Work with Words

Title: Flotsamandjetsamonster

Assignment: Make an image with just words or letters. You can cut them from magazines, draw them yourself or print out words on a computer to work with.

Materials: Driftwood and found objects on the tide flats on Camano Island, a bit of PS to help with definition.

Inspiration: I took this assignment a little more literally than intended, I think, re-reading the instructions now after I got home. AH well! I was walking along the beach yesterday and loved the weird sculpted driftwood, and decided to just make the word MONSTER out of what I found. My favorite bit is the part of a jawbone I THINK is from a possum that  I  joined up with a  crabclaw to make the N.

Day 84: Keep it Clean

Title: Seasoap Dragon

Assignment: Use a bar of soap to make something new. You can carve it, use it to draw, break it into pieces, or even bubbles.

Materials: Black board, two pieces of soap, sponge, paper towel, PS

Inspiration: I started drawing with the soap, wasn't happy with it, so I went to wash it off to start over again, and noticed the nice patterns the sponge made on the black with the suds. Experimented with taking away suds to create an image, then added in definition with the soap bar and a little PS.

Day 83: Visual Pun

Title: Eye-paw'd
Assignment: Make a visual pun. For example, a handbag made of hands

Materials: A photo of my hand and eyes, PS

Inspiration: I remember reading one of the OZ books as a child, and an illustration/concept that always gave me nightmares was this evil 'watcher' hand with eyeballs in the fingers that could find you ANYWHERE. I just tried googling it though, and couldn't find a reference - any one out there know what I'm talking about? (And yes, I know there was a monster in the movie PAN'S LABYRINTH that had the eyes in its hands, believe me that gave me a jolt and nightmares too!)

Day 82: Utensil

Title: The Shtawk
Assignment: Create a new kind of utensil. Functional or not, document its use.
Materials: PS, pencil, pen, paper
Inspiration: Every good invention has its start over many drinks in a bar or restaurant,  drawn on a paper placemat or cocktail napkin. Here is what every modern vampire hunter should own.

Day 81: Erasers

Title: Alien Eraser Robot Is Coming to Rub You Out!
Assignment: make something out of erasers.
Materials: the erasers from a bunch of pencils, my artgum eraser, pins and thumbtacks. Oh and he has some eraser shavings frothing out of his mouth, too.

Inspiration: I REALLY didn't want to destroy my art erasers, so created something that could be repurposed.  This turned out better than I thought it would.

Day 80: Dying

Title: Vampirate Flag
Assignment: Try dying. Work with food or fabric dye. you can try traditional tie-dye methods or just paint it on.
Materials: yard of cotton muslin, old mop handle, tie dye, fabric paint, acrylic

Inspiration: I vaguely remember trying to tie-dye along with everyone else in the late 60s and tried a couple different methods here on the flag and two white tshirts. I think the scariest thing about these is what it will do to the rest of my laundry if I ever try washing them.

It was fun to make the logo, and I will 

try flying this in my backyard if I can 

get the right hardware and figure out a 

place where it won't be a hazard to 

passing traffic or low flying aircraft. ;-)

Look out!!

Day 79: Side of the Road

Title: Dandealien
Assignment: Walk through an alley or along a small road and pick up discarded materials to work with.

Materials: A broken hubcap, red spray paint, a mess of dandelions and other roadside flowers, PS

Inspiration: Well I wasn't about to go picking up icky slimy garbage that likely has REAL monsters crawling under it, but I did finally bring home this interestingly broken plastic hubcap I'd walked by a number of times, thinking it had some potential. On my street there are tons of dandelions, so I painted the hubcap, arrayed the weeds and created a member of the alien species that spawn these garden devils.

Day 78: Make up a Name

Title: Ellen the ZombieMom
Assignment: Make up a name and write a back story for a stranger you see today. Bonus: Create something based on what you've made up and give it to them.

Materials: Pencil, Pen, Colored pencils

Inspiration: Somehow I figured the poor woman I saw struggling at the library with her demon brood would not appreciate me gifting her with this. They truly looked as though they were sucking the life right out of her.

"Before her children ate her brain, Ellen loved to read about far off places and days long past. And occasionally the odd domestic murder mystery."

Day 77: Shredded Paper

Title: Somethin' Out There's Disturbin' the Crows
Assignment: Work only with shredded paper. Maybe even give quilling a try.
Materials: one piece of white copier paper, cut into strips. a few pieces of red paper from a netflix envelope for the eyes and hands. a bit of glue and a little PS touchup

Inspiration: I was going to do more quilling on this one, but really liked the random patten that happened when I just threw the white strips on the black board. It looked like high grass to me, so I put a monster inside it.

Day 76: Ear

Title: Ceti Eel

Assignment: Make something inspired by and/or that fits on or around an ear.

Materials: Sculpy, wire, acrylics, sand, clear nail polish for the shine!

Inspiration: "Keptin...they put...THINGkz...in our EARSz!!!" Well, this is a facsimile of Khan's charming "LITTLE PET", from which he EXTRACTED the larvae thingkz to put in Chekov's ear, but you get the point. I put a little hook on the back, so this will make a delightful ornament come Christmas.

Day 75: Chalk

Title: The Eye of Smudge
Assignment: Get some chalk and work on the sidewalk near your home.
Materials: big crayola chalk
Inspiration: Well, we don't have sidewalks on my street, so I used my back walkway as my canvas. Once again I just free formed, letting the contours of the concrete and rocks and moss determine the pattern.

My neighbor cat (who I'd dubbed "Smudge" due to his markings) insisted upon helping, and definitely lived up to his name.

Day 74: Neighborhood Store

Title: Spider Island Barbie SCREAM House

Assignment: Be bold. Go to a store that you frequently shop at or a restaurant where you frequently eat and ask what they'll let you make there.

Materials: Toys and some PS

Inspiration: Sorry, Noah, I'm more of a guerilla artist, especially when it comes to creating monsters in someone's business. I went to Value Village, where I DO often shop and quickly made this before a freaked out mother could complain about the strange lady messing around in the toy section.

Day 73: Rocks

Title: Rocky
Assignment: Work with the gravel, sand or rocks available near your home
Materials: Just that, along with some 'beauty stones' I'd had lying around and some hot glue.
Inspiration: Started out trying to build more of a rock monster ala Galaxy Quest, but this guy's goofy face appeared instead.