Cay Denise

For the last month, I've been working through Lynda Barry's workshop-in-a-book titled "Making Comics".  It is actually based on her college class in which students, from novice to skilled artists, learn to make comics.  Her approach to this subject has everything to do with noticing your life and experiences within it.  It also involves not being embarrassed about making child-like drawings.  Starting out, students create a 'selfie' image following Ivan Brunetti's method for drawing simple characters. It's this character students use for their selfie and daily diary exercises.  I've created one for my work too.  While amassing one's collection of works using this character, it's fun to see how there is a sense of continuity from one image to another.  That's not to say the character looks the same in each exercise.  But isn't that true of us?  We don't look the same every day either.  We change in 'look' from one day to ...

Florian Gadsby, a very good wheel-throwing instructor with a series of videos on YouTube, recommends throwing your first 100 pots as soon as you learn the fundamentals.  Whether they are successes or failures, you'll learn from each pot thrown.  The point is not to be precious or work to perfect a piece as you're learning, but to throw them for the experience and skill-building.   I can attest to the fact that pottery throwing is work.  It takes strength in muscles you don't normally use, and you have to learn not to make abrupt movements with your hands as you work with the clay.  I've done multiple 3-hour practice sessions so far.  As a result of each, I'e returned home tired and with various aches.  That said, the practice is  necessary (like learning to play a musical instrument). On the count to 100, I'm at 32.  Today, I did 11 of those that included a failed one.  These are of the day's work.   Last week's class (#2) was learn...

My first day of a new-to-me pottery class was less than stellar.  I made a lot of mis-steps that were frustrating.  One of those mis-steps included scraping the side of my hand when trying to do 'centering'.  So, I couldn't practice for a couple of days.  During that time, I reviewed YouTube videos and found a superb one on the subject by Florian Gadsby.  He is a great teacher/guide!  His channel has other wheel-throw pottery techniques too.  The video recording is very good because of the close-ups that help viewers to 'see' the process more clearly.   Today, I went to the studio for a first day of practice.  My goal was to be able to repetitively center pieces of clay on the wheel.  The two vessel starts below were successfully centered and are now drying (for about 8 hours) before the first firing.  Granted, they look a bit odd, but that's ok...I'm learning.  Beyond that, I did them all by myself.   One of my discoverie...

To make this sign, I took inspiration from a King of Diamonds card.  My project involved creating a layout in a negative image -- so the sign would be white on black rather than black on white.   Materials for the project included black foam core and poster board, white copy paper, red vinyl, and glue.  In addition, a wood handle wrapped in black duct tape was added to the back.   The finished sign took a few days to make.  Most of the work involved tracing the elements and cutting them out.  That said, I'm pleased....and mission accomplished!

Do you remember cootie-catchers?  They were a fad when I was young.  Known also as paper fortune tellers too, they fueled interesting games.  Their exact origin is unknown, according to Wikipedia.  Another name for them was 'salt cellar'.  The first reference to a salt cellar in Europe and the Americas was in 1836.  It was referred to in a November article that year from the The Lady's Book, a women's magazine published in Philadelphia.  Since there was no illustration in that article, it's unknown whether the salt celler and cootie catcher are the same. With Flag Day arriving on Saturday, June 14th, I had an idea.  That was to create a cootie catcher as a learning game about the flag.  It would have exterior flaps looking like the flag, related flag information topics as choices inside (Flag Day, design, colors and adoption), and below the interior flaps would be narratives about the specific topic.    Some might think this kind of...

This zine was inspired by a Netflix series...a South Korean series about the afterlife titled 'Heavenly Ever After'.  The first episode (of the 12 total) sets up the background of the main character and her immediate 'family' -- all whom she will eventually meet in the afterlife.   The series has so many twists and turns in the storyline as well as explores some of those questions I think we all have asked or will about whether 'life' goes on after we physically die and whether we'll meet our beloveds in the afterlife if there is one. One of the interesting plot twists is that a woman in her 80s loses her paralyzed husband of about the same age.  He chooses in Heaven, to take the form of the youthful male -- at about 30 -- that he was before becoming completely paralyzed for the rest of his earthly life in an accident.  The woman, his loving wife and dedicated caretaker, chooses to stay her age (80s) when she ascends to Heaven because of something he says ab...

This is a really good documentary and well done.  It's about a special program for those participants on the inside and those who benefit from their gifts on the outside! Here is the trailer (from YouTube):

The process of creating this zine reminds me of Alice's journey after falling into the rabbit hole -- entering Wonderland...a curiously strange and entrancing place. This project started as a test of some new markers.  The test was done by drawing a flowery image on an 8.5"x11" sheet of copy paper in a horizontal orientation.   I decided to make a zine out of the image.  As 'luck' would have it, when the paper was folded as a zine, half the image was right-side up and the other half was upside down.  It wasn't going to work that way.  So, I asked myself -- what am I going to do to fix the problem, because without a fix it is non-sensical?     I started to think of how to work with the problem rather than tossing the zine-in-progress out, cutting it up, or just giving up and being defeated by it.  What would Alice do, I wondered?   A 2020 article in Medium titled 'Alice in Wonderland: The Sense Behind the Nonsense' says that gaining power in W...

This project is the result of a session led by Denise Love, part of Tamara La Porte's 2025 Mastering Mixed Media Expo. In my May 8th post in-progress photo, one of the three painted strips has been cut into smaller pieces for future art projects.  It just didn't fit (design-wise) with the other two painted strips.  This finished Concertina combines those two (see the top photo).   The Concertina covers have been made using chip board covered with scrapbooking paper, and  I'm delighted with how it worked.  The paper has a very nice finish and is perfect for a book cover!  Some decorative black shapes have been added to the front and back covers -- as a continuity element because they are elements in the paintings (the front cover is the second photo). The back of the painted strips have black wavy echo lines made with a Sharpie and some smaller nib pens.  The rest of the photos show how the Concertina looks partly open and folded.   This is a great...

This started out with what I thought was going to be a zine about trees.  All I can say is that it had something else in mind.   The first two-page spread is the one on the top right.  It sat for weeks after being completed while I felt stumped as to where it could go (this was when the sky was still white and there was no quote).  As I said, I thought it was going in the direction of trees, but there seemed to be a 'pull' for clouds to have a greater role.     Now there is something cloud-y on each two page spread.  That said, the two-page spread on the top left may need a bit more work at some point.  But it is ok, for now.   What I like best about this zine is the stained glass looking page with the drawing of a tree/sunrise and the cloud quote.

I started playing by drawing stem-like lines in gray on regular copy paper.  Then I drew the leaves  followed by the flowers (some odd).  Once everything was colored in, I cut out the drawn and colored part and glued it to black paper.  Changing the background to black was a great way of immediately creating contrast.     Because this was a play effort, there was no planning of what it might be beforehand (aside from maybe flowers) or become - during the making process.   What I really like is the red and pink jagged-edge flower with the center black dots over white.  It's gnarly and fun at the same time.  Many more together -- might make a strange and winsome 'garden'!

Filoli, also known as the Bourn-Roth Estate, is a country house set upon 16 acres of formal gardens surrounded by a 654-acre estate in the San Francisco Bay area. It was a hot day to visit, but what a lovely stroll we had through the gardens I haven’t seen for over a decade!   A bonsai exhibit had some interesting displays including a redwood that has been cultivated as bonsai since 1966.  Another was a trident Maple that is 200-300 years of age donated to Filoli by a gentleman who survived Nazi Germany and emigrated to the United States. The Spring blooms have already passed away, but there were still many flowers to enjoy especially roses as well as other varieties including ranunculi, peonies, irises, and water lilies (in the many decorative ponds).  Here are a few photos.                                                 ...

In Tamara LaPorte's latest Mixed Media Expo (Taster), I started creating the pages for a Concertina book (from a guest instructor's session).  The first part involved making marks and shapes on a large piece of watercolor paper.  I started with a large piece of paper that was already covered with gesso and a bit of green watered-down acrylic.  From there, we were to play adding whatever we wanted.  So, I added fluid and airbrush acrylics, more watercolor, water-soluble crayon, India and Acrylic inks, Tempera paint sticks, Posca pens, and Sharpie markers.  After drying, we were to slice the paper into three equal strips.  What you see below is the product of my play and the strips cut.     I'm going to use two of the strips for the Concertina.  The third just didn't work and has been cut into much smaller pieces to stash for other uses.   What I especially like in this one is the darker green ink applied in a design and then - using a pai...

It has now been 100 days since Donald J. Trump was inaugerated President of the United States and began his second term in office.  PoliZine #1 covers the period beginning Inaugeration Day through the end of February.  Today's post is about my newest zine which is another digital collage of many shared Facebook posts from March 1 through the end of April -- about the political issues that have risen to prominence in the news cycle for this period including the peaceful, public protests that have been increasing across the nation, in response.   I've called this piece ' PoliZ ine #2' (Poli for political).  It's hard to believe it only represents what has happened from 3/1 through 4/30/2025...all that has been visible to the public, that is.  It marks the completion of the administration's first 100 days, considered an important benchmark.   Both PoliZine #1 and PoliZine #2 feel like hosting containers for the information dumps I've needed to make for my own ...

Yellow, from a pre-created zine cover, has been paired with maroon as the color combination for this new abstract zine titled 'Something Stirring'. Many of the images are cutouts from the Spring 2025 issue of Quilting Arts Magazine and have been edited a bit. The single flower pages look a bit bare, so I may fill them in with a quote or some writing later on, but I like it as is.   For information, the full quilt art pieces in the magazine were created by Serena Brooks, Paola Machetta, and Barbara Whitt.  

In a latest Spring zine using coneflowers as inspiration, this one had spaces in it once all the collaging was done.  What do you do with space?  Is the space you see restful to the eye, a distraction from the eye moving along, or just right?   The top image show the spaces after my 'It's Spring' collaged elements were in place.  How does the space look?   I searched for quotes and poems--nothing looked right.  So, I wrote a Haiku (first line of 5 syllables followed by a line of 7, then a line of 5) and added it to fill the spaces.  Now this zine has a different 'tone'.  It seems, to me at least. more fun and lighter.  Granted, the distinctive flower shapes have receded from focus.  But wouldn't it have been more boring to turn the pages only to see different versions of the flower layouts?   The flowers, aside from their shapes (that I love and was my inspiration), have purpose.  Their blooming is not only beautiful, but they ...

'Letters Aloud' is an ensemble of about four people who do reading concerts.  They read real letters written by real people while the screen on stage shows images.  The letters vary from those that are tone-deaf, mean, discriminatory to hilarious, inventive and kind. One such letter was quite amusing.  The State of Michigan sent a letter in December 1997 to a property owner directing two dams in a pond on the property be removed.  A January 1998 reply informed the state that the beavers couldn't do that.  Here is a link to the exchange:   The Dam Letters .      Writing and sending hand-written letters was the primary way people communicated before computers, smartphones, and social media platforms (even before telephones, television, and radio too).  I used to write letters quite often.  Now, it amazes me how much less I do it, but how much greater I prize receiving them.  Letter-writing is becoming a lost art and could use som...

Working in fits and starts over the last week, this zine is an assemblage of floral imagery in a combination of abstract and semi-realistic versions.   That said, I've added a few words to this zine.  'Flower Power' in unusual lettering was created on one page.  The rest of the text appears on another page.  The latter includes a phrase I just discovered today while doing a search of flowers and philosophy.  "Mono no Aware" is Japanese in origin.  From an excerpt of Georgetown University's Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs write-up about the meaning of the phrase, this is how it is described: It boils down to this: appreciate the moment, because the beauty experienced in it will never be the same.  It will pass.  It will end.  And that is okay because as life changes, new beauty, perhaps of a different kind, will arrive.  Every season the cherry blossoms die.  But every year, they come back to, once again, coat th...

This zine is a sheet of copy paper covered with glued remnant squares of different sizes and patterns, emulating a patchwork quilt.  It wears of translucent cover of vellum with cut-out letters (outlined in gold) spelling the title.  I tried using tracing paper for the overlay, but it was too thin.  I also experimented applying matte medium and gloss medium over a test vellum sheet to see if that could add a bit of strength.  But the vellum wrinkled a bit.  For now, I'm sticking with the unaltered vellum.  I like how the translucency of it mutes the covered color.     That said, a project like this might have been better on black paper instead of white.  It would have helped the letters 'pop'.  But I'm still pleased with this piece.  I'll also keep my eye out for a stiffer translucent paper that can be cut with an X-Acto and a colored vellum. If you have any suggestion as an alternative for the vellum, please consider leaving a comm...

Do you remember book reports we did in school?  This zine is a 'riff' on a book report.  Using the zine format, it contains my most important notes from the first two seasons of 'The Diplomat', a Netflix production that I have really enjoyed watching.   The show is about a woman appointed as an Ambassador to the U.K. (rather than Ambassador to Afghanistan which is what she wanted).  Plus it is about politics and political intrigue in two governments that intersect when there is an Embassy of one in the other's country.  The show begins with the explosion on a U.K. Aircraft Carrier that results in many fatalities and the Prime Minister of the U.K. is intent on finding the responsible party, as he should be.  Of course, there are many other plot twists and turns beyond this single incident.   Because I don't want to give away the show, I'm only providing a photo of the zine's cover .  It is a quick sketch of the White House, because it is the U.S. P...

In one of my March 2nd (2025) posts, I mentioned in the next zine with a word background, I should try folding the 8.5"x11" paper horizontally and writing from the fold to the paper edge on both sides.  That is how this zine background was created.   Both the front and back covers (the two pages on the bottom left) have abstract designs.  The remaining pages have words/letters in different forms: hand-writing, cut out with black paper framing, and printed with glitter glue framing. In making this zine, I wasn't thinking or planning how I wanted it to look when finished.  In fact, I simply put watercolor remnants together that I liked.  The 'I am' came to mind because I cut out the 'I' and liked it.  Then, I cut out two squares of paper I liked and created the A+M.  Later, I printed 'enough' which seemed like the perfect pairing with I am.  It is certainly a vivid reminder of what is important to remember as an artist...and even more so, as a perso...

Naomi Vona was one of the featured artist instructors for a module in Kara Bullock's 2024 Let's Face It online course.  I wanted to try it, becuase she's done some really interesting work transforming magazine images.   This is my first effort using the basics of her technique.  The image I used is a magazine photo of Millie Bobbie Brown from the March 2025 issue of Vanity Fair.  The only things not changed are Millie's shoes, feet, arms and face.  All the rest of the photo has been painted over with paint markers, and embelished by washi tape, a gold Pen-Touch, Micron pen, and a touch of glitter glue.   I love Naomi's art-making idea, but I'm not enamored in using magazine paper for an art substrate.  (It doesn't work well for collage either.)  That's because I tried some other paint pens in my supply that didn't go on opaque and others that made the surface too wet such that the paper wrinkled.  It was fun to try, but is not my cup of tea. ...

How much art has been made to express political points of view, to  illustrate the results of political impacts of decisions, and/or to make fun of or satirize politicians, etc.? It has been 40 days since Donald J. Trump was inaugerated President of the United States and began his second term in office.  From that day through the end of February, I've made so many Facebook posts about issues including his Cabinet nominees, his selection of Elon Musk as an advisor, the (seemingly illegal) efforts of DOGE, the indiscriminate firing of federal workers without due process, and the compromise of national security through some of his decisions/directions/policies to name a few.   So today's 'art' is a Photoshop assembly of screenshots of those posts with words/phrases that capture much of what has been part of the news environment.  I'm calling it ' Poli zine #1' (Poli for political).  It's hard to believe that it only represents what has happened from 1/20 th...

There are a couple of paragraphs somewhere in the book titled 'All the Beauty in the World' that the background writing in this zine is a handwritten copy of.  You wouldn't know that to look at it, and that is intentional.  The idea was to have a fully handwritten page of text that has no spacing (other than between lines), no punctuation, and is continuous (line by line). Once done, using what I thought might be a contrasting watercolor paper pattern -- rectangles of it were added to the center of each zine page.  There wasn't enough contrast though.  So, smaller black rectangles were also added.   For what was to go in those black rectangles, I had no idea.  After thinking about it, I decided against quotes and stopped thinking further on it.  Sometime later, the word 'repeat' came to mind, and I thought that would be perfect because each page looks SO similar.  The words you see (aside from 'repeat), are synonyms except for 're-turn'.  The...