A Cookie

Do you know the children's story If You Give A Mouse A Cookie by Laura Numeroff?  

If you don't....you can listen to it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCDPkGjMBro

This is my version:  If you Give MaryAnn A Clean-Up Project.....a story about one thing leading to another.

I desperately needed to clean up my work table...there were tools and paints and tiny snippets of color swatches everywhere. One might think that I could just swish it all in the trash and be done with it....but if you know me you know I can't part with precious little scraps. 

So I put down a long piece of double sided tape on a long skinny scrap and started assembling a little swatch lineup.  

Then I wondered how it would look sewn. (The "and now" on the paper is at the bottom of one of my sister's writing pages....and it's serendipitous that I chose it for the background of the photo....."and now" seems pretty appropriate.")

That was pretty cool....lots of uses for that....so I thought I would make another.

Of course then I started playing around with bigger pieces of paper laying there on the table and this swirl I made a few days ago. I'm thinking little landscape....or city skyline? Hmmmmmm.  

There were still more little salvageable strips but I really needed to get my table cleaned up so I sorted the good ones out and put them in a little box.  

But I was intrigued with the little chunky scraps....so what do you do with those?  You cut out little round shapes....because you never know when you need a little round shape.

Finally I was able to swoosh the teeny tiny slivers of scraps that were left into the trash. 

Our goal for class today was to add color and turn our sketches into a cohesive series responding to the "character" of the place we sketched.  I had some trouble....this doesn't come easy....but I mostly completed the task.  I'm not quite ready to show the whole thing straight on....the angle is more forgiving....and I don't like the top row.  I mostly used pen and watercolor pencils and a few markers....and some gray text to collage the gazebo parts.  

But you know what my favorite part of my series is....this little pile of rocks. Do you remember what I said? You never know when you're going to need a little round shape." 

If you give MaryAnn a cleaning project....magic can happen.

Time for a cookie.  😉