Keeper of the Secrets

  Here is the mask I made in art class; it's all painted now. I think I made it a little bit scarier than I had originally intended.... but since it is my first attempt I am okay with it. I can improve more next time. I Hope you like it!  -Hugs, Heidi

The "Natural" side

The side with the Native American embellishments

"Keeper of the secrets"

My new little bear Art

 Hi everyone! It has been a good and a bad day for me. I went to the doctors today and found out some not so great news and I got a lot of blood drawn. I felt pretty sick after I came home so I decided to just sit in my chair and sew. Finishing this little bear definitely made me feel a lot better, I have worked so hard to get him done before Christmas! Little Art is made of synthetic imported fabric and filled with steel shot. He has
realistic eyes, a needle felted face, sculpted toes, and wired arms. He is only 5 inches tall, and his nose has been modge podged, sanded, and painted.. a lot of work went into this little dude! I named him Art since I've been working on him in my art class at school. He is for my grandmother for Christmas... I hope that she likes him and that you do too! :)  Thank you for looking and happy holidays!
 - Love Heidi

 

 

Over the summer my Grammy gave me some little props I could use with my bears. I think this bird looks great with Art. Thank you Grammy Nancy! :)

 

Tired

 Right now I am adding little finishing touches to the face, I sealed the nose, sanded it,painted it and I added a Santa hat and a scarf. I tried attaching little claws to the foot and I think I like it. I am going to make these permanent and do the other feet the same way. I still am not sure if I should shade the toes... I am afraid of messing up and ruining the entire bear. It's so risky when you've spent hours on everything else and I think that I would be to tired to restart. I had five and a half concerts this weekend all back to back four hours each... I have gotten pretty much no sleep and I've been waking up before the sun has even risen to go and perform. I was hoping to finish the bear this weekend but it turned out to be just impossible. Hopefully I can get him done before exams start on Friday.

   Happy Holidays! - Heidi

I really should invest in a better camera. I'm still using my phone to take pictures

 and I don't think it does this bears face any justice.

This is the first foot I finished so I signed my name on the side. Three more to go.

A little felted face

 I always like to take pictures of my work along the way. It is very helpful to look back on something I did right, that way I know exactly what I did and I can duplicate it again. The old saying is right, "A picture can tell a thousand words."

Just a quick update

   Can you believe that Thanksgiving has already passed and that Winter break is only in three more weeks? I really am enjoying seeing all the Holiday decorations go up, but at the same time things are getting a little bit more stressful! Last week I ordered a bunch of tiny teddy bear eyes, little disks, cotter pins, clay, and a few more fun surprises. I have been working on a couple bears and experimenting a lot with new ideas, techniques and materials; but it really is time that I get to work on everyones Christmas gifts. Since I have had nothing to do this week or the next in my art class (I am waiting for the bear mask to get fired in the kiln and I am two projects ahead of the class) I have just been sketching up ideas for Christmas bears. I cannot wait for the supplies to arrive and finally get started; just hope that I can get everything finished in time. At least I am done with all of the tedious and time consuming college applications. And it looks like all that work is finally starting to pay off! Yesterday I recieved my first college acceptance letter in the mail! It really is a good feeling to know that I am on the right track.
 - Heidi

Some new realisitc looking eyes I ordered

... these things are really cool!!

My kitty Autumn couldn't figure out why we were taking away

all of her pumpkins : )

Cover your eyes, its a mask!

 Hi everyone! It has been a while since I actually sat down and wrote, but things are finally starting to slow down as Thanksgiving break rolls on through. I've been keeping busy with art shows and more projects to work on; my dragon was displayed in the "Great day in the country" fair here in my home town. I was very excited about seeing my art work in a show, along with many others from around the county... but to my disappointment someone broke my dragon. I am going to invest in some serious heavy duty super glue this weekend and try to fix what was damaged. Other than this I have been working hard for my All-County flute auditions which I had on Thursday. I did very well, probably the best I have ever done .. I think it was because I did not get nervous. I find out if I made it into the band on Monday; either way I am happy to end my flute season on a "good note"! In my art class we have just begun a new project. My teacher told us to make a mask that we can either wear or put up for display on a wall. The mask is supposed to be an historical piece and we are to look at ancient masks as references. Since I am just a little bit (by a little bit I mean less than that) Cherokee Indian on my mom’s side I decided to look at some Native American masks. My very distant ancestors created masks that resembled the images of bears, wolves, buffalo and otters, and they were used to appease the animal spirits. They were often worn in dance ceremonies conducted before the hunt, to ensure that the hunt would be fruitful. The Native American people have always had a special place in their hearts for the bear. The bear represented a symbol of power, strength, learned humility, motherhood, teaching, healing and even dreaming. By Northwest Native American tradition, a bear that is killed by hunters is taken to the house of the tribe's chief and treated like a guest of honor. Eagle down is sprinkled on the bear as a welcoming gesture. Dances and prayers are made to the bear's soul in order to ensure that no harm would later come to the hunters. One of the most widely told Haida legends is that of the Bear Mother. She was a daughter of a tribe's chief who fell in love with and married a young handsome bear who was the nephew of a great bear chief. After the birth of twin bear cubs, the Bear Mother's brothers killed her bear husband during a hunt. As a result, the tribe agreed to use the bear as their crest which is how the bear clan started. This agreement maintained good relations between the bears and humans. The twin cubs, who had the ability to transform from bears to humans at will, became guardians of the land's people. The bear clan became one of the most respected of all Northwest Native American clans. The mask I am working on is going to be a mixture between ancient Native American works and current, I want to be sure to include a lot of the same style as the ancient people but at the same time I want it to be of my own work. Here are some pictures I’ve taken along the way, as well as some of the traditional Native American masks. I hope you enjoy them and Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

  - Heidi

                      
                        Here are some traditional Native American masks.

A painting by a Cherokee artist, it is called "Two Bears"

Here is my mask. Now that I have the shape I plan

on engraving some Native American looking designs 

on one half of the face and leaving the other side natural.

My art teacher always has us sketch out our design

before we actually start in clay.

Here is a penguin I made for fun to match the new snowy

background on my blog : ). He is only 2.54 centimeters tall,

holding a sled and chilling on my miniature easel.

Frozen in Fear

Here is the dragon I sculpted out of clay all painted now.

The lighting here isn't very good but I added snow flakes on the piece.

I am going to name it "Frozen in Fear"

The dragon next to my Fat cat sculpture I made in first grade.
This is encouraging for me :).

An Artichoke sponge holder I made for mom. No one knows what an artichoke is...

They are missing out. Seriously.

More art work!

Do you see the slug crawing onto the leaf?

The project was to make a building.

The little people in the corner are half an inch tall.

The whole project is about 15 inches long and 12 inches wide.

Trick or Treat!

  Autumn is my favorite time of the year, you can probably already tell this by the abundance of pumpkins and leaves decorating my blog. My birthday is on the 29th of October and my moms is right after on the 30th, and then of course comes Halloween! As you can imagine that whole week is an ongoing party; cake, good food, and family is definitely something to look forward to! I have only ever seen the trees change color once, and that was when I went to Pennsylvania in October a few years back. Sometimes I wish that it got cold enough in Florida... but at the same time I can imagine that the cold weather would become tiresome after a while. This year I am turning 18, which is supposedly a big change but just like the Florida trees I don't feel or think I look any different. Birthdays are generally not to big of a deal for me, so this year I will probably just go canoeing with my family on the Wekiva river to celebrate. There is nothing I enjoy more than getting out and paddling around in my little blue kayak. For my mothers birthday I made her a pumpkin sculpture that you can put a candle inside. I just finished it this week in my art class at school. My mom has always been such a great supporter of everything I do, especially my art. When I was younger she put me in so many sculpting and painting classes, and on the weekends we would spend time together making home made play dough and drawing bugs and animals we saw outside. Here are some pictures , hope you enjoy! And happy Halloween everyone!

  - Heidi

Tiger I drew for AP Lit, its an illustration to the poem

Tyger Tyger by William Blake.

Exploding frogs and other things

  It has been a difficult couple of weeks for me, which is why I haven't gotten around to update my blog lately. Nine weeks exams and the end of the school quarter are drawing near and I've been scrambling to get all of my homework done each night after swim and cross country practice. The only time that I've really had to relax is in my art 3D class, but unfortunately it only lasts an hour... which to me feels like five minutes. The past few weeks we worked on "Sea creatures and amphibians" , I was very happy with how my frog turned out, and I was looking forward to painting it once it came out of the kiln. The next day I walked into class I found my frog broken into little bits and pieces, I almost didn't recognize it. I talked to my teacher and evidently there was an air pocket in the lily pad and my poor frog must have blown up in the big oven. Although I was pretty upset I did find out some good news; the penguin pinch pot I made in class was going to be displayed at an art show near by. This surprised me, I honestly did not like my penguin pot after I had glazed it.. (the glaze is patchy in some spots where I didn't brush on enough, and some of the glaze smeared around the little details like the eyes and toes.) Maybe I am being to hard on myself, who knows. Either way I don't think it will look half that bad filled with Halloween candy :). Among other things I have been running a lot lately, this is my first year doing cross country and wow is it tiring. I finally got my 5k time down to a 24  (My PR was a 20 back when I was doing 12 mile swims out in the middle of the ocean and lakes) and right when I thought things were improving I started noticing a lot of pain in my right knee. A day before our big meet I tripped at practice and of course landed right on my injury and skidded a couple of feet. The next day I tried running in the meet anyways (not one of my best ideas) and I ended up barely finishing the race (I came in with a high 25. ) Yesterday I went to the doctor who believes that I might have sprained or torn my meniscus, and now I am not allowed to run or swim until I see an orthopedic. I am so upset about this, I was really looking forward to running in the nice new fall weather we have been having... but I guess on the bright side I now have more time to do college applications and work on my art projects.
   - Heidi

What the frog looked like before it exploded...

 (No sorry I didn't take an after shot)

A one inch tall clay tiger I made for fun at home. I am still working

on the panda bear as well but it is taking much longer than I expected.

The penguin pot with Mr. Tiger sitting in it.

Turtle Tutorial

Hello all!! Here is the turtle tutorial as I promised as well as some of the pictures from the wedding! Hope you enjoy... I tried to make the tutorial as straightforward as possible but if there are any questions please let me know :).

Use a bakeable clay, and a small sea shell

Break the clay in half, it should be a little larger than the shell and twice as thick

and then roll into a ball. Make sure that there are no cracks.

Begin to form the head by pinching and smoothing.

Use a small knife to cut the sides into arms

The end area you can pinch off into a tail, shape the arms and legs as you do this.

Then place the shell on top making sure that the clay goes in fairly deep

so that it will not fall off.

Add eyes with different colored clay and a smile, and then smooth out all cracks. 

Bake for however long

the clay instructions say. The shell stays on during the baking process.

And then add a thick base coat. You can then add other designs on your turtles shell.

Spray or paint on a gloss or acrylic sealer afterwards.

                                            The Wedding

Bride with all the bridesmaids and groomsmen

It rained just beforehand but turned out to be a beautiful day..

Me

The lovely table arrangements...

The cake