I'm now done with college. Given the two words sound so much alike, this is the perfect time to post some pictures of collages I have made.

Sadly, the second picture is the least fuzzy full picture view I have of this one.

The picture above is of the same piece, but it only shows a close-up of the middle.

Making things like this is one of the reasons I love Birds and Blooms magazine so much.

I made another collage with a blue theme, but I can't find any pictures of it right now.

- The Mongoose

Happy Easter Everyone!

I made these in Paint and used them as backgrounds for Easter e-mails my family sent out to all our relatives a few years back.

4AM kinda pictures

This is what happens when I make "art" at 4 AM.





All of these were made during late-night or all-night study sessions over the last two years.











This one I made in the dead of winter when the sun goes down at 4:30 PM and doesn't rise again until around 7AM. Suffice it to say a nightowl like myself doesn't see much daylight around that time of year.


I find this one makes me dizzy if I stare at it too long.


The last piece of crazy art:



All of these are done with oil pastel on cardstock paper and cardstock paper cut with a craft knife. Dimensions on all of them are 8 1/2 " by 11".

I think it looks a bit like a sprouting fern, what do you all think?

I saw a pretty scrolly design on an etched glass plate and then I had pretty scrolly designs floating around in my head until I couldn't take it any more and had to draw the designs sprouting in my brain.

At right is one of the designs I drew. I draw these straight from my head, no copying and no direct reference material.

Above and below are the same design only scanned into the computer, duplicated and flipped.

Thoughts comments and snide remarks are all welcome! Seriously, you don't have to like the random scribblings, but comments tell me that someone has looked at the blog :-D

Almost done

This still has a little work left on it but it's close enough to done to put it up on here.

This was one of those scribblings I keep beside my schoolwork when I'm studying, working on it breaks up the monotony and keeps the school work from becoming boring. This particular one took me though Physics and part of one of my education courses. A couple more weeks and I'll finally be done with the physics. Anything with math takes me forever to complete. I understand the math just fine, it just is painfully time consuming. This was an extended term distance ed course so I could work on my own schedule, that was nice, it meant I wasn't rushed.

A get well soon card

I made another version of this yesterday as a get well soon card for my pastor's wife. She just had surgery for gallstones. We're praying for a quick recovery.

Summers have names....

Mom and I tend to name our summers, for example, not last summer but the summer before we dubbed "summer of dahlias". There were dahlias at the state fair and we tried our hands at growing one of our own.

Of course, my brain has an odd sense of time and I constantly forget which summer earned which name. I'm pretty sure last summer ended up being summer of the fireflies though :-D

At right is a chalk pastel drawing that was inspired by the dahlias I saw at the fair that year.

Scanning it into the computer was tricky because the picture is double the size of my scanner so I had to take two scans and splice them together, also the peculiar way the chalk pastel reflects light that gives it such rich color causes the colors to come out blagh when scanned so I played around with the picture in a photo editor for a while to get it to look right on screen. I'm pleased with the final results.

Below I have photos I took of the dahlia mom and I grew.























I wonder what name this summer will earn?