I woke today thinking of Australia … thinking of Barry and Fiona, and the ripples of peace they send out to the world … thinking of Mo, who dreams of a world where love is the answer …

Thinking of Australia burning …

The #crayonuary30 challenge, done with beeswax crayon bricks, was a test to see how I might hand-draw circles using the edge of each crayon …

I also wanted to see how the various colors interacted, and fought at times with keeping a smooth line as the edges caught on previously laid arcs of pigment.

And in the end, though I originally envisioned it as the world sending cooling thoughts of water to quench Australia’s droughted land, what I also saw was Earth and Sun, with Earth itself. radiating heat …

Then I was on to Acey’s Day 5 prompt: a diagonal line, a conversation.

Finding rainfall and seasonal temperature maps in the World Atlas, I was struck by the colors trending from cool to warm to hot …

Then by a book cover with an image of time, narrowing …

And finally, a second book cover with darkness falling …

I commented elsewhere that I fear Australia is much like the canary in the mine … and can’t help wondering if humankind will wake in time to save our world, or if it is already too late.

Taking on two month-long challenges in crayon and collage might have been a bit much, but I must say I’m having a lot of fun!

Yesterday I tore a plain square of book cover and pasted down my three hand-cut circles, completing Collage Challenge #1 in a less-is-more sorta way …

Next I tackled Challenge #2, taking two snapshots from many years ago, one left whole and the other cut into 1×1 inch squares. I proceeded to pencil a grid onto the back of a book cover, which gave me a much deeper appreciation of Agnes Martin’s 6×6 foot gridded canvases …

Then I took a page out of Ellsworth Kelly’s book (metaphorically speaking), and randomly pasted down the photo squares to complete the challenge …

Taking a break I picked up a library book to read …

which fell open to this page …

Well, that definitely left me primed for this morning’s crayon session …

Soon my crayons were scooting around Iowa like Democratic candidates and I began to notice the names of the counties were whispering stories in my ear …

people, places and things … associations triggered and then written. Note to self: crayons are not great for writing words, but process, not product was the goal …

Warmed up, I tackled Acey’s collage challenge #3: taking one large image and adding three smaller elements. What better than Gruene Hall and Lone Star beer caps?

But hmmm … copyright infringement loomed large as I read the notice across the top of the George Boutwell calendar page. So I ended up taking the rejected book cover from the other day and adding three Lone Star “pentacles” …

Here’s the cloth-coated back, trimmed with my handy corner clipper (a long-ago indulgence that I just happened to have in my craft pantry). But notice those loose threads around the edges … gonna have to work on that …

Last (I promise), I put it all into my first-ever art journal (a totally unexpected thing that just seemed to make sense with two daily challenges in the works) …

Now I can’t wait for tomorrow!