Holey Moley

I've been wanting to do something fun with hole reinforcers.  I started by stamping designs in black ink. 

 Then I sponged on different colors of stamp pad ink. That's all there is to it.  Quick and easy.

 Or so I thought.  I seem to have taken up permanent residence in the Land of Oblivion.  In the picture below, notice that the sheet on the left has no hole reinforcers on it.  That's because they are on the reverse side of that sheet.  How I could have been so oblivious to stamp and sponge the whole sheet without noticing that is beyond me.  But when I realized it, I just turned it over and repeated it all over again.  But you know, once I have used up the reinforcers, that back side of the sheet with all those holes would make a nice embellishment.

 As will my scrap paper where I worked, with all those dots. 

The Land of Oblivion provides lots of happy accidents as a bonus to its residents.

When Good Owls Go Bad

A new issue of Cloth Paper Scissors had a technique for making owls, where you draw the shape with water, then use the dropper of a bottle of acrylic ink to put the color in the water.  The technique for last week's DLP journal was acrylics, so I thought I would try this. 

One of the main adjustments for this journal for me is that it is such a large size.  So I wanted to practice making a large owl in another journal.  I did pretty much everything wrong.  I didn't use enough water, so when I dropped in the color, it didn't do much of anything.  Plus, I forgot to draw in the owl ears with water, so I had to go back and put some in. 

The whole thing ended up looking pretty bizarre.  I can't decide if this looks like Eddie Munster, or a Russian orthodox priest.  Either way, every time I walk by it, it cracks me up.  It's so large, I can't avoid looking at it.  So I guess it wasn't wasted effort after all!!

I get it now....

Friday, I headed up the road to have an art day with my friend Gaye.  I was about halfway there when she called my cell phone to say there was a change of plans.  We met at another location, she picked me up, and we went to a yard sale.  I have mentioned before that Gaye is some kind of yard sale guru who can find the most amazing things.  Where I live, I have stopped going to yard sales because I hardly ever find anything worth getting up early for on my day off!  This particular sale was held at the house where Gaye grew up, so it had special meaning for her already.  Plus, they had some pretty fun stuff and great prices.

I get it now, why she is willing to get up early, endure the heat or rain or whatever it is doing that day... because I got all this for $4.   Art supplies, red envelope with someone's class notes and drawings from an art history class from 1952, an old Japanese/American newspaper (Chicago Shimpo), what appears to be a block printing kit, and a button.

Lots of fun stuff to play with later, for sure.

Then we went back to Gaye's where we played with pan pastels, doing all kinds of things they were not supposed to do!  I love playing in the experimental art laboratory.  I highly recommend it!

Commitment Anxiety

I'm not sure what my problem is with this journal page I've started.  I know what I want to do and generally how I want to do it.  But for some reason, I'm having trouble gluing the parts down!

I started by putting some painters tape down the center of the page, then used a palette knife to place a smooth layer of white gesso on the left.  I pressed an old book page onto the gesso, rubbed it down, then tore it off before it could dry completely, leaving some reversed text there.

I then took a magazine page with a face on it, and traced part of the face on tracing paper.

I cut the magazine page in half but have not glued it to the journal page yet.

The tracing paper part of the face will go over the text.

What I plan to do is paint some details on the back of the tracing paper before gluing it down, and will paint more on the top of the tracing paper once it is glued. But for some reason, I'm having trouble thinking through the negative and positive, the reverse painting, etc.  I think I'm intimidated by the eye.  I'm not very good with painting eyes.  Don't be surprised if she ends with with a flower over her eye, or a patch!

 

Maybe I'm just thinking too much...

 

Water Birds

Instructions:
1.  Spray water through stencils.
2.  Use brush to place watercolor into the water puddles made by stencils.
3.  Don't worry if the water runs and makes things look weird.

4.  Add more stencil design in the same manner.

5.  Use inkpad and sponge to add more stencil design in the background.

6.  Put aside while you try to figure out what the heck to do next.

Floundering in my Journal

I think it's time I say it out loud.  I am a Journal Addict, and I may need an intervention.  Just when I think I've got too many journals going already but it's manageable, I accidentally started another one. I swear, it WAS an accident.

When those Strathmore visual journals came out, I bought two at Michael's (watercolor and mixed media).  Being wary of hyped up products, I got the smaller 5 x 7 sizes, in case I didn't like them. Well, I did like them, and have worked in both off and on over the past couple of years, trying out techniques and making color charts on the pages.  I've been wanting to go to a larger size, but for some reason my Michael's doesn't carry these anymore, in any size.  They are pushing the next best whatever hyped up new stuff instead.

So, in ordering my grid journal for an online class and running across other journals on sale, I ended up ordering two 9x12 Strathmore journals (again, I had to get one of each--watercolor and mixed media), you know, for later.  That's how I ended up making the stars & stripes page in my last post.  I was anxious to work on a 9x12 size to see how I liked it.  I liked it so much, I played some more in it with what you'll see below, thus being now fully committed to another journal playground where I'll try out new techniques.

That (above) is the long version.  The short version is:  "Hey, look what I did."  (below)

This technique is based somewhat on Dina Wakley's re-inker background project in her book.  She squirted circles using bottles of re-inker ink.  I was too lazy to dig out re-inkers.  I had my sprays nearby, and unscrewed the cap to make cirles with the stem of the sprayer thing.

After using two colors for the circles, I spritzed those with water, then dipped the sprayer stem from a darker blue spray into the wet ink for just a touch of extra color.  When this was close to being dry, I could tell I didn't care for it too much.  And it looked nothing like hers.  I think maybe the squirt bottle gives way more ink than the sprayer stem, looking much brighter.  Plus, my circles may have dried too much before being sprayed with water because I was busy getting my camera and taking pictures.  

So I repeated the first part, making more circles over the first, and sprayed with a little less water this time, trying not to dilute the color as much as I had the first time.

I'm still not too crazy about the background, but I went on to the next step anyway, which is to use molding paste and a stencil to add more design.  Here, I went my own way again.  Whenever I use any kind of texture medium like molding paste, I'm never happy with that white stuff sitting on the page.  Even when I try to color it, I'm not happy with it.  So this time, I put some of the paste in a bowl, sprayed some Dylusions orange onto it and mixed it a little before I spread it through the stencil.  I do like this better.  Plus, since I didn't mix it completely, some of the white paste shows in places, giving it a marbled effect.

There are more steps to this process, more things to add to the page.  But I haven't gotten that far yet.  For now, I'm just floundering and wondering what to do next...

Stars and Stripes

Happy Birthday, America.

In your honor, I present my journal page of Stars and Stripes

Technique used: gesso on page, vintage ledger paper glued down, sprays and stencils added, torn red scrapbook paper for stripes, cut out stars from black dot scrapbook paper, black pen for scribbling. 

Verbs

Spray.... Stand... Drip... Dry... Admire....

 



I have multiple projects going most of the time.  This is something I played with last month - still trying out spray inks!  I saw some Dylusion inks on sale and bought a couple colors, then bought a few more bottles at Stampaway when I ran across them.  They are such vibrant colors and they spray really well.  I think these are my new favorite spray inks.  (No affiliation, yada yada yada...)

The first and last pictures are done with black and blue inks.  The middle two are brown and blue.  I sprayed heavy layers and stood the journal up to let it drip.  Now these pages are just waiting for the next step (whatever that may turn out to be!)

These inks are from Dyan Reaveley, and I used her techniques.  This last one, I used a paint brush dipped in water to draw leaves - the water removes the ink from the page, leaving that part whiter.  I experimented using black and then white to outline the leaves and make vines.  Not sure which I like the most.  These pictures are really dark, but the pages in person are very bright and vibrant.  

 

To see Dyan's video, go here.

Ready for my close-up

I had to get away from the postal book and paint something.  I have been re-visiting some books and articles on texture projects, and I think this two-page spread probably has ideas from several places.  I know it started with gesso on the pages, with scribbling into the gesso before it dried.  Next came layers of paint, some circles, number stencils, more scribbling, and collage.  The postage stamp has a quote by Abraham Lincoln, and that's the quote I used on the page.  It was done quickly and I'm not that happy with my lettering, but this is a journal for play.  Emphasis on play, not perfection.

My favorite thing is to isolate sections of the pages for close-ups.  I love seeing the close-up detail on my computer screen, and I sometimes use these pictures for screensavers.  Of course, that close-up also magnifies imperfections that I don't want to see, but mostly it helps me remember (temporarily) that I did something I was fairly happy with.

The Dark Side

Today's Adventures in Texture takes us to the use of gesso and a rubber stamp.  This journal page started out bright and red, but as time went on, it ended up kind of dark. 

I painted a double page spread with red acrylic paint and let that dry.  Then I swiped some clear gesso down one side of one page.  I let that dry somewhat (about 15 minutes because I'm impatient, but I should have waited about 10 minutes longer). 

 Then I pressed a rubber stamp into the gesso.  Since my stamp is just a piece of rubber and not mounted on wood or cushion, I immediately put the stamp in water so the gesso would not dry on it.  The gesso then needs time to dry completely on the page.

I then painted over the gesso impression as well as the rest of the two pages with some brown acrylic ink.  The last thing I added was black, applied with a rubber stamp pad around the edges of the pages and over the gesso impression. 

Yep, I've gone over to the dark side on this one, and I like the grungy-ness.

Text-ured Skin

I have been going in a hundred directions all of a sudden.  Similar to what I do every spring and fall.  I think it's because the heat wave has gone away and days are crisp and happy, much more conducive to making art.

After I made rusty skins, the next day I made skins from pages of old books.  I figured the print was more likely to come off the page on older books.  And I knew I'd have to use the skins with the lettering backwards, but that didn't bother me.  I put them on cardboard to dry, put them up high so they were out of my way, and promptly forgot about them.  It was a nice surprise to stumble across them a day or so later!

I think I'll be able to find a place to use these in the future.  I should be able to use them either frontwards or backwards, although I do wish I'd made a couple of them thinner.  Like the rust skins, these were made by spreading soft gel medium, then letting the medium dry.  When they were pulled off the page, of course a lot of paper came with it, so I soaked them in a bowl of water, then rubbed off the paper with my fingers.


I also did some journaling on the page I showed earlier.  No special plans for that page, just some random stuff I came across!

Rusty Skin

I have rusty skin.  And I'm perfectly fine with that.
I picked up a new book not long ago, and it has a lot of interesting techniques to try.  There is one section about making "skins".  I'm familiar with spreading acrylic paint, letting it dry, then peeling it off to use for a collage element.

But I was intrigued with possibly making a rusty skin by spreading soft gel medium over a rusty object.  I got my rusty object (if you've read this blog from the beginning, you might recognize this object which I found in the road in front of my house once.  My guess is that it is an old tractor foot pedal.)  I spread the medium on the back side and waited for it to dry (about 5 hours, with the help of a fan blowing on it).  I liked seeing veins of rust showing through as it dried.

When I finally peeled it off, I was a little disappointed that it was mostly black from the blacker parts of the metal, not the pretty rusty brown.  But it IS a soft, flexible, usable skin, as the book promised.

I wanted to try again for the perfect rusty color, and spread a thinner layer on the other side of the object.  It was still drying when I took pictures, so I don't have the finished skin, but I don't think it will be what I am looking for either.  I'm sure I'll try this again though.  I just have to find the right rusty objects!

While waiting for things to dry, I spied my journal on the table where I had stamped with wallpaper last week.  I decided to put masking tape on the pages, sponge color around the tape, then peel off the tape.  I am seeing some great places for journaling on these pages!

I like having a lot of projects on the back burner.  But I think I'm going to need a bigger stove, with a lot more burners!

(Forgot to mention the book that has the rust technique.  It is Surface Treatment Workshop by McElroy and Wilson.  I was so taken with all the techniques that fill this book, I paid full price at the bookstore, rather than waiting to order from amazon!)