I’m a big fan of experimenting with a variety of materials in my sketchbooks and art journaling. For me, learning how a materials is expressive is part of the journey of making art.

Every tool has it’s own mark and how the artist uses that tool is how it can become an expressive tool.

For this exercise I grabbed 4 random tools off my messy work surface: pencil, fat paint marker (15mm), brush tip marker, and a bold 1.0mm Uniball 207 black gel pen. I then headed over to EarthsWorld on instagram and decided to draw this woman 4 times.

Here are the spreads in my sketchbook. Each one is unique and as artists we can use the marks our tools make to capture different feelings and looks in our art. 

In my opinion the pencil feels unfinished as a sketch. It’s loose and lacks depth.

The black thick paint marker is bold and graphic. It lacks the detail of the pencil and finer materials but it has punch that would allow it to stand out on a brightly colored background, where the pencil would wash away. The thick black paint marker is used on it’s corners and edges to get a variety of lines, not just a simple flat black line.

The brush tip marker is purple, and it layers. So there are darker areas of purple and lighter areas. It has the punchiness of the black but more depth to the darker areas. It’s less flattened. If the marker were gray it would stand out on a lot of colored backgrounds. The brush tip gives the image a softness that the thick black paint marker lacks. There are more details here too.

Finally (for this experiment) I used that bold Uniball 207 gel pen. Line many pens the line is a single width (though with experience I can tell you that if I get the right angle on the pen, I can get a thinner scratchy line that is broken up) The amount of detail possible with a pen like this is pretty unmatched, though to be fair I was not looking for perfect detail here, merely to capture SOME of the potential of a pen line. You can layer and cross hatch and get some remarkable details with a gel pen.

I think that using a combo of materials really unlocks mood and feeling when it relates to the look of a pen or marker or pencil. It’s worth noting here that the paper used can really change how a material looks and we respond to it. For instance paint markers on rough paper look a lot different than they do on this pretty smooth paper. Pencil looks different on rougher or colored papers. Some pens won’t make much of a marker on rough paper.

Materials need to match one another but also the mood you are attempting to explore.

When it comes to making art, charcoal is a classic for many reasons. It’s dark and black and feels pretty awesome to draw with. There are different types of charcoal- willow/vine, stick, compressed.

Willow is exactly what it says, thin willow twigs are carbonized. It’s the softest and grayest of the charcoal. It’s used for under drawings for paintings and figure studies.

Vine is also like willow, exactly what is says it is. It’s pieces of vines, usually grape, that is carbonized. It’s also extremely soft and pale.

Stick is a harder wood, usually thin sticks that have been carbonized. This is generally darker and harder than vine and willow charcoal.

Compressed charcoal is the most complicated charcoal. It’s a harder material carbonized and then turned to a fine powder. This is then  mixed with a binder and compressed into stick form. This is the darkest of the charcoals offered and can be sold is various degrees of hardness much like a regular pencil.

Charcoal can be made by the artist (that means you!) pretty easily and inexpensively if you have access to a few things- a fire pit, grill, or fireplace. You will also need a tin of some sort.

If you have a dollar tree near you they have several snacks available in tins or they sell tins that work perfectly for this purpose. In the holiday section they sell good sized metal tins that are decorated for the holidays they are available in 2 sizes and hold a lot of material in a good length. In the snack section they have a tin of rolled wafer cookies that is a great size for making willow and vine charcoal. They also have butter cookie tins that are great for making charcoal out of smaller materials or oddly shaped materials. In the office supply and back to school supply section they often sell metal pencil boxes that are great for making charcoal, however they don’t hold as much as the other tins mentioned.

I am using small tea tins that hold about a half pint of materials.

Please note that the initial burning process will burn off the paint and lacquer on these tins and will smell terrible. It is best to do the initial burn outside. The tins will be ruined after this process and can only be used for making charcoal.

For each type of tin you’ll need to prep your materials to fit. This means chopping things down to size and packing them into the tin. I try to pack as much as I can into the tin so I get the most bang for my buck. In this case the buck is time and effort. The packing of the tin is the most amount of effort. Even that with kitchen shears or garden trimmers can be pretty low effort.

For the tins I’ve mentioned here, the lids have a loose but snug fit, this is perfect. It allows the gases to escape but doesn’t allow the flames into the tin. If you have something with a lid that is more snug, like a paint can, you will need to poke a hole in the top.

For willow, wine, and stick charcoal you may wish to prepare the sticks and twigs before carbonizing. Older bark will form a hard layer of charcoal that is much harder and darker than the inner parts of the sticks and twigs. Buds and offshoots will also form very hard areas inside the final charcoal and will cause issues like cracks and breaks when drawing. Those areas can be so hard that they can damage paper.

If the lids are too loose you’ll need to use wire to keep them on. I’ve seen a few instructions where people use screws to hold lids in place.

Once you have your tin packed. Place it into the fire. I generally put mine into the coals and then build up and around it. Then I wait.

​If you heat your home with a wood furnace you can place the tin in the furnace and go about your day. This is what I do. I load a tin up, place it in the burn chamber, and either go to bed or go to work.

Depending on your fire situation and the size of the tin and the size of the materials you are carbonizing the time for the contents to carbonize can vary. A minimum is 30 minutes over a hot fire. I generally put my stuff in the fire and leave it for hours. The longer you can wait the better.

When you think your stuff might be ready get some tongs and get it out of the fire and outside. Let it cool off before opening. If everything isn’t fully black, reseal and put it back into the fire. If it’s all black, yay!

Once cool, open it up and reveal your charcoal. YAY!

​What you have carbonized will determine how you can use it. If you have carbonized willow, vine or sticks you can really use it right away. For other materials, you would need to figure out how you want to use it.

I am carbonizing coffee grounds. This is already a pretty fine powder but I grind it down further and then mix it with gum arabic and methyl cellulose (wheat starch based binder and glue) to make paint and sticks for drawing. I’m also using it to color some papercrete and as an additive for my recycled paper briquettes.

I have detailed this before but it is hard to get carbonized coffee grounds down to a fine enough powder to make watercolors or other paints. In my opinion lamp black is another better and easier alternative. That said, it works well for making charcoal sticks and powder for drawing. It is also really great for adding to papercrete as an additive or colorant.

It is of course important to note that when you are carbonizing, the materials push out gases that are flammable, and don’t smell great, and are probably toxic. Generally when I’m making charcoal it’s in a sealed burn chamber that exhausts to outside. Or in a open air firepit where the air is constantly moving and not being trapped. Do this at your own discretion and use caution and care for your own safety.

Are solidly in the meh category. Unlike paper mâché clay it’s less sticky and really does require a mold. It’s less sculpt-able and more just mash it and forget it. I’m going to try the recipe that contains PVA (Elmer’s) glue and see if that makes a difference in how I can sculpt it.

All that to say that the pieces I did mold are VERY VERY interesting and they aren’t even fully cured. They are still at about 50% moisture content. I really like the look of concrete and I’m interested in how the paper shreds interact and look in the concrete. There are some fibers that are fully encased but not all.

Interesting. Also the mix of concrete with paper is extremely heavy. Much heavier than the paper mâché clay.

The kind of molding I’m interested in, mostly are what I have always called “slump” molds, or molds that are on the inside of the piece. Rather than a more traditional style where the clay goes inside the mold.

Around 12 years ago I got sucked into the world of paper mâché clay and spent about a year delving deep into making pottery out of it. I made small pots, large pots, weird little organizer trays and assorted things out of it. It’s great for display pieces but not great for anything that needs to hold water. It’s wonderful for interior display pieces, but not for anything that you’d want to put outside.

There are many recipes and detailed instructions on how to make it, so I won’t delve into it here, that’s not what this post is about.

A few years back I kept having issues with my identity stolen and we saw folx swiping stuff out of our recycling bin. So we bought a shredder and started to shred all the credit card offers that arrived. This correlated with less stolen identity issues. But it left us with another problem, and one we didn’t know about for awhile.

We had been bagging up the shredded paper and putting it into our recycle bin, not knowing this is a major no no in our area. Shredded paper is not recyclable apparently the machines they use to sort out the paper but open the shred and blow them everywhere. It makes a huge mess and they ask that you don’t put it into the recycling. Instead we’re asked to put it into curbside compost, which is an alternative program the home owner has to pay to be in. It is also pretty expensive in our area. So I’m left with what to do with the shredded paper.

In the past I have used it in my compost bin, but I haven’t been composting and I am also generating more than should go into a compost bin. I have also used it as a weed block- it works surprisingly well under mulch. These two uses have been my primary manner of reuse. But I don’t have space to store it for a whole winter and thought I’d give some other manners of reuse a try.

First up was a deep dive into paper pulp briquettes and a mix of paper pulp and spent coffee grounds. These are actually pretty nice and work pretty well in my charcoal grill and pellet stove. But honestly they are a huge amount of work for not a lot of burn output. That said they are good for the solo stove and my mini twig stove. If you want to read more about this area of my recent time suck head over to my weird stuff/obsessions/ADHD hyperfixation blog. It’s where I detail stuff that doesn’t fit here or Less is More Healthy.

Anyway, after making a hundred or so paper briquettes I thought about my experience with making paper mâché clay and the off shoot- papercrete. There are a lot of versions of papercrete but the one I’m most interested in is the sort that would allow me to make waterproof pots that I could use outside for planting or whatever. Papercrete is the answer. It’s really pretty (if you like the look of concrete) but also very sturdy and water proof or resistant to the point that people make planters out of it and it stands up. There are also industrial versions of it.

Anyway I’ve got several buckets of pulp breaking down in my basement getting ready for me to make some pots out of papercrete.
Here is a very good recipe and instructions on how to make the papercrete. Her whole channel, though not updated in a long time is really great.

And of course is Jonni Good’s weatherproof paper mache clay recipe. She’s the OG when it comes to paper mache clay and has a variety of recipes for making the stuff, but her recipe uses white glue or PVA glue as a component which I don’t really see in a lot of papercrete recipes.

Yes, I am continuing my obsession with marks and mark making. I’ve been diving back into printmaking as the kids I work with this year are open to the various manners of printing in a way they weren’t last year.* So I’m back to trash printmaking- specifically tetrapak or the stuff that soy and nut milk cartons** are made of. Back in the 90s and early 00s the material was billed as “easily recyclable” and now we’ve learned that it really isn’t, and worse yet, is not accepted in many US recycling programs. I’m also exploring a variety of cartons.

Anyway, it makes a lovely surface for making prints. I have detailed this before, so I won’t rehash too much of what I have already written.

I have used old school standard etching needles, various metal working tools, a machinist’s scribe (a fave), needles in pencils, various awls, and most recently a rotary tool.This was made with a standard etching needle.

Each tip for the rotary tool give a different mark and each tool acts a bit differently on the various tetrapack and other carton materials.

I really like the carton materials for a whole variety of reasons but the largest is the variety of marks that the material is capable of holding. From super fine to wide bold lines it’s really cool to see what the materials can do with all the tools.

I’ve got to get some more photos of the prints and tools, but the rotary tool I’m using is the Fanttick F2 Master. Honestly any of the cheap rotary tools on ‘zon or other places would work as well***. I’ve used the Harbor Freight $10 rotary tool and it worked well until I used it for… stuff it wasn’t intended for and I broke it. But for $10 if I had treated it better, it would have been perfectly fine and would still be working. Probably.

I would suggest that for this kind of work, having something light is more beneficial over power. You don’t need a lot of torque to cut through thin plastic, foil, and card. I’ll get more into this in another post.

More on these tools and marks later.

*My studio and where I work work in a very different manner from a school. Our groups are therapeutic and require that materials and methods match the needs of the youth attending. Last year I’d planned on having a year of printing but printing can be a bit rigid. The methods for inking must be followed or prints don’t look exactly like what we want and that leads to frustration and disappointment. I chose to switch things up and move in a different direction.

** Also broths, juice boxes, and some tomatoes.

***I went with Fanttick because I followed a link from a creator I follow and they seem to have decent customer service, so if it dies too soon I have maybe get a replacement.

This rant has been brewing for about a year, and it hit a boiling point last week when I attended a meeting where the first half was as advertised and the last half of the meeting was a pro-AI presentation from my alma mater. The presentation was not on the meeting invite and was required as my part in a program I’m involved in for work. It is loosely art related but mostly related to my being an art therapist.

I’m going to start this out by stating that I’m not totally against AI. I’m in favor of it’s use for editing and cleaning up written work. I’m not in favor of using it to create new work, written or art based, whole cloth.

My ethical struggles begin with how the MLM are trained- on blog posts, books, and writing stolen from the authors to train the AI. Art pulled from images shared online to train the AI. None of it with credit.

My struggles continue with how AI data centers are set up up in small rural communities under the guise of creating jobs. While the construction of the data centers gives a few temporary jobs there are few jobs as the centers are not maintained by a local person. These data centers suck energy resources and use water to cool them. The ecological impact is immense. The energy costs to the community increase drastically.

The ethical struggles are continued through my concerns for data privacy. I get several alerts about data breaches per year. My data has been stolen from my credit card company, Home Depot, Meta, my former health insurance company(s), and many other places. The breach from the health insurance companies is the most concerning. In that breach my personal identifying information was stolen as well as a great deal of my health information. Sure we got a pay out, something like $200, but that doesn’t help the fact that my very private information is now out there. *waves at the air*

So I’m not totally anti-AI. But I also don’t know that there is a truly ethical way of using it. I use it to soften the tone of my emails since I’ve been told that I’m too direct in my online communication. I have used Grammarly and Hemmingway to edit my writing. I believe it has it’s use in making some things go faster and more easily. But I struggle with all the aforementioned information. I struggle knowing that my writing would be labeled as AI in a college class. College writing gets pushed through an AI detector that uses AI to check for AI. These AI detectors are trained on AI that was trained on my writing (and yours if you’ve published anything online). I’ve read account by student who swear that they didn’t sue AI getting flagged for use of AI when the issue is that they have a great vocabulary and are good writers. I’ve spoken with students who have told me that they purposefully put grammatical and spelling errors into their writing so that their essays are not picked up by the AI detector, and they don’t even know if that works or not.

Know that when you read my writing, it’s all my work. It’s also been harvested by at least on AI MLM. I know this because I had several link backs to my blog from ChatGPT. It’s clear someone asked for sources from ChatGPT and followed a bunch of links back to my blog. I’d always assumed that Comfortable Shoes Studio would have been farmed, after all it’s been online since 2003? and the current version of it dates back to at LEAST 2006. That’s a lot of writing.

Part of the reason I was so heated about the pro-AI presentation by my alma mater was their stance on technology when I attended (2013 to 2016 I went back to school at 35). Many of my professors were extremely anti technology. Anti the use of tablets for drawing. When I floated my thesis topic- the use of online tools for art therapy with a heavy focus on accessibility for rural and disabled people it was met with extreme negativity. I was dissuaded from the topic. My thesis professor had extreme issues using technology herself and struggled to get edits back to me in a way I could access. Eventually I was handed off to the dean for editing help and that was the first professor at my grad program who was positive about my topic.

As part of the presentation I sat through several people mentioned all of the concerns I outlined above. We were met with the statement, “Well the students are already using it.” One of the presenters had the gall to bring up accessibility for rural and disabled people and the use of AI therapists. Honestly, this probably angered me the most. As someone who grew up in an extremely rural area, with rampant poverty around me, access to therapy and medical care is hard. But I would argue that everyone, disabled or rural, deserve access to the best medical and psychological care. Frankly, AI ain’t it. AI isn’t even close.

I was shocked. Especially with the recent articles coming out about AI offering up the worst psychological information to teenagers. There are already lawsuits about these topics. But these people want to offer up the very worst in health care to rural and disabled people.

/rant

I have been attempting to keep my sketches with the walnut ink larger sized- 12×18 on that old Strathmore 400 drawing paper. Also, I just want to note that I still really love that 400 series drawing paper and will be sad when it runs out. I have been working through my photos that I took this summer and have been making multiple sketches of the same subject.

In these sketches I have been playing with different brushes, adding in different media, and loads of layers. Each brush leaves a different mark on the page as it’s loaded and unloaded with the walnut ink. I’ve been adding in a quick layer of various colors of Inktense. The blue and black shades work the best. I tried green and it wasn’t a great combo with the warm brown. Each tool has a mark of it’s own- each brush looks different on the page. The inktense leaves a pencil like mark that lifts and blends with the ink. The chalk pastels leave a broken line or can be smudged out to give distance and softness in areas as needed.

With an image that has just a few colors like these the marks really make the image work.

you might have noticed that I have been drawing the same images over and over again. each has subtle shifts in the composition- more darks in some areas, more contrast in others, more light here and there. The textures throughout are different and different base colors added and used.

Despite thinking the green does not work well with the brown walnut ink, I think that composition (image one in this post) works the best. The contrast works best. The textures are varied and the small figure is right. I also like how I used the chalk on top.

Apology for the slow posting these last few weeks. I have been fighting off the lurgy that has plagued the office some the middle of September and I believe that this weekend I’m effectively sleeping it off. I really wish folx would not come to work sick. (No it’s not covid, I have tested repeatedly to a negative, also at this point, allergy meds aren’t kicking it.)