Author Archives: leslie

Technique Tuesday: Grunge Glaze

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Last week I mentioned distressing and grunging a journal color wiht my grunge glaze,  so this week I’m going to tell you about my mix for what I call “Grunge Glaze.” It’s a special blend of colors to give me a perfectly abused and dirty look to any page. Here’s the  recipe:

  • 1 part Carbon Black
  • 1 part Burnt Sienna (Red Oxide would work too)
  • 1 dash Burnt Umber (this can be skipped or another color added to warm or cool the mix)
  • 2 parts gloss gel medium (add more if you want more transparency.) Use glaze medium if you want a fluid grunge glaze. I like my glazes thick so that I can have brush strokes show up as thicker layers of color.
  • 1 dash retarder (skip if you want it to dry fast, add more if you want it to dry more slowly.)
  • Put all of this in a jar with a lid and mix well. Adjust as needed.

I spread this on with a rag and rub it in and off as I want a heavier or lighter coat. It dries pretty quickly so I can layer it easily. A spritz of water before fully dried allows you to lift more off than with a dry rag.

Go forth and make glaze mixes and call them fun things.

I know I've harped on this time and time again (as far back as my participation in 21 Secrets) but you don't need to buy those premixed glazes. You can mix your own. This is just one example of a glaze you can mix with gel medium or glaze medium. Share recipes in the comments!

Supplies for travel

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Often times when I take a weekend trip I take all kinds of supplies, telling myself, “I’ll use this, this, and oh I should add that to my pack.” In the end I use little of what I brought. I’m taking a weekend trip pretty soon and while I pack my things I’m being a little more deliberate about what I pack. I’m packing my new gum tin watercolor set, along with one of my mini mint tin sets full of intense colors for a little added punch when absolutely needed.  I’m taking 1 regular brush (#6 round,) a couple of water brushes, a small assortment of drawing tools, my sketchbook, a watercolor sketchbook and a 40 ounce water bottle. To round this out I’m taking my fancy pants camera and my point and shoot.

Added to my travel bag will be my journal, laptop and my pogo printer.

In the past I strayed toward over packing art supplies. I’d leave my house with a pack full of acrylics, pastels, pencils, watercolors, and everything else; only to find that I was never able to find the time to use any of it. My choices were so overwhelming I’d not make any art.

In the end the most important thing is capturing those moments that are of interest. I suppose I should take what can capture things quickly and easily and forget the rest.

Make a Watercolor Tin

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I'm obsessed with making watercolor tins. I've been looking for more and more adaptable methods since I  made my first with medication blister packs. (I have a UStream about this.)

On my way home a few nights ago I had the brainstorm to try to make the pans out of moldable epoxy putty, like that Mighty Putty stuff. I have a bunch of tubes of that but can't find them so I stopped by Ocean State Job lot to look into their glue section. (They generally have a ton of weird glues.) If I hadn't found it I'd have headed to Home Depot. I found a tube of Elmer's Automotive Epoxy putty. You could also use Mighty Putty, Sugru, or JB Weld's Putty.

The key to this project is that you get MOLDABLE epoxy putty. The Elmer's has a working or open time of 2 minutes after it's fully kneaded together, which works for this project.

You cut a chunk off, knead it until it's fully mixed, roll a snake and then press it into place in your tin and then mold it into a wall. Keeping your hands damp through the process helped a lot.

Once the walls firm up you can trim them with a knife. I used a utility knife to trim the walls into a nice straight surface, well mostly. Partially hardened the putty carves pretty easily.

After I built all the walls I let it cure and then sprayed it with a kind of even coat of white spray paint. I also sprayed the outside with a little gray spray paint.

This little adventure cost me the $2.50 for the gum and $2.99 for the epoxy putty. If I were chewing the gum anyway (which I do) it's sort of an even sum thing. If you have a friend who chews gum or is a mint addict this could be even cheaper. I used approximately 1/3rd of the putty. A larger tin like an altoids tin would use more and a mini altoids tin less.

I made myself 6 areas for paint and a small mixing area. The wells are 3/4 a full pan of a half pan and a half (this will only make sense to people who have half pan watercolor sets.) Anyway pictures:

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Technique Tuesday: Planner Journal

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Awhile back I purchased a  planner* from gouletpens.com and I didn’t do anything with it. I snagged it for about $4 off their clearance rack because it was for the 2010 and 2011 school year. The pages while tough enough for a lot of use for I was planning I felt needed a little heavy duty treatment,  so I started gluing pages together, every other page. This gave me a very heavy weight page.

I then applied a coat of gesso and watercolor crayon to each left hand page. I used a soft brush to really blend the colors into the gesso. Each page has a soft tint of the watercolor crayon. I then used tape that I’d masked off painting (it's got random colors all over it) with to cover up dates and calendars on the right hand page, leaving me with a nice framed grid on the right hand page.

I cut no pages from the planner. I know it’s strange but I really like that stressed out thick spine look. I also plan on adding a lot of collage to the left page. The right page may get some collage but I plan on mainly writing on it.

The other thing about this journal? I’m drawing in it with sharpies and nothing else. It’s the reason I wanted to glue pages and gesso them, so that I wouldn’t get soak through.

So far the journal is a combination of collage, sketch and writing. I always work in spreads so this journal is really working well for that.

Here’s what a spread in the book looks like with no sketching, collage or writing.

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And here are a few finished pages:

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Art Adventure: Saugus Iron Works

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Yesterday I went to Saugus Iron Works with my good friend Jane for painting, photographing and sketching time. It was great. The day was hot and the scenery was great and I drank 40 ounces of water. Thankfully, I wore sun block, by the end of the day, Jane’s iPhone was giving off temperature warnings! Yikes!

When I first got there I wandered around snapping pictures for a good 30 minutes or so. One of the Rangers spotted me with my camera and we chatted for a few minutes and he asked me if I wanted to see the water wheel working, of course I did, so he got another Ranger and they opened up the water and I got to see the water wheel working. It was pretty cool. It was especially amazing to see that almost everything there was built of wood or stone. Meaning they worked the iron with a lot of wood, crazy stuff.

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I saw lots of  great stuff. Big ass wooden gears? Hell yes! Big white Great Egrets? Yup. A blast furnace with bellows that stand 10 feet high? Mhmm.

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It was funny that I would sit down and paint a picture of the river leading away from the buildings but I enjoyed that scene as well. I’ll post a scan of the paintings I did as well as some of the sketches from that day.

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All in all, Jane and I both agreed that this was a sight we’d be returning for many more sessions of drawing and sketching. If you are looking for a free thing to do with kids in a quiet spot not too far from civilization Saugus Iron Works is it.

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Review: The Artist’s Way (BOOK)

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I am seemingly one of the few artists (journalers) who is not in love with Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve read it, I’ve got it on my bookshelf, complete with the bookmark exactly where I left off. Sometimes I feel like I’m the only one who isn’t telling everyone else what a great book this is, recommending it every time someone I know hits a block.

It’s not that I don’t get it or that I don’t think it’s a wonderful book, it simply didn’t resonate with me. Sometimes I feel guilty that I’m just not that into TAW. Someone once told me that to follow TAW was a commitment, and I have to agree. There are groups online to help you get into TAW as well as a workbook, and at some community colleges you can take a course in TAW.

Reading TAW or taking a course in TAW can be a transfomative experience for some people, at the end of the line, the real message behind TAW (and all it’s look alikes) is that you need to spend time making and thinking about art.

If you think this might be a good book, pick it up. Maybe I'll revisit it, or not.

Wordy Wednesday: Professional Presentation

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I was the sort of art student who loved the “outsider” art tacked to the walls in the basement of the official art shows in college. It was raw and rough. I liked the look.

There came a time when I grew up and I realized that even some of the most rough and rugged art looks great or even better when framed. It’s true. A frame sets art off from the wall, enshrines it and best of all emphasizes it.

Case in point, take a look at this image I painted of a sunset. It’s a small 5×7 inch painting. Alone on the wall it looks lost, even with the clean taped edge.

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Stick that same image in a mat and wow, it looks so much better. As much as my 19 year old self would grumble at the added expense, this DOES look better, even in JUST the mat. Now imagine if I framed that image?

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A friend of mine calls this effort, I call it extra work and added expense. But I’ve come to realize that IF I want to sell my art I have to appeal at least in part, to the buyers of art, not to my inner 19 year old rebel. Part of that appeal is handling my art in a professional manner- matting it up and placing it in a Krystal Seal bag or framing it when necessary.

I really do think that it looks a lot better when matted and those Krystalphane bags really do a great job of snazzing them up, giving you a good idea of what the piece will look like under glass.

Plus take a look at the prices on the mat and Krystal Seal bags I linked, those are pretty cheap.

Technique Tuesday: Rolling Gesso

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I’ve forgotten where I learned this technique but I know atleast one of my professors from college used this for the first few layers when prepping his boards and canvases for painting.

And that is to use this:

(Imagine there is a picture of a small foam paint roller here, ama zon is being a dink and won't let me link it up.)

To roll on the first several layers of gesso.

I’m using a heavy foam roller, 4 inches wide by about 1 inch in diameter. It lays down a even coat of gesso, in the exact same texture as when applying wall paint, a pebbled texture that looks like an eggshell. The thicker the gesso the higher the peaks.

The one down side is that the roller holds a lot of gesso, so it’s best to plan ahead and cover a lot of paper or canvas when you are rolling gesso. It’s also effective to get a perfect smooth surface with much less work than using a brush. (Another downside is that if you are rolling the roller away from you it will kick up a lot of fine even splatters, it will coat a new black shirt in sand like dabs of paint. This may or maynot have occured in real life.)

I used the roller as if I were rolling ink onto a plate. Then rolled it onto the paper or board as if I was painting a wall. I allowed it to dry between coats and I did not sand at all, I enjoy the texture.