Category Archives: Inspiration

More Printing More Layers

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What is it about scraping and moving paint and ink around a piece of paper that feels so good? there is something tactile about it that I just connect with.

Yesterday a coworker wanted to print a year on her work hoodie. So she came on down to the print shop and I got to teach her how to roll out ink and print on fabric. She enjoyed it and I ended up with a lot of left over white fabric ink and a dirty plate, so I hand printed the plate onto my scraped ink and paint papers. I’ve added a lot of additional layers from that last post. I think they are looking great. Almost ready to use as little book covers.

I realized as I uploaded these that I also found a half empty Maribu spray acrylic bottle and I used all of it on these piece to spray and splatter some more. It’s such a dark green it’s almost black in areas. Fun.

I think this image really showcases the chalk pastel and transparent base screen printing technique I’m practicing for use with the kids. you can see the self portrait right next to the 2024 on the left bottom.

Anyway, I like the combination of printing styles and how the white is very stark against the vibrant background. I’m definitely going to be printing my very serious artist screens on here.

More Paint Scraping

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The last few mornings I’ve been granting (AKA forcing) myself to spend time in the studio. It’s a simple process I have suggested to many over the years- when you don’t know what to do with your art, sling some paint.

I’m doing a few things in the studio. First off I’m experimenting with DIY.Eli’s screen printing PVC frames. Yeah I hate plastic but in this case… Plastic makes enormous sense. Anyway, I’ll take some pictures, BUT I have 2 BIG screens stretched and no ideas on what to do with them so there’s that. The other things is I stretched some cheap Harbor Freight drop cloth canvas on one and put MANY coats of gesso on it and DAMN! It’s awesome. I don’t even like painting on canvas but this is amazing.

The second thing is I’m working on the process for adding pastels to screen prints on paper. I want to add some sketchy loose feeling to some really flat portraits that I’m working on. The chalk pastels are great for this feeling. The trick is to use silk screen base or medium to print the chalk through the screen. Pretty killer. The chalk pastel gets really dark with the ink.

Then I’m just scraping some paint around. Like many things screen printing ink is very much use it or lose it. Once it is open, you’ve got to use it. I’ve got some OLD quart sized tins of Hunt (what is now Speedball, and changed names back in the 90s!) ink. Some of it has a bit of an odor so I know we need to do some stuff with it. The great thing about it is that it is artist grade, so it mixes into other colors well and can be mixed with regular acrylic paint for a FULL range of colors. Very nice.

​The paint scraping is really taking these sheets of paper and just elevating them, making them more interesting and thick.

Recycling T-Shirts into Loom Knit Blankets

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Every job I’ve ever had gave out t-shirts. Some jobs I had to purchase a t-shirt* to wear while at work but then also gave me shirts to wear. Currently I make shirts with kids and also make shirts for the org as a project with kids. I have dozens and dozens of shirts that I’ve gathered over the years. It used to be that they would go from regular wearing to yard work or sleep wear. But currently many of the shirts from the last 10 years don’t fit anymore. They are comically large, and I only need so many to sleep in.

I have made many different projects out of t-shirt material over the years. One of my favorites is the t-shirt tote bag. Cut the sleeves off leaving the stitched seam behind, cut a large U shape at the neck leaving about 3 inches on the shoulder. Stitch up the bottom. Easy. We use these for laundry bags but with a double stitch across the bottom they can be used for shopping bags.  For laundry bags I used my largest old t-shirts. XXL. They can carry a lot of stuff.

I am not good at knitting or crochet. I lose count of where I’m at in the project and generally drop stitches and get distracted. Even with that I’m fascinated by t-shirt yarn. It’s probably the second fasted way to recycle an old t-shirt and you end up with a lot of yarn. Making t-shirt yarn is pretty easy but also it is important that you keep the width of the strips cut the same. I’ll explain why later.

For this project I had no idea how many shirts I needed, I started with 8. These shirts are a range of really well worn to newer. If your shirts are really well worn you’ll need to cut the shirts wider to get yard that is roughly the same thickness as a newer less thin shirt. The weight of the fabric does come into play here. New shirts that are still thick make thickener yarn. Thinner shirts make much thinner yarn and can tear while in the roll and stretching part of making the yarn. I should have taken some photos of the shirts cut into the yarn and the different thicknesses. Also, get rid of the seams, I left a lot of mine in and it makes the yarn harder to use.

I attempted to keep my strips around 1.5inches (3cm ish) to 2 inches. There were some areas where I didn’t do a great job of this. This causes problems later in the process.

I want to again say this- I am a terrible knitter.

I won’t give instructions on how to use the knitting loom but instead direct you to this video. It helped me get started.

I bought THIS loom. My resulting piece is a bit too marrow BUT I think part of the problem is that because I’m a terrible knitter I used too much tension and kept my loops too tight with yarn that was a bit too thin for the project. You can get looms at a more narrow gauge that work for thinner yarns. I might try to build my own in the future but for now this worked pretty well. For a blanket and my lack of skill this was maybe a bit too narrow. And to be clear I was making a lap blanket for use on the couch for TV watching.

Anyway, I let the bands of color be mostly random. I also recognized that I had a lot of old gray t-shirts. This worked well for having a unifying color in the blanket.

Here you can see the back of the blanket.

 

In the above pic you can see the attachment point for one color to the next. Because I attached as I went I had to cut the slots a little wider and this resulted in a lot of little flaps. In the future I would consider creating one giant ball of t-shirt yarn and attaching each shirt together in the yarn making process. This results in nearly invisible attachments and looks a lot better. IMO. I might trim some of these larger flaps down but I’m afraid that might cause the blanket to unravel. 

This pic shows a VERY well worn shirt- the red yarn sandwiched between 2 newer shirts. The well worn shirt produced a very thin, but sturdy yarn that is exceptionally soft. I had cut the strips to about the same size as the shirts that were in good condition and the resulting yarn was so much thinner and less bulkier it threw the knitting off.

I think you can see in my pics that my tension on the yarn was not great. there is a great deal of variation in tension. Some of this is because i’m a terrible knitter and some is a result of the variety of thickness of my yarns. I did not strive for a single thickness of my yarn, I let it vary a lot. The end result is that it was a lot harder to work with.

Anyway the end result is a heavy thick blanket with a lot of wonkiness. I’ll be making more yarn from more old t-shirts and making at least one more of these and possibly a scarf as well. The goal here, is to reuse my old shirts and create something new from them. I’ve made many swiffer pads and absorbent rag pads and even with that I have dozens of old knit shirts that need to be recycled and reused.

Mark Making Makes Interest in an Image

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I vividly remember seeing a real Van Gogh in person for the first time. The marks he made in his self portrait captured my attention. After that museum visit I did a deep dive into Van Gogh’s drawings and paintings- the thing that really unifies his work in my mind is the quality and quantity of his marks. Every mark unique and partially determined by his tools- from brushes to reed pens, his marks were all really interesting.

I have made vats of walnut ink, while not the ink Van Gogh would have used it has been forcing me to play with brushes and the marks the brushes make, particularly as I have tested casein medium/binder in the ink.

I have been using some old Strathmore 400 series drawing paper (90lb I believe) that I had ordered to make myself some books and then lost interest in the project. These pages were unearthed in the great basement studio cleanout. I cut the sheets in half to get 12×18 inch pieces of paper. These sheets are roughly the same aspect ratio as the photos I took this summer while on vacation. 

I’ve been working with these papers and my homemade inks to make studies of my images. I’ve also been making some mixed media pieces with the studies in mind. The interesting thing is that after I make a few studies of the image, I’m not looking too closely at the original photo, only checking in on it here and there, and occasionally never. I more rely on the studies, which work out the composition before I make the final art piece.

Anyway, I’ve been playing around with squirrel mop brushes and a few other soft brushes to create my images, and it’s been interesting to capture the marks these brushes make with the casein and walnut ink. The brush strokes very much lend to the sketch and the study. The layers of the casein based walnut ink give a lot of depth to the sketches.

I’ve also been mixing it up with these images. I’ve added in night blue Caran D’ache Neocolor 2, some blue Inktense, and some white chalk pastel. The walnut casein based ink mixes with the blues to create a lovely shade of warm gray that I’m ink love with. I mixed up some clear casein medium and have used that to further thin out the walnut casein ink and get even lighter lights.

The casein gives the paper a nice tooth for adding in the chalk pastel. I give the pastel a spray of SpectraFix to keep it from smudging.

In these images I’m attempting to capture the smoothness of the sandy shore line, the calm-ish water, and the rocky shore as well as the darkness of the trees and rose bushes.

The casein also dries to a lovely satin finish.

Water Resistant Ink

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Depending on the paper most of my ink experiments have been water soluble. They have a great lift-ability. Which is great for sketching and drawing in many cases. However my ability to layer the ink to create deeper darks is limited because the ink lifts up into itself and actually ends up lighter when the brush lifts it off the page. Annoying. I’ve learned how to work with it, but what if I didn’t have to?

Gum arabic is an additive that improve adhesion to the page and improves flow, but it doesn’t seem to reduce the amount that my ink lifts off the page. In increased amounts it seems to simply thicken the ink.

​Casein paint enters the chat.

Casein paint is water soluble until it dries then it is water resistant and in some cases waterproof. It’s about the correct blend of stuff to make it waterproof.

I’m more looking for water resistant than water proof.

From Robert Murray-Smith’s youtube I used this as a recipe:

I mixed the 5g of borax into the water and let it sit until it had fully dissolved. This took just a few minutes with agitation. That is to say, I shook the bejesus out of it. I then added in 10g of casein powder. I added in a shaker ball I have for protein shakes. Again I shook the bejesus out of it. Then I let it sit for 15 minutes.

At this point I added an equal amount, by volume, of my homemade walnut ink.

Again I shook the bejesus out of it.

The resulting ink is highly water resistant and waterproof in some spots once dry. 

Again I’d say this is more like a liquid watercolor than ink. In this case it acts much more like acrylic or gouache than it does watercolor or ink.

It dries to a matte or satin finish depending on how much of the paint is layered onto the page.

I really like the paint and I can see myself using this to tone a canvas or panel or just for this sort of layered image. It is quite a bit more thick than the original ink. The casein glue is thicker than expected. I might need to acidify my casein, but so far this looks and seems pretty decent. My tub of casein powder will make a LOT of paint binder and DIY fixative. If I wanted to make this more ink like, I would test out amounts of the casein glue to add to the ink. I did 1:1 for the paint. But I think 1 part casein glue to 5 parts ink would probably yield an ink that was ink like and water resistant.

One thing to note, the casein has a very very strong odor of sour milk. It dissipates quickly when it’s dry or brushed onto the page but it is gag inducing when the dry casein powder is mixed with water.

Hectic Second Week Back at IT

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This was first published on my Ko-Fi blog a month ago, if you want to read my writing in real time head over to Ko-Fi and follow me.

Routines. I have written about routines endlessly over the years. I am someone who thrives with a similar routine for each day of the week, with a few outlier days here and there. It’s how I work best and how I thrive.

I wrote previously how I had established a great summer routine that really helped me to put a focus on my own art making. My August plans and vacation destabilized that routine and now that I have returned to work I am struggling to get that routine back into place.

It’s not helped that the first 2 weeks back at work are not regular weeks back at work. The first week was a lot of running around, catching up on emails, and cleaning the studio. This week is all trainings and weird scheduling. Next week will be the first week I am back where I have a set schedule. Even that week is a bit more flexible than I’d like.

I have not been able to work on my new routine for this fall.

ARGH.

I have been making art and a little bit more acorn cap ink. I’ll write a full post about the ink- because I made more of the brown but I also did an iron version that is a wonderful shade of gray.

I’ve been trying to use the acorn cap ink on it’s own and in conjunction with other tools I have in my on the go kit. It’s been really truly wonderful. The shade of brown is golden and warm and works really well with all the colors I generally have in my on the go tool kit. From sepia to black to shade of blue and purple it mixes well and creates wonderful darks and shades of gray.

It’s also really nice on it’s own but is too light to create deep darks.

Here are some examples: I’ve been working on sketches from the photos I took at West Quoddy Head and Roque Bluffs. These images are studies from the photos and are really looking at patterns of light and dark and how they impact the final image. I’m adding and cutting out trees in the tree line and looking at how that impacts the image as a whole. I might try to do a few images in this warm brown and blue color way- it’s really striking.

I think the last image is my favorite, it’s definitely not true to the scene itself but it gets the vibe. The lightness of the sky works well with the shadows in the trees. The trees are a bit too tall so they’ll come down a bit, but the over all feel of this is right where I want it.

Sketchbook VS Sketchbook

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One of the things I really love about sketchbooks (and art journals) is that they can really encompass anything and everything. It’s also a point of contention.

Part of me wants to take all the sketchbook videos and categorize them into neat little containers that explain exactly what they are:

a finished art sketchbook- an art book

an art journal- an emotional sketchbook

an UGLY* or WORKING sketchbook- a sketchbook with rough ideas

and so on.

Part of my response of “WE NEED TO PUT THESE IN NEAT CATEGORIES.” Is due to the fact that I see all these things are really different, and they are. There are vast differences between an art book, an art journal, and a working sketchbook. The art in each one can be vastly different. But also have similar qualities.

I also think that because we lump finished art books in with the greater label of SKETCHBOOK that it’s confusing for people who want to start a sketchbook. It also sets a bar that is perhaps a bit too high.

As humans we compare ourselves to one another and I know I compare my art to that of other people.

When I look at my sketches and doodles that are in preparation for other pieces of work and then compare it to a sketchbook with finished art pieces, well I feel like I can never match up.

“If that’s their sketch, how amazing is their finished piece?”

A finished art piece in a sketchbook isn’t a sketch, it’s a finished art piece done in book format. It’s sequential art. And that’s okay but it’s important to note that it is a FINISHED art piece and not a sketch.

Sketches are meant to be rough. They are meant to be thoughts on paper. Thoughts made physical as we work our way to a more finished art piece.

I am not suggesting that sketches don’t have vibrancy, or that they aren’t beautiful in their own right.

I write this as someone who sells their sketches. I know the power of that immediacy and that vibrant capture of a moment. We respond to the artist’s eye and viewpoint of that moment. Sketches are beautiful and art on their own.

But it’s hard to compare a rough working sketch to a finished piece of art in a sketchbook.

(Going off of this, I think Urban Sketching is really Urban en Plein Air. A great deal of what we do in urban sketching is create finished art works in sketchbook format.)

I don’t know if there is a true resolution to this. Instead when I watch a video or look at an instagram of another sketchbook flip through I note to myself if I think this sketchbook is a finished art book, an art journal, or a working ugly sketchbook. I note this and then think about how my personal classification of these various sketchbooks helps me compare myself less to perfect pictures of art.

(It also helps me when I talk to the kids I work with about their sketchbooks. I talk to them about how we’re creating and using a working sketchbook, and how it’s going to have thumbnail sketches, color studies, and notes about our work.)

*I’m going to note here that I FUCKING hate the term UGLY sketchbook. But it seems to be what is being used here in social media land so I’ll stick with it and SEETHE.

Koh-I-Noor Magic FX

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Not long after I moved to Massachusetts I made my way to the best art supply store to ever exist- Charette. Sadly Charette folded 15 or so years ago. It was a very sad day. I hit their clearance sales with intense sadness in my heart.

Not long after my first visit to Charette I picked up my first Koh-i-noor Magic FX pencil- glossy black lacquer with glitter. It featured a mixed color core- a rainbow core of bright colors. According to the Koh-i-noor website, the colors are neon. Whatever it was, I used it quite a bit. I have no idea if I ever finished it or where it is now. (Probably with my missing in action clutch pencil*.)

I recently reinvigorated my love of them. I’ve been taking the train again and while I wait I draw vehicles in the parking lot. I usually have between 5 and 15 minutes to wait. I’m sketching in a 5×5 inch Talens Art Creations sketchbook or a 4×4 inch sketchbook from Dollar Tree.

​Also, I started to take the train again right after the weather here in Mass decided to be seasonably cold and windy. My markers and pens started to freeze up. The acrylic paint in the brush paint markers just wouldn’t dry or would thaw as I worked on the images on the train.

I pulled my Neocolor 1 and 2s out and started to draw with them.

In the back of my mind I thought, “Hey I’ve got all those clutch pencil leads and that clutch pencil, that would be great for this.” So I looked for it. I couldn’t find them. So I stuck to the markers and crayons. 

Then I pulled my rainbow pencils out of storage and started to use those. I can see why I loved these- capable of a thin line like a regular pencil but also with some practice capable of some delicate shading. I also liked the fat size of the pencils so I could keep wearing my gloves. I also had snagged a package of cheapo rainbow pencils. They were also very nice.

Over the last month of cold weather I kept thinking about those clutch leads and where that lead holder might be. This weekend I took a deeper look around the house, office, and studio.

I found all the leads but not the lead holder. I have no clue where it might be. So I gave in and ordered a replacement.

Funnily enough, now that I’ve ordered the lead holder and found the leads for it, the predicted temperature for tomorrow and the whole next week is in the 40s.

*I have been scouring my home and attempting to figure out where I stashed my beloved E+M clutch pencil. I couldn’t find it so I ordered a replacement- a Koh-i-noor Magic version of their clutch pencil.

Practicing Blobs Makes them Perfectly Imperfect

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I don’t know about all of you but the news has me both distracted and discouraged. Combine that with my recent sinus infections and norovirus and well, I’ve been feeling a whole lot of, “Why bother?”

​Despite this I’m making art.

In times of crisis, I stay calm and get through it, then retreat into my art journal and art making processes. It soothes and heals me, to a point.

So I’ve been giving myself goals and challenges.

I’ve been practicing what I’m calling “blob people.” It’s a watercolor technique where you make, well, blobs and then use that blob shape to create people and crowds and individuals. I’ve watched a few videos on the technique and it’s deceptively easy. By which I mean, it’s not easy, at all.

It relies heavily on feeling confident in your brush strokes and marks. The media you use doesn’t matter as much as a confident brush stroke.

I’ve watched videos where people use collage and acrylics. Mostly I’ve focused on watching videos of the technique in watercolors.

It’s so simple, kind of a rectangular blob, dot, and a carroty shaped line at the bottom, add in a bit of grounding shadow and BOOM! Figure!

Except I’m hesitant.

Or was?
I’m less hesitant now than I was. As of this writing I’m about 20 images into my (self) challenge of making 100 figures/images with the blob people as a focal point. (I’m also 85 vehicles into my 100 vehicles challenge. I’m also at 38 out of 205 videos into #gesdrawparty.) There are things I’ve learned a long the way- where to place shadows and highlights, how to shape cast shadows, ways of making crowds that work, and many other things.

I’m attempting to bring y’all with me in this journey. I’m recording a lot of me making the images, which I’ve been unable to do with the vehicle challenge. Over the next month or so you’ll see how my approach to the images and figure changes. I’m also challenging myself to work from imagination or limited photographs and not from life. My practicing gesture drawing via Gesture Drawing Party has helped, though I have to say that most of the time, the way people pose for gesture drawing, is not based on anything you’ll see in real life. That doesn’t stop it from being fun.

Anyway, much like the other challenges I’ve taken part in or set for myself, I hope to do a wrap up video at the end where I discuss what I’ve learned.

The first video in the series is here:

Technical Skills and Style and Mixed Media

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I consider myself a mixed media artist. I went to school to be an art teacher and an art therapist. The skilled learned were broad spectrum and about all media. I didn’t have to be super skilled in all of them, but I needed to understand them well enough. I missed out on pottery.

In all honesty I think learning all the media I did in high school, college and grad school suited the way my brain works. ADHD and all that.

I consider myself proficient in print making, specifically relief and dry point as well as drawing with a variety of materials and finally watercolors. Though I suspect some people who watch my watercolor videos would debate me on that.*

That said I enjoy learning about materials. I think changing up what I draw and paint with on occasion keeps my brain active and pushes me to try harder.

But what really get my artistic groove going is mixing media. Watercolors with pencils and pens and collage and gouache and acrylic and slapping all that into a sketchbook/journal.

I like it when I take the rules of a media and break them. Continue reading →