I have one word for this guy’s work: MESMERIZING.

One of the important things I’ve learned over the years about art is that it’s okay to make bad art.

It’s okay to fail.

It’s part of the learning process of art.

Back when I was in college I pushed myself to make every piece of art I approached a successful work. I worked hard on things and labored over stuff and I grew to hate it. There were few pieces of art that I really liked when I was in college. Over the years I worked on less and less outside of class until my last year where I became fascinated with Matisse’s collages and started making my own with crayons and white glue. I loved making collages. The great thing about it was that it was easy to make something vaguely attractive.

After I left school and I worked with kids I realized that a good part of what I had learned was how to fail and how to make really really really bad art.

Some of the stuff I made in college was awful.

Really bad awful.

I avoided painting class but the funny thing is that some of my more successful pieces from college were from painting classes.

I’m not sure why I avoided those classes. Perhaps I didn’t want the challenge or I was too distracted by all the ohh shiny stuff of other stuff I hadn’t done yet- carving plexiglass? Why, yes please!

I gave myself a challenge today, to complete a 5x7inch painting of stuff in my office while on my lunch break. Before my break I noticed that my hand sanitizer bottle and tabbed paperclips made an interesting composition. I quickly set up my pochade box, grabbed a panel and sketched out the little bottle and clip, super rough. It took less than 5 minutes to sketch them out. I squeezed out 3 colors: titanium white, unbleached titanium (titan buff), and cobalt blue hue. I grabbed a crappy #1 bristle brush and dipped into the blue, applying color in bold strokes. I then added the unbleached titanium in dabs and small strokes, allowing the color to blend directly on the page. As I worked the thinner layers of color  dried the thicker layers stayed slightly moist. I scrubbed color here and there, dabbed it in other places.

At the end of 30 minutes I snapped a picture of my piece and posted it to twitter.

If I spent another 30 minutes on this painting it would be inherently better. I’d add more layers of color, maybe some glazes and maybe add some other colors. I could firm it up and make into a finished piece.

That defeats the point of a piece like this.

A piece like this is meant to stretch your skills force you into looking in broad bold strokes and attacking the canvas/paper.

There is no mincing around when working small and fast. There is no going back and touching up  little slips here and there.

It’s go.

Here’s the thing, I’m not beating myself up because this isn’t my best painting ever, instead I’m looking at it as a starting point. From here I can only get better. In 30 minutes I’ll be able to produce something neat.

But I won’t kick myself if I fail.

This guy/s sketches are great. Really great. Love how he works out the ideas clearly. Also his use of color is amazing.

I'm in love with these simple collage and sketch journal pages. So simple and effective.

This person's work is amazing in that it's done on garbage and using stencils and collage. Every time I look at his stuff it blows my mind. Simple and effective.

I spent Saturday making gelatin monoprints with my friend Jane. I’ve read a lot about  gelatin printing when I took a class in monoprinting in college. It’s a really simple and easy to use technique that lends itself to a variety of looks. Jane took a class with Tamar Etigen at LynnArts a few weeks ago. I found this blog about mixed media by Linda Germaine. Lots of good info on there.

First you need to make your printing plate. You need to make a big tub of unflavored knox gelatin, even sturdier than jigglers. You can buy bulk gelatin online but if you are only going to test this out, buy 3 boxes of Knox brand and mix it with 5 cups of water. This is the most expensive part of this technique. Follow the instructions on the package mixing. Pour it into a tray. we used those heavy paper disposable trays made for heating things up in a toaster oven.

Scrape the bubbles off of the top and let it harden.

We used acrylic paint and waterbased block printing ink. To use acrylic paint as ink you need to mix it with a product called retarder. You can buy Golden’s retarder for acrylic paint or speedball’s for block printing inks, both work. I liked the thickness of the speedball retarder. It allowed me to get heavy thick layers of ink on the block. The thin retarder from golden allowed me to get thin even layers.

You’ll also need a brayer. If you’ve never done any printmaking before you may want to buddy up and test this out with a friend, brayers are expensive and if you aren’t going to use them later for more printing, a pricy investment.* I preferred the soft rubber over the hard rubber.

Mix your paint and retarder well. I used about 1 part retarder to 3 parts paint. Different brands of paint used different amounts of retarder. But the 1:3 ratio seemed to work well. You can also add some gel medium to the paint to get very transparent colors.

Roll it onto the gelatin.

Here’s where things get interesting. What can you do with a solid sheet of ink? Well you can add masks and stencils to block out areas or lay down leaves from your nature walks. OR you can remove ink with q-tips, paper, old credit cards (careful not to cut the gelatin), papertowels, sponges, rags and well, just about anything. The possibilities are really endless.

Then lay a sheet of paper on it. Smooth absorbent paper works best, cardstock does wonderfully. Press down firmly. Peel it off.

Impressive isn’t it?

Spend a few hours playing with the technique. Don’t TRY to make anything. Just lay ink down, move it around, lift it up, put down multiple colors and finally print it. Don’t strive to make anything, just experiment. Make notes in your journal. What colors do you like? What colors lay over one another the best? What tool do you like?

This is one of those techniques that you can use to break up a creative rut, make background papers for collage or for you to allow happy accidents to occur. When you get an ink build up on the gelatin you can wash the ink off with tepid water and a sponge.

After you've made a few hours worth of prints you can wash the surface and toss it in the fridge for another day's printmaking. Or you can package it up and freeze it to use again. You can always melt it down in a double boiler and reform the plates. Don't ever put gelatin down your drains, it'll clog them.

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