I have really been enjoying the Kodak Charmera. I picked up my first one during the early hype era, and they were under $30, barely. Now thanks to hype and tariffs they are $35, a little high if you ask me. But I really really like that the Charmera  both version one and version two has made way for more versions of similar small form factor keychain cameras. There is a budget version called the G5 Thumb camera. There is this one that looks like a mini DSLR and extra battery.

I’m going to state this here and now, none of these cameras take GREAT photos. The images remind me of a cellphone camera from 2005 to 2009. Some of the brands are really pixelated and weird. Some do some resampling to make the image larger and it can make for some REALLY weird images.

I have found that all the linked cameras in this post take really similar images. The G5 Thumb Camera probably takes the best images. Which is nice because you can get one, without a storage card, for just over $16 right now.

There are several reasons why I really like these cameras. First they are tiny and fit into a pocket. I can ALWAYS have one in every bag. No excuses, there is one in every bag.

They are unobtrusive. Their tiny size means that they aren’t that noticeable, and I can take a shot without people getting weary that I’m taking their picture. Related to this- their cute factor. A lot of folx assume they aren’t a real camera or get caught up in how cute these little guys are before they think to get weird.

The images aren’t great. In good lighting they are pretty okay. But details are a little muted and brights are blown out and darks are often too dark. I have to hold still to get a good clean image. Any movement and there’s a blur. They simplify an image but in the right conditions you can get a really nice clear image.

The simplification is WHY I like these cameras. They are perfect for capturing a quick image for making art from. Colors are there but they aren’t perfect. Dark areas are there and they are often too dark.

Yes I could get my phone out and take a nearly perfect picture. Clear and sharp with accurate colors. BUT The pocket cameras force me to use my imagination to complete the image. I have to add texture and color and think about the image in a different way.

Anyway, here are some examples of images taken with these cameras and the resulting art I’ve made from them.

This was shot in late winter. The date stamp may be off. The leaves in the tree are much lighter than they are in this image. I really like how the sky is blown out and the trees are pink and orange.

This was shot just now, these trees are turning color SUPER early. I’ve read and watched a bunch of articles that suggest that fall in coastal Mass is going to be super weird because of our drought. Leaves are already turning and dropping and we haven’t even had a real frost yet. Colors are pretty muted so far.

Apparently doing a lightfastness test is now controversial? People will really try to create clicks out of anything. No I won’t link to the guy ranting about artists doing their own lightfastness tests and calling out manufacturers for their BS. Instead I’ll like to this video by Sarah Renae Clark, who does a good job explaining the blue wool test, why it’s kind of garbage for art supplies, and how she did her tests.

I am currently using a North West facing window that gets full sun from about noon to sunset- during a Massachusetts summer. Roughly 8 to 9 hours a day from July to August. Yes that’s a lot of sun, yes it gets hot in the room and on the pane of glass. My goal isn’t to create museum or typical hanging situations, it’s to see how long a material will last when applied the way I use it. This means I’m not applying it in the way the manufacturer applied it in their tests. I’m doing washes, I’m scribbling, I’m swatching.

Anyway, I feel comfortable that my lightfastness tests give me the information I need to make art that lasts. You should conduct your own or look for results from other artists who make art like yours who share their work.

I’m also going to add here, I think lightfastness is important if you sell your work. It is less important if you are only working in a journal for yourself. I have art that I made that has been on my wall for 20 years made from who knows what kind of materials and it has probably faded more than I know. And yeah I hang my own art on the wall.

Now let’s discuss these tests I did with my current urban sketching/en plein air supplies.

I have been pleasantly surprised by the Arrtx watercolors, Beam Paints, Art of Soil, Meeden soft bodied acrylics and Stockmar Crayons. Almost all the colors showed little to now shifting except for the Arrtx Cad Red Pale and 2 of the shades of green in the Meeden soft bodied paints. None of the Beam or Art of Soil paints shifted at all. The Stockmar Crayons in bright bold primary and secondary colors are aimed at children and I expected them to respond like other brands of crayons and disappear, but they did not. Instead the colors are bright, bold, and vibrant- and the window didn’t get hot enough to melt the wax into the paper*.

Some disappointing results- Arteeza gouache. More of the colors disappeared or shifted than I expected. The “nude” colored Miya charcoal pencil shifted drastically. A number of the Aliexpress woodless charcoal pencils also disappeared or shifted drastically in color. 

The most disappointing result was the number of Prismacolor colored pencils- both regular and watercolor that changed color or disappeared. It was just really disheartening to use a supposedly professional (Premier) colored pencil and have the color just absolutely change or disappear.

I wasn’t at all surprised when the Seami watercolors completely disappeared. This was pretty much an expected result. 

*I am just going to write this here, I don’t think my window gets hot enough to cook any of the materials placed in it. The wax would have heated and melted into the paper if that were the case. There is no wax halo and the texture of the wax is still felt on the surface of the smooth Strathmore mixed media paper. So do with that what you will.

** IMO Lightfastness tests by individual artists are important because they give you information on how the material will last in the way that an artist uses it. You know I’m not the person suggesting that the only good materials are lightfast materials. I use more lightfast materials on works that I’m going to sell. I use anything I want in my sketches and art journal. You do you. That said, I do think that manufacturers should list accurate information on their tools. There have been a number of artists doing lightfastness tests on materials coming from budget friendly brands. Lightwish, Phoenix, Rubens, Mart Marie, etc… And more than a few of the items claims don’t match up with the artist tests. Here are some of the videos that offer up real world bright light tests over time:

https://youtu.be/plfnSqz67bo?si=fCQH_OxZZjvfiGgA

https://youtu.be/GlmOHZMlKus?si=Bwwq0Mc9SSQcIObs

https://youtu.be/EV_L_n61qVg?si=t8BoxVk5iZJslWRc

https://youtu.be/YCDYR3McULc?si=HP-VEi6q9kp6k86d

I learned a bunch of stuff from my Unofficial Artist In Residency at Salem Willows. Today I want to focus on desaturated colors.

I mentioned this in the video I’ll link below. Colors in the distance are desaturated, also a bit hazy. You can observe this When you look out across a distance, things further and further away appear more and more faded. Colors are a bit more muted. In my area distant trees appear a bit more blue and pale. In other areas I see artists represent colors as more pink or purple the more distant they are from the viewer.  Capturing this color change is interesting.

It’s necessary to convince the viewers eye to buy that the image has depth.

The colors need to desaturate to make the foreground pop.

​With acrylics and watercolors you do this by mixing on the palette or paper. For acrylics and gouache you can add a hint of white. For watercolor, more water and a touch of the color opposite.

With oil pastels, it’s a little different. Some brands blend well others just don’t. Some people use a palette knife and mix their oil pastels on a palette and apply with a knife.

I decided to mix the colors that I’d use desaturated in a series of tests to see what colors I could get. Generally I used 2 colors- a blue and a green. On some I added white and others I didn’t.

Here are images of my tests and some images made with them.

My last post was about proper storage of oil pastels.

My recommendation is that they are stored as air tight as possible- I will switch to an oversized zipper bag inside the tote at work, and I’ll keep using my nearly air tight clasping tote at home.

I decided to take some pics of what the sticky oil pastels look like in my sketchbook.

The above image is of my home set which has been stored air tight. The feel of them is still silky smooth and feels like drawing with lipstick. There are a few colors that are more transparent, particularly the greens and browns.

This image shows the work version. You can see that the application is significantly thicker. The color also seems to stick to itself and lift off the page. You can see that some colors are more opaque, this is only because there is so much MORE oil pastel on the page. (The colors are also in a different order from my package. Kids.)

It was really startling how different they 2 packages of pastels feel.

As a note, the pastels were both applied to the same paper in air conditioning. I have noticed that when I’ve take the work oil pastels outside for en plein air, they are smoother and less sticky.

Interested in reading something like this, but a month earlier? Check out my Ko-Fi page here. Consider buying me a coffee so I can continue to explore art materials and manners of storage.

This past Friday was an oddly satisfying day but also more physical than I had imagined. Generally when an artist sets up a screen for screen printing it’s one, maybe two or three screens at a time. With more modern screen printing equipment stretching a screen is more simple and easy than it used to be.

Old style screens were stretched in the same way as a canvas, well somewhat. The silk (polyester actually) is loosely stretch over a frame with a heavy polyester tape (more like a heavy duty ribbon) under it and another over the top of that. Staples were carefully placed through the tape the whole way around the screen. The screen was then heated with a heat gun or hair dryer to shrink it tight.

This isn’t a bad process when you are doing one or two screens. 

When you need to rip apart and put back together enough screens for a whole group of kids and then you and your coworker decide to rip the screens off all the damaged and clogged up screens together, well, that’s a HUGE endeavor.

Together my coworker and I stripped down something like 30 screens. I stretched 9 of them on my own with a less than traditional staple only method. and I have 5 more than use a spline in a groove method that I’ll stretch in the upcoming days. However I don’t need those all ready for today and  can do one a day instead of all of them at once. 

If you’ve never stretched a canvas, the method for silk screens is something like this: Cut fabric to size. Secure one edge with a staple. Opposite that, pull the screen taught but not too tight, staple. Repeat process on 2 remaining sides. Pick a side pull snug, staple 3 to 4 time, rotate screen, repeat, continue until you are at the corners, place 2 to 3 staples across the corners. If staples protrude at all, hammer them down.  After all that, run a hair dryer or heat gun over the screen until it feels tight. It should kinda make noise like a drum. A flat drum but a drum. It can take 20 minutes a screen.

Exhausting. I have spent the weekend recovering. It also highlights that I’m out of shape again and really need some quality time on my bike.

I am switching over to a PVC pipe method that uses regular 3/4 inch schedule 40 PVC pipe cut to size and then fit into regular PVC corners. Screen is fixed to the pip with hoop house clips and clamps. Screen is tightened by rotating the clips.

My goal is to never clean out a screen from either screen filler or photoemulsion ever again. I always have problems getting it all out and the screen is always ruined anyway. This way I can rip the screens off and give them to the kids when they are done with their projects. Easy.

Over the years I have experimented with a great deal of materials to create prints and I keep coming back to trash. I remember back in the 90s Tetrapak was held up as a future for sustainability and recyclability. At one point so many things were available in Tetrapak packaging.

And then it was revealed that it is actually really tough to recycle unless you have the RIGHT facilities. Of course they weren’t available in the US.

SIGH.

Tetrapak, and similar brands have several different variations. There is the traditional which is a layer of fiberboard with aluminum and plastic coating on the inside and a layer of plastic on the outside. There’s the newer version which has a layer of plastic on the outside, a layer of fiberboard, and a final thick layer of plastic on the inside.

The fiberboard is thick and pulpy and absorbent. This is useful for printmaking.

The plastic on the outside is thinner but very tough. Also useful for printmaking- the back of your plate is far easier to clean than other types of card.

The plastic and aluminum is nicely layered to be waterproof. As is the single thick plastic layer variety. Either can be easily scratched into and carved with simple tools like a needle, etching stylus, awl, or an exacto knife. Basically anything with a point or a sharp edge can be used on Tetrapak and similar surfaces.

A similar surface is a regular carton from frozen food or other packaging that has a plasticky coating. If it’s glossy, it can probably be printed. Check out this youtube video for ideas.

I’m working on having kids, middle school aged in particular do a layered tetrapak and other packaging project. They’ll do some sort of self portrait and hands holding something their “heart.”  We’re going deep on symbolism and meaning this year. They’ll get to use one color to pop off elements but their background will have to be black and white.

Here are some pictures of my plates and an example print.

The two pieces in the back are cartons- Wheat Thins and Melona ice cream bars. These have been manipulated with knives and scratchings and wood glue has been added to create texture. The plates have then been sealed with shellac to create a durable surface that will survive wiping and printing.

I used Cranfield Caligo safwash etching inks on these, and they are much more difficult to wipe out of the tube compared to Akua. I’ll need to modify them for students.

The colored pieces are more traditional Tetrapak, one a chicken brother container and the other a small boxed wine. (We use single serve boxed wine for cooking, since neither of us in this house drink.) I love the wrinkles and damages in the surfaces, but larger containers and if you are careful with disassembly  leave the surface pretty clean and smooth.

This print is pretty BIG- 22×30 inches, printed on Legion Stonehenge printing paper which was sprayed down and allowed to soak up the water. I’m not showing the backside of this print, but there is a GREAT emboss on here and the ink was really deeply pushing into the paper. The results are stunning. The paper will wrinkle horribly if not wet properly. A paper this thick (140lb/300gsm) needs to be quite wet for it to be flexible enough to get down into the various grooves. A lighter weight paper can be spritzed and not soaked. Some papers, like washi paper and other Japanese style papers don’t need soaking at all.

There is a spot where I didn’t get a good seal on some glued areas of the skull (near the hands) and the paper tore a bit. The pressure from the plate and the dampness of the ink adhered the glue to the paper. It wasn’t reactivated, but softened. I may attempt to use an acrylic varnish to see if that works well for the kids and if it might not adhere to the paper when printing.

I don’t usually work this large but so far I’m really enjoying it and the look of these pieces as they are layered and put together.