Category Archives: technique

Messy Materials

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When I was young I loved chalk and oil pastels. There was something about the dusty blend of chalk that I loved working with. Oil pastels left chunky lumps on the pages but smoothed out with a finger into lovely layers.

I didn’t use them often in college but when I was teaching I used them a lot. I also stained a rug in a rental with chalk pastels. It cost me some money.

I started to avoid really messy materials like chalk and oil pastels. Chalk also started to dry out my skin.

When I picked up the kid’s tempera sticks I was reminded of oil pastels. More than once I felt like the tempera sticks felt like chapstick or lipstick smoothing onto a page. Good oil pastels are often referred to in the same way.

I went out and bought a 12-pack of Faber Castell oil pastels. Pretty chunky, smooth but chunky.

I’ve been thinking of doing the tempera sticks with the kids for their big project but they are not lightfast and we only use artist grade materials with the kids for these projects. So I went back to oil pastels.

I made my way out to my local (truly local a small local chain Artist and Craftsman Supply) art supply store and picked up 2 brands of student grade oil pastels and a handful of artist grade pastels.

The first brand of student grade oil pastels I picked up was Panda by Talens. They were smoother than the Faber Castell but not by much. The 24 pack of colors is a good choice.

The next step up was Van Gogh brand by Royal Talens. Smoother still but not that chapstick like consistency was looking for. Continue reading →

Values Studies and Ink Wash

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I recently took part in Ohn Mar Win’s Patreon hangout. She puts up photos and everyone draws and paints. Really kind of fun and something I want to challenge myself to do more of in the new year. But I need to find balance*.

Anyway, it made me realize that my landscapes are stiff and don’t feel as good as those i made years ago. I don’t know that I’ve shared here that in the early 2000s when I lived in VERY rural Maine I used to drive around Washington County and draw and paint local landmarks and scenic images. I’d then load them up to eBay starting at 1 cent or 10 cents. eBay had some sort of promo if you started your listing for 1 cent it was cheaper. I did a LOT OF that. I have very few images left over from that time period because I sold most of them for a few bucks. You might think that’s a shame but I literally paid my rent that summer** by selling landscape drawing and paintings of West Quoddy Head and Roques Bluff State Park to people all over the world.

Honestly, as an artist paying rent by selling art is a good feeling. Also, if I’m totally honest I lived in a tiny apartment and I needed to get it gone. Continue reading →

Values Journaling Series

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My Values Journaling series of videos is currently finished and loaded to YouTube. I might try to edit them down for the TikTokers out there, but for now I see value (ahem) in keeping them long. This way you see the process.

Here they are:

Setting Up a New Journal

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When I’m about 1/3rd to 1/2 way through a sketchbook or journal I start to set up my next one. This gives me time to think about decorations and what journal type I want to use. Do I want blank or ruled pages? Dot grid? Hard or flexy covers? I grab a journal and start to make it mine. I add ribbons, elastic, a pocket and remove a few pages so I can collage. I number the pages.

Then I decorate the cover and set it aside to finish the one I’m currently using.

Lately I’ve been really into these sketchbooks from 5 Below. At $5 they have acceptable paper and are sturdy. They require all the prep I listed above.

These are some videos I have made of the process.

Composite Images with the Thermal Instant Print Camera

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I have written here on multiple occasions about my love for David Hockney’s work. I’ve been fortunately to see a couple of his shows when they’ve come to the east coast. One that stands out was when my friend Jane and I met up in Portland, Maine for an artist’s date and decided on a whim to go to the Portland Museum of Art. I don’t know if Jane knew there was an exhibit of Hockney’s work there or not but I was delighted to go into a relatively small room and see a number of his works, including a favorite, Pearblossom Hwy.

Done in 1986 he used a point and shoot 35mm camera to take multiple shots of the same scene. Which he then pieced together into a 48×64 inch collage. He’s also got a series of works done with a Polaroid arranged in a grid.

really interesting stuff.

My friend Erik went to a recent Hockney show and snapped a picture of Pearblossom Hwy and sent it to me said he wondered what I could do with one of the thermal printing cameras.

And hot damn, I set out to test out the idea. I wanted something more interesting than just a landscape. I headed to the Willows for one of my morning constitutional walks and thought I’d do something with one of the benches or buildings.

Instead I was presented with a ripe opportunity- someone had discarded a Little Tykes Cozy Coupe, in faded red and blue; at the recycle and trash bins. It was backed into the bin like it had been parked there purposefully and not illegally dumped. I decided this was weird enough to be my subject. So I set about snapping a whole range of photos, 5 up and 6 across. A total of 30+ images.

I learned a lot with those 30 images. First off, space my images out a lot more. And don’t move my feet, much. To keep things in the same perspective I tried to keep my hands at the same level and played with just tipping the camera.

Obviously I need to test this out some more. but what a really cool little range of images I got from one set of 25 images.

 

 

Later That Week: Further Explorations

I headed back out to the Willows to see if the Little Tykes Cozy Coupe was still next to the trash, and it was. What luck. I moved it back to the same spot where it had been. (It had been moved around.) I then set about to take more photos of the scene. I took what I learned- move the camera more between images and move to the sides and above more.

IN this image you can see I took many more images, probably close to 50 or 60. I did not use them all, but having more was better than too few. I also used this as an example and working piece to figure out some more stuff. More on that.

I also tried another scene, this one of a do not enter sign, and another of the parking area for Blue Bikes.

 

I think this telephone pole and fire hydrant is super cool and really shows how the camera can distort and tweak the image.

With this one I focused my attention on the do not enter sign and getting a clear image of that leads to distortions around it. There’s a metaphor there.

For the notes:

  • Take more pictures than you think you need or want.
  • Print some of the images, then print more as needed.
  • Use a glue runner or other film style glue instead of glue stick- glue stick tends to curl paper and not stick to the plasticky coating of the paper.
  • If you pick a focus point you’ll get distortions as you move the camera around, this can be very cool.
  • Use a heavy weight paper or put it in your journal.
  • The time stamp  can be very distracting in some areas of the image. I like it in most of the image so I work around it.

With this last image. I shot maybe 100 pictures but only printed 50 of them to start and printed more as I needed to fill in areas, but I REALLY wanted to play with the idea of perspective and distortion around the edges. So I really worked with keep my feet planted and moving my upper torso around to take the shots. I then realized I could keep one foot planted and ROTATE my other foot around it. I chose to keep my left foot planted and rotate around on the ball of that foot. This worked REALLY well at creating the warped perspective I was looking for. I think I could go back and fill in the empty areas with some more shots. Either way this piece is much larger than the others. The others are about 6″ square while this one is about a foot and a half high.

Anyway I really dig this.

 

This is the camera I have been using for this exploration. It prints a little more slowly but it’s black and doesn’t draw attention despite being pretty large when compared to the other cameras I have.

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Make Your Own Gel Plates

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I finally made my own gel plate with gelatin, glycerin, rubbing alcohol and water. I used a microwave method, which seems to be the best method for me. Most of the instructions I found use a double boiler set up. It’s too hot for that in my house.

Keep in mind that this is an investment. For a few dollars you can make a permanent plate that if it gets damaged you can chop it up melt and remold it.

I am providing links to the ‘zon for the materials. Prices are the cheapest for that product by unit price at the time I ordered.

  • Gelatin (Keep an eye on this, gelatin fluctuates in price daily. The pack I purchased was $20 for 2lbs, the next day it went up to $35 for the same package!)
  • Glycerin (Also called vegetable glycerin, they are all vegetable glycerin)
  • 95%-75% Isopropyl Rubbing Alcohol (I purchased this locally)

Tools:

  • Cookie Sheet- with a flat bottom without any texture at all. Dollar tree sells a 9×13 inch tray for a $1.25. Walmart has cheap options as well.
  • Small spray bottle filled with rubbing alcohol.

Recipe:

2- 3 tablespoon of gelatin per cup of fluid. Roughly 1 ounce of gelatin to each cup of fluid. The fluid should be 50% water to Glycerin/Alcohol. This ratio is important. You can adapt the recipe to any size container by measuring the volume of your container. The more gelatin  you add the firmer your plate will be.

You want your plate to be at least a half inch thick and the consistency of Jello Jigglers.  In my experience the larger the plate the firmer you will want it.  I prefer a very firm plate so I use additional gelatin.

Pour 3/4 c Glycerin into a microwave safe dish. Add in 3/4 c of rubbing alcohol. (You can use 100% glycerin for this recipe but rubbing alc is cheaper) Sprinkle 8 tbsp of gelatin over the alcohol and glycerin. Let this sit for roughly 10 minutes to bloom. Use a spatula to gently stir this. Add in 1 1/2 cup of rapidly boiling water. Gently stir. The mix should be opaque and a bit gritty. Put this into the microwave for 1 minute intervals. Stir at every minute until the mix is clear. It took 5 minutes for mine to be perfectly clear. Stir gently but thoroughly.

Pour the hot mixture into your cookie sheet or whatever tray you plan to use. Skim any foam off with a piece of news print. Pop any bubbles with a finger or toothpick. Let sit at room temp for a few hours, once set put it into the refrigerator to finish setting.

You may also want to add in a couple of drops of essential oils like tea tree or lavender. I do not like the smell of the gelatin. A few drops of essential oils mix into the glycerin or alcohol well and do not impact the ability of the plate to function.

Some Science:

The glycerin and isopropyl alcohol are plasticizers. That is they interact with the gelatin to turn the protein strands into something plasticky. They change the proteins of the gelatin to elongate them, which bugs and mold no longer recognize as food. This is why the glycerin and alcohol plates don’t mold or rot.

Some videos that explain the process:

The video below has recipes for a variety of sizes of gel plates. Look from 18:04 to 18:58

As the last video explains, there is some wiggle room in these recipes. You can add a bit more glycerin or a bit less and the plate will still plasticize. If you don’t like the smell of the alcohol, don’t use it. Many of the recipes I saw online did not use it and in fact, Linda Germain, who I consider to be an expert on gelatin plate making, doesn’t use alcohol at all. you can get her recipe by signing up for her mailing list here.

Here is a link to another blog with info about making your own plate.

This is another good blog for making your own plates.

Keep in mind that by making your own plate you are saving a lot of money over buying the commercial plates. You can also chunk them up, melt and remold them, many times. You can add a bit of water to rehydrate the plate and it’s good as new. This is an investment.

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State of the Art: Creating a Place to Work

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One of the key items in my art making and creative arsenal are my headphones. With these I can create a place to work, make art and be creative, just about anywhere. By extension music helps too.

I’ve used headphones as a way to tune out and tune in since I was in elementary school. Back then I slipped the foam cushions of my Sony Walkman over my ears and tuned out of the world and into my art or homework and later in high school to work. Soon I was using foam covered earbuds and trying to hid the black cords around my ears, through my hair and into a hoodie to wear them in study hall.

My parents had rules on when my brothers and I could wear them.

As I got older I used headphones to tune out a variety of things- the noise of my roommates, construction, late night noises in the neighborhood, the people on the train and other various things. Over time I moved to in ear buds (IEB) and I found they worked better to help me tune out and tune in, and it really kept the noise of the subway out of my head.

At the DayJob I needed to buckle down and get a LOT of paperwork done, some of which I had let build up, so I popped my IEB in and sat in the gallery with my laptop and churned through the work. In the few hours I had I churned through pages and thousands of words of work. The combination of noise cancelation through the DIY plug tips and the music I chose (The Tidal 420 Playlist for giggles) let me tune out of the stuff that was happening around me, while I focused on the music.

Of course when you use true wireless BT IEB it can lead to confusion- one coworker laughed as I pulled a bud out, apologized, then said hello back.

For me, there is something really helpful about being able to isolate myself from the noise around me. I tend to look up when I hear a noise and then get distracted. It takes me a minute or two to get back to what I was focusing on. Headphones means I can ignore all the little inconsequential noises around me, and just focus on the task ahead of me.

It seems dramatic to call this bliss, but as an easily distracted person, being able to focus on just one thing is fantastic. That combined with the controls being on my ears just makes setting up a place to work easy.

In some places, like my home studio, I use a speaker system. That works well enough there since it is a private location, in a more public location, like my DayJob studio, I use a speaker when I’m not feeling distractable, otherwise it’s headphones.

I have to admit, I never really thought much about my use of headphones until recently. I’d been feeling very distracted and popped my IEB in, did my work, then realized I’d been doing this for YEARS of my life, and that I’d unconsciously been making a place to be creative.

It works for me. Do you use headphones or music to make a creative space for yourself?

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