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UStream Faces
I’ve been working on some faces on ustream. Check them out
Toner Transfer Journal Junky Style
The Journal Junkies use toner transfers in their journals. I'm always jealous of well done toner transfers, as mine have almost always failed. Goof off is the first product I've used that gives great results. Watch the video, and work in a well ventilated area away from flames.
Dark Days
I notice that a lot of art journals only seem to cover the happy parts of life, as if only the pretty parts are deserving of a page.
Ignoring the crappy hard parts of life isn't the best way to deal with the garbage. Disappointment, sadness, death, and our distress all deserve to be explored and figured out in the pages of our art journals.
My art journal is a place for me to work out my thoughts and ideas, exorcise the demons if I need them gone. It's a place to explore and even fail.
I've got some dark not so happy stuff in my journals, and that's just the place to shut it away.
Week in Photos #12
Busy week and the typepad app will only let me load 5 pics. Boo!
Lightfast Test #2
Pens tested:
- Sharpie Brush Pens- Green, Purple, Blue
- Copic Cad Yellow Brush Pen
- Zig Clean Color Brush Pen: Bright Yellow, Prussian Blue, Green
- Uniball Signo DX .28 Bright Blue, Black .18, .28, .38
- Several Create-a-color 5.5mm Leads
Method:
I drew lines, scribbles, and a block of color on acid free archival
paper. The page was cut in half. the loose page was placed in a south
facing window that gets full sun for the majority of the day.I placed
the sheet in the window on August 30th, 2012. I took it down on
September 13th, 2012.
Let’s
start with the good. There was no color shift in any of the
Create-a-color leads. No worries there. The Uni-ball pens also had no
color shift, not even the bright blue color. The gris Nuage ink by J
Herbin also showed no signs of color shifting. This is a second test for
this ink. I like to affirm my previous tests, just in case.
The
bad. Let’s start with the Sharpies. Sharpie makes no lightfastness
claims. They don’t even bother with claiming their markers are archival.
No claims, no surprises. The green had major color loss. The purple was
mostly magenta after 2 weeks. The blue showed off some major color loss
and change. This was all expected. These are not lightfast. Do not
consider it archival and do not use it in finished art.
The
next on my list of bad is the Copic Cad Yellow marker. In the art world
Cad Yellow is not considered a fugitive color. In fact if you find a
painting with cad yellow in it from 200 years ago, that color is likely
to be still true to the day it was placed, depending on where it was
stored yada yada yada. The copic yellow marker had a major color shift
in 2 weeks and lost much of it brightness. What was left was a pale
yellow ghost. In some areas, where I’d had a light touch the color was
completely gone. The layered areas also showed color change and loss.
The Copic marker is not lightfast. Do not consider it archival, do not
use it in finished art.
The
next series of markers that are in the bad category were the Zig Clean
Color Brush markers. Zig makes a great deal of archival markers for the
scrapping market. I had to test them. In 2 weeks the color of the bright
yellow was completely gone. As in a shadow remained, as in you couldn’t
tell a color had been there, unless you already knew. The Prussian
blue and the green showed a great deal of color shift and loss. The
black, perhaps the most disappointing of all, turned purple and was well
on it’s way to disappearing. Zig does not advertise the Clean Color
markers as archival, light fast or even acid free; simply watebased. As
such I’m sure I can say with confidence that you shouldn’t consider them
any of the above either. Again, don’t use these in finished art pieces.
What
does this all mean? You can go ahead and use these in your art journal
and sketchbook- any place that will be kept out of sunlight, but be
aware that these could shift color if exposed to any strong sunlight,
really for any period of time. Let’s face it, even in the summer
Massachusetts sun is not considered all that tough and tougher pigments
and dyes often outlast it. I’d also caution you to be aware of buying
art from people who use Copics in their finished pieces, they were
initially made for the marketing world, where finished art is often
tossed after it’s been photographed. The markers did not need to be
lightfast. Now that people are using them for other art, Copic should
really consider making their markers lightfast.
Drawing People
I’ve
started to work through the Drawing Tutorials Online figure drawing
from memory instruction series. You can get it by signing up for his
newsletter here.
I
took figure drawing in college and then took a continuing education
credit at the School of the Museum years later. I haven't done figure
drawing in years. I’m trying to work with some friends to get another
friend to pose for us. Since I don’t want to be too rusty when I go into
the session I decided I’d brush up on my skills with the DTO lessons.
As
with my college classes the first DTO lesson is about gesture drawings
and working with a simple skeletal figure. I’m very familiar with this
lesson. It was what we spent the first week of our figure drawing
classes doing. Short 30 second poses. It is a great way to warm up.
I
decided to work with my yellow brush pen and a blue brush pen. In
college I used to do my figure drawing with yellow, orange, red, and
dark blue colored pencils working in layers. This method works well for
me. When I took the class after college the professor complained that I
chose difficult materials since I brought watercolors and a long liner
brush. 🙂
Anyway,
since I don’t have anyone to pose for me I went online and found a few
websites with free images to draw from. The best was this one. Caution
it is NSFW EVER. I mean never ever. Lots and lots of n@ked people. I did
20 quick gesture skeleton drawings. And by quick I mean quick, spending
no more than a minute or 2 each. I also worked in a dirt cheap
sketchbook.
It
was a good challenge and by the end of the 30 minutes I spent sketching
I really wanted to flesh out the images and create a finished drawing.
Alas that was not the goal for tonight, tonight was about looking and
recording quickly and with simple methods. It was about getting the
eye’s and hands attuned to the figure. It was learning to see.
Week in Photos #11
I'm venturing out from my usual walk into work images. Trying to find beauty in another way.
Max Material Use
One
of the things I really like to do is get the maximum use out of all my
art materials. This means that I like to hack them for a secondary use.
AC Moore recently had a 55% off coupon. SCORE! I headed in and bought
yet another brush pen. At 50% off I spent $4.30 for a Niji brush pen.
Sweet price.
When
I get one of these the first thing I do is take an exacto to the body
and separate the restrictor that forces you to fill the pen via
squeezing it. I stuff that into the brush part. (Video on this later.)
This lets me fill the reservoir with water in my prefered method- small
squishy bottle. Or in the case of this particular pen, a bottle of ink
and a blunt syringe.
I placed 4ml of ink into the body of the pen, greased the threads with silicone grease and screwed the whole thing up.
I now have a brush pen full of ink.
I
can fill this brush pen with any ink. Pigmented ink, acrylic ink,
fountain pen ink. Obviously it works best with ink that is watery in
thickness than super thick ink, but even super thick ink will flow, just
not as well. If using permanent ink you’ll need to make sure you clean
the pens out well and not let them dry out with ink in them.
Why would you want ink in a waterbrush? Uh, awesomeness.
Personally,
I really like how the colors flow together and I get a really nice
amount of blending and feathering when 2 colors hit the page. I love the
loose brushiness that the brush pens force me into. I can’t spend time
worrying about anything, overthinking kills the look of the brush pen.
Worry is it’s enemy. It forces me to be free and to not overthink.
(I'm currently testing my yellow inks for lightfastness, or lack thereof. I don't expect much from these. I'm probably going to pick up a bottle of Liquitex or other brand of pigmented ink.)
Review: China Marker
In college I took a figure drawing summer course. The professor came up from the Savannah School of art to enjoy the Maine summer and teach 3 classes: figure drawing and 2 sections of monotype. In the figure drawing class he carried a simple china marker. He would, after asking permission draw on top of our sketches with his china marker. Je liked them because they wrote over everything, leaving behind a bold line. It also helped that they were dirt cheap. I don't remember what brand he used but he carried a variety of colors, red, blue and black.
A few weeks back I was in Artist and Craftman and found a cup full of them in a variety of colors, around 70 cents each. I picked up a white and a yellow. The yellow is lightfast and I'd assume the white to be as well.
I've been using these on toned pages to add some delicate colors back into my ink drawings. They look a lot like chalk but aren't dusty or smudgey.These are a great way for art journalers to add white to a page when they don't want the look of a ultra fine line pen.
I found multicolor 12 packs on amazon for less than $10.