Mixy – Page 65 – Mixy's Art Blog

layers on overspill

Sunday 29 April: This page started out with some overspill remnants from previous inky fun – the golden orange magenta dyes.

It’s been a while since I played with watercolors and the blue forms are today’s addition.

I’m messing about with different techniques – this time using a water brush dipped directly into the tube of watercolor paint.

The wonderful rich turquoise is from the Koh-I-Noor dye paint

I love the magic of colors interacting!

Watery puddles take the pigments in their flow. As the water evaporates the trails are left.

liberating discoveries

Through the pages of the recent weeks I’ve made some unexpected discoveries:

Everyday I look forward to my bit of time set aside for play, there are similarities, sure, but everyday is individually distinct from it’s neighbours.

The ‘no rules’ rule liberates any planning, expectations, or regrets. By photographing the interim stages they are captured, so when they vanish under another layer of something-totally-else, I still have a memory of them to refer back to.

The properties of one small detail can infuse into other parts of the page. A textured paper inspired these scored lines…

Sometimes new characters drift through my subconscious and out the end of the pen. They reside here, waiting to return in a future idea. Or not. It doesn’t matter!

The adage less is more does not apply. The contents of the page unconsciously reflect the content of the day, and some days are bright, loud, bustling and care not for a controlled, contrived design and color scheme. They are just pieced together with what is at hand.

The possibilities ARE limitless!

visual echos

Thursday’s page focused on utilising bits of the dyed paper through stacking n stitching, to exploring cut and torn shapes

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The echoing shapes from previous pages are now just indentations. To continue the theme of the swirling frond shape that has lasted all week I cut a stencil from acetate and used this with ink and then acrylic glaze for a subtle sheeny shape here n there.
The roughed up surface, sheen of the glaze and the warm earthy colors put me in mind of a leathery effect.

dot dot dot …

I’m so glad I posted the beginnings of Wednesday, cos all trace of that pink ricey start are now hidden beneath layers of acrylic dots!

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Using sequin waste (punchinella) as a stencil, I’m most taken by the white dots, raised from the surface with nice crisp edges, made with thick goopy printing ink.

pink rice beginnings

Wednesday’s page started out with the results of playing with dye and rice. I poured rice onto the puddles of dye that’d spilled onto the page

As the rice absorbed the water in the dye, the concentration of the pigment outlined the grains.

I’ll post what happened to this page later…

a journey through color

As the cut out shapes from Sunday echo through the pages, Tuesday bore the same linear curves and disconnected egdes through which a glimpse of Thursday…

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Much coloring, inking, paint splatting later, the page evolves through different color groups and combinations. A journey of a day! 🙂

layers of lumpiness

As Sunday’s cut-out page was backed with card, turning over to Monday’s page, meant incorporating two big rectangles of card bang in the middle of the page. I often follow the adage If you can’t hide it, make a feature of it, so this page was destined to be layered in a chunkier fashion than before.

Collaged into disguise with layers of dyed paper, bits n scraps of leftovers from old projects (those swirl shapes keep on coming back!), unified with layers of tissue paper.

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As there was a little bit of left over gold card, I made a block with the day and date, written in dead biro (no ink, but still a useful tool)

After accidentally modpodging too far over the edges, as an exercise in ‘let’s see what happens’, I brushed modpodge over the card, then red ink. Scraping back when it was nearly dry revealed the shiny gold again.

day of the ephemeral dragon

When I was doing the paper dying thing I was using future pages of sketchbook to catch the drips.

Today this page came round. Pleasant in itself, but that was then. The nature of this is to be ephemeral, fleeting, evolving. This page belongs to today: time to change.

Skipping over the stages I forgot to photograph… then came the inky bit

What’s with white ink, then? I know, like dilute white paint. Just concept of ‘white ink’ doesn’t sit straight in my head. Anyways, white ink can be a bit milky, but dripping onto wet colored ink gives this effect. Can’t always guarantee inky splodge is dragon shaped 😉

The dragonyness left as he dried. But I think the idea of the shape got stuck in my head as I remembered I hadn’t done any cut outs for a while…

Back with the metaphors this book throws up: Y’know when the events of one day echo and reverberate, the memory creeps into the next few days? Such will be the next few pages!

More ink, sprayed, dripped, smudged…

integrating the stark whiteness from underneath, and stenciling its negative onto what will be next Tuesday’s page.

As the colors warmed up, it seemed to be wanting some gold. Metallic card stuck to the back of the page shines through.

watching paint dry

…and photographing it!

As I type to you the final drippings and runnings of this page a doing their thing, which give me the chance to show you some more bits of page.

After scribbly ink and doodles I wanted to knock back some of the busy color and detail, which I did with a mix of acrylic and guache. Sliding and scraping with palette knife.