happy accident – Mixy's Art Blog

A day in a page, part 2 of part 2

Remember the fantastic ink squirting device from earlier today? Well here it returns but with even more ridiculous proportions. We needed red instead of yellow, which meant draining the yellow out of the squirty-bit. Never wanting to waste color, we released the residue onto tomorrow’s page.

Tomorrow’s page was temporary resting place for the palette we had lined up for later – (clear plastic box lid). No other space for it, so plonked back down on the puddle of ink.And wow! Happyaccidental art!

Look! It just happened!!

These pages are now both very soggy.

So it kinda didn’t matter to get a bit more soggier still… cue: coffee dregs. (Such a shame to waste)

Proper drying time now needed. I have to say, at this stage all I know is this is way off finished. It could absolutely go in ANY direction and I wouldn’t be surprised. Check back soon-ish, I’ll show you what comes next 😉

serendipity

Serendipity [noun] “an aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident.”

I think this sums up so much of what I do. Yesterday’s post about recycling was a tangent I wandered down when thinking about how the collage pieces I make come into being.

Paper is readily recyclable these days (indeed it’s often recycled when it’s ‘new’) but I like to get every last ounce of use out of it. Once it’s been printed on (both sides) with info that’s no longer needed, it retires to a life in art.

Images and pictures, blocks of color or gradients, maps, poetry, lyrics, photos, scanned doodles and sketchbook pages, mish-mashed up in photoshop, I let fate take over and set the printer running. And if there are gaping spaces left, the page gets turned around and over-printed again. Serendipity occurs!

The ones that don’t happen into something immediately usable cover my work table to take on new nuances with splashed color, and as testing grounds for paints and inks and stampings. Or used to soak up excess color from dying fabrics and threads (I think this must be where the great paper-dying project originated… one idea bears fruit and blossoms into new ideas and schemes and badly mixed metaphors!)

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.

off on a tangent & happy accidents

Using a blank page from my sketchbook to work on for the paper dying episodes has a threefold purpose:

It’s a nice clean white (to begin with, at least) backdrop to photograph and record work in progress. A3 size book, opened up is a good sized working area.
It protects my work surface (for now, an ironing board)
It’s captured some gorgeous incidental art. Every stage of art, is art, right?

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The little wire coils? Yeh, I’ll explain them later. Meanwhile I’ve got drying paper to go check on. BRB 😉