Tag: ink

words and colors

If you’ve visited here before you’ll have to noticed two of my favourite things are words and colors.

So dying a dictionary seemed the obvious thing for me to do.

Flamboyant through to Flat, multiple ink stains

30 years ago this month I began high school.
Plea to Plough

30 years ago? Lordy!

ink soaked paper napkin squashed between Shun and Side

Equipped with the essentials dictated by the school, I now owned a Pocket Oxford Dictionary.

from Irk to Irresponible. Coffee painted on with teabag.

(At over 1000 pages and a good 2 inches thick, the average pocket size of an eleven year old child negated its title.)

Lure to Machine. Dripped inks and dye water.

Nonetheless this book has travelled with me through the decades.

Abbreviations to A. Squished inky paper

Repay through to Reproach. More inky goodness.

Battered, dog-eared, with scribbled notes in the margins here n there…

from Pylon to Quandry. Squashed strip of inky paper

… the spine went first but now it’s cover has separated totally from its papery wordfilled heart.

dip dyed dictionary

In it’s new incarnation – a colorful version of the former – it will one day become collage ingredients.

Encode to Engine. Colorex inks

As an aside, I sometimes catch a glance of myself in my art room, as if from an outsiders perspective. I’m ironing torn, stained scraps of paper. Phrases like ‘not doing anyone any harm’ in bemused but sympathetic tones echo in my head. I smile. They just don’t understand. Anyway, I do it cos I have to and it makes me happy. Nuff said.

day last-but-one

While I was playing with my new inks last week, I developed some of these experiments on Thursday’s and Friday’s pages

the milky opacity of white ink dripped in transparent colored ink details the runs of the liquid

With a thick coating of white gesso on part of the page, scribed with pencil for deep furrows of swirl, the inks had routes to wander around

ink on wet white gesso reduces the saturation of blending colors

and new routes made with small watercolor brush, trying the page together as a whole.

swirls an spirals painted into the ink before it dries

The ‘day last-but-one’ thing – well, I’ll explain that bit later…. 😉

subtlety

The range of colors, the colors themselves, all add up to a mood or visual sensation. By changing the hues, we change much more.

Restricting colors (I find this a BIG challenge!) is a technique I am striving towards.

When space limits me to work on just one project at time, the Inner Kid won’t listen to me. “More Colors!” is the constant command.

If I had a few pieces on the go and space to dip between them this would be much more simple

But for now, working within the parameters of my living/painting space, I have to exercise a little more self discipline to make these more subtle images happen

Initially this page was to be just 2 colors: Olive green and burnt orange.

So the fact that I only allowed in some different shades of orange, I consider a victory!

And the results have (for now at least) left Inner Kid in slightly hushed awe: Maybe less is more!

Monochrome Monday

I’ve thought about a black and white page for a while.
I’ve even tried.
But resisting any color at all was harder than I cared to admit!

Anyway, prompted by John Clinock of Art Rat Cafe I determined to give it another go. Armed just with black and white gesso, black and white Dr PH Martens’ Bombay Inks, black and white gel pens, this is what happened!

I’d do it again – thanks for the nudge, John!

Mixed Mish Mash

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This weekend I spent playing with ink on gesso and acrylic medium.
Dripping, spraying, dribbling and seeing where the runs take it.
On wet and dry gesso, ink on wet inks, ink mixed in with medium, water on dry inks… all sorts of permutations. The circles in the gesso came from the end of the drinking straw I was blowing some ink about with. Good messy fun!

ink runs

Two pages in one post,


Playing with ink never tires, never gets samey, never ceases to amuse me.

Alternating between transparent, opaque, and water in drips and runs, watching the pigments flow and merge;
Pulling at the puddle edges with a brush or pen or stick… imprinting in wet ink…

Big love for ink!

ink dribbles


Remember the watermarked dyed paper ?

This week I’ve been playing with ink (quite a lot!) So it followed that where water does one thing, ink should do similar but with more colorful results!

I used Pebeo Colorex ink (Chartreuse. My fav color de jour!) they have a real glowing transparency and mouth-wateringly rich color! On pre-scrumpled paper they run deliciously through the landscape of the paper’s surface.

The quilt-making (more on that later) is my current obsession, and the urge to stitch is cropping up everywhere!

the other side of the folds


The other side of day / page 40 had folds already in place from which to make structure.

These created rectangles in which to hold doodles.

It was another page that spilled into its neighbour, repeated shapes formed along the far edge along with inky grass-green spillage and over spray.

Coming together as a whole, like this.

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 😉

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