Mixed Media – Page 20 – Mixy's Art Blog

3 of 12

Todays snippings are from the spring to early summer and range from the violet edge of blue through to sunny yellows 😀

Twelvty-Twelve

Hey folks, remember the 12 in 12 in 12 project? One book: 12 colors in 12 months. Serendipitously conjured up in the year called ’12.

It’s been a little while since the last update, and as well as the recent (unseen) month-color-pages I’ve been hopping back in time to add little bits and things here and there.

So as we arrive in the 12th of the 12th of ’12, here comes the first of (…hey – guess how many…) daily snips of pages you’ve not seen yet!

some P, M, bits of N and oddments from G

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Remember the dictionary I dyed? Pages are evolving!

Apologies for the poor photo quality. Better to follow when me, camera, art & daylight are in same place @ the same time!! 😉

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.

editDSC_3130 — Flamboyant through to Flat, multiple ink stains

30 years ago this month I began high school.

30 years ago? Lordy!

editDSC_3123 — ink soaked paper napkin squashed between Shun and Side

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

editDSC_3143 — 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.)

editDSC_3135 — Lure to Machine. Dripped inks and dye water.

Nonetheless this book has travelled with me through the decades.

editDSC_3132 — Abbreviations to A. Squished inky paper

editDSC_3126 — Repay through to Reproach. More inky goodness.

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

editDSC_3128 — 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.

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

editDSC_3131 — 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.

every last ounce of goodness

I’ve been dying fabric for the quilt lately. I’ve been dying fabric for years. It got me thinking: The only stage I don’t like is towards the end when the residue dye – as it’s no longer active – has to be poured away. Why? it’s mostly water. But something inside me winces, it’s beautifully colored water and I don’t want to waste a drop of color.

In my perpetual quest for ways to wring every last ounce of goodness out of every stage in a process, last week I had one of those why did I never think of this before epiphanies.

It’s no good to dye fabric with now, but it will dye paper!

Decanting the dye dregs into jam jars, rolling up scrap paper and standing them in the jar.

Then just let science take over: the water soaks in and climbs up the dry paper bringing the remaining pigment in its wake.

When they’re soaked through, or the water in the jar has dried up, or when I just need to clear some space I empty the lot into a bucket to finish intermingling and eventually dry.

It’s satisfying on so many levels: using up color, repurposing scrap paper, creating patterns for future collages and art works. It does it’s own thing when left to its own devices. It’s messy and unpredictable (just like me) And it’s effectively better than free!

More variations on the theme:

Dry paper, water-splashed paper, soaked paper (hot & cold water)
Letting the liquid soak part way up, then up-ending the paper so it runs down and creeps up at the same time
Pouring more color down the inside of the paper rolls
Using paper that’s been part printed on the inkjet so the colors merge and dribble into each other
Coffee dregs instead of / mixed with colored water
Just water + inkjet printed paper (but not laser printed – that ink won’t run)
Scrumpled paper for a veiny effect
Glossy photo paper (make good use of those expensive printer mistakes!)

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

editDSC_3047 — 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

editDSC_3052 — 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.

editDSC_3057 — swirls an spirals painted into the ink before it dries

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

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 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!