Tag: Mixed Media

acrylic gunk bird

Y’know the gunk that builds up round the top of acylic paint bottles?

Y’know when the paint is copper color and it’s just so shiny and gorgeous that although it’s also dried up paint something inside you says No! Don’t throw that away! It’s pretty – stick it in the book!

Y’know when this happens on a day you’ve already started with a page covered in hairy paper that does have a certain feathery like quality?

Y’know when you look at the dried up copper color acrylic paint gunk that you stuck to the page and it looks back at you, demanding: OK, I just have an eye and a beak. You must make me a body with a tail and wings. Immediately!

Y’know? Y’know that feeling?

 

I knew you would…

Image

That’s how this happened.

for the love of paper

Isn’t there something irresistable about paper? this page is centred around play with handmade paper. Not made by me I hasten to add – that’s a game I haven’t played (yet)!

It lends itself so well to roughly torn edgery, and as I discovered this week, tearing it when wet makes for even fluffier edges. Now I don’t remember what this paper is made from, it’s (I beleive) Indian and has super-long fibres. I painted it with Koh-I-Noor dye paints then gently tore it while it was still soggy.

The contrast on the magenta page really ZINGS!

I did the cut-out thing with a scalpel, the out-cut-bits then glued on top making multi-levelled layered shape, surrounded by doodle. With some more of the hairy edged paper and dyed envelopes glued to the underside of the page to show through the cut out holes, the next page was starting to take shape too. But more of that later.

Jam Jar Art

Have you ever noticed the underside of a *jam jar?

Me neither… until by happy accident. I checked all the old jars I have collected up, and they all seem to be the same. (I’ll wait here, you go off to the kitchen if you need to check yours now)

They all have a ring of raised dots – like glass Braille – I guess an anti-slipping thing.

Turns out if you wash out a jar and instead of drying it, leave it to dry naturally on the nearest flat surface, like maybe an inky page of an open sketchbook, a beautiful ring of dots appear where the water has run down the sides and puddled round these dots!

Oh yeh – and if you get carried away trying to recreate the effect you can obliterate the dot circles just as easily with too much water!

The patterning reminded me of sewing machined lines (unthreaded needle, just perforating the paper) …that seemed like the best thing to go with the page in progress

So that’s what became of page 36!

* strictly speaking mine are all coffee, mayo & pasta sauce jars. I don’t like jam. Funny how they’re always called jam jars…

Moments in the process

There is often a stage in the process where I look at the page and think WTF? What is going on? It might fly off on a tanget, or it might develop recognizably from here. But until it does, I have no way of telling…

Pushing on from this point gets easier every time. Like this…


Beginning the page with Black Gesso, some white writing and doodling. Tissue paper for texture.


Building up the shapes with slices of dyed envelopes


And some splashing – I used Dr Martin’s Bombay inks and some dilute acrylic paints.

And left to dry…


…to doodle on…


…and on…

to this! 😀

upside-down-ery

hole-punch holes make for old fashioned typewriter key style letters

I love the way ideas and moods will just flip upside down sometimes.


From a sure and steady point, no warning, suddenly everything is reversed, inside-outed. Its own antithesis.


Yesterday was strong and richly toned, uncoordinated, bloated with opulence and excess.


Today has a muted, balmy calm behind knotty labyrinthine lines.

Tomorrow? we’ll have to wait and see! 😉

now…. where was I ?

All that giddy excitement from last weekend (or some such excuse) meant I’ve not kept you updated on the page a day project – but I’ve not been so remiss as to let it slide!

Ready for a 10 day/page binge? Ok, here they come!

Day 29 (chronologically this day fell between Contrast (with buttons) and Quality Time)

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Although there are parts of this page I like – the colors and some parts of the composition, it has an overall feel of hurried chaos. Something too bitty and scrappy, but isn’t that the way of some days?!

Onward and upward to day 30!

a day in a page, part last.

The disparate parts of today’s page are beginning to merge and sit comforatbly in each other’s company.


The only things we need now are the doodles

Light and Dark – Black and White – We Need To Doodle!!

…………………….and now to bed! G’night all X

a day in a page, part 3b

Sorry folks, unkind to leave you dangling.

Dangling?

Yes! Here – on the brink of painted catastrophe!

….daubing and splashing… still no idea where this is going now…. it’s just so busy, so freeform jazz, so focus-less.

Enough! cries IK. I need new and I need different! I need solid edges and flat color! I need Spots!

If only the page weren’t so darned soaking wet…..

…aided by dabbing with a scrap of dyed paper drying time elapses…. (time to type to you) …we wait

still not what you’d call dry, but enough to stick stickers, and a bit more paint…

Time for the papery things we made earlier. They want some more blending in… but that’ll be after some more drying time. Til then…. 😉

a day in a page, part 3

Here’s kinda where we left off earlier, the coffee has soaked in and the general consistency of the page is still damp and squodgy.


Time for paint! Inner Kid is impatient with all this waiting, drying, waiting, so we press on:

Paint and drippy ink. And more purple again!

More splatter! More messy!

More!!!

In a bid to tame the splattering we meditate a moment on the yellow ink and coffee-ness of tomorrow’s page. I love this a lot. Even if nothing else comes of this weekend, the ink + coffee thing is going to be replayed!

But it doesn’t do the trick, the splattering amps up…

…………………..can this page be saved??? It’s looking kinda out of control to me……………..

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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