In all the fun of creating Gunk Bird I forgot to show you page he landed in!
The hairy/fluffy paper leftovers from the page before set the scene
Cut out shapes echoed in white pen
Gold foil blended in with copper acrylic paint
Tag: page a day
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…
That’s how this happened.
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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.
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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…
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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! 😀
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scrap-driven pages
Working in the way I do generates a lot of scraps and offcuts. There are days (most of them) when I have no idea where to begin or how the page will look. The scraps often decide this for me, and Day 33 is pure 100% scrap driven!
Along with the scraps I make there are scraps I save from the ‘outside world’ – labels, tickets, lists and quotes written on the backs of envelopes… these were the founding ingredients for day 34.
The quote that I made annoyingly illegible was from an unknown Sufi master: “May I overcome any bitterness that may have arisen because I was not up the magnitude of the pain I was entrused with”. Hearty food for thought.
Scraps make for textural interest too, in page 35 I used little torn rectangles to build up a layer of white on the blank white page, that’s where the linear forms began and the rest just happened!
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upside-down-ery
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! 😉
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resistance to drawing
Funny how some fragments of life become lodged in that part of the memory that keeps rolling back round to the front.
This was part of the conversation in my interview for art school 2 years ago…
Me: I’d really like to learn to draw
Tutor: Huh?
Me: Yeh, I can’t draw, y’know like real things
Tutor: Bullshit! Fuck, I’m not meant to swear in interviews…
This was the point I knew I was going to fit in.
In class with same tutor some while later we were drawing the music that was playing – the topic came up again: But you are drawing a real thing… or are you saying music isn’t a real thing?
But I still have this resistance towards drawing. I accept I can (to a degree) do it, but something inside me chooses not to. But I want to. But I don’t.
The inner-squabble continues, meanwhile I splosh and splatter and doodle inside the familiar comfort zone, rarely stretching out to sketch and interpret shapes and objects.
Page 32 began with ink and coffee dregs – the ideal background for some drawing of real things! I started out with some stuff in my immediate view – scissors, water jug, paint brushes, my left hand.
Over this I drew some of the imagery from a vivid dream I had the night before. (After all, dreams are real things too, right?)
I will endeavour to do this again. Art is like all exercise – remember to stretch!
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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)
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!
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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
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