paper – Mixy's Art Blog

Water In Parallel (part 5)

The ongoing story of the two paintings about Water bumbles on… collage on top of painting on top of collage.

Next? Next came more painting!

I love the stuff that going on here, it’s expressing the watery vibe I want it too. But there’s a lot of it with no central focus. It’s uncoordinated jazz that needs summoning together into something more melodious.

Blocking out bigger areas in white was the best way I could find to start this stage of the process.

Then I got thinking about ripples….

I’m really nearly done on this now. I’ve got some more pulling together to do – and I know just what (I’ll show you next post). This came to me in place of sleep last night. Insomnia is a double edged phenomena: it leads to tiredness and inconvenience, but it also provides the space for thoughts that just don’t seem to have room to surface in the bustle of daytime.

Water in Parallel (part 1)

I’m working on a project over the next 6 months, part of which is to produce a collection of eight works, two at a time through each six week cycle.

So…. 6 weeks, huh?

I’m just into week 2. The logical, ordered part of my mind says ‘so you’re like about 25% done, right?’ Then when I stop laughing, collect myself, I can get on with showing you where it began:

I’ve got a theme: Water. But I’ve got no limits, no plan, and no expectations. Apart from – this is gonna be so much FUN!

Experience tells me straight off:

Make it Big (I’ve gone A1, cos I have that sized cartridge paper, and post-masive-sort-out, I’ve got that sized working area, both on table and floor)
Make it Strong (I know me; paper gets dog-eared and crumpled just by touching it. If I’m playing with this for more than a few days it’ll get holes in and ripped and all manner of fucked up – unless it’s super-tough) So this substrate’s gonna need layers! That’s where the heap of other papers comes in to play.

Ooooh tearing paper – inner kid – she’s in her element here – construction from destruction (yeh – eventually – but first let’s relish a bit of ripping deconstruction!)

Like day follows night, gluing follows tearing.

Working the two in parallel (here’s the plan) will keep them in sync. It’s now layered two to four thick, much more substantial to hold up over the coming weeks!

More developments in due course…………….!

Page 23: The Gecko has landed.

Page 23: Ephemeral Gecko makes his first appearance in the page a day book!

Nestled amongst the snippets of color….

winding his way through the stitches…

he is camoflaged in the scene.

But those papery toes are leading him onwards and upwards

to adventures yet to come.

Ephemeral Gecko

If you’ve been following these posts you’ve maybe wondered about the name. So I’ll let you into a little secret…

Ephemeral Gecko resulted from pairs of fave words randomly combined til I hit on a combination that yeilded no Googlings.

In a serendipitous way, the 2 words seemed suited to their purpose: Sharing the fleetingly ephemeral art on the journey to a finished piece – my initial plan for this blog. And my fascination with the Gecko, the +800 variations of this lizard come in a wonderful assortment of colors and sizes, many of which are nocturnal, much like my art.

Fresh from a recent paper-dying harvest, I’ve got many little stashes of paper scraps like this…

Have we gone off on another tangent here? Not exactly, bear with me here.

Inspired by “musings of a muse, dave’s diary”, last week I felt compelled to manifest an Ephemeral Gecko in physical form.

(I don’t know where these ideas come from, but have learnt not to question, it only delays the inevitable.)

He’s already found a home in the page a day book…. but I suspect he could be the first of many.

the magic of color

Rich colors like these make me smile. So much! 😀

The contrasting torn and cut edges

papery things

The dyed printer manual has really got me thinking about all the other redundant paper lurking in the house and office – future dying ideas………..

All instruction manuals – speshly those ones relating to things long broken, gone or forgotten
Phone directories; the Yellow Pages would be a fab base for warm-colored dyings
Newspaper, magazines (but not the very glossy type – unless there’s time to give them a very thorough scrumpling to break the surface up)
Old bills and receipts, tickets, shopping lists, that kinda stuff
Paper bags

Added to previously explored and sucessfully played with……..

Old envelopes
Out of date manuals/instructions, insurance docs (they send me all this art paper every year!)
Diary Pages – the calendar pages, the lists of international holiday dates and all the extra stuff that isn’t actual diary & the unused pages!
Maps
Sheet Music
Misprints from the computer – y’know when it fails to feed the paper and you get the top inch on one page and the rest on another. Both of these!

Any more for the list? Yeh……there must be! All suggestions welcomed 🙂

paper dying – new techniques!

I really thought that stash of dyed papers would last a long time, but supplies are getting low, so last night I began another batch, and in so doing I’ve streamlined the process a bit.

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It’s the same ‘lasagna‘ of paper and ink/dye, but instead of leaving it to marinade for ages, once it had a good soaking (1-2 hrs I guess) I spread the bits out on some more ‘scrap paper’. I used a super-cheap watercolor pad – v low quality and rubbish for painting on – but nice and absorbant, so just the job for this! Given a good squash (I stood on it, then danced about a bit) the colors soak through to the watercolor pad the bonus of more dyed paper than I’d bargained for + far quicker drying time. Result!

They’re drying right now – will show you the pics tomorrow. Meanwhile I’m planning another batch in different colors. I’m torn between blues, greens and purples next… What d’you reckon, folks? 🙂

So many, many layers

The page a day page/day parallel thing – they day resembles the page, the page resembles the day. Like the chicken and egg thing. Causality and whatnot.

This page went through so many incarnations.
Layer upon layer of indecisive confusion, unguided and unintentional.
Layers added, torn off, reglued on bits.
The page is quite dense and chunky now!

The day was complex, dense and chunky too 😉