Quiet Day to Play

Today is really quiet, after the hectic, nearly manic pace of the last 6 weeks.  I have been frustrated in not having time to do anything creative.  So when I finally have a quiet, rainy day with no demands on my time, I ran wild. 

First, I did a bunch of Suminagashi prints using Sumi ink on rice paper to create some wonderfully swirling black and white images.  Then, I cut them into smaller pieces, mounted them on black cardstock and then white cardstock to create 25 postcards from the group.  Here are a couple of the group:

Then, I wanted to work in bright color for a while, so I did more postcards in some shiny acrylics - Maya Golds -- and stenciled some black dots on them.

The next two also used Maya Gold paints, but in this case, I first texturized the background using gesso through a piece of plastic grid from a bag of Stump Chunks. 

While I had the gesso out and a messy palette knife, I applied some gesso to two watercolor paper pieces, and let it dry, then used watercolors over the top and spritzed black watercolor through a stencil.  I then turned the ink-covered stencil upside down and printed the excess watercolor on the other card. 

The next two are totally abstract color studies using watercolors and the little bit of black Sumi ink still remaining in my cup.  I rather like the odd, ink-blot images that happened.

Two more, this time from some new sprays that I just got and wanted to see how they looked on paper.  Some of the color formed pools, which I then moved around a bit, and finally accented with a bit of Stickles glitter glue.

I took the very last of the Sumi ink and covered a final piece of watercolor paper.  I then did some "subtractive" stenciling (lifting color back off the paper through the stencil) painted the revealed areas a lime green in sort of a haphazard way, and finally created fireworks with some rose-colored Stickles glitter glue. 

Sum:  36 postcards ready to go.  Whew!  And it is amazing how quickly the day passed here in the studio. 

Catching Up - February flew by

February is always the shortest month, but this year it really flew by in many ways.  Having been incapacitated with some broken bones, I slept a lot and read a lot, and watched our endless snow fall, and fall, and fall, and fall. 

I've finally uploaded all of my February Journal52 pages. Yes, I forged ahead and did all of them, and finished 4 days early.

Feb 1, Iris

Feb 2, Checkered Flag

Feb 8, Explore

Feb 20, Breakthrough

These are a few of the pages; you can see all of them on my Flickr page -- they are in the set called Art Journal52

 http://www.flickr.com/photos/bertnparker/

A Few New Pieces

I've had very little time in the studio this week, but I've managed to do a few cards and sketches.

My friend, Nina, got a shipment of inks from Dick Blick, so we got together to do some creative stuff with them.  We both worked on a scrap of paper, and at the end of the day, it was quite a mess.  But a mess with some potential....

Nina had painted large blocks of copper in two areas to test the opacity/sheerness, and we had both used a calligraphy pen to test the inks.  But I liked the scrap of paper and after she left, I played a bit more with it.  I added some trees with watercolors and tried out some new Old World Oak Gall Ink I'd gotten from John Neal Booksellers.  That made some fairly credible rocks, so I turned the biggest of the copper block areas into a not-very-realistic, but fun, spirit bear walking down the rocky slope.  I actually think the bear looks a bit more like an elephant (note the ink dribble by his muzzle/trunk), but what the heck --  elephants don't live on rocky slopes with birch trees.  A few blotches of green served as leaves and here is the result:

From Nina and my ink testing experiments on a scrap of paper.

 Another day, I was looking out the studio window and saw a clump of birch trees half-buried in snow.  I am so tired of winter, that I decided to make a bit of spring.  So...out came the tags, my brushes, some watercolors, and this was the result:

Wishing for spring.

I was working with some Silks Acrylic glazes one day, and decided to stop wasting the beautiful paint that was left on my brush when I changed colors.  I got out a piece of 90# watercolor paper and started cleaning my brush off on it.  I liked the result, so when I was all done painting, I had a big enough piece of "cleaner" paper to make these two postcards.  I know I will be doing this again!

Cleaned my paintbrush on watercolor paper...now it's a postcard.

This is the other half of the watercolor paper...another card from just cleaning my brush.  Silks Acrylics are so much fun to use.

I'm always finding ways to make postcards (yes, I mail a lot of them) and if I can use pieces that didn't work out as planned, I'm even happier.  I was working on a watercolor background for my March Calendar Journal pages and it was darker than I wanted, so I put it aside.  Then, I decided it would be good as postcards if I added more paint.  Layers later, these postcards were the final product.

I got some fantastic new stencils from Joggles, and used one of them, with a couple of colors of Lumiere paints, to liven up this leftover hand-dyed scrap of fabric.  Naturally, it is another postcard!

 


And, last but not least, I have a new book that is great fun.  It is called "Drawing and Painting Imaginary Animals: A Mixed-Media Workshop with Carla Sonheim" and today I tried my first drawing from the book.  I dropped some yellow liquid watercolor onto paper and when it was dry, dropped some blue-green on top of it.  After both were dry, they seemed to suggest bird shapes so I gave it a try.  It was fun!  And totally silly!  

 I really wish I had more studio time.  But then, don't we all?