foil print fun

This is an artwork on cartridge paper, using black gesso, watersoluble crayons, black ink and black Pitt Artist pen. I completed the artwork, but it is actually a failed attempt at a new technique. My friend (Helen) and I decided to try a technique from Mary Todd Beam's book "The Creative Edge"... but we made a booboo and it didn't turn out the way it was meant to. But if you are making any art at all, it is not a failure, so we carried on and had fun with what we had anyway!!

The first stage was to brayer black gesso onto aluminium foil.

It needed to be a fairly thick layer. Then you needed to wait for it to partly dry.

This was where the booboo happened! You had to wait for the shine to dull to know when it was ready. But we waited too long and it dried too much.

Then we turned the foil over onto our cartridge paper and using a pencil, and shapes, and sticks, and the side of a ruler, we drew loose shapes and patterns onto the back of the foil.

You can see that we ended up with lots of tears in the foil because we had to scratch the heck out of it to get anything to transfer over to the paper!

When I peeled off the foil it looked like this... it was meant to be covered in heavy and light black lines and shapes all over the page. So my result is very sparse. But like I said, bad art is still making art, so we made the most of what we had.

Nervous that I would lose what black gesso I did have on the page, I sprayed with fixative first to preserve all I could. Then I leapt in with watersoluble crayons and coloured and washed to my heart's content. The finishing touches were stamping the word "icarus" and then the feathers, and decorating more with black Pitt Artist pen.

partner journal

I am involved in a partner journal with Wendy in New Zealand. These are the fifth set of layouts that I have done. These layouts are in my journal.

The theme for these pages was self portraits with commentaries.

In the self-portrait as Venus page I painted the background first with acrylic paint (for you people who like detail... the colour was "Derivan Matisse Ultramarine Blue", gorgeous colour!) The image of Venus and Cupid was found on the internet. The painting is "Venus and Cupid at Vulcan's Forge" by Palma Giovane. I added my face to Venus' body (bless her!) using Photoshop Elements and cut out section I wanted and glued it to the page with Gel Medium. I continued on the curtain at the top and the sheets at the bottom using watersoluble crayons. I stamped flourishes with white ink (sorry all you artists that don't like flourishes!!), then printed my commentary with a white Uniball Signo pen (the colour is called Angelic Colour!). This pen is FANTASTIC on the dark background, the white comes out even more solid than my souffle pens and there was no trouble using it over acrylic paint.

The next page started with torn and collaged scrapbooking and magazine and pamphlet papers. Then I drew the drawing on the right hand side. Then I attacked it with gesso and watersoluble crayons and coloured metallic pencil for the glasses. It was cool too wet the watersoluble crayons with gesso rather than just water! You get a more milky effect. On the left I used watersoluble crayons on the edges and gesso in the centre. The text is done on the computer and printed on transparency sheet. The writing didn't show up too well when I sat it over the page to test it, so I glued a layer of white serviette with gel medium to the centre of the page before I glued the transparency on. You will notice that I managed to smudge the bottom of the text in the process, but I let it go, because it is OK to make bad art!!!!!

I am loving doing this journal swap, it always manages to kick start me again from the doldrums!!

partner journal

These pages are from the partner journals that I am doing with Wendy from http://wendypslittlecorneroftheworld.blogspot.com/

The theme for these pages was where we lived, grew up, came from, etc.

The 'provenance' page is a vintage book page, printed photos, gesso, watersoluble crayons, rubber stamps and black inkpad, pencil, sharpie, and written with Faber Castell Pitt Artist pen.

The 'bakery' page started with scrapbooking paper, then I built up the background with gesso and watersoluble crayons. Then I added the brochure images of bread and buns and the printed photos. The 'bakery' letters are stickers. I then decorated with punchinella and flourish stencils using liquid pencil, white ink, black ink, brown ink and orange souffle pen. The writing was done with Faber Castell Pitt Artist pen.

To anyone interested in the layers beneath, below is a scan of the 'provenance' page before I added the elements and decorations.

thief!!

This strange little fella was spotted nicking off with an expensive piece of jewelry! He buzzed through the room and out the window and everyone there thought it was just a willy willy blowing through. This high speed camera just happened to catch the guilty culprit redhanded.

This is a page in a journal. It is a mixed media piece with pages from a vintage book in the background. Then I coloured the background with watersoluble crayons and acrylic paint. Then I collaged on the images of the man, the ring and the wings. I used a white pen marker to do the feathers on the wings and outlined the figure with black fineline pen.

If you look carefully, you will see the woman that the ring was stolen from in the picture. And she is wearing the very same ring!

Can't find her? Take a close look at the wings!!

Lighthouse

Aaaaaah! I'm still in a good mood from having finished an Illustration Friday drawing! Now to keep the momentum going! This is a journal page with an excerpt from Virginia Woolf's "To The Lighthouse." Unfortunately I can't claim to have read this book. I found the quote (as well as a couple of others from the same book) and comments on the story line, and now I have to say that I want to read it. I have some others on the go and in line at the moment ("The Artist's Way" "Novel About My Wife" "At The Sign Of The Sugared Plum" and "Petals In The Ashes"), but I think I will see if there are any Virginia Woolf books in the library next.

The method for this page was colouring the page with watersoluble crayons first then washing them with water. Once dried I collaged on the images of the lighthouse, the boats and the woman.

Next I washed a layer of dark paint over the top. I had planned to use Payne's Grey because I love it so, but I discovered that the lid had been broken and my tube had dried up. Because that is what I had envisioned, I made up my own version of Payne's Grey with Mars Black, Phthalo Green and Phthalo Blue. It seemed to do the trick. I masked the portion where the beam of light shone and painted over the entire page (except the woman.) I rubbed the paint off a few times with absorbent towels.

Then I attached the bird image and wrote the text with souffle pen, and added embellishments with sharpie and souffle pen.

Angel

I just adore angels! This angel is a photo I took of a memorial statue at a cemetery. I posterized the image and superimposed it on the image of the wall of a room being renovated. I printed the image out and then collaged it in my journal with snippets of sheet music and old dictionary pages. The colour around the edges is watercolour crayons, the circles are souffle pen and the dotted lines are acrylic paint.

Enjoy this image! I will post some of my angel photos on another day. You are bound to see many more angel images in the future. They are just heavenly. Compassion personified.