Wow, two posts in one week!

• April 28th, 2005 • 0 Comments • painting, papermaking •

Quoting Bill and Ted, “Whoa!” Today was such a beautiful day, I HAD to go back down to the studio this evening. My fundage is a little tight right now, which means everything that can be painted on will be painted on. Paper supplies are VERY low, mostly due to my lack of place to store a varied stock. When there’s no paper, what’s a girl to do? Make some, of course!

There have been a couple of pulp balls lying around all winter, so I reconstituted them. While they broke up well, methinks I need to get ahold of a cheap egg beater to break up the smaller chunks. The ol’ potato masher just doesn’t cut it. Despite large paper chunks, I decided to make two sheets for painting on tomorrow. It’s nice and warm and dry outside tonight. In addition, I took some of the wood chunks that are building up around my newest “painting” and threw them in for a third sheet of extra-chunky paper.

* * *

If my vast memory serves (and by looking back ONE post…) I took a photo of the very beginnings of the “painting”. I’m somewhat skittish about taking another one as it’s in a working stage. As I’m no longer in a college environment, my work is more prone to people telling me what my artwork looks like. Spindle, as it’s tentatively titled, had already been subject to being labeled as a recognizable item. May I say, “Arrrrgh!”? Telling me what a non-objective artwork is irritates me to no end. Granted most folks need to know what an object is in order to make sense of it, so it really isn’t fair of me to feel irritated. Nevertheless I am, and so I won’t show any photos of what Spindle looks like. So there. Nyaaaah.

I’m faced with a problem in creating Spindle. Room and time. One, space is at a premium in Studio 4A. This project is somewhat large. Two, I have not had time to find a show space in which to present my large-scale paintings. These works NEED to be in a show. I am convinced that they are successful; Anxiety Beast was the only one to make it into my only show, and it isn’t nearly as delightful as the Industrial Strength Tryptic. I’d love to be able to have a show of the larger paintings…but it isn’t possible right now. Sigh. Perhaps the Summertime will offer more opportunities?

Arrrrgh

• April 27th, 2005 • 0 Comments • computers, jobs, supplies •

Ah, I was cheerily coming up from the studio after a productive evening, only to have Neptune’s Finder malfunction. Insert sad sad noises here. I can’t for the life of me figure out what is wrong with it. Fortunately, my generous family bought Pisces for my 25th, so I can do a firewire connection and backup everything. Bah. Just when my evening was going so well, too!

* * *

I finished a lesson plan earlier this week involving CMYK printing process for my pedagogy class. Unfortunately, I could not procure any oil colors in process cyan, magenta or yellow. Acrylic was the only thing available: I purchased some retardant and decided to try and print using acrylics.

Materials:

ez-cut block
acrylic CMYK colors
acrylic paint retarder
various papers and posterboards

I actually started out using the acrylics without the retarder. The cyan rolled up well, but I quickly forgot exactly how fast thin layers of acrylic dry! Luckily I tossed my roller in the sink before it was ruined. After adding the retardant, the paints didn’t roll up as nicely, but didn’t dry out quite so fast. Interestingly enough, the recommended amount of retarder to add was no more than 15%…I mixed up about a 3:2 combo. While the package warned of tackiness for hours to come, the thin amount rolled onto the block dried QUITE fast. Not as good as oils, but they worked in a pinch! The only real problem I had was acrylic acting as a glue between the block and paper. Initially I thought it was a problem with the acrylics’ fast drying time. However I accidentally laid the block down on a dried print and it peeeeeeled the acrylic right off of the paper! There is now a thin layer of acrylic affixed to my block. Great.

After working out a lesson with examples I was somewhat inspired by using and working with the very “layerable” CMYK paints. Normally I’m a little reluctant to act on working with some new materials but I thought, “What the hell.” And painted something somewhat nice, complete with some modeling paste and a screen I used to make some t-shirts with. It’s not bad; it may not be good, either. It has a wiener dog in it. CMYK Wiener or something like that. Humph. So, it may not fit in with my usual portfolio…eh. Everyone needs a little ’bout of self-indulgent art therapy every once in a while! On that note, I’m thinking of starting a portfolio of pictures and items that are not typical of the usual suspects I create. When I returned from Europe with a painting for my parents of a campsite in Venice, I think they were surprised that I could do a watercolor landscape at all. (Heck, their favorite print I did was of an old Mexican man sitting in a chair admiring the landscape.) Parental admirations aside, I’ve been meaning to have a secondary gallery for a while now. Perhaps this is something I can attend to when I finish with these teacher certification classes!

(Incidentally, wish me luck…I have applications in at 6 districts in my area. Here’s hopin’!)