NO GRASS GROWING UNDER MY FEET!

I am working on my Kanuga presentation.  I am thinking I will collage a drawing onto the altered surface and then paint from there.  I am trying different variations of this idea.  This drawing was done on some sort of Japanese paper I have.  The drawing was done with a coffee stirer and ink.  I really liked the results.  The surface of this paper is very soft  and is difficult to collage down because it starts to fuzz up a bit.  I put it over a surface that I had used ink and bleach on.  The bleach causes the ink to turn brown and yellowish. It continues to bleed through with interesting results.  I like this piece the way it is and don't think I want to add color to it.

This piece is tissue paper with a sharpie ink drawing on top collaged onto a piece that had very colorful, high gloss collage on it.  I love the random color that shows through the tissue.  I will definitely paint on top of this page.

This page had a red ink drawing on tissue collaged over a collaged background.  I am leaning toward this idea but need to see how the red line works into the painting.  

This was an experiment to see how a drawing on newsprint would work as collage material.  I was surprised to see it allows the background to subtly show through and works well as collage material.  I added the magenta ink while it the sheet was still wet so it bled.  I'm not sure I like that result but I can add paint on top and modify the effect.  

I need to finalize my ideas so I can stop stressing over this demo.

BACK IN SCHOOL!

David Lobenberg honored me by asking if I would come up to his Sacramento City College watercolor class and do a demo for the students. What fun to meet someone in person you became friends with through the internet! Naturally, the weather was fairly threatening with a big storm coming in and I had a two hour drive to get there. Add in rush hour traffic in the Bay Area. I was anticipating a harrowing journey. Just goes to show how we waste so much time worrying about what might be....it usually doesn't. The drive was easy all the way, counter commute, and I was ahead of the rain. By the time I left, everything was sunny.

David is a very joyful person and his wonderful sense of humor and fun pervades the classroom so I knew I was in for a great time. I did demonstration using Tyvek with two different inks....the Carter brand I found ad Staples which has a cool bias and a Winser Newton non-waterproof ink that had a warm bias...Permanent India Ink plus bleach. I added some carbon black at the end. While the painting was drying, the class put on a feast, pot luck style.

So, thank you David and your wonderful class for such a warm welcome. I am looking forward to receiving lots of e-mails with photos of the paintings inspired from my demo.

I am getting lots of people loving this Tyvek paper. Maybe everyone who is interested should start requesting it from Cheap Joe's. If there seems to be enough interest, maybe they will carry it again.

FINAL TWO STEPS

Here are the last two stages to complete this painting. I added white acrylic to the bleached painting, then started glazing and painting on top. It is a good idea to photograph the steps of your paintings for future reference. If you find you don't need them, it is easy to erase them. If you decide after the fact, that you wanted to document the steps, you can't go back!

Very little of the original bleached effect is left. Most likely it impacted the look of the finished painting, but it is pretty subtle. I'm going to keep on with this idea until I hit on the balance I am looking for. Can't quite say what it is, but I will know it when it shows up. The thrill of the hunt!

IF AT FIRST YOU DON'T SUCCEED, TRY, TRY AGAIN!

This was a piece of watercolor paper that I had put a band of textured gesso on as a demo. I decided to cover it with the ink. The ink is very blue in appearance on the gesso section. The ink will lift off of the gesso with water but the bleach changes the color to orange which gives both a warm/cool contrast and a blue/orange compliment contrast at the same time. I put two full strength coats of ink on the paper. Today I started playing around with the bleach. I was able to get the layering of values I wanted on the paper but it is too orange. It wouldn't lighten enough. I think I will go back to just one layer. I like how it looks on the gesso area. That area is totally liftable, so I sprayed it with acrylic fixative. Tomorrow I will go back in with some acrylic and see what happens. I put up some detail photos so you can see things more clearly. I was using a stick, a dip pen and all kinds of brushes. I went to Michaels and bought a bag of cheap brushes to use with the bleach. I was also experimenting with all of these ideas on YUPO. It moved around too much on the slippery surface, so I think I will move on. I guess Tyvek is next!

CLOSE BUT NO CIGAR!

I don't know where this expression originated but it seems to be appropriate for how I feel about the final results. The color didn't photograph very well and the odd dark shape in the lower right hand corner is the arm of my chair that I used to prop up the painting to photograph it. Still, I think I am on to something with this technique but I am not happy with this image. Her nose is too long, so it ruined the face for me. I think I removed too much of the ink. You can't see the effect of the bleach enough. This will probably see collage or gesso in the future. I think I will do the next one by totally covering the page with full strength ink and draw with a chalk pencil then bleach out leaving more of the ink behind. This painting is a full sheet. I think I will work on quarter sheets until I have the right combination.

Our branch library is closed for renovation, so I returned my books to the main library in downtown San Mateo. When I walked in there were arrows on the floor leading to a Friends of the Library 1/2 price sale. Well, I practically swooned! All the art books were marked $1 up to $3 and then they were sold at half of this ridiculously low price. I decided to be nice and leave a few books for other people. I paid a whopping $5.25 for my bag load of books which included a hard bound 1961 original edition of Faber Birren's "Creative Color". Signed copies of this book are going for $129 but, alas, no signature could be found. Since I already have this book, I will have to find a creative way to pass it on. Any ideas?

2ND BLEACH PAINTING EXPERIMENT

After completing the first bleach painting, I wondered what would happen if I used different dilutions of ink and bleach. That's what this painting is investigating. I let the computer do the hard work and broke the image down into 4 values, printed out the results and used that as my guide. I drew the shapes of the values in with a charcoal pencil and then painted away. This ink is decidedly blue when diluted. I let stage one dry, then went about bleaching out the ink areas. I diluted the bleach about 50/50 and it seemed to work. There was practically no odor, so this is a good discovery. I played around with a little stamping. I can't seem to help myself! I'm not sure if I took too much off or not. Tomorrow I will be sitting at Gallery Concord, so I will take my paints and put the color in. If you are in the area, stop by and say hi.

EXCITING NEW TECHNIQUE!!!

I found a very interesting book at the library called "Painting without a Brush" by David Ferry. Printed in 1991, it is still available on line. In fact, I had to pay as much for postage as for the book! The library is a very expensive place for me. When I find a book I like, I want to own it. This book has lots of interesting mixed media ideas. Today I decided to try one that really intrigued me. The idea is to use bleach to lift areas of ink. Above is the final result. Here is the process I followed:
First I drew the image with charcoal onto a sheet of smooth watercolor paper. Next, I took a white candle and drew some lines that will act as a resist. Then I took some non-permanent black ink (permanent ink has shellac in it and won't work) and brushed the ink over the paper, leaving some of the area white. When that dried, I then used various brushes and applied bleach. Be sure you have decent ventilation as the bleach odor can be fairly strong. The bleached area turned shades of orange. I want to explore different strengths of ink and different dilutions of bleach to see how much variation I can achieve. When the paper dried, I applied more charcoal, then sprayed with an acrylic fixative. Lastly, I glazed some acrylic color over areas and used titanium white acrylic from the tube for more opaque passages.

This was so much fun, I can't wait to try it again tomorrow. Now that I have the idea, there are some variations I want to try.