Gelli Printing Newbie

My friend Kelley Walker over at One January Day loves her printing plate from Gelli Arts so much that she teaches classes. I couldn't take them cuz of tax season so last week when I was being super lazy, I mean, recovering, I watched a bunch of videos on their site and decided I absolutely had to have one. So yesterday I went to My Heart's Fancy and bought one. Here are some results.

 

The above were made using a stencil from Tattered Angels - the first one was with the stencil on top of the paint on the plate printed on a magazine page, the second was printed on a map after the stencil was pulled from the plate, and on the third one I brayered the painted stencil on top of another print (pink paint that had been stamped into).

But my favorites are what Kelley calls Messy Seconds (watch her video) and what Gelli Arts call Plan B.
love, love, love the grungy look
like doors with tons of layers of paint wearing off - but with subtle patterns in them

Naturally, there's a mess to clean up.  But everything fun is messy.

 

Not sure what I'll do with these little gems.  Art journal pages (ah yes, something else I haven't done in forever) or parts of a collage or maybe the handmade books we're making in art group.  

But I do know I'll be pulling this out again.  And again.

ps ~ it's good to be back

Arting with Friends

A year ago, my friend Ellen (above) and I took an encaustic class from Ellen Koment

in the Paseo Arts District here in Oklahoma City.  It was a long hot two days.

We learned a lot. 

And then, because we didn't use it right away, we forgot a LOT. 

So yesterday Ellen came over and we practiced, practiced, practiced.

And if you know either Ellen or me, you know we talked and talked and talked.

But that really helped us be loose in our experimentation.

(More on the experiments at the bottom of the post.)

Here's the only piece I made from scratch and finished.

Well, I'm not quite sure if it's done.  I think so but . . .

Makes me think of grapes for some reason

(maybe cuz I am ALWAYS hungry?  LOL)

The next piece is one I started in class and didn't like.

So when I first whipped up my batch of encaustics, I covered it in white.

And I still didn't like it!

So I scraped and dug and put green wax in the cuts, scraped some more, etc, etc, etc.

Still didn't like it!

So yesterday I pulled it out and covered it in black.

Then I scraped in a tree which I filled with gold.

A lot more scraping and torching and this came out.

I like it.  But it's nothing like what I usually do.

Which can be a very good thing some times.

Ellen and I had so much fun! 

By the end of the day, I think she was as in love with scraping as me. 

I'm telling you, it is soooooooooooo relaxing ~ even contemplative. 

And I'm pretty sure she'll be buying a kitchen torch soon. 

They are so much less intimidating than those big old tank things. 

And easier to control. 

My friend Roz loaned me her torch but I'm going to wait to use it til I do something BIG! 

You see, I am deathly afraid of fire and I burn myself all the time in the kitchen. 

Yeah, I'm a little confused as to why wax is my favorite medium. 

Talk about pushing yourself out of your comfort zone!

In my last post I mentioned I was working on 3 art group projects.

This year we're doing a round robin of boxes.  Very cool. 

When they're all done, I'll share pictures.

In addition, every month the hostess gives us a "challenge".  

I've got to admit, I am pretty lax about doing them.

But in May, Lynda gave each of us an unfinished curved wood cabinet door.

LOVED IT!

and I came up with this ~ After the Fire

Working on the curved surface was tricky. 

But again, something new can yield wonderful results.

Also in the last post I showed some works in process.

Here is one of them with a few more steps of wax collage & color.

Looking pretty different, huh? 

Well, I think it's about to change.

You see, while we were experimenting and talking yesterday, guess what happened?

I got distracted (surprise!  not) and ignored a piece

on the heat for a little longer than I should have.

And I loved the glass smooth finish it gave the wax

so I'm going to do it with this piece on purpose.

I have no idea how it will work becuz you just never

know what the wax will do when it gets hot. 

Okay, you know it will melt, but will it run, pool, slide completely off?

I'll let you know what comes next with this.

I love arting with friends.  New ideas just seem to form in the air.

And while most of the women in my art group do work entirely different than me,

I always come away so inspired.

I am so glad I revamped my studio so there's room for two or three to play.

There's even room for small class of four.

If you're in OKC, let me know. 

Maybe there's some arting in our future.

what I've been doing

busy, busy, busy
we are all so busy
when I looked at the blog last week I was shocked to see I hadn't been here since Thanksgiving
but as I thought about it I understood

you see I was working on a piece of art that really really stretched me.
why was I stretching?
mainly cuz it's YELLOW!!!
I know, I'm a little weird but yellow is just not a color I'm comfortable with - it's hard to keep it clean and, well, yellow, when doing as much layering as I do.

the other stretcher was that I actually wanted to paint an image that looked like its counterpart in the real world and I haven't tried to paint realistically in years

all-in-all, I'm very happy with the results

I struggled with a beeswax collage I was working with. I must have scraped this one down five different times. I really like the way it looks now except it's missing something. Any ideas?

I also went shopping with a new friend and she suggested I could do a line of pieces for some local stores and etsy that was a little less involved and less expensive.  I loved that idea and wondered

why didn't I think of that before?

and my brain was off and running.  I came up with a whole series of 6x6 whimsical collages which I finally finished today.

I desperately wanted to have these two pieces and the new series done and on here and on the website and on Etsy and everything linked to everything and and and . . .  
You know how it goes, the more you need to do, the more things go wrong as you try to do them all!  When my camera battery said "ENOUGH" today, I realized I needed to say it too and just post what I have so you all don't think I moved to Mars or something.  Afterall, tomorrow I start tax season and the odds of me popping in regularly are pretty slim.

Thanks for sticking with me.  Maybe I'll get that new series posted before the overtime crunch starts but maybe not.  LOL  In the meantime, I'll be stopping by your blogs and Facebook pages to see what you're doing amidst the crazy busy-ness of your world.

Feel free to visit/like my FB page as it's so much easier to post artsy tidbits and images there than here.
TTYL

bored bored bored bored & a little lonely

Patrick has a huge deadline tomorrow with his biggest building yet so I don't see a lot of him these days. And while I love, love, love the art time, I do get a little bit bored & lonely all by myself.

Just how bored?

Well, I cleaned out the freezer, I tried to start a Tumblr art blog, I talked my daughter into gutting one of the guest rooms with me, I started a new non-art blog, I redid two pieces of art and started a few more, I've posted every day to at least one of my blogs, I started a new book (reading, not writing) and I went by myself to see this movie.
By myself.

And if thats not enough, I then made a journal page about it!!!!
 
I started with a CitraSolv paper in really pretty pastel shades with what I believe was at one time a hummingbird on it. When I started to journal on the page, I discovered that not every pen works on a CitraSolv page. I finally settled on Sharpies and PrismaColor.

Next I slapped on some scraps of handmade papers and my favorite tissue paper. 

And then I decided to gel transfer the movie picture on top.  I've never transferred onto paper before but I expected it to be fragile so I coated both sides with medium prior to attempting the transfer.  Well, I was wrong, it wasn't fragile.  It was super-fragile!  As I started to scrub off the paper backing, the magazine page started to tear so I had to leave a lot of the white fuzz on there.

And that led to a nice discovery ~ the white fuzz absorbs watercolors (I used Twinkling H20s in the same colors of the original CitraSolv paper) beautifully.  Since I'm working on another collage with a transfer at the same time, I'm going to use the watercolors on its white fuzzies too.

I bet all the world's best discoveries came becuz somebody somewhere was really bored one day.  Okay.  Maybe not ALL and maybe not THE BEST (after all, I know some people worked really diligently to get us medicines and electricity and other wonderful things) but certainly some really cool artsy discoveries were made this way!

More CitrSolv Experiments

Everything I've ever read about CitraSolv and art said you could only use National Geographics.  Since I don't believe everything I read, I tried a few others and got absolutely nothing (well, a color ad in the newspaper gave me a wierd floating text thing but it mainly looked dirty) so I played with National Geographics and made some lovely papers.  You can read about it in this post.

Then I saw this video

on the ARTWAX blog and decided it might be my technique, not the magazine itself, that caused it not to work.

You see, with National Geographics I used the spray-n-squish technique and the lovely inks moved on their own.  But with these fashion magazines, AJ first moved the CitraSolv, and therefore the ink, around with a brush. So I sorta gave it a try - except I used cotton balls cuz I didn't want to set up to do a lot of these. Here are the results with a black & white ad, sepia-toned ad and a color ad all from Vogue.

I think I need to do it exactly like she shows in the video - brush & cling wrap - since these still leave something to be desired.  However, I noticed that the back of the ad above looks like when you use NevrDull over a texture.  Hmmmm.  More experiments to try.

Then I tried the photo transfer technique I'd read about so much. Again the experts aren't always right - they say only photocopies not inkjet or laser prints but I did these two with my Brother laser printer.

(I love,love,love this Conde Nast ad - I have to find another one and try again).

Again, the problem with the first was my technique - too much rubbing with too much CitraSolv causing the inks to smear. The second with just pressure looks pretty good.

And now for the beeswax & encaustic part of this post.  Yes, all the CitraSolv papers work great in collage, with or without either type of wax.  But that's not the experiment I want to tell you about.

You see, I work on a glass desk and just scrape it down with a razor blade when it gets too messy.  Lately the wax build-up has really been clogging up my blade-holder-thingie.  So I poured a little CitraSolv on my desk and let it soak a few minutes.  And Voila! the wax came up so easily - as did the paint and glue.

Who knew?  You can actually use this stuff for it's original purpose - to clean!!  But don't tell Patrick I know that cuz then he might want me to try it in the rest of the house.  hehe

Is it done?

Above is another of the encaustics I "finished" at the encaustic workshop I took (you can read more about the workshop here).  At the end of the day we had a critique session and it received favorable reviews.  But I have the same issue with it as with other abstract work:

How do you know when it's done?

Now, with the piece below, I "know" it's not done - something in me is screaming that it needs some words added in somewhere (details are not being provided however- hehe).

So I get screams when an abstract piece IS NOT done but I don't always hear anything, feel anything, "know" anything when another piece IS done.  Especially in pieces that start out as experiments I often just look & wonder.  Ugh! 

How do you know when a piece is finished?
Is it a feeling of satisfaction?
And if you don't get that feeling, do you keep going or put it aside for another day?

Help!!

Encaustic Workshop with Ellen Koment

Last weekend, I took a two day workshop with Ellen Koment sponsored by the Oklahoma Art Guild.  It was amazing.  Ellen would bring everyone to the front and demo a technique and then we would go back and practice incorporating that into a piece.  Later we would repeat with a new technique.

I had tried some of these techniques before with varying degrees of success so for me the very best part of the workshop was having an expert show me the right way to do everything. 

The second best was the torch!  There is so much more that can be done with one compared to an iron or heat gun.  Fun, fun, fun.  This is one of several pieces I did at the workshop.  See the burned paper?  Clearly I need to refine my torch skills!! 

And the other great part was meeting some new local artists!  A sculptor, a glass worker, some painters and some mixed-media artists - so exciting, so inspiring, so envigorating!

journal experiment

I was just a doing a little scribbling and doodling on a pre-painted journal page when I decided to melt some beeswax onto the page just becuz it was there on the desk.  After adding crayon, I wrote a little bit with a Sharpie Paint Pen.

But you could read that and the page was a little sticky so I took a scrap of white hand-made paper and lightly fused it to the page, resulting in a lovely, ethereal quality.

I just love experimenting in beeswax!! I'm really looking forward to teaching a class in it too. I can't imagine anyone walking away from it NOT hooked to the medium! If for no other reason than the way it smells.

Rest (completed)

"Come to me, all of y'all who are worn out & run down, and I'll give you rest" ~ Jesus  (Matthew 11:28, paraphrased by me)

Awhile ago I posted a picture of a citra-solv experiment.

I finally took that piece and created this collage.

It was a real stretch for me to work in blacks & whites.

Do you find that you get into a color rut?

For a long time I was into vintage photos so there were lots of ochres & sepias in my work.

Then there was a red kick started by calls for red pieces at a couple of different local shows.

Now I seem to be all over the place -

almost developing a new, more abstract style.

But even with all the changes and experimentation, these colors were difficult for me.

What about you - do you lean toward certain colors?

Is color one of the things that defines your style?

Beeswax & Encaustic Play Date

Today two of my friends came over so we could play with beeswax and encaustic. Lisa Bruno runs the stamp section at My Heart's Fancy and Roz Grage is a stamper and my BFF (yes, I'm in the 4th grade!!).

I usually collage the old-fashioned way, with lots of glue or gel medium, then add a layer of beeswax, sometimes with color, sometimes not.

This time NO GLUE.  Yikes!

We all started with a base coat of paint so we could dispel that blank-canvas-syndrome.  We followed this with some modeling paste applied thru stencils.

Then we ate lunch while the modeling paste dried.  I love this time of year with all the delicious fruit so lunch included a great fruit salad mainly made up of berries.  Lisa brought chocolate bundt cake with chocolate chips.  mmmmmmmmm.  (Later we discovered how delicious and how much more healthy it was to eat the cake with a pile of berries on top!!)

After lunch we applied a layer of beeswax with chip brushes and melted them in (and off in some cases) using our heat guns.

Next we added some sheer papers melted in with our irons.

Then the fun (and scary) part:  using only our irons, we added color with encaustics and crayons.

We had soooooooooo much fun.  Not much is better than friends talking, eating and making art together.

Here are the final products.
What do you think of our little experiments?
What do you suggest for names?

Thanks ~ Sherry

linked to the week 22 challenge at LOTS TO DO

CitraSolv Tests

After reading about CitraSolv Concentrate and National Geographics on Pam T's Art Loft and on Approachable Art, I went to the CitraSolv website and just KNEW that I absolutely HAD to try this. So I hunted CitraSolv down at a health food store here in Oklahoma City. Then I bought 20 National Geographics at a local thrift store for $2.

Somewhere I had read not to use pages that had lots of black ink so for my first test, I pulled out all the pictures with too much black. And I don't think I used enough CitraSolv. All my results were rather muted, with the exception of a few amazing pages that kept a lot of the original photo (I used one of these in Rest). Anyway, for the most part, my pages looked a lot like this one (click to enlarge - feel free to copy the enlargement for use as a background):

Not bad but not what I was expecting. So Saturday, I left in darker images and squirted on a lot more CitraSolv. And my results are much more dramatic. Here's a sample (click to enlarge - feel free to copy the enlargement for use as a background):
Both times, I kept the pages in a stack in a plastic tub in the garage (PLEASE don't do this in the house, the very strong orange aroma will make your eyes water tho it won't hurt you) for about an hour then pulled them apart and laid them out to dry. I've noticed a few things:

• you can't find this stuff just anywhere - Whole Foods, Akins & other health food stores carry it - their website lists several online stores as well as a zipcode/locator tool (which I couldn't make work for me)
• you need more CitraSolv on the top pages and less on the bottom because it runs down to the bottom
• pulling the pages apart or wiggling them together causes the smears you see most places on the web
• but sometimes you can get an image transfer onto text or another image if you have just the perfect amount of CitraSolv (the times this worked, I had sprayed it on), press it together and leave it alone
• as others have said, this doesn't work with fashion magazines
• however, I laid my images on top of my recycled paper to dry and guess what, it dissolved the inks on the JCPenney little catalog- the look is very different tho, soft with puddles of gray/black dots that used to be the type
• you get ink on your hands but the CitraSolv cleans it right up - we've actually started using it on our kitchen counters in less concentrated form

Hope this helps you all with your own experiments. Please share with me what you learn. Next I want to try getting more controlled results - perhaps leaving a part of the image as is and smearing what's around it. And I'm also going to look for something that will work on fashion magazines - I'm gonna try NevrDull and a few other stinky liquids sitting in the cabinets.

I'll let you know what happens ~ Sherry

added 4/26 - I just found out I received an honorable mention in CitraSolv's contest for my piece REST (you'll have to go almost to the end of the page)

Rest

photo from National Geographic altered with Citra Solv, charcoal pencil, white paint pen

I'll write more later but wanted to share at least the visual of this little experiment ~ Sherry

added 4/26 - I just found out I received an honorable mention in CitraSolv's contest for this piece (you'll have to go almost to the end of the page)

Playing with some new toys

This is a little journal page I made today while playing with some new Golden acrylics and my new color laser printer-scanner-copier in my new studio.

FUN!!!

I also worked on two collages (still not done with either) and more journal backgrounds.

Now it's off to a tax-season kick-off lunch and when I get home I'm going to work on the PRIZE for Nancy for winning my first giveaway.

Sounds like it will be an INCREDIBLE day ~ Sherry

Experiments Gone Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad

Last nite I wrote about the fun day I had experimenting with my new glass kiln. Now let me tell you what happened AFTER I wrote.

Well, first I went to bed. But being "of a certain age" (ie, middle) I was having a restless night. The fact that all three stooges were snoring in my bed added to my sleeplessness. So I got up. Checked blogger. Checked facebook. Checked my email. Checked messenger even. Hmmmm. Now what? Oh, I know, that one piece of glass was just about perfect but not quite shiny enough. Now here's where I made my mistakes.
.....(1) Check the internet for instructions on shining up the fused glass BEFORE trying to fix it.
.....(2) No matter how wide awake I think I may be, I am NOT functioning at optimum performance levels at 3 am.

But early this morning, those things didn't occur to me. So I put the piece in the kiln with some clear glass balancing on top and set the microwave for way too long. When I opened the kiln, the clear glass had slipped off the fused glass and both pieces had become a big glumpy puddle - some of which was stuck to the kiln wall.

I have these magic heat proof gloves for taking the kiln out of the microwave (you should all totally buy them and keep them instead of those bulky kitchen mitts). But apparently there are limits to how heat proof they are. So when I saw the molten glass on the inside of the kiln wall, I tried to pull it off with the magic gloves.

Dumb!!! The gloves sizzled and turned brown and my fingers felt burned. I set down the kiln (amazing that I didn't drop it), took off the gloves and immediately iced my fingers.

Apparently the gloves were magic enough to keep my fingertips from blistering. But when I got up at a NORMAL time today, I noticed they had little brown marks on them that matched the weave of the gloves where they turned brown.

So buy the cool mesh magic heat proof gloves for your kitchen or kiln. But, for goodness sake, don't put them to the test in the middle of the nite unless you're pouring yourself some warm milk.

lol ~ Sherry