tryinhg a new pastel paper-----

Shelley told me she had read rave reviews of Pastelmat. We've been working on velour paper but have had some frustration with work seeming to disappear - perhaps sinking into the nap - so we were interested in trying something different. I had tried sanded paper but didn't like it because of all the dust. But Pastelmat was supposed to be different in that regard, so I ordered three sheets - a maize, buff, and light grey.

I drew a design with three sun conures which I was happy with, so decided it was time to try the Pastelmat. I chose the maize because of the sunny tropical feeling of the drawing.

My first experience with the new paper was transferring my drawing to it. I traced my drawing on a piece of tracing paper then used a stylus and actual carbon paper (the kind typists used to use) to transfer the lines. Lesley Harrison had recommended this carbon paper in her workshop last year and it was fine on the velour paper - in fact, it was even a bit hard to see. But on the Pastelmat, it created a very nice, sharp, pretty dark line. So far, so good I thought.

I began my pastel work with Nupastel and pastel pencils. The tooth of the Pastelmat pulled good color from both - better than on the velour paper. But guess what? It wasn't covering my transfer lines. Yikes! This could be a REAL PROBLEM!!! But I decided to persevere with lesson 1 (transfer with a light touch, and graphite paper would probably be a better choice than carbon paper) hopefully well learned.

I was working with the background in the upper part of the painting - a sky with several layers of palm fronds with the light shining through. After working the sky I moved to the only two palm fronds I had indicated in my drawing, which were the main fronds in the front. This, of course, turned out to be wrong. I should have worked the softer, further back layers of frond first. So I got confused and frustrated. Whenever I have the strong feeling that I don't know what I'm doing, I should stop and get a grip on the situation. But instead I pressed on, just making the situation worse. So I decided to switch to one of the parrots and had the same result. Of course I didn't know yet how to work on this paper, and things weren't going well.

So I had an "art meltdown moment" and decided to go for the "big blend." I grabbed a terry cloth kitchen towel and RUBBED VIGOROUSLY, blending and also removing much of the pigment. In the end, I kept rubbing and rubbing until I had removed everything that I reasonably could. What I was left with was a very soft rendition of the design. I kind of liked the look so decided to work the rest of the piece in the same manner for the first layer. As I continued with the leaves on the bottom 2/3 of the piece I simply blocked in color, not striving for any detail or much shading as I knew I was going to remove most of the pigment. After blocking in the leaves, branch, and other two birds, I did another "big blend" and I was finished with the first layer. TIME TO SET IT ASIDE. I think it looks a little like a tone paper specially prepared for my painting!

By the way, my transfer lines still show after all the abuse, but I think I can end up covering them.

Drawing Monkies

The silverpoint drawing I was working on was two Velvet Monkies. I liked the preliminary drawing and didn't want to give up on the concept just because the silverpoint didn't pan out for me. So I decided to do a graphite drawing of the same design. I also decided to use the Golden Silverpoint/Drawing Ground which I liked so much.

For my surface, I began with a piece of Ampersand Gessoboard. I covered the entire board with Golden's light Molding Paste, spreading it on with a long cake knife. I kept working it to get the smoothest possible surface (which was mostly, but not completely, smooth) on the right middle part of the board where the drawing was going to go. I textured the rest in various ways - pulling my fingers through it, using a comb, and squiggling with a shorted spatula. I even pressed the face of a flower into it then pulled it away. What resulted was interesting, but didn't look like a flower, which was OK. I also used a clay modeling tool to add some writing to the left of where the drawing would go. I wrote "ancient knowledge" in ancient Greek - my commentary on the spirit of the monkies.

After the modeling paste dried, I tinted some of the silverpoint ground with acrylic paint and coated the modeling paste. Foolishly, wanting an antique white, I added antique white paint to the silverpoint ground. Of course it took a fair amount of paint to get the color I wanted, and I should obviously have used a much darker paint so that I wouldn't need so much. I think it would have worked out a little better if I had more of the silverpoint ground in the mix.

Anyway, with the board prepared in that way, I carefully transferred my drawing (with the drawing on tracing paper, I went over the lines on the back of the paper with a 2B pencil, then placed the drawing right-side-up on the prepared surface and went over all the lines lightly with a stylus, thus transferring the 2B graphite to the prepared board) and began my drawing with HB and 2B mechanical pencils. The drawing was a little tricky because the surface was not completely firm. The modeling paste leaves a "flexible film" and, since it was thick - 1/16" to over 1/8" in places - it gives with the pressure of the lead point. I had to use a pretty light touch and be careful to not scrape the surface with the pencil point. It all worked pretty well, but I didn't get real darks, even with my 9B Cretacolor Monolith Woodless Pencil. I think the ground would have caught more pencil lead and I could have gone darker - even with a light touch - if I hadn't had diluted its tooth so much with the paint I used to tint it. When I felt almost done, I sprayed the whole piece with Krylon workable fixative. I did just a little more drawing and found that the lead transfers more heavily with the fixative on the surface - increases the tooth, I guess. I'll work on the drawing some more then fix it again. I'm considering light washes of acrylic or watercolor over the parts without the drawing to antique the piece a bit and bring out the texture - especially the lettering. But I don't know how the washes will work over the fixative. I guess I'll have to experiment - YUCK, I hate "practicing!"

By the way, I looked for softer leads for my mechanical pencils but couldn't find anything darker than 3B and 4B, which I found at jetpens.com.

I don't like to give up on things, and I rarely do. But add silverpoint to that short list. I'm done with it - at least for the forseeable future.



I'd been interested in some old techniques - egg tempera, silverpoint, early styles of calligraphy - and found a website with lots of information on silverpoint. And Golden has a Silverpoint drawing medium. I happily ordered a few silverpoint styluses and the medium and, after the usual hesitation surrounding beginning something new, I prepped my paper, transferred my design (graphite erases without disturbing the silverpoint - at least that was the theory), and began drawing. I liked the feel of both the points and the treated paper.



But I was frustrated by my inability to get any decent value contrast. I had read that silverpoint produces a "delicate" drawing so was prepared to some extent. But I just didn't like the look I was getting. I know that the silver will tarnish and darken with age and maybe more value contrast would emerge over time. I worked on the drawing for two sessions, then quit. The areas I wanted the darkest appear to be fully saturated with silver, but even those areas are maybe 20% on the value scale. So I'm going to put it away and check it out in a year or so just out of curiosity.

By the way, erasing the graphite worked quite well - erased completely without disturbing either the ground or any of the silverpoint.

On the plus side, I did really like the drawing medium. It's easy to use. You shake the bottle vigorously then let it sit for about 5 minutes for the bubbles to dissipate. Then you pour a little out into a shallow container and apply to your paper with a sponge brush. Supposedly you can tint it (with watercolor, I think). It gives a really nice tooth. So I'm going to try tinting some paper and then work with pencil over it. Will let you know how it works!



This evening I made a small polymer clay bear's head for a bead embroidery bracelet I want to make. I included part of the chest, ending in a rounded point, and plan to have the bear piece be the center of a beaded embroidery butterfly with turquoise and other cabochons included as well. It should be a fun project. I was happy with the way the bear head came out.

I managed to finish my gourd on time to meet Monday's deadline, but it was a struggle. Nonetheless, I was happy with the results. I sculpted the elephant on the top from polymer clay. The lotus petals and base are pieces of other gourds. I painted the main gourd and the base with acrylic paint. This piece is basically a shallow bowl with a lid. The jagged line at the top of the petals painted on the main gourd is where the cut is.

In case you're interested, I drew the three elephant groups without any particular regard for size - just whatever was comfortable. Then I reduced them on my printer/copier and cut them out. After changing sizes a few times and shifting them around experimentally on the gourd I decided where I wanted them and transfered them to the gourd. I loosely designed the other elements in my mind, added a few guide lines, and started painting! The mountains and sky were first, then the groups of trees (except the bit foreground one with the ibis) then the grassy areas and water, then the elephants. The tree with the ibis was next, then the group of water lilies. The waterfall reflections in the water were last - and the hardest part of the painting. After painting so small, it was a mental shift to move to the base with it's large areas.

The big problem at the end was the gap between the gourd base and the bottom piece of the main gourd - the seam was uneven and didn't look too good. Fortunately, I had a piece of kumihimo braid that was the right length and color. I glued it in place to cover the seam in the gourds then made the two tassels (from silk embroidery thread) and the little polymer clay frog to cover the ends of the cord.

As for the epoxy clay that I was trying out as an adhesive to attach the gourd petals to the gourd ring of the base, it worked but wasn't what I hoped it would be. I expected it to work like clay, but it was pretty sticky - too sticky to model in any precise way. It fills gaps and gives a good bond but I had a difficult time getting the epoxy clay to be smooth enough to show on the finished piece. Now that I've worked with it I'll know better next time how to use it. And I definitely will use it again. I recommend this product, but it takes some experimenting - as everything else - to get to know how to best use it.

The name of the epoxy clay product is APOXIE SCULPT and I found it at http://www.arizonagourds.com

Working on the gourd

I am working on a new gourd and trying to finish it by Sunday so I can enter it in the up-coming Mother Lode Show (entries due next Monday). It's a concept I've had in mind for several months, and I found the perfect gourd for it on e-bay a few months ago, but only finally started it last week.



It's a somewhat elaborate construction. The gourd sits on a base made up of parts from other gourds. The base is a ring cut from the center of a gourd, then I cut several large petal shapes from yet other gourds and attached them around the top of the ring. They will be the lower rows of petals on a lotus flower. The inner row will be painted on the base of the main gourd. I'll have to upload a picture which will make the whole thing clearer.



Anyway, the problem was attaching the "petals" to the "ring." After much fretting and fussing, I finally decided to make supports of polymer clay for each petal and glue the petal to the support then the support to the ring with 2-part epoxy. It was a cumbersome and lengthy process which was not completely satisfactory. But Friday I found what looks to be a great product on Bonnie Gibson's arizonagourds site - a two part, air dry epoxy clay. It arrived in the mail today and I'm going to give it a try tomorrow. I'll fill the cracks and crannies left by the first process and hopefully it will work well. So, expect an update!

a good day for clay

Today was one of those days when I liked my project, then didn't like it at all, but then in the (nearly) end, I liked it again.

I wanted to make another "slugs" necklace like the one I made with the beads inspired by Kim Cavender's class back at Donna Kato's clay get-together in Las Vegas in 2008. But I wanted to use brighter colors, specifically turquoise and navy blue. I was very happy with the raw beads. But then when I put the alcohol inks on things took a turn for the worse. For one thing, the colors were so intense that they effectively covered up the colors of the clay that I had liked so much. Then the embossing powder I put on was just too much It looked way to much like glitter which I could have anticipated if I had actually paid more attention when I put it on. But I cured them anyway. Then, once cool, I decided to try to remove some of the damage with sandpaper and they came out looking pretty cool. The ink colors stayed in the texture from the plastic scrubby and all the surface effects stayed in place where dimples in the shapes kept the sandpaper action at bay. It'll be fun to do the beading and I will probably like the necklace even though it won't be anything like what I envisioned.

I need to experiment with thinning the alcohol inks for more dilute colors. And I'd like to try translucent clay. That's what I love about this medium - one thing inevitably leads to another!

I finished #24 this afternoon, so the end of the project is now definitelhy within sight - yeah!!!! I have to write an artist's statement and also need to mull over what I've learned from the process. As of a few days ago, I thought I would never do this again. But now I'm softening on the idea - so much so that I've begun to think of ideas for the theme for another series. One thought is "postcards from Paradise" - the small wonders that are around me every day.

Anyway, as far as what I've learned, I have some things confirmed, as well as learning some new ones.

I really like employing symbolism in my art and intent to do a lot more of it.

Also, I like incorporating text. The Welsh I've used in these is purely decorative since I assume that most people won't be able to read it. I wonder what it would be like if the words were intelligible. Would it add or detract?

I am enamored of the iridescent and interference watercolors and acrylis that I'm using for the first time. The Daniel Smith acrylics are so smooth and creamy.

It's nice to get back to drawing - like re-connecting with an old friend.

The Stonehedge drawing paper on the Crescent Perfect-Mount self-adhesive mounting board is a nice surface to work on. But the masking fluid is a pain. Not only does it mung up the brush (although Goo Gone does a nice job of removing it), but I have a hard time judging whether or not I have good coverage, and, no matter how careful I try to be, I seem to always peel away parts of the paper when I remove it. The colored pencil covers the imperfections pretty well, but the water color seems to emphasize them.