ArtiphyTheHeart

Cutting Edges

One of the things I quickly discovered while cutting this stencil/mask: When cutting your own stencils by hand with an Xacto knife, the edges are really important.  You have to pay careful attention to the intersection of horizontal and vertical cuts.  It isn't enough for them to just meet each other because you risk frayed corners if the edges don't intersect.

Cutting text is good practice.  It helps prepare you for the combined straight and curved lines in artwork.  I could have used purchased stencils, but I wanted the practice.  And I like that I can control the look when I do it myself. In an Art for Elementary School class I took in college, we were told to emphasize to students how much their drawing would improve if they practiced improving printing, script, and penmanship in general.  I think this extends to cutting letters with an Xacto.  If you practice cutting letters, your stencil cutting skills in general will improve by leaps and bounds.

Do you recognize this page?  I started it a while back and posted about it HERE.

The first decision I made when designing the stencil for this page was where I wanted to put it.  This art journal very conveniently has 8-1/2" X 11" pages.  That means that if I cut the area which will receive the paint from a separate piece of printer paper and I position the cuts carefully, the stencil I cut will also successfully mask out the rest of the page.  Once I decided where I wanted the letters, I  drew the letters in a type style that I thought would look good on the page.  Cutting out the letters proved to be quite easy.  

Here are some notes I took to ensure the success of future projects:

• Make sure cuts intersect at corners
• On some curves it's easier to turn the paper than the knife
• Fresh, new blades.  Always.
• Clean, unblemished cutting mat
• No day dreaming!  This is not the time to lapse into the zone!
• Remember, you're pulling the knife, not pushing it.  All cuts are on the pull.

This is page 23 for Marvel: Your Precious Life, an online art journal workshop offered by Kelly Kilmer.  The stenciling exercise is for Stencilry, an online workshop for designing, cutting, and using  stencils.  It's offered by Mary Ann Moss.

I used Liquitex low odor acrylic spray paint in medium magenta for this stencil.  The layer of acrylic spray on top of the printer paper reinforces and strengthens it with a light coating of acrylic polymer.  You end up with the best of both worlds:  A very easy to cut sheet of paper which becomes more durable after it has been sprayed.  

I think the top pic of the stencil cut from the paper is actually pretty cool looking.  I'm sure it will find it's way into another journal page soon.

Stenciled and Sprayed

Last week I received a box in the mail containing 14 colors of the new Liquitex acrylic spray paints.  But I was too sick to rip open the box.  If you know me, you know that I will never let a box sit unopened.  I'll rip and tear until I've found every item.  Finally today I felt well enough to shred the box to get to the paints inside, and I spent several glorious hours familiarizing myself with the contents.

After setting up a make-shift spraying station outside, I took a large sheet of paper and three of the transparent colors:  Quinacridone Crimson, Phthalocyanine Blue (green shade), Yellow Medium Azo, plus Raw Sienna (opaque).  I wanted to see how these would layer, mix, and blend together before moving on to the opaque colors.  

The pic above is most of the left side of a 17" X 11" sheet of practice paper.  Not the good stuff.  Just 68# cover from an office supply.  But it held up remarkably well, and it helped that it was a very bright white.

The pic below is most of the right side of the sheet.  If you look closely, you'll notice that much of this side contains off-load prints from the stencils themselves.  One of the nice things about the acrylic sprays is that the paint remains open long enough to get a good reverse print, unlike enamel sprays which dry permanently almost instantly.  The paint is quick drying, but like all acrylics, it is water soluble while wet, and permanent when dry.

I'm looking forward to becoming more familiar with holding the can, setting my distance from the paper, and learning how to direct the spray to maximize the desired results.  There are a variety of caps available for the cans which produce different effects of spray, and I can't wait to try them out.  But for today, the goal was to watch how the spray hits the paper and pay attention to layering and blends, so I grabbed a handful of stencils and didn't pay too much attention to anything other than how the paint reacted to the paper, and to the other colors.

I think heavy-handedness, and a tendency to hold the can too close to the paper must be a beginner's hurdle.  I had to learn to stand back farther and spray less aggressively.  

This is something I've been wanting to explore for years, but my lungs couldn't take the odor of spray enamels.  When Liquitex introduced their line of low-odor acrylic paint sprays, I was overjoyed!  Presently the sprays are available in 100 hues which are exact matches to the other Liquitex acrylics, and I can't wait to use the sprays together with the heavy bodied and fluid acrylics.

For some guidance in using the sprays and in cutting my own stencils, I've signed on to Mary Ann Moss's "Stencilry" class.  It's an older online class, no longer live, but all the information is available in videos and .pdf format, and several other friends have decided to play along.  It's great to have a group when you're learning something new, and this is really very new to me.  If you'd like to join us, we're learning each at our own pace, but together.  No rush.  For more information, click HERE. The class now comes bundled with a second class: "Stitched and Stenciled", so it's a two-for.  Join us!  The more the merrier, and I think you'll have fun!

Drawing On Stickies

Why?  Because some days all you have at your disposal are a pencil, a piece of notebook paper, and a post-it-note.  And you have to do something creative.  And sometimes you're in too big of a hurry to bother wiping off the eraser bits before you scan and post.  But that's OK.  

Two Elements

On my table for tomorrow.  Two elements working together to produce what will eventually become MYPL page 23.  I'll keep you posted as things progress.  

Looking Forward To Everything, Always

I'm so excited to begin each and every day.  I look forward to absolutely everything.  Life wasn't always like this.  There were days upon days that I anticipated with boredom and exhaustion.  What changed?

Something tiny.  A very tiny thought popped into my head one morning while I was making breakfast.  I thought that maybe I would enjoy cooking, eating, and after breakfast clean-up quite a bit more if I did something creative with it.  So I did.  

That morning I rummaged through the fridge and came up with a small handful of veggies that I washed, chopped and added to a dab of melted butter in a skillet before scrambling my eggs.  And a pinch or two of spice.  Maybe four extra minutes of my time made all the difference, and I really enjoyed breakfast.  

During clean-up, I kept a notepad and pencil handy.  I thought about what I might make tomorrow and I wrote it down.  I even thought about busy mornings on the fly when a piece of toast and Nutella was all I'd have time for.  I resolved that on those mornings, I'd use fine china for my tea and toast.  Or spread a cloth and have a floor picnic.

Those thoughts took me through the day and here and there I began to write down things that would easily add pleasure to other routines.  I thought about adding a flower--just one--to my table every day.  And I thought about places to get flowers and about crocheting doilies and all sorts of other things, too.  And I wrote them in my notebook.  Some weren't practical, but it was fun thinking them up and writing them down.

I thought about expanding this.  Seeing every single piece of monotony in my day in a different light.  And I thought about driving, and how I hated it.  So I resolved to notice one new thing on each and every drive and to remember to write it in my notebook.  Once I noticed a shirt on a man standing at a corner.  Another time I noticed that the telephone wire running along the outside of a building I always passed was painted blue.  Just tiny things.  But life started becoming more exciting.  I began to look forward to seeing.  And I fell in love with thinking up ways to add something playful to every routine.

Some other tiny things that made a big difference were how I turned book reading and film watching--things I've always savored--into an end of the day ritual, and how I purposely skip some days and just keep them open.  How I randomly pick a day each week to sip wine or tea in bed while listening to music.  How I invite my family to join me, or ask them let me spend my time privately, and what a huge difference voicing an invitation or a desire to be left alone can make, and how it gives a choice to others.

And then, all of a sudden one day I realized that I looked forward to everything.  All of it.  And the most beautiful thing happened along the way--I have very a hard time now remembering how it felt to be bored.

The First Rule...

...in everything is knowing what to keep and what to throw away.  That includes knowing what to say "yes" to and what to say "no" to.  And what to focus on when you read and which words are just there to hold the others together.  And what to eat all of and what to leave on your plate.  And who to hold hands with and who to run away from.  

They all--everything, that is--begin with an idea, and that idea can be distilled into a "this or that" format.  Once it's this or that, the wisdom is in knowing which to keep and which to throw away.  

A hint:  Never, ever, throw away your freedom to decide.  Always keep that, no matter the cost.

MYPL page 21.

Beside Myself

This is MYPL page 20.  I'm in a hurry to feel perfect again.  I'm at 96%.  Not bad, but not quite 100%.  In the midst of an illness it's wise to be patient.  But at this stage, I don't think it's a bad thing to want to rush, as long as it's held in check.  Wanting to hurry up and get on with things means that life is desirable.

How Would It Feel To Be 103?

A very different kind of page for me (MYPL p.18), but I was determined to stretch my wings.  

It began with the upside down hat, which of course needed something pulled from it.  Owls.  Wiser than rabbits.  Maybe just one owl.  And typed text.  Typed on tissue.  What to do to offset the sterility?  Funky block letters.  As imperfect as I can make them without crossing into the "messy as crap" zone.  In pencil.  God how I've missed pencils!  Graphite is good.  Scribbled in with markers.

If you have an old typewriter at your disposal, I urge you to use it!  I have my mother's old Royal.  It's cast iron and heavier than the table it sits on.  I moved it to my work table a couple of years ago so that I'd use it.  Finally!  I can't believe it took me this long.

I didn't realize the date until I went to schedule this post, so I changed the title.  Happy birthday, Daddy! 

Ten Days

This is MYPL page 18.  I started it on Thursday, February 7th.  For some reason I was really uncomfortable and I couldn't focus.  Very unusual for me.  So I got myself to a stopping point and called it a day.  

That night I announced that I was sick.  Really sick.  It was strange that I just announced that, and even more strange, it felt less like I was talking and more like I was just listening to myself talk.  Surreal.  But then fevers are surreal. This one lasted ten days.  Ten days of fevers plus a host of other symptoms that viruses bring.  

I finally went back to that page yesterday. Ten days later.  When I began again, all that was on the page was background, the topsy-turvy ladies, and the hearts: two positve shapes (bottom right)  and two negative shapes (top left).

Here's what the page looks like flipped upside down.  I added some yellow tint to the photos, and finished it with a few pieces of collage, and lots of pen work and lettering in negative.  

Valentine's Day got lost somewhere in the middle of those ten days.  The hearts hold the dates.

Without Limits

I'm working my way back and forth between various journals, taking a short break from the Connections journal that I've been showing in blog posts the past few days.  

This is page 17 in Marvel: Your Precious Life.  It has to do with some of my childhood aspirations for adulthood, and nothing at all to do with fashion models.  More than anything, I aspired to a life without limitations.  Not without reasonable boundaries.  There is a difference.  I was taught from an early age to beware of people who say "can't," and to positively reject those who dare to say, "you can't".  

Page 3

This third page in my Connections journal is my absolute favorite so far.  Like the others, it's unfinished.  Just the bare bones of collage to start the process, along with a bit of photo tinting.  

I'm too tired for words tonight, so I'll leave you with this and share more later.  To see other pages in this book, you can click HERE, HERE and HERE.

A Common Thread

Page two in my Connections journal.  Once again, just the barest collage.  I'm showing the page before adding the layers which will tie it all together, and before journaling.  

I added color to part of the black and white photos with Faber-Castel Pitt brush pens, but other than that I left them alone.  

There is a common thread throughout this book.  You probably haven't seen enough pages yet to make the connection, but then again, you might have an idea or two of what you think might tie these pages together.  If you need a need another look at page one, you can find it HERE.  And you can see the inside cover and learn a little more about the book by clicking HERE.

Alchemy

This is page one in my Connections journal, but only the barest of beginnings of a page.  If you're interested, you can read a little more about the book and see the inside cover HERE.  

I may or may not show this page again when it's been a little further down the line, but I wanted to show it at this stage to point out how easy it is to turn one thing into something completely different just by making tiny changes here and there.

For instance, the center photo was black and white and glossy.  I removed the gloss and gave it an uneven sepia tint with walnut ink.  Darker here, lighter there.  

The paper top left was a light cream color.  What now looks like a lighter design was quite a bit darker than the background.  Brushing on walnut ink unevenly, stained and darkened everything but the design which resisted the ink, so now the design appears lighter.  Nothing more than that.  

The lettering was fun.  I did that by myself.  But the flowers--bottom left--were stamped with plain, black ink.  Adding a bit of the blue from the letters at the top turned the flowers into something completely new altogether.  

Alchemy!

Now the fun will be in adding more and more layers, making it uniquely personal, tying it all together, and turning it into something more than a composed grid.  

Abracadabra!

Connections

Just the collage without additions, subtractions, or journaling. 

This is the inside cover of the book I bound in a workshop with Kelly Kilmer on Saturday.  It's scanned.  When I decide how I'm going to finish it, I'll snap a pic of the outside of the book.  It's a wonderful, unusually constructed book, and I know I'll be binding more of them.  

This collage has only 4 separate pieces of paper, including the two focal images.  The rest is a collage of tape, and a snip of open-weave twine.  

It's far from finished, but I plan to scan each page as they get to this point and print copies.  I'll bind the copies in paper back journals and see how many variations I can come up with for the same page.  Just for fun, and to keep me on my toes.

That little girl looks a lot like pictures of me when I was that age, right down to the haircut.  But my mother didn't look at all like that lady, and she wasn't a French accordian player.

A Good Drink

Page 16 from Marvel: Your Precious Life.  An entire page dedicated to tea.  

To accurately illustrate the importance of tea in my life, there should be sonnets and love songs as well.  Perhaps even an opera.  

Tea has saved my life more than once.  As Agnis Hamm said in E. Annie Proulx's Shipping News:  "Tea's a good drink.  Keep you going."