My Favorite New Art Tool
I have been watching gelli-print videos for a while now and finally purchased a few of my own. A gelli plate is a flexible gellatin surface used for simple printmaking. I love the pure spontaneousness of the whole process. You cannot predict what the print will look like, it's pure playfulness; and really why would you want to, that takes all the fun and surprise out of it. It's great because it prevents me from overthinking the final prints, I simply can't.
The way it works is you lay ink down on the plate and spread it around with a brayer (roller). By using stencils and other marking tools you create a pattern or shapes on the plate. After it has some texture, you simply press a piece of paper onto it and you have a print. You may be able to get a few prints out of each layering of ink. They will get lighter and "ghost" as you lift up more of the paint. The results are amazing, and, if you don't like a particular print, just use it again, pressing and adding more layers until you like it, (or not). You don't have to love all of them.
The other thing I love about this is the cleanup; there is almost none. I lift most of the paint off the plate itself with your prints and I usually let the stencils and tools just dry. If the paint gets really gunked up and I want to clean the plate or tools, I just use baby wipes. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy! You can use any paper, recycled junk mail, book pages or scraps from other projects. A great paper to practice on is deli paper; yes the paper you get your sandwiches wrapped in. You can get a big box and pull out a single sheet at a time. Deli paper is thin like tissue paper, but much more durable so it can handle paint well and you can use these prints in collages etc. I plan on playing with this a lot in the future because I can create so many prints so fast for a variety of projects. I am also thinking of experimenting with materials other than paper such as wood. Can't wait to make more! A good days work is always dirty hands, happy printing...
Which Ones Move you?
ROYGBV, we all know it... red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet. Are those still the names you use today? Are you a simple color person or do you see them with a deeper expressive passion. My rainbow would be scarlet, tangerine, banana, jade, sapphire and orchid; or crimson, pumpkin, pineapple, emerald, azure and amethyst; or, well you get the point.
People are drawn to different colors. Some see the millions of shades of a color while others just see the simple pure color. There is a whole psychology to color theory. For example, purples are associated with royalty and creativity while reds are associated with passion and romanticism. Some people love the color orange and others can’t stand it. There’s no rhyme or reason, different personalities are drawn to different shades of the rainbow.
What are your favorite colors? What do they say about you? How do they make you feel? Mine are purple, teal and coral; but I have to say I really love the whole spectrum at different times for different purposes. You may love certain colors for your home amd others for clothes. I am personally drawn more to soft muted colors over bright and bold when it comes to decor. And, although I love when I see a bright turquoise or dark chocolate brown on someone’s wall, I don’t think I could be that striking in my own space. I’d like to think I could be that brave, but I always fall back on soft, neutral colors. They give me a sense of serenity, peacefulness and quiet that I like to live in. When it comes to fashion, I will definitely pick up a scarlet red sweater or a lime green necklace because they are fun and I don’t have to live in them everyday.
“Color is only color when it's next to color” was another quote I learned from a teacher back in the day. A particular shade of red will look different depending on what color it is next to or surrounded by. It wil also appear differently in different light. Color changes, color is subjective, color is beautiful, color makes a statement or can evoke a feeling. Color changes with light as well. It’s not just ROYGBV, it’s millions of colors. Nutritionists say eat your colors everyday, I say live them!
Kaleidomatic App
There is an app that I absolutely love called Kaleidomatic. I used to use it all the time to create patterns from my artwork. When IOS11 came out, it stopped working but I refused to delete it in hopes that the developer would update it. Finally a year later and onto IOS12, they have. I was so excited to start playing with it again.
It allows me to choose an image from my photos and create amazing random patterns using the artwork. I purchased the "in-app" pattern and color packs to have more flexibility. The collage image above started with the flower artwork in the center of the grid. By choosing different options I was able to create the other eight patterns. By twisting two fingers on the screen, you create a moving kaleidoscope image that you can take screen snapshots at various points. The patterns are infinite. And you don't have to use artwork, you can use any photo either from your albums or taken within the app itself.
One thing I am not sure of the quality and resolution of the saved image if I was to try and use it to produce an actual product. I will have to experiment with it and see and maybe write to the developer.
Here are a few more examples. It's amazing to see your artwork in a new way that you couldn't have imagined.
10 Years and It's all Good...
Last month I entered a cover contest for Uppercase Magazine. It was for their 10th-anniversary issue and the theme was "the tools we use". This was the first time they had a cover contest and there were over 300 submissions. I found out yesterday that I did not win, but it's all good. I was happy just to participate and I love the piece of artwork I created because of the opportunity.
If you are a creative person and haven't heard of Uppercase, go pick yourself up a copy, you will love it, I promise. It is a wonderful inspirational quarterly designed and printed in Canada. It is, as it says on their cover, "for the creative and curious". Each quarter has a theme and is filled with artwork and stories from creatives from all over. Uppercase is also an independent magazine so there is no advertising, just lots of amazing print, craft and artwork. When the new issue arrives every three months, I can't wait to open the package. It's not just for the content, but I absolutely love the way the magazine smells. Paper and ink, print shop fresh, reminding of my graphic design days when I used to go on press runs for clients.
Anyway, back to my submission. I wanted to show you the progression of the idea to the finished artwork. I knew immediately it would be a watercolor mandala in my doodle style.
It started with a quick pen sketch. I then arranged "the tools I use" in a circle and created another sketch from that. Once I had a sketch I was happy with, I traced the image with an ink pen onto vellum paper and did a quick color wash. Then I did something I have never done before, instead of redrawing or tracing the image directly onto watercolor paper, I scanned the vellum into my computer and printed it out on watercolor paper made for an inkjet printer. It worked out nicely, but I think I prefer painting onto good quality watercolor paper instead of the inkjet version.
The finished piece looks like this...
And the submission I sent to them to show them how it would look on their cover looked like this...
So even though I didn't win the cover contest, I won because I really enjoyed creating this piece. And coincidentally, 2018 is actually my 10th year in business, so it's my anniversary too. I think I will frame it and hang it in my studio.
Trying to Teach My Son the Difference
I recently found this piece of writing I did over ten years ago. My son was writing an English assignment for school about this amazing sunset we witnessed on a drive. His story went something along the lines of, “It was the coolest sunset I ever saw with lots of bright colors and big clouds.” (It was longer than a sentence, but you get the point.) I told him he should try to be more creative and rework it using adjectives and feelings to describe it so that someone else could imagine seeing it. He responded, “No I’m good, I like it, it’s finished.”, so I wrote this to show him what I was talking about.
"It may have been a night in January, but it didn’t feel like it one bit. We were driving down to Princeton to attend a drum circle with our son. It was a crystal clear night and the temperature was unseasonably warm. The evening’s sky became the most beautiful canvas of color and texture I had ever seen. The old masters would have been in awe. The colors of the sky were indescribable. As the sun started to go down glowing swirls of bright cream and ivory streamed through the low dark clouds. The colors began changing to soft shades of pink and orange that looked like the colors of a slightly unripe peach and the amazing clouds added large and small fluffy white forms. The linear white streaks criss-crossing the sky from airplanes looked as if the pilots had been playing tic-tac-toe.
As the soft winds became a little stronger, the clouds started moving more intensely and the large cotton candy like puffs now had underbellies of vibrant pinks, lavenders and blues. What made the sky even more incredible was seeing it through the landscape as the sun went down. As it became darker the trees became silhouettes of thick and thin spider web meshes along the horizon. The sky turned into an electric highway of lava-like rivers streaming into and around the clouds and the colors reflected off large office building windows resembling mirrors of fire. The whole sky was so bright and vivid, even I as an artist and painter myself, could not imagine ever reproducing them on a canvas and no photograph could do them justice.
As the sunset ended and the colors began to fade into the horizon, they transformed into electric blues and violets ranging from cerulean to ultramarine. And then, just like that, it was gone. If you walked outside at that moment, you would have had no idea what you missed, there were no traces of it left in the sky.
I’ve seen many sunsets before in my lifetime, the ones where the actual sun going down along the horizon was the focal point. Tonight I never saw the sun at all, but the colors above us created by that molten ball of fire in the universe were the most beautiful I had ever seen in my life."
When my son finished reading my version, he was like, “Wow Mom that was awesome. It really explained what we saw in the sky.” Then as he walked upstairs he turned and said to me, “Thanks, but I’m going to leave mine alone, it’s fine.”
