Yep ... still journalling ...

Been awhile since I posted some journal pages - sorry 'bout that. Sometimes life gets kinda busy. I'm still creating pages (which is a good sign) ... so here are three more for you:

... and here are the inevitable notes:

Page 1:
~  The symbols used on a family crest to designate the order of sons. I found these in an old genealogy magazine. Nothing about daughters, not surprisingly, but history is history I suppose. Maybe we should invent some symbols of our own. Being the oldest child, I kinda fancy a crown of some sort. :)
~ Random planning ... an idea for a roll-out closet (I can hear Mr. B rolling his eyes already). More useful plans about alphabets for a zine swap I'm involved in. I'm pleased to say this *did* develop into something.
~ I tore a piece of washi tape putting it down, so I drew a little roof + smoking chimney to fill the gap. Sometimes it's these little things that satisfy me the most. Go figure.
~ More random musings about writing and time travel(?).
~ The collage is one I did at a retreat. The headless woman was from an article about old collars. For the stenciled bit I used one of Chris Cozen's pod stencils, a lovely little set. I've embellished it with extra dots and lines as well.

Page 2:
~ Basket making card from one of those ubiquitous sets of cards that were popular in the 70's. The Lifetime Collection of Homely Arts (or words to that effect). It goes with the other circles, of course.
~ A diagram loosely based on Susie Lafond's journal that I saw on Pinterest. I called it Gathering Up, but I see she's actually called it: Wild Rumpus. Great name. So amazing ... wish I had time to try my hand at all the beautiful things I'm inspired by.
~ And a song by Ferron that simply would not leave my head one day. I finally listened to it and realized I'd got many of the lyrics just plain wrong. Memory is a curious beast ... I caught the feeling if not the words. There was a time when I attended a Ferron concert every time she came to whatever town I lived in. Haven't done that for years, but her early albums are pretty much burned into heart ... just not all the words apparently.

Page 3:
~ "Never on Sunday" ~ Another article from an old genealogy magazine. Sometimes a story just sticks with you. I was particularly amused by the last line: "I don't know where they buried the horse."After all, the horse was the innocent party here. :)
~ The writing is just some random fiction from me. Oddly, the picture I have in my head is of my grandfather, a man I hardly knew, who did indeed in the photo look like he was wearing a pair of spittoons on his feet as he crossed the yard half-covered in patchy snow. Not sure what made me think of it ... just started writing at this came out (as with so much of what I write).
~ The triangles are from The Buzzer, an occasional publication on BC transit. I'm attracted to the artwork they choose for it because they're working with a quite limited colour palette (black plus 1 colour), reminiscent of printing that seems to be dying out with full-colour digital printing so prevalent these days.
~ And a postcard for "The Foreigner". I never saw the play, but I love this postcard, a sort of Magritte-ish kind of character collaged surreally with flowers and nose-glasses. What's not to love?

That's all for now ... more pages next week!

More gelli fun - zine covers + envelopes ...

Finally had some time this afternoon to sit down with my Gelli Arts plate again. My goal today was to make some bases for zine covers and goodie envelopes for an upcoming zine swap. Although it might look like it, I didn't actually approach my colour choices in any kind of organized way. I just arranged them this way for the photograph afterwards.

I usually use a variety of paints, but these ones were mostly made with higher quality paints so I could get good "pick up" when pulling up residue paint off the plate. On the higher end, some colours were Golden, as well as Kroma (a local paint company in Vancouver). Kroma tends to be very buttery and lovely to work with. I love their pigment quality and how they blend. Slightly down the economic scale, there is some Pebeo and Amsterdam acrylics. Still good pigment, but not as good on the pick up. My new favourite colour is still Titanium White - the zine cover on the right-hand end must have about eight layers of uglier and uglier paint experiments - all saved by cross-texturing wavy lines in white. Fabulous.

For this gelli plate session I used some of my favourite "pattern makers" : 12x12 stencils from The Crafters Workshop, two pieces of wavy corrugated paper (not sure of the name or the source ... still trying to track down more of this stuff!) as well just plain old dragging a triangle graining tool through the wet paint.

I only foresee one problem with these zine covers ... I have to give them away in the swap. I wish I didn't fall in love with all the stuff that comes off the Gelli ... it would make life easier when it comes time to hand things over, even when I'm getting a bona fide art journal zine from some pretty amazing artists in exchange. Sigh.

Gelli Plate Surprise ...

Yesterday I decided to have a little fun with my newly-acquired 8x10 Gelli Printing Plate. This may come as a surprise to some of my creative friends, but I'm a bit of a doofus around new tools. I've watched other people magically creating amazing stuff with ease, then I've rushed out enthusiastically to buy whatever miracle toy they were playing with ... only to find the stuff I create is ... a hopeless muddle.

I'm very happy to report that my experience with the Gelli Plate is *not* one of those times. As near as I can tell it may well be idiot proof (Exhibit A: the collage above). With a minimum of tools, a variety of acrylic paints (some new and luscious, some old and cranky), some leftover divider tab sheets and about an hour, I created a generous stack of deliberate experiments and gorgeous happy accidents.

So ... what did I love? Each print doesn't need much paint, so it's very economical. Think that "clean up" is a drag? Don't clean up till the end! Yes, you can change colours as you go. See that collage above? I only cleaned up at putting away time. Don't like the first print you pull? That's okay, set it aside and print over it a second, third or fourth time till it can't take it anymore and decides to be gorgeous for you. Think you hate the final result? Not so fast. See that mottled green on the bottom row? I really hated it when I pulled it, but looking closely at it later I decided it was very nice indeed. And did I mention the no clean up till the end thing? Oh yeah ...

So ... paints ... I used whatever I had on hand. Mostly random acrylics, although my friend Rose recently gave me some super sparkly Dick Blick Glitter Watercolours, and while their pigment wasn't strong, the sparkle is very cool (and that's from a person who usually shuns glitter). The more liquid your paint the more prints you'll get from each inking and the easier it is to spread it around, but even my less liquid paints were fine, just took a bit more time to brayer them on evenly. Whatever the paint is, the first pull is usually fine, and if the paint seems too dry for a second pull, just lightly mist the plate. The green dots on the middle square in the collage were from a misted pull, and I love how they turned out.

Tools I used: stencils, foam stamps, a little graining tool, the core from a roll of skotch tape, a rubber brayer and a spritzy water bottle. I also taped a length of freezer paper to my table before I started - the Gelli Plate contains mineral oil, so it needs to be on something so you don't mark your table. Some people use a piece of glass or a teflon sheet. This also helps you if you want to rotate the plate while you're using it.

My other essential item (gleaned from watching various gelli vids on the net) is something to roll your brayer on after you've inked the plate. My choice of was an outdated copy of Leonard Maltin's movie guide. Let's face it, there's nothing more out of a date than a 20-year-old book of movie reviews. I suppose I could have torn out the pages and rolled on them, but I decided to just roll and turn the page. I figure I can throw it in my bag and take it to collage parties.

The table (post clean up). Poor Leonard! His reviews were never this colourful.

Well ... that's about it ... I just signed up for Carolyn Dube's Colorful Gelli Printing Workshop. I've been watching all the wonderful videos on her blog and I love her enthusiasm. In her last post she gelli'd her freakin' shoes (!). I'm looking forward to learning a ton more fun stuff to do with my Gelli Plate. I mean, if this is what I can create in an hour with *no real* knowledge, just imagine how far from a hopeless muddle I'll be with a little more practice.

Artfest 2011 - Part 2

More on my adventures at Artfest ... this episode: too much fun with paint!

My first day's class was Roxanne Padgett's Lush Layered Canvas. I'd taken a class with Roxanne at Journalfest, so I had an inkling (paintling?) of what was coming, but I knew I had SO much more to learn from her. Like how not to be so timid with colours. Okay, I'm still timid, but it's not her fault ~ it's just going to take a few more whacks on the brain to make me more adventurous.

The first thing she had us do was paint a colour wheel, and you know in all the exposure I've had to art, art classes, art teachers and art supplies, I've never actually sat down and made a colour wheel before, and I gotta say - it was a treat. Yes, yes, of *course* I know the primaries, and the secondaries and even the tertiaries, and how it only takes a little bit of dark to significantly alter a whole bunch of light, but doing it was very instructive all the same. Roxanne's advice ("How *not* to make mud") was perhaps the most useful of all, since making mud is the thing that usually scares me away from playing with paint in the first place. We also learned about tints, shades and complements - the stuff that we all think we know about ~ and then you sit down and do it and you see it in a fresh way.

We worked on four pieces at once ... canvas, linen, bottom weight (no snickering out there!) and just your average pre-printed cotton. I eschewed the pre-printed cotton (which was too beautiful to paint on ~ sorry, Roxanne!), and opted to make my fourth piece on paper. Funnily enough, I think I like the paper one best of all. Probably because I chose colours near and dear to me (the colour coward wins again!). Anyway, that's the one I've shown you above. Our basic modus operandi was to start with broad strokes on the bottom layer, and work our way up to more and more detailed layers as we went. We moved from piece to piece, letting each successive layer dry as we did so ... by the time I finished layer one on the last piece, the paint on the first piece had dried enough to move on to layer two, etc etc.

I *did* try to coax the colour coward out of the box, but the results were (to my mind) so atrocious it's one of the few times I wished I could turn back time so I could *undo* my work and go back to the step before when I'd really, really, really liked the piece. Oddly enough, this is the piece (other) people seem to respond most positively to, so obviously I am *no* judge of anything. And no, I'm *not* going to show you that one. Well, not right now ... maybe after I stop sulking and trying to turn back time. This negative turn of events made me chicken out of finishing one of the other pieces, since I knew I was on the verge of Doing Something Undoable That I Might Regret to it and I wanted to think about it a bit before I did that. So that's why I'm not showing you that one either.

I blame *none* of this on Roxanne, who is an amazing and generous teacher. When I'd taken her class at Journalfest I spent most of my time muttering things like: brilliant!, why didn't I think of that? and OMG (in a good way). This time I resolved to a) take better notes, and b) take lots of photos, both of which I'm happy to say I did. I came home fired up to cut my own stencils! use paper plate palettes that become art in themselves! and never waste paint!

So far, I cut two stencils in class: an anatomical heart (loosely based on one of Roxanne's own stencils) and a rowboat, and since I got home I've been experimenting with a woodburning knife to *cut* my own stencils in acetate ~ hey, it works! Instead of paper plates, I've opted to use file folders for palettes (I have like 200 of them and they lay flat, and I can use their random painty goodness in future zines!). And I've been smudging, stenciling and stamping my about-to-be-leftover paint onto already-leftover bits of canvas lying about the studio. Cool ~ looks like I actually learned something.

The dress stencil I used on the piece above is one of Roxanne's own multi-step designs, and she has a *wealth* of ideas about stencils ~ commercially-available, cut-your-own, stuff that was never intended to be used as stencils, you name it ... she's made me aware that I should keep my eyes open at *all* times for hidden pattern and texture opportunities. I'd highly recommend anyone interested in this sort of stuff take a class with Roxanne - she's the bomb.