Little Gold Boat
Little Red Boat
acrylic wash and Prismacolor on paper
3 3/4 x 5 1/2 inches
These are a couple of finished pieces from the watercolor collage experiment. The backgrounds were done with watered down acrylic on 140 lb watercolor paper. I used Prismacolor to darken and alter the color of selected areas. The gold boat was made from a piece of Burpee catalog paper coated with metallic gold paste. The red boat was made from origami paper.
acrylic wash and ink on paper
3 3/4 x 5 1/2 inches
I’m obviously still stuck in Blue Land. These are small paintings that will be the bases for collages. I’ve started adding ink and watercolor pencil to some of them. I’ll be adding Prismacolor, more ink, and collage elements, as well.
I just found a half a loaf of bread that had fallen off the top of the microwave and got hidden behind a box of cereal. The bread is old enough that I don’t remember buying it. It’s not the least bit molded, which is really disturbing: the use by date is February 14 (presumably 2005). I could understand it if this were white bread. That stuff has a shelf life that rivals Twinkies. This was 100% whole wheat bread, though. I’ll keep this experience in mind the next time I’m tempted to buy something besides Ezekiel bread.
A Book of Vessels: Tomato Toque
A Book of Vessels: Green Tea
A Book of Vessels: Gorilla Fish
A Book of Vessels: Eden Sundress
These are the latest in my series for the Vessels book. The round spinner dials on many of the collages came from the Dial-a-Tale book I found at a thrift store. I took the book apart and used the cover for a book I made. Most of the illustration from the book are pretty bad, but there were a few I saved, thinking I might be able to use them for collage.
I recently stumbled across Rebecca Blood’s blog (What’s in Rebecca’s Pocket?) and am enjoying it. It’s always guaranteed to provide food for thought. And, not junk food, either; this is good, nourishing grub. Most of the content is concerned with social and cyber issues. One of the things I like most about Rebecca’s blog, though, is its tone. Rebecca’s voice is a refreshing island of humor and reason in a shrill sea of marshmallow filling.
(Damned Blogger ate another post. It wouldn’t be that bad, as this was a short one, but I’m never able to rewrite them as well the second time around.)
I adore the show, but why, oh why, did they have to bring back Michael? And if they just had to bring him back, why did they have to devote an entire episode to him? Yes, I know there were plot points that his story explained (and yet more questions it raised), but surely there could’ve been another way to go about it. Gah.
I really don’t like his over-the-top character. Watching him is like listening to a Celine Dion song, where it starts on a super emotive note and just builds and builds and builds, with no relief. Yes, Michael, we know your heart will go on and on and on and on and on. Enough! You’re making me tired. I also find his character’s actions to be unbelievable (an Island with an agenda? Sure! But someone who kills two women in order to make a deal with someone he clearly cannot trust, and who later feels so guilty that he tells his son about it? A son he’s never had a meaningful relationship with, and who doesn’t need any more reasons to distrust and resent his father? And then he’s suicidal because the son rejects him? And then he’s so remorseful about the murders that he’s willing to become re-entangled in Benry’s schemes? Not so much.)
Harriet Brown
pencil on paper
I drew this a few months ago and completely forgot about it. It was done on a blank page in an altered book I was working on at the time.
Red Fleece Journal, Front
6 x 4 inches
140lb Cartiera Magnani hot press watercolor paper
buttonhole binding with coptic and long stitches
Spine
I’ve been wanting to try a buttonhole binding, but, as always, I got hung up on what to do about the cover. Then, I remembered a remnant of fleece I’d bought with the intention of making some braided tug toys for the dogs. The bright red color is cheerful and the fleece is soft on the hands. Since it’s a small book, there was still plenty of fleece left over to make a few tug toys–a win-win solution.
The paper came from my stash of 140lb Cartiera Magnani scraps that were left-over from the Blue Book. There are ten signatures of two folded sheets, so the book has 40 pages.
I ended up attaching the cover a little too tightly to the book, where the eyelets are. At those four points, the cover pulls around the edges of the spine. Next time I’ll be careful to leave a little slack at those points. Other than that, I’m pretty happy with the stitching. It’s nice and tight without being too tight. And, for once, I didn’t tear any of the holes by applying too much pressure.
I’m not a big fan of painting with acrylics, though I use them for priming backgrounds in my journals/sketchbooks and, occasionally, for painting. I do, however, love to use them for dying fabric. Even the ubercheap (44¢/bottle) craft acrylics work well for this. I use about 10-20 parts water to 1 part paint. It’s not a precise measurement–you want to water down the paint enough that it doesn’t affect the hand of the fabric, but not so much that the color becomes washed out. It should look like a nice, rich dye bath. The reason I prefer acrylics over dye is that the acrylic will not fade. In fact, you can even bleach it without lightening the color.
So… I had some left-over paints from the Blue Book and thought I’d use them to dye some of the little paper scraps I’d reserved for making more miniature books. I got out a small mixing bowl and went to work. I combined a pearlized teal with phthalo blue, which made a gorgeous Mediterranean blue. The paper is absolutely beautiful, with just a hint of shimmer. My hands, alas, are also blue. I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed, but I couldn’t remove all the blue dye.
Pandora’s Jar
acrylic, Neocolors II, and collage on paper
This is the second spread in the Blue Journal. The background is acrylic, again. The jar was done in Caran d’Ache Neocolors II. I also used Neocolors II to color the fortune cookie slips. Like the previous spread, the tealy colors in this piece did not scan well. I ended up knocking down the saturation and contrast, which helped a bit, but the color itself is still off.
This spread could’ve doubled for the Vessels book. I may end up repeating it there, using a different color scheme.
red paper boat 