Canvas with Tissue Paper

With an online group, I am working my way through Mary Todd Beam’s Celebrate Your Creative Self.  The portion we were working on this month was to add tissue paper to an illustration board or canvas and then paint it. 

 The workshop leader was so smart and decided to break this into three weekly parts to make it easier.  And I am sure it would have been if life didn’t get in the way.  I started this last Thursday and still think I need to put some additional color on it.  I want the third that is basically in the center horizontally to have something else on it - a different color to contrast, something.

The first step was to get the tissue paper on the board.

While this does not look like much, it was harder than I thought it would be.  I knew what I wanted it to llook like, but really wanted to let the tissue have its own “life,” so to speak.

I have three pictures below that have the item with its first coat of acrylics on it.  I did gesso over the entire canvas once the tissue was dried on, including the tissue.  The acrylics I used were crimson, deep turquoise, and phthlato green.  I also used a pearlescent tint in the bottom area which tends to show as a bit of glare off my flash on my camera.   All three images below are the same canvas.  I just haven’t found a good way to take pics.

         

Water Webbing

In one of the last lessons I have to do for February’s working through Paper Transformed by Julia Andrus is webbing.  I knew, from the start, just what stamp I wanted to use and what I was going to do with it.  I just needed the time and a water bottle. 

I have several squirt bottles but they are all large ones for cleaning solution, although they do not all have cleaning solution in them.  I grabbed one and cleaned it up, made sure there was no cleanser left in it if that is what was there to start with and filled it with water.

 I, then, took my Marvy Le Plume markers and used the brush end to color my stamp which is from Anita’s.  I stamped first and second generation on this one piece to be sure I had one finished item for my project.  Then, came the water and squirt away I did.  I finally realized I love the technique but do not love the large squirt bottle.  I am putting a small squirt bottle on my list of things to get next time I am at the dollar store.  This one just put too much water on my designs.

February Projects

In the two workshops I am participating in this year - Paper Transformed by Julia Andrus and Celebrate Your Creative Self by Mary Todd Beam - have some wonderful projects for the month of February.  Unfortunately, February is a very short month and very busy so I spent a day doing some paper transformation.

All of the colors in this are done on white cardstock.  The colors are watercolors that are manipulated.

I set up six half sheets of card stock on my art board.  I used masking tape to keep them from curling from the moisture associated with watercolors.  Each piece or part of a piece of cardstock has a different technique used on it.  Most, actually all but one, are from Paper Transformed.  The wax resist is from Celebrate Your Creative Self.

This particular technique involves putting Pearl Ex mica powder in the watercolor as I painted the cardstock.  I used a mahogany color watercolor and a antique gold Pearl Ex. The picture does not do the coloring justice.  It is much more gold looking than here.

Above are what will become two different plastic wrap altered watercolors.  Neither left the amount of design in the paint that I thought it would but I do like this technique and will continue with larger and smaller, tighter squeezed together and looser plastic wrap until I get what I am looking for the watercolor to look like once dried.  The finished products are below.

Another wonderful technique was the basic watercolor wash.

Next up was salt.  I don’t know what I was thinking.  I have two containers of sea salt - coarse for making bath salts and reminding me of the rock salt I put on the driveway here in upstate NY during winter.  I figured this was what I was going to use.  I guess I should have thought about it more so in the second art board full of techniques I used both the sea salt and table salt.

             

The first two of these have the coarse sea salt on them.  The right end has the table salt on it.  The results are below.

      

Another technique that I fell in love with was the watercolor with watercolor pencil shavings in the wet watercolor.  I did this with deep green pencil shavings in a yellow watercolor.

Finally, I utilized a wax resist from Celebrate Your Creative Self.  I have tried a wax resist before, using the wax from a dripping candle for wax and ironing off the was when done, and not been happy with the results.  I am not sure I liked the results this time either but below are two examples, one with a yellow crayon and one with a white crayon.

    

I am going to keep trying the wax resist.  I also still need to try the water removal of paint to reveal white space.  If it doesn’t get tried in the next week, it probably won’t as I have a big event coming up March 1 and need to work on that for a bit.

Simple Abundance - Feb 11 - 17

I realize I should do these second time through readings of the daily meditations in advance of the week, not in retrospect.  Anyone who is reading along may not come back to look now for the past week.  I am going to seriously try to do this for the upcoming week later today.

 I truly love our search through ourselves for our authentic selves.  The discussion of “spiritual electricity” resonates with me.  I have been trying to create some varying backgrounds and works of art but have seemed to feel there was nothing there.  I did not work on Friday of this week as my son had a sectional diving event and, then, decided not to play catch up on Saturday.  Instead, I flipped the switch of my “spritual electricity” on and did some painting and creating.   My first creation was three and a half dozen ginger cookies for my visiting 21 year old daughter to take back to college with her.  Then, the work from Julia Andrus’s Paper Transformed began.  That is another post altogether, though.

And, that 10 year old girl…. oh my!  I do not have this picture but I can see it in my mind.  It was on my father’s desk in his office, when the office was behind an old barber shop.  I had hair about mid-back, straight as a board and pulled back in a partial ponytail.  The chestnut colored hair is a color I yearn for these days but it is not the hair color that speaks to my authentic self.  I was wearing a high necked green plaid dress.  This dress does not speak to my authentic self either.  It is my face that speaks of who I really am.  I had the remnants of two black eyes.  I had spent the summer camping with my grandmother and tripped over a wagon tongue.  In the process, I fell - hitting my forehead in a very precarious spot.  The doctors said I could have been blinded had the point of impact been a fraction of an inch in any direction.  The blood from the huge egg on my head drained the only place it could - into the whites of my eyes.  Then, the bruising came.  I had these huge black eyes for weeks.  But getting them was fun!  I was playing with the boys, a tomboy at her best.  And, that is truly me.

Wanderlust and travel are also explored in ways now that could not be previously.  Do you dream of travel?  I have done the travel in a small part.  I spent one fall travelling up and down the eastern seaboard.  I went 13,000 miles from August until November.  I saw many wonderful places and beautiful people but I loved it most when I came back home.  I don’t think this is where home will always be but it where it is now and I love it!

Simple Abundance - thru Feb 10

I know - I should post first thing in the morning all these thoughts I have on the daily musings.  I have been very wrapped up in politics lately and those have been my first, and sometimes second and third, posts of the day.  I will try to fix that starting Monday.

If you go back to the beginning of the month, on February 2nd, Ban Breathnach discusses creative excursions but of a slightly different note.  I love this particular excursion to a home furnishings or decorative accessories store.  I have three that I go to for these particular outings but my favorite is Pier 1.  If I cannot make it to the actual local store, I could spend hours going through things on their web site. 

I like to go in, walk around.  Then, I start thinking about my house and which items here I could use.  I think about the changes I have always wanted to make to my kitchen - a tile backsplash in Tuscan colors behind my sink, painting of the one set of cupboards a gold and green.  I think about what I could do to make my living room look much less like an office and play area - more on the wall, a nice way to have candles lit all the time.  I think about how to make my bedroom, which doubles as my craft room, more of a sanctuary - throw pillows, maybe a screen to keep the craft stuff behind.

After I walk through, I go out to the car and write down the items I like.  I print pictures off at home of them with pricing information so I can purchase if I get a small windfall.

On the days of February 3rd and 4th, we are introduced to our “authentic self.”  I do understand the keeping her available for those important moments.  I think I did this earlier in my life.  Now I feel that I am at a point where I am more comfortable with myself than I have been in the past.  The light is on daily.  I do know this is hard for women.  We invest so much of ourselves in others.  As a mother, we invest ourselves in our children.  As a wife, we invest ourselves in our husband.  As a worker, we invest ourselves in our job.  We need to be able to take those pieces of us back and make ourselves whole.

I think I relate most to the discussions of being an artist.  I do create art.  It took me a long time to think of myself as an artist.  I make crafts, cards, scrapbook pages.  I do painting, molding of clay, bending of wire.  I bake and cook.  All of these things are creating art.  So I really enjoy reading February 7th & 8th.  I also love reading the 9th where SBB talks about each day being a fresh canvas.

A Look at January

You all know that making resolutions doesn’t normally last.  I know this to be true but I like to try to check in each month with how I am doing on my aspirations.

I have been creating new items but have not yet submitted anything for publication.

I am well on my way to The Triple Eight Challenge.  I read three of my Penguin Paperbacks in January.  I also read The Art of Happiness by His Holiness the Dalai Lama.  I have started three other books that will take me most of the year to work through or read - Celebrate Your Creative Self, Paper Transformed and Simple Abundance.  These were all in January.  I just this past weekend started reading Jimmy Carter’s most recent - Beyond the White House, which I am finding a wonderful book.

I still have not purchased a new pedometer.  It is on my list but I haven’t gotten where I can find one I like.  I did run 75.26 miles in January.  A lot of this was done indoors as the weather in upstate NY in January can be detrimental to your health if you do not take care.  I also have managed to put some strength training into my schedule but not as much as I would like.  I have not yet gotten back to my Pilates as I had hoped.

I did pay some minor debts in January.  I have a few more slated for February so am working towards a debt-free life.

I also did two weeks worth of posted menu plans.  I sort of did a plan in my head when I went grocery shopping at the end of that time frame.  I am currently living in a somewhat rural area but without a car so I have to plan what I need when I get to the store.  I am working on a February menu plan today as Lent starts on Wednesday so my menu planning becomes more essential as I have meatless days that need to be worked into the plan.

I just realized I have not yet heard from the farm I participated in community-supported agriculture yet so I am going to email her today.  I do hope she is still doing this as it was wonderful last summer.  I am set to go with it this summer.

February - Simple Abundance

February is the first month where we concentrate on one of the six principles of the journey for the entire month.  This month we will concentrate on gratitude.

I have to reiterate.  You really NEED a gratitude journal and need to make writing in it a nightly habit.  There are days when the nights are long and I also write about gratitude in my daily dialogue but definitely I write five things I am grateful for in my gratitude journal every night.

Second, please be sure to read the “joyful simplicities” at the beginning of the month.  In February, there is a joyful simplicity geared towards today - February 2.  If you wait until where they are placed - at the end of each month, you will miss information about today.

Please feel free to comment on any day in February on any post I have about Simple Abundance.  I really would like this to be interactive.  I am not willing to do an actual forum - which is where I lead a book group for this book the past three years - but I do like hearing what other journeying along have to say.

 February starts off with the discussion of a creative excursion.  Sarah Ban Breathnach talks of these creative excursions.  For those of you who have read Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, you may be tempted to draw a line between this and the artist’s date.  Creative excursion can be so much more.  A few years ago in February, I went on a creative excursion to a tile store.  I was thinking about redoing some backsplash behind my kitchen sink.  The creative excursion of just going to the tile store and looking, seeing the possibilities, was wonderful.  I have also gone on creative excursions to Pier 1, to Starbuck’s to a new kitchen wares shop, to a thrift store.  I like to make these excursions something I will love!!  You should, too.

Look ahead to see if the titles - or teases as I think of them - on any particular days call to you.  I know many do to me.

Wrap-Up of January Simple Abundance

Hopefully, you are reading along daily as opposed to waiting to hear something from me.  I have lead a book group around Sarah Ban Breathnach’s Simple Abundance for three years now and I never seem to get out the things I want when I want to but I keep trying.

From the middle of January until the 19th, Sarah went over - in great detail - the six principles of simple abuncance.  These six principles will be the themes, individually, for six of the months in the upcoming year, starting with February and gratitude.  They are also the backbone of the journey.  If you are thinking you don’t recall these, please go back and re-read January 13th through January 19th.

My favorite reading of the year was on January 24th - “Blessing Your Circumstances.”  So many parts of my life make this reading ring true.  First, this particular year the 24th of January was the 21st birthday of my twins.  Second, my faith leads me to believe that my circumstances are a blessing to me as yours are to you.

Finally, in wrapping up the first month of the new year and new journey, please be sure to look at the days following January 19th.  Look at what Ban Breathnach calls the basic tools for the journey.  She introduced the one tool you MUST use back on the 14th - the gratitude journal - but the rest of these tools are wonderful for your journey.  Read about the illustrated discovery journal, the daily dialogue (which, if you have ever read Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, I find similar to morning pages), your personal treasure map, and golden mirror meditations.

Wax Resist

In our (a group of artists online) neverending way to work our way through Mary Todd Beam’s Celebrate Your Creative Self, we have been working on some white space in paintings. I understand the need for white space but I have trouble keeping it in creations.

One method discussed in the books is wax resist. This time I took a piece of cold pressed watercolor paper. I lit a candle and dripped wax on it. If you don’t think my two teenage boys looked at me like I was nuts, think again. After this, I mixed a combination of a pearlizing tint and red and gold acrylic paints to get an orangy paint color. This was still way too thick so I added water to get the consistency I want.

After I painted the entire page with this color combination, I let everything dry. After drying, I took clean newsprint and ironed the wax off the paper. I had tried to direct the wax so as to make shapes but the finished product does not look as if I did.

More Marbling

I finally received my book - Paper Transformed by Julia Andrus in the mail.  The more I read about marbling, the more I was sure I wanted to use some of the other supplies I have around to marble additional papers. 

 I have mordant mixed up so that is not a problem.  Both boys had events last night so I was home alone for a good two hours.  I had several projects I am in the middle of but I set up a marbling station.  The station consisted of a 9×13 aluminum pan with about a quarter of an inch of water in it, a set of papers already treated with mordant and dry to be marbled, a place to dry the marbled papers, a plastic knife for scraping and several plastic forks for swirling the marbling.

 This particular attempt was made using about a quarter inch of water in the pan.  I, then, took the plastic knife and scraped pigment off three different blue pastels.  When I placed the treated piece of cold pressed watercolor paper in the water, it came out like the yellow and orange piece below.  I had a paintbrush near by so I wet it and ran it across the paper also.  This is how I got the piece above.

The particular piece above is just the pastel without any help from a paintbrush.  What I just noticed as I was scanning these papers is that the pastel pigment in this example was not really - even after treating the paper to accept the marbling - take.  I have orange and yellow pastel all over my scanner.  I just took a tissue and rubbed this particulare one and it looks more like the blue one now - just yellow and orange and red.

The marbling above was also done using water as the size.  I found, in my craft stash, old iridescent inks from Stampa Rosa - a company that has long since gone out of business.  I splashed inks on top of the water.  I, then, laid treated cardstock on the water and lifted it off.  It dried overnight.