Drawings--upside down and skewed

These are my drawing practice (I'd say "warm-up" if I continued on with something else) that I can do in the middle of the day to help myself stay sane.

These first two were drawn with the reference photo upside down--a most excellent right-brain exercise (even though the whole right/left brain thing has been scientifically debunked).

The next two were essentially blind contour drawings, with pencil, that were then rendered as realistically as possible.

29 Faces #28 and #29

And I thought I was so far ahead, but it's February 27.....

But here are the last two, both drawn upside-down.

29 Faces in February #17 and #18

The problem with doing drawings that you really really like is that you know the next one is going to be awful, or at least nowhere up to the one you really like.  But you have to do them anyway, because otherwise you're not going to get to others that you really like.  So here are the next two, which are okay, but nothing special.  Oh well.

29 Faces in February #15 and #16

The latest two of my daily meditation upside-down drawings.  If you haven't before, you really ought to try it.....

29 Faces in February, #10

Okay, so I'm not going to be able to do the whole thing in monoprints, not because I don't want to, but because I have to go to the Arts Center to use the press, and that's not something I can do every day.

So instead, I'm borrowing an idea from Terry Sargent Peart http://terrypeart.blogspot.com/search/label/29%20Faces%20Feb%202014 who is doing a drawing each day from the newspaper, and from Rick Baker, who did a fabulous fabulous series of upside-down drawings -- see them here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/silav/sets/72157626005133599/with/7441475532/
and my thought is to do an upside-down drawing each day from the newspaper here.  It seems like it's a really good exercise.

Here's the first one, from today's paper, about someone challenging the Mormon Church to offer proof of....oh, I don't know what; I didn't read the article; I just liked the picture.

This is what--or at least one what

I'm not really happy with these, but here's one idea of what to do with those lovely washes.....

Wheat Paste Resist explained

Here is latest batch of wheat paste resist portraits, and as several people were asking how I did them, I am going to attempt an explanation.

First off:  the wheat paste--This is just a mixture of white flour and water.  Remember making paper mache things when you were a kid?  It's exactly the same thing.  I experimented some with how thick it should be, and concluded that I like it best when it's really thick, like thick pancake batter.

Then, I brushed it onto the paper.  The paper needs to be really good paper (ie, 100% rag paper) and really thick paper (300 whatever unit is used to measure thickness--pounds?  grams?  I don't remember), and this is because it's going to be subject to a lot of soaking and rubbing when its wet, and you don't want it to disintegrate.

Let it dry.  It will take awhile (at least 24 hours), and it will curl up.

When it's dry, very gently flatten it out, and maybe even bend/roll it the opposite direction.  You may or may not be able to see the cracks in the dried wheat paste, but they're there.

Then, brush full-strength India ink over the entire surface.  Drench the surface.   What's going to happen is that the ink is going to seep through the cracks in the paste (which are most likely invisible to your eye) to the paper.

Let the whole thing dry.  Another 24 hours is probably best, as you want even the ink deep in the cracks to be 100% dry.

When it's completely dry, run warm water over it in the sink.  Gently rub on the surface. Some of the ink will come off, and you'll get down to the now slippery wheat paste level.  At this point, I leave the paper soaking in water because it takes awhile for the wheat paste to soften up.  Periodically, rub gently over the surface.  Eventually, you'll rub off all the wheat paste (and do get it all, for while the paper may be acid-free, mice love wheat paste). 

You'll end up with something like this:

At this point, you have an interesting surface, which you can then put ink washes on, draw on with pen and ink, or do anything else that appeals to you.

On most of these I also did an additional gouache resist on the side of his face (cheek, nose, chin, etc.) for the white areas (I had made a drawing on the paper before I started anything, but all the pencil gets rubbed out with the wheat paste, so I basically had to redraw everything with only the white spaces as guides.   All of these have a wash of ink over the original wheat paste crackle, which I then let dry before I started the pen and ink drawing.

This one doesn't have the gouache resist, and it feels way too gray to me.  Also, the wheat paste was too thin, and didn't get the crackling effect. (But I like the drawing!)

This one didn't work out so well.  The paper tore from the cracking of the wheat paste (from her nose out to the right side of the paper), which is one of the dangers of this.  Okay, also the drawing wasn't very good.....

I liked this next one a lot....even though the glasses turned out all wonky.

And this one didn't turn out very well either.   I completely lost the drawing in the washout, and it didn't reconstruct very well.....

So I have about a half and half success rate.  Two of these I REALLY like, one is okay, and two didn't work out at all....

Gouache resist and ink

I've really been remiss about posting, I think because I have also been posting these to my Flickr account.   Here's the link if anyone is interesting in checking it out: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kansas-coreopsis/

But here are the gouache resist and ink pictures I've been making....  Some of them I really like.

Wheat Paste Resist

I've been playing around with a new technique--wheat paste resist.  A friend has been doing it on fabric, and I loved the crackly effect she got, so I've been trying it on paper.

The white areas then come from making a gouache resist, like I was doing before.  It takes quite some bit of soaking and rubbing to get the wheat paste OFF again, but then it's ready for pen and ink.

I'm a little ridiculously pleased with these.  I really like the texture, and like all resist techniques, I like the chanciness of them.  This especially has some pretty random results, and I like having to work with that, and make the faces fit in with what happens with the wheat paste resist.

This one had the least amount of crackle of all (as in--zero), so I had to do almost all of it with cross-hatching, and I must say, that's way way way too much cross-hatching.

And then, there's the option of using ink washes.  So many possibilities.

Skewed Sketches

All I can say about these is that after nearly a year of not doing them, its really fun to do them again.   When I was last doing them, they had lost their "skews", which I am trying to put back in.

Skewed Sketch #25

I guess I'm back to doing these.  They're hard to resist, especially when you have a working technical pen.....

Veteran's Day

I have to say that it is a joy to become reacquainted with my technical pens.  I hadn't touched them in months (too busy doing all sorts of other things), and three out of the four of them were all dried up.  I soaked them all in warm water overnight and cleaned them well, and only refilled one of them.  But one is enough.  I can do these little sketches at school while the kids are working.

Old Man Collage #4

I'm not sure what to say about this one.  In a way, it's the most "finished" of the four I've done, and in a way, I really like it, but I think I might like the "roughness" of the others a bit more....It will be sitting around for awhile, for me to look at, and I'll probably come to some conclusions about what it still needs.  Actually, I usually do that--what you think or feel upon seeing something when you first walk into a room is very revealing.

Illustration Friday: Power

POWER is taking it all in--all the words, all the perceptions, all the world--and channeling it through yourself.  In it is joy and fear and anger and contentment, and you can't block any of it out.

Another old man collage

I didn't mean to do it this way, but all the words are upside down.  What does that mean?  These both make me think of Alzheimer's and losing language and losing memory.

Winds of TIme

The coolest thing about trying ANYTHING new is that once you make the first one (see yesterday's post), it gives you ideas for other things.

Getting close to the end

I'm getting near the end of my rusted paper.  I think there are three more after this.  I realize that I started with the most striking pieces of paper in the beginning (of course), and with these last ones, it's harder to coax images out of them, because they're not jumping right out at me.

I'm already thinking about making some more rust paper......and if I do, I can set different rules.  Like maybe using washes instead of all these lines.....

More rust people

So there are rules....These are the ones for this rusty paper.  The images emerge from the rust itself.  I don't pre-plan them, but look at the paper, and see what kinds of folks are there.  Sometimes I lightly sketch one out with pencil, but then when I come back to it later (a different day, even), it's someone else there, and I go with that.  And then I use a dip pen, with the same nib, and black India ink.  I so want to use some kind of black wash, but that's not in the boundaries.

So if these people look a bit skewed, know that that's the way they came out of the rust.  All of them are "doodles", in that I just played around with the forms.  No models here.

Rust Princess and others....

It is now summer vacation, perhaps not officially until tomorrow, but the semester is over, grades are in, my room is packed up for the summer, and I am checked out.  Every year I haul home at least one crate of things to work on over the summer, and every year I haul the same crate back untouched.  This year, I'm saving myself the trouble.  This year, I am going to be traveling a lot, and when I'm home, I plan on making lots of art, playing lots of music, and making major improvements in my many out-of-control gardens.  

Unfortunately, I got a cold the last two days of finals, and really didn't want to do anything but lie in bed.  But I'm better today, and since it's been storming all day, and I can't work in the garden, it's art-time.  

Here are two more drawings on some of the rusted paper I made a couple weekends ago on our art-group retreat to the lake.

Rust drawings

This was "art-weekend"--eight women in a cabin on the lake, with nothing to do but eat good food, drink wine, and make art.  One of the projects was "rusting".  Most of the others were doing it on fabric, but since I'm much more of a paper person, I gave it a shot on watercolor paper.  It worked really fast, with steel wool, and vinegar and water mixed together in a spray bottle.  It wasn't really this red, but that's how my scanner scanned it.  Then I used pen and ink, making the images that were suggested in the rust.  The top one I like, the bottom one I don't (I did for awhile, but then made too many marks).

It's a pretty cool process, one I can see applying to a picture AFTER doing some kind of initial drawing, so that one can make the rusting happen in the places that you desire it.