Journal ATC's

I finally made a batch of ATC's I really like. I did some found poetry ones a few months ago, but on pretty lazy backgrounds. This is the first set that felt like ME.

The background was one large masterboard that was a diagonal rainbow done in watercolor crayons, topped by stamps, topped by embossing. I cut it down, added out of context lines from old journal entries that I typed on my typewriter and edged them with a black ink pad.

I'm in love.

This May makes 4 years since I started writing daily again. I took a break for about half a year while life was difficult, only writing here and there. Started up again last month. 

Some old entries are heartbreaking. A lot are inane. 

My confession about the peas I grew not tasting good made me laugh until I cried. Some of the things I record are so dumb.

Oddly, these 3 are the ones that have been claimed so far. I'm not on swap-bot (and don't have enough dedication to strict deadlines right now to go back yet) so I am trying to find homes on instagram- always a bit of a hit or miss. 

That's all I got for now.

Too many photos documenting a creepy painting

Like it says on the tin, here's too many pictures about a painting I did.

Concept sketches plus first background layer. Pretty sure I was dry brushing with a pastry brush, but it was in my brushes so.

Background. Layers of acrylic and gloss medium and ink and alcohol ink....

Using chalk to outline the composition. Chalk is 100% my best friend for big paintings like this.

Had to take a moment and draw a rough design on myself to see how it would look with a smirk like she has. I had decided at this point that instead of painting her make-up in black, I wanted to have the original background show through to push a more ethereal look instead of just woman with spooky make-up.

When I do big mixed media paintings, I always go ahead and paint in some white acrylic where I intend to add oil later. It makes it a lot easier to see what I am doing and also usually seals in the background so it won't interfere with my oils. Usually. This time, I did layer after layer after layer and the damn alcohol inks just kept bleeding through, which was fine everywhere except where it was doing it the worst, her eye. I finally used heavy matte medium to seal in the eyes and all the skeletal spots. I also used some molding paste to texture up the hair, because at this point, why not? This is before it dried.

Eyes, in. And already I'm seeing I am miles and miles better at oil painting than I was when I made the other creepy mixed media paintings in my room. 

(It was at this point I had to take a 3 day break from painting to assist people with online gambling on the kentucky derby. I have learned so many things about horse racing, most of which being that I don't give a fuuuuck about horse racing.)

And you know on my first day off I got right back to it. Her face in progress. Taking a selfie with the make-up and smirk was so worth it, that's one of my favorite details in the entire painting.

Finishing up on her face and neck and that. The kid voted I leave her hair ghostly, but I thought there wasn't quite enough contrast. I did take his vote into consideration though and kept it lighter than I had planned.

So she ended up a pretty bleached out strawberry blonde, which is perfect.

And all done. This post is long enough so I'll save a comparison of my creepy paintings over time for another post, but I have to say I am completely over the moon with her and somewhat shocked how much I've improved in the last few years that I have been doing these.

One for you, one for me

It's not Wednesday, but this is what I wanted to post about this last Wednesday, and by the time this coming Wednesday rolls around, I am going to want to post about the current projects I am working on now. So. Blog time.

I spent the last week or so working on a fairly large commission. 12 x 16 inches, acrylic, canvas, this:

I loved working on it. Genuinely, I really love working on commissioned work. Just knowing the painting is actually going to be loved and live somewhere besides my stairwell in what we affectionately refer to as the "limbo gallery" (or worse, in the closet) while it desperately waits for a home adds a whole level of motivation to my work. 

Commissions are where I really focus, use, and improve my technical skills.  

I start with the solid, well planned outline. Especially with pets I have to get general fur pattern and quirks down so that the recipient (in this case, the son of the client, it'll be a surprise birthday gift) knows it's THEIR pet. 

I usually start with the eyes. Sometimes I do eyes, nose, ears, sometimes I save nose and ears for later. Mostly depends what paint I already have out.

I focus, on all my work, really, the most detail around the eyes and rest of the face. The face usually takes about as long as the rest of the body combined.

I use reference pictures, of course. I used to use my laptop but now I print them out to size. Half so I can see them with my glasses off so I don't give myself a migraine and half so I don't get any more paint on my laptop. (Besides, I found printer ink for really cheap on amazon and definitely write it off as a business expense now, so I can justify myself.)

There was a time when my realism would be an aim for complete realism. It isn't anymore. I leave in brush strokes and raised bits of paint and little things that whisper "this is a painting". It's a lot less stressful this way, which makes the piece turn out better.

Cat number two, was of course added in the same way. Face, body. Then the white wall behind them sponged on, then the fridge painted in. 

Roughly, this took me 6-7 hours from deciding on the composition to finished painting. I only really spent about 2 hours at a time on it (I measure my time in Seabound albums, currently. So I'd listen to both their albums I really love and then quit for a while). 

And in between those times, I took a break from painting by painting. 

I had this idea for a mixed media painting with acrylic and oil floating around in my skull. When I sketched her out, I just had to follow through and do her.

She turned out, as my work often does when I am left to my own devices, a lot more grungy and dark than I had originally intended. Somewhere the whimsy was lost, probably in my mood this week. 

I let her oils dry before adding the rest of the acrylic.

And here she is. With wild flowers in her hair, waiting to be reborn. This was for me. 

It's funny, because if I were to pick between the two paintings to say "this is what I am capable of" I would tend towards picking her over the cats. I've noticed that time and time again, the pieces I like the most seem to be the least popular ones - wherever. If I post them on instagram or show people my artwork. Invariably, the work that I feel like is my style, my creativity, my spark, passion and good ideas merits a very lukewarm response compared to the rest of it. 

Which is, of course, a matter of taste and perfectly fine. Because canvas was buy one get two free so I got two extras both times I bought canvas for commissions this last week. I'll keep stretching my technical skills on what sells and my wings on what makes me warm.

Canvas

When I was a teen and the only things I had to spend money on were comic books and art supplies, I painted on canvas a lot. I went through this ridiculous abstract phase, not that abstract is inherently bad, but boy-howdy mine sure was. Those masterpieces have since been painted over (save for one that had actual effort put in) and besides that, I just don't work on canvas very much. 

But lately I have had this day dream of the perfect commission. There are these GIANT, taller than me, canvas at my local art store. My dream is that some devastatingly good looking person will commission a life-sized black and white nude portrait of themselves that I can do in oil over a gorgeously splattered rainbow on white acrylic background and they'll pay me like 3 grand plus supplies and I'll be able to afford sushi and perhaps a shelf for my art crap. 

This has, of course, gotten me really excited about the idea of working on canvas, so this week I did a bit because I need to list more art in my etsy. Really, I must. This is for my business. 

Playing it safe on canvas board, I did an actually good abstract in the same technique as last week's blog post because I was a bit gutted about cutting it up. 

Procrastinating a commission, I did a similar style, but without really mixed media-ing the tiles. It's just plain acrylic. Also on canvas board. 

On canvas paper, the commission I was supposed to do. I actually had to clean my desk off entirely for it so I could fit both my easel and laptop on it. I work on and off on canvas paper, but I find really most my art I either do in my sketchbook or on bristol/mixed media board to cut into mail art, unless I have a commission, of course. I rarely really do fine art "just because".

I decided that my easel being out was a good enough reason to do a painting on stretched canvas. Which is always a serious delight to me, as is any chance to paint a topless lady. The canvas was an odd size, 12" x 16", so I decided to work in landscape for once. Originally I wanted to try my hand at a palette knife painting, but I settled for just going a bit more impressionist than usual. And I love it so much. I want to paint a thousand more canvas in this style. I am thinking I desperately need to rope some friends into modeling for me because I'm still digging through my old self portraits from when I did photography and needed to iron out lighting issues for inspiration.

So, those are my canvas of the last week. This coming week is the start of InCoWriMo again, so expect something mail related next post...

Five Minutes at a Time

I wasn't getting anything done. There was plenty of stuff I needed to get done, but sometimes I just have to accept it's not going to happen. This was one of those times.

So I made atc's instead.

For my own amusement, and for this blog post, I set a timer on my phone and took a photo every five minutes. Here's an insight into my masterboard making.

Blank mixed media paper. Messy desk.

Acrylic paint, alcohol ink, blobs of embossed bits. I'd like to pretend I had a plan to start with but nope. And I regretted this all immensely.

Tried to block a few segments for different color schemes. I already knew I was going to cut it up and reassemble so I wanted distinctly different areas. Gelatos were added here.

Pulling together a little more. Looks like one of my first masterboards from 9th grade art class.

Half of getting better seems to be learning when not to quit.

The paint pen dots really make it for me. I use them in a lot of my mixed media.

Cut up into chunks. Tried to make sure each chunk was limited in its color range. Also, my redvine got in shot.

Gluing down. Alternated between wanting to use tacky glue and a glue stick, figured out early on the tacky glue was warping the mixed media board too much. Which is kind of bullshit. I need to work more on canvas since it's the only thing that doesn't seem to warp.

This is surprisingly slow. 

I tried to get a decent balance, but also to remember it was going to be cut up.

Starting on adding the black between chunks. Acrylic paint, palette knife. To minimize the paint on the colorful blocks, I "pipe" the acrylic on using a zip lock bag with a tiny hole in the corner. I still end up with some paint on the blocks, but enough that it looks intentional instead of haphazard.

This process is kinda slow. It'd be faster if the lines were straight, but that wouldn't look as cool, would it?

Finally! My masterboard, just to let it dry to trim down.

At this point I stopped photographing because it took hours for the paint to dry and then literally just cutting it down into 3.5 x 2.5 chunks was not exciting. 

I liked the cards as they were, but decided a little text for focal point couldn't hurt. I sat at my typewriter and pounded out some random phrases. A lot were rehashes of unfinished projects and old poems, hence the series title "Poetic Nonsense & Goddamn Cliches". 

Here they are in sets of 4. I put them up like this on instagram and it was fun to see what got dibs'd for trades first. I'm hoping the rest of them will find homes too, because the last thing I need is to start hoarding my own ATCs again... 

I think I made up for every post I have ever done without pictures in it... yikes. 

2018: Let Go & Thrive

People keep telling me about their word of the year. I admit, I thought it was kind of a cop out the first few times I heard the concept. Like an ambiguous word doesn't really have that much tangible accountability. Mind you, this is coming from someone who schedules eating 3 meals a day into their planner to make sure I don't go flailing off track, so don't take it as me being snobby.

But this year I set a word. Thrive. Which, more specifically, is making efforts to change my mindset from "survive" to "thrive". And the first step to this, because of course I am breaking down a word into steps, is LET GO.

I am endeavoring to let go of my ideas. Especially with my novels. I keep having these dreams of being a ghost and I realized it is because I have been writing in a vacuum, trying to make everything perfect to me, 3 novels worth of perfect, before doing anything with them.

I decided a few nights ago that I am going to focus my work on the main novel, the first one, and leave the other ones in the closet (so to speak) until such time as the first novel is published. If I want a break on the novel, I can start something completely unrelated. But writing a trilogy all at once before sending out any queries on the first one is insane...

But I was doing it because I need to let go of my fears too. I need to let go of my need to be validated. Need to let go of the idea of rejection being a bad thing and embrace that rejections mean you have been trying. And need to accept, that at the end of the day, it is ok to do some projects that are just for me, as long as they are not for me, forever. Because at the end of the day, art and writing exist to be shared, not hoarded.

Horace the Grotesque is actually looking for a forever home, if you really love him. 

Finally, I need to let go of some of my expectations for myself as an artist. I am, at my very core, an eclectic person. My art is eclectic, my writing is eclectic. There is no one style I could stick with and be content. I like to stencil pleasant pop art doggies. I like to make horrible creepy grotesque masks out of paper clay. I like to do painstaking realism paintings in ink. So many artists I follow you can scroll through their instagram feeds and they have a brand, all their content looks pleasingly similar. Mine looks like it was run by about 15 different people. And that's ok, having a "brand" is ok, so is not having one.

I need to let go of that nagging itch to compare myself to other artists.

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"remember that you will die" (and remember that first, you will live.)

Happy 2018, procrastinators.

stamps, watercolors, coldbrew, and other crap on my desk

Let's make this snappy because I am running on a borrowed laptop, minimal sleep, stolen time and too much caffeine. 

Postcards!

Hand carved stamps, I have a drawer full next to my desk. 

Working on an 11x14? chunk of mixed media paper. I painted very rough shapes and colors in watercolor for each stamp. This was all totally freehand and wonky, how I like it.

This kept going.

And going... I kept the stamps nearby so I didn't forget what went where. 

Finally stamping over the rough painted parts with black ink.

Added some wonky pen lines and littler stamps to fill up the awkward space between stamps.

slice and chop and we've got 8 postcards.

Hoping for another miracle this week in the form of me actually finding the time/energy to send these fuckers off to all some the lovely people who have contributed to the teetering pile of mail on my windowsill. But I won't hold my breath.