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. 

Woof.

This is an obligatory announcement post to share that I have launched a Kickstarter Make 100 campaign.

This week's proper blog post is here so you can go ahead and click back if you don't want to read my spiel. No hard feelings.                 
                   

As part of my growth as an artist, both in putting myself out there and in wanting to have the funds to venture off into screen printing (because I have some really cool ideas planned, both t-shit wise, textile wise and even crazy poster wise- not just dogs!) I am taking part in Kickstarter's Make 100.
        
My project is here and I am offering limited edition prints in the shown style (different background colors available) as well as a few slots for custom stenciled artwork. I'll be doing a give-away for my prototype in a few days over on instagram other than that, this is the only chance to get this design.

So if you want to check it out or share it with people who might like it, it's much appreciated. So are good vibes sent my way.                 
             
And thanks to the handful of people who check in here to read my nonsense. I love blogging as a way to document my growth and ideas for myself, and the fact anyone cares enough to check in and read it blows me away, honestly. You guys rock.

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.

----------------

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

Happy 2018, procrastinators.

Mermaids or When I'm being honest

Back in October I was playing along with the whole "inktober"  make something inky every day thing. I'd say it was a particularly rough month for me, but with how often I use that phrase I think it's just kind of a perpetual thing. 

Anyhow, I wanted to pretend to have some sort of inspiration so I could post something neat-o on instagram instead of another fucking hand. I started to go for a very safe, very cliche mermaid. And then I veered wildly off into what chronic depression / anxiety has felt like to me. That I am being gnawed at and fighting constantly no matter how well I look like I am doing or how much creative energy I am putting out into the world.

I came up with this little sketch and really liked the concept. It kept bouncing around in my head and finally last week I had time to revisit it. 

This started with redrawing the sketch with actual human anatomy in mind. I notice I tend towards the same simplified style when I am doodling, which gets the point across for me to redraw it later, is all I can really say about it. 

I tried to de-cute the depression fish monster a bit while I was at it. 

Carved a stamp. I like texture in my stamps, usually, so I tend to make sure to carve neatly so that any stray lines capture the form instead of just being wonky. Same concept as if you were making a drawing just with a bunch of lines, except you don't know for sure which are going to actually show up until it's done. 

Print of the stamp. Also how I realized I really need to buy an ink pad that costs more than a buck if I am going to spend so much time dealing in stamps now. 

I did a test print on a dictionary page. And determined I also need to just get some good printing ink and find where my brayer got off to. 

It amused me, in a sort of sad way, that one of the conversations I had when showing the prints off went like this:

"Look, I made a stamp."

"I see. It's a mermaid."

"Well, kinda. It's a woman being eaten by a horrible fish monster."

"Oh."

"See? She's trying to hold it off so it won't consume her completely."

"huh. She looks like she's doing well and pretty happy."

Which I guess just means I got exactly what I was going for in the stamp. 

place your bets now if next week will be back to pets. 

Gone to the Dogs

I have a hunch that two months ago I wasn't even entirely sure what a dog looked like.

Just a hunch.

But my friend, Elena, who runs a dog emporium  training business had a kind heart and a tight budget for the office space and offered that I could have her giant gorgeous wall to decorate with my art (so long as it was dog or at least pet related) and she'd be happy to offer prints of my work, or the work itself gallery style, in her space. 

This, this gorgeous giant wall.

I had pretty much no idea what I was going to do with this much space. Mostly because I have a tendency to work fairly small and detailed, and when the wall goes up ten million feet, you aren't going to be able to fill it with twinchies. 

I wanted something that would be striking and clean looking for the office space. We're in downtown Portland, after all, they seem to know about dogs and art here. (And beer, on a side note. We went to a nature park when we first got here and there was a flyer advertising what was essentially a get drunk and watch the birds afternoon, all officially organized. This is my kind of city.)

Besides, I wanted the art to be good because my best girl Penny does a lot of work here too and she deserves some good artwork to go with scratches and treats.

I spent a while thinking on this and got a few false starts doing fairly traditional acrylic paintings on canvas. They were alright, but I was worried they were going to look that cozy cobbled together look like the owner's best friend who was a hobbyist painter did her a solid and made art for her empty wall. (wait a second...)

Anyhow, I was sitting in the bottom of the shower thinking on this, probably either a bit sick or hungover or delirious because I stumbled out of the shower and drew the following schematic.

I'm an ARTIST

I tried to send pictures of my blueprints to Elena, and she showed a sort of vague I can't say anything negative or back out because we've been friends since high school enthusiasm. 

I soldiered on and got to cutting stencils.

The first two I did, I will re-do at some point because I hadn't found the right style yet. We'll take a look at the stencil for my personal favorite.

Meet Baxter. He's one of my friend's personal service dogs. Elena provided me with tons of pictures both of her personal dogs and clients of hers to work from. I decided for the office space I really wanted to stick to dogs that were hers because it seemed special and she has enough dogs... 

For the stencils, I worked over the photograph in a sort of daze marking where I wanted black. I really can't describe the process better than this. I don't have any pointers for stencil making besides intuition and again, plastic dividers. I cut out the design painstakingly with an x-acto knife.

Part A. The black details.

Part B. In two variations. You'll see why in a second.

After the stencils are made (and these are clearly used) I sponged on the background first. Doing these in sets of two so that there were white dogs with colorful backgrounds and colorful dogs with white backgrounds. 

Once that is dry, the black details get sponged on so I end up with... 

This. (forgive my poor lighting today, the background is white)

And this. Honestly my favorite of the prints.

I did this process 6 times just for her office art. I talked to her and her girlfriend about what colors they thought they wanted for the space and jokingly threw out rainbow to celebrate their incredible gayness. We decided to give rainbow a go.

They looked so snazzy on my floor we got some dollar store frameless frames and tasked my dear, tall, husband with hanging them in the space.

Voila.

I can now confidently say that I know what dogs look like. Also, I think they look perfect up. I plan to re-do the orange and yellow dogs because I did them first and after the fact they don't look quite right with all the others, but they are fine for now until I get around to it.

It cheers me up every time I go into the office space (which I do now and again to help with some very minor tasks- mostly giving Penny treats.) I have to say it turned out far better than I dreamed.

I've also found, starting to take commissions of peoples' pets even though I was initially reluctant to, it makes me so happy how happy people get at seeing art of their pets. It's just fucking contagious and I can't even begin to complain about people randomly messaging me pet pics inquiring about commissions- even if they don't end up commissioning anything I still get little surprise bursts of cute and joy.

next week- maybe I'll finish my current *not dog* project and post about that? maybe.

Festive Ferrets

I wanted to do something new and actually make my own Christmas cards. I woefully underestimated how many I wanted to send and need to make another batch, but here's my design and process.

I've done a lot of fiddling with stencils lately and feeling ambitious I went for a 5 part stencil. The most I have ever done successfully before is 3.

It started with this sketch of a ferret in a santa hat I just kinda woke up to. I leave myself notes when I am half asleep a lot, usually they are a lot less clear.

Traced the different layers onto bits of plastic divider. No joke, this is my go to for stencils, it is so cheap and holds up so well.

Carefully (ha, not really, more like maniacally) cut out the details for each stencil.

Also spent 75 years cutting down postcard size bits of paper. I was not about to make envelopes and, to be honest, saving a few bucks on postage sounded nice too.

Layer one, dark brown. I brushed the acrylics on going for a more flat look.

Tan.

There was a white layer then a red layer. I missed getting a pic of the white because it really wasn't that exciting.

And finally, layer five, the black details. If I do make another batch, I am definitely doing the first four layers and drawing the black parts on with a sharpie by hand. The details were just a little too fine and the acrylic a little too blobby. But there's a 75% chance anyone I missed the first batch is just getting a store bought card or forgotten because I am pretty much the worst at sending out cards for any occasion and the fact I got 20 out is nothing short of a Christmas miracle.