Crusade no. 53 - Mad Scientist

This month crusade was an easy one. Hmmm ...maybe not as easy as I thought. Or maybe that was because I missed all  the other crusades of the year!

As I was planning to sketch my cactus garden anyway, I decided to use the sketch for the crusade. I must say that I had some difficulty coming up with names, and they are kinda boring anyway. Maybe next time I will do better.

I don't like wasting paint, so whatever I had left on the palette I used on the left page. The plan was to look for abstract shapes in the mix of colors. But instead of abstract shapes, I ended up with that figure. To me, it looks like a girl with a dog on a swing. OK. The dog looks more like a pig. The thing is I was looking for abstract shapes ...and I ended up somewhere else. Such if life after all, often we do not end up where we thought we would ...

 Here are the names: stormy sky, pomegranate juice, saguaro, spring grass. Hmm ... I forgot to write the colors I started with. This must be a senior moment ...

Crusade nr. 47 - Evidence

When I read the topic of this month's crusade I almost cried. Seriously! I had no evidence of Christmas past. I made my own wrapping paper from newspaper pages, paint and stamps. Made my own gift tags too. But take pictures? Nope...that I did not.

I made all my tree decoration though. You can see them here. Hope that counts ...

But then I thought ...must do something. So I took some candy wrappers left over from the chocolate spree and sewn them to a piece of cardboard. This in no way indicates that this is the only chocolate I had! I then applied two coats of absorbent ground. I never used it before and I wanted to test different mediums to see what happens. This is the end result - evidence of my Christmas chocolate over indulgence. The creature is based on one of the exercises in Carla Sonheim's book.

 I used charcoal, pen, watercolors, pan pastels (I cannot figure how to use those properly no matter what) and watercolor ink.

Crusade nr. 46 - What's your hang-up?

I thought I had nothing to submit for this crusade ... but then I found!

I enlarged some collages at the print shop and tacked them to the wall. I want to find a way to print them even bigger and use as wallpaper. The first three are printed on color copy paper - a bit too shiny.

 This one was printed on cardstock.

 These are assemblage pieces.

 This one is about the pilgrimage to Compostella.

I also "found" paintings from my previous "artist life" - when I was into oil painting. I painted the orchid with the fingers.

Thanks for visiting!

Crusade nr. 45 - Back to back

Boy, what a battle this was! And I have wounds and plenty of BandAid to prove it!

I made color photocopies of some of the backgrounds from previous crusades:

I started with a page in a board book I am altering where I pasted some scraps of my papers.

 

Then I decided to make some ATC. After all, what can be easier, right? They are so small... the results however where terrible.

In the left one, I doodled with colored pencils; in the middle one I collaged the face and "found" the face; I should have left the last one alone, but I decided to draw a one-liner sketch. hohum......

On this piece of matboard, I glued a photocopy and a face from a magazine, then I "found" the rest.

I did not like her, so I applied gesso and washes of paint. Then, I "found" a rabbit-chicken-russian-cossack-dancing-kazachok:

I liked it, but I the background papers are almost completely covered. So, I thought that maybe if I apply washes of gesso instead of straight gesso it will make a difference. Here is the result:

These being done, I proceeded to try the same process on a black and white background:

I wanted to have a simple figure as a focal point; that, believe it or not, is a man. Yeah, I know my drawing skills are ....well ...let's move on.

I wanted to see if I get a different results using scraps of store-bought scrapebook papers. I forgot to take a "before" pic. I "found" a blue cat:

I liked the cat, but not the background, so I changed it. I am not sure I improved it, but the doodles in the background seemed a bit much. 

It just occured to me that I probably misunderstood the crusade - I should have used copied of the same paper in different ways ... ooooouch....

Thanks for visiting!

Crusade nr 44 - In a scrape

This one was fun, fun, fun...and as usual, some pages turned out better than others.
Step 1 - scraped paint on found papers, first incarnation:

Step 2 - scraped paint on a journal page.

The page was wavy and the paint created some interesting effects. All of a sudden, I "saw" a crowd. This is what it became of this page:

Then, the bubbles. You know which ones, when Michelle says to spray water and then scrape. I first tried it in the journal on pages made of sewn newspaper pages. The water softened the pages too much and the scraping did not produce the expected result.

 So I tried again, this time on a piece of cardboard left over from a chocolate box. Better!

Next step in the scraping odyssey - stencils and masks. This were things took a sudden turn for the worse.
 The first attempts produced lame results, all the paint ended up pushed under the stencil so the design got lost. Maybe I should have cut multiple masks and glue them to the page. Anyway, I reused the pages for more stenciling and masking. These are the stencils and masks I used. Top left - that is a thicker stencil made for  high-viscosity paints, it is ment to create a 3D effect. I create 3D effect with regular staencils too, but I thought this one might be more resistant and might work better with spray paints. I have not tested it yet though. I cut the head (ha!) from leftover cardboard and the pink thing is a party crown bought from the dollar store. I also used number stickers as masks.

These produced the following:

And the final version of some of the above - drum roll, drum roll, drum roll ....here they are:

Crusade nr 43 - Text messaging take 2

Few of the spreads in my journal are made of newspaper pages machine sewn and gessoed. I thought they will be appropriate for the theme of the crusade, even though most of the text was obstructed by the layers of gesso...

The spread turns out to be similar to the fist one - the same sort of grid layout. I also applied some oil pastels to create a resist - the resist did not work too well. I then applied text from different books - a bible, older novels, scrapbook papers. Applied also some colored pencils, markers, stamps and what not ....I also "found" some poetry on the right page. Voila the result:

 Lost messages

complete puzzle

"i'm afraid" 

there is no will 

is dead

afraid it's pretty plain

trying to gain

property

the place will have to be sold

There will be no way out!

What a mess!

Crusade nr 42 - Strip Ease Take 3

Addiction, your name is stripes! Or so it seems these days ...Here is another stripe-inspired spread.

The pages were prepped with dry brushed paint. The journal was open on the table and as I peeked at the pages from across the table, I "saw" them. The two women faces on the right page. I then transferred two images at the top of the right page. I then added the dancer and the paint chip stripes at the bottom of the page. I did not know what to do with the remaining of the page. From the layout of the images a solution imposed itself: stripes, of course. Doodled stripes.
The yellow square on the left page is a yupo skin (I took a piece of yupo, painted and printed on it, applied gloss medium, let it dry and then peeled off the skin). At the bottom right there is a half-man face that emerged like the other ones. I should have probably used one colour only for doodles; black would be the obvious choice. Using one pattern per stripe would have made the pages clearer. I am OK with the result, except that it is a bit too busy. Thanks for visiting!

Crusade nr 42 - Strip Ease Take 2

Hohum ...Looks like I am addicted to stripes! I wanted to use horizontal and diagonal stripes this time. On the left page, I used wallpaper stripes. Focal point is an image tranfer on wallpaper. I added some doodles and wrote on top. I should have maybe written only around the image; now everything sort of blends together. On the right page, I wanted to preserve the images at the top, so I glued the stripes diagonally, added some stamping and doodling. I contemplating adding a strong color to add some contrast but in the end I voted against. I don't know how good this is, but my studio assistant studied it attentively ...

Crusade nr 41 - Grid

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa for missing the last crusade! I was swamped with preparations for the marathon and I did not make it in time to post.But this time I hurried!

Here is my grid. The apple and the pear on the left page are remnants from past drawing classes as all the pages in this journal are recycled. On top of the aple, there is an acetone transfer on watercolor paper and the original. The shape at the top of the left page was used in the printing crusade and the pears on the right are from the same exercise.

Crusade nr 39 - pulling prints

Prints...Easy...I do it often. I printed from aluminium foil, wax paper, wax paper, ceramic tiles and so on. No big deal. Really! So I gathered first my supplies:
printing plates

 shapes

 and papers.

 I decided to use a vast assortment of found papers, card stock, scrapbook papers, old book pages, painted pages and so on.

The printing plate of choice ended up being the ceramic tile, aka my palette. Soon in the process I had to acknowledge that things were not working out as expected and the results are proof of that.

 Out of this pile, I could salvage a few:

Seeing these less that stellar result, what's a crusader to do? Accept the losses? No way...
I decided to pursue the second crusade and try to rescue some of these prints by any means possible.
In some cases, I channeled Picasso et comp:

 Other pages became background for doodles and journal pages:

Some of the better second generation prints:

In retrospect, I should have probably stick to one type of paper. There were too many variables in the process, sometimes the color used for printing ended up being too light for the page I was printing on and the design was not visible. I also had trouble with the paint - it dried extremely fast. I tried spraying alcohol and pulling a second print - sometimes it worked well. I should have taken more pictures like this - the printing plate. It could be used as a background - either printed or digital.

The winners in this process I think are these:

I sprayed  them with alcohol and wiped some of the color off. I like the aged, graffiti kind of look.

All in all, it was a fun crusade, but I came somewhat short of what I was hoping to achieve.

Crusade nr 38 - Grab a tissue

Things got out of hand around here and I am behind with everything, not only the postings to the blog. At least, I will make the deadline for the crusade.

I had more trouble with this than I thought. Painting the tissue paper was fun, but finishing the journal spread was a whole different story. Here is the painted paper:

I used spray paint, stencils, stamps, craft paints on pattern paper, phone book pages, white and colored  tissue paper.

The first spread made using these papers:

I used a piece of rusted metal, craft wire, beads, rusted beer caps and hardware pieces, transparencies, a piece of broken mirror glued under Monalisa. I used the tissue paper for the hair and the clothes of the human figure, and for the heart border on the right page. It's got a somewhat creepy feel to it, but I did not plan it. I never do - whatever happens, happens ...

I also made another spread because I liked the black and white silhouettes I spraypainted and I did not want to cut the paper. So here it is:

 The words read: "Every day is a show" and "Love at first sight, desire, temptation, scandal and curlers". I posted smaller pictures; if I enlarge them, they get truncated. Another "to do" on the already long list of stuff I have to do ...someday.