Weekend Update

There's not much to update as far as the mosaic project is concerned--that's a much slower process than I anticipated! Maybe tomorrow!

What I did do this weekend was participate in a small town art show that I have found to be great fun! The people are so friendly--I really enjoyed getting out and walking around. I want to share one ribbon with you as it is a watercolor piece that I posted several months ago. This is the first time I have shown it and I am extremely happy about it!

Something Different--Mosaic

I'm not sure you would call this mixed media but it's something I've been wanting to try for a long time. I had quite a lot of trouble deciding on a support but ended up with a gesso/acrylic surface on foam core. It wasn't the best decision as it bows but the alternative was much much heavier. In the spirit of experimentation, it works for now. I marked my surface with a design previously used for stained glass and the photo only shows half of the "canvas". As I place more and more of the "tiles" I will post the other half.

The tiles are not really tiles but plastic pieces. More about those later. I am playing this by ear, but after completing the design, my thoughts are to varnish the surface, maybe use some antiquing solution to give some depth and apply a final layer of varnish.

Experimenting with Wax Based Media

The last couple of days have been devoted to experimenting with things other than color pencil. I have read about Jeffrey Robert and Don Marco who are CRAYON artists. That's pretty amazing to me, the kind of work they create with the lowly crayon! So, I decided to try it for myself. Trying something like that gives you a new respect for the artist and the medium. This magnolia started out in crayon but just didn't have enough pigment for the black background and too much wax! So, before chucking the whole thing, I pulled out the oil pastels, which to me have the same kind of consistency as the crayon, but decidedly more color pigmentation. After trying to layer and blend a bit, I couldn't get any more pastel to adhere.

Since I was working with heat yesterday, I decided to try some heat on this project. I heated up the "drawing pad" and tried adding some pastel to the drawing, without success. Remembering that I used crayons in the past to create drawings on fabric, layering by heating with the iron, I pulled out the iron, heated it up, laid a thick paper towel between the paper and the iron and moved the iron across the drawing several times.

The resulting drawing is what you see here; the heat didn't "melt" the color enough to fill in the specks left in the paper. I might try this another time using a paper with less texture. The crayon/pastel also built up on the paper making it seem heavy and a little like it might crack!

Experimenting with Heat

I spent today playing around with a technique that's being talked about on WetCanvas, colored pencil on a heated surface. To experiment, I pulled out a drawing that I made years ago. It was meant to be a fantasy/abstract kind of drawing so the colors are pretty wild for me! Anyway, because this piece had lots of white specks showing through I thought it would make an excellent subject.

I placed my heating pad (minus the cover) on the drawing board and over that I used an acrylic cutting board from the kitchen, smooth side up. In testing, the board can get pretty warm, so warm that a couple of times I lifted my hand off quickly when I set it down. However, if you keep something under your hand, it's just right.

I found that it was best to add color to paper right on the heated surface. It seems that it makes the pencil move more smoothly, some colors more than others. So while not all my white is covered at this point, it definitely improved. Unfortunately, I didn't make a photo of the before product for comparison. But, I did enjoy the experiment enough that I will do another small piece by this technique soon.

Giving it a rest...

Well, folks, I have done just about everything imaginable to this piece and it still looks the same to me! I used some solvent to dissolve the pigment trying to fill in all those little white specks of paper. So, the zebra goes to the "come back to this later" pile while I decide on something new to work on.