Join Me for 60 Days of Birds Starting May 30th!

60 Days of Birds Mixed Media Challenge

Begins in 5 Days!!!

Learn more here!

Happy Birthday to Me!

Lamy Al-Star fountain pen in dark lilac.

Not knowing any better I ordered the fine tip nib.  It is now filled with lilac ink!

Getting Gelly Pens to Write Again!!!

Ok after trying a multitude of fixes available on the internet I finally found one that got my pens working again.

If you have gelly pens, and the Glaze Pens seem to be the worse, and they have quite writing and you can see that the ink is still viable in the pens try this.

Leaving the caps securely attached to the tips of the pens, and I highly recommend wearing goggles here when you do this,

Trying NOT to split the pen cap, take the pens and tap REALLY HARD about a half dozen times straight up and down onto a very hard very sturdy surface like a counter top.  You want to tap the pen tip end down onto the surface.

THEN once you are done doing this with the pen tip down, and the cap still firmly covering the tip of the pen, whap the hell out of the pen onto the hard surface, yes this would be teh writing end of the pen.

And when I say whap the hell out of the pen I ""really''"' mean whap the hell out of it, and yes my rotor cuff is screaming at me right now, however, I now have 38 out of 39 gelly pens writing and quite beautifully I might add, once again!!!

WIP Crows Follies

Crows Follies No's. 1 thru 14

There is nothing like seeing them laid out like this to make one realize what needs to be done, fixed, changed, etc.!  I'll have to have John make two new raised panel frames for me to replace No's 11 and 12 as these two do NOT go with this particular series color wise.  The good news is is I'll have him make more than two new frames for a new series in the blue tones.

Off to add more paint and ink to these panels.

On My Desk

From this

To this.  All told there will be a minimum of 28 new pieces in my Crows Folly series.  These fourteen panels are 6x6x2 inches, with the remaining panels being 8x8x2 inches.  I have several large panels as well for this series, however they will take a bit more work to finish.

Posies with Bird

Watercolor and pen on mixed media paper.

WIP - Crow Panels

More layers of paint and ink to come, and birds, lots of birds!

Journal Pages and Stencils

From this...

To this...

I played around in a handmade journal this evening with my new paints, oil bars, and inks and my Black Birds in Tree and Three Crows Stencils.  Tomorrow I will finish out these pages after the oil bar dries.

Paints used:
Matisse Flow
Golden Fluid Acrylics

Inks used:
Daler-Rowney FW inks
Liquidtex inks

Oil bars used:
Shiva Paintstiks
Shiva Paintstiks Metallics

Some Bird Art

Little medallions with featuring Black Birds in Tree, alcohol inks to the left, shiva paintstiks to the right (prussian blue)

Experimenting with copic markers and gelli pens on scrap booking paper.  Barely noticeable at the bottom are three of the washi tapes I purchased last weekend.  This will probably end up as the cover for my "new to me" journal.  Crow is from my Three Crows Stencil.

More birds to come, I'm working on a major project (all new work for an upcoming solo show) the big reveal will happen and soon, until then here's my latest samples to see how the various mediums work with the stencils.

Black Birds in Progress

I'm still in the layering of paint and ink stage, I will be adding more layers tomorrow and then hopefully finishing out the birds.

Black Birds in Tree stencil can be purchase through StencilGirl Products!

Part One - Black Birds in Trees Harvest

With a round object of your choice (I used a 6" plate) and a soft pencil (HB) draw a circle on your 9x12 sheet of watercolor paper.

 

 

 

Using a texture or geometric stamp, and waterproof ink, add some texture around the circular area.

 

 

Now fill the circle with some yellow paint, I used Folk Arts Medium Yellow.

Using a thin layer of grey paint the background.

The thin layer of paint will allow the background texture to show through; allow paint to dry completely.

Now apply alcohol inks and in random manner.  I spritzed the moon area with butterscotch, lettuce, and red pepper.

Not to worry the inks will dry way lighter than what you see in the image here! 

About half dry now, it will become lighter still!

Once the alcohol inks are dried take a baby wipe and in a swirling motion remove most of the ink from the moon shape on the paper.

This gives you a realistic moon shape and fall harvest coloring.  Not all of the ink will wipe away and this is fine you don't want it all to wipe away.

If you need to amp up the color for the background now is the time to do so.  Here I recharged the alcohol ink using some additional inks and a water bottle.  Spritzing with water will cause speckling, etc., to occur giving you more texture.

Place stencil of choice onto background, and using dry stencil brush techniques push the paint through the stencil onto the paper.  Here I'm using my stencil Black Birds in Tree which is available through StencilGirl Products!

Too much paint will cause the paint to go under the stencil and well creates a HUGE mess, but this piece can and will be redeemed!  Folk Art Paint - Licorice

And because sometimes I am a bit of a perfectionist, yes me, I went and created a second piece the steps of which are above, just to see if I could get the stencil portion correct!

And I managed to keep the paint in the lines this time!  Ok, the paint should be dry now I'm off to add more layers to the first version of this piece to see where it takes me, oh and to cook dinner!

Stay tuned for Part Two!

Birds and More

Getting ready for my Open Studio, for Art Crawl Iowa, in October. 
Ink on watercolor paper.

And then some down time with some hand carved and mounted stamps.

Ink on watercolor paper.

Black Birds in Tree Now Available!!!

I'm so excited to announce that my stencils are now available through StencilGirl Products!!!
 

The stencil is available as an inverse of the design and also as a traditional cut out.

 

Black Birds in Tree Inverse with Lilac and Ecualyptus Tsukineko Inks.

This page is the result of brayering a sheet of clean paper onto the Inverse stencil while it was wet with alcohol inks.

 

Stencil Heaven!

 

 

Tsukineko ink on watercolor paper using my two stencil designs.

Birds in Tree Inverse Stencil -  works beautifully as a mask when laying down color!

"Bird in Trees Inverse" Stencil sample.  I'm in love with both of my stencil samples, if you don't hear from me well you know the drill send whoppers and cheesecake cause it means I'm holed up in my studio!

Oooh Stencils

 

Yesterday something absolutely wonderful arrived in the mail for my approval, my sample stencil from one of my own designs "Birds in Tree"!  I've been playing with it ever since it arrived, and of course the inevitable wait time for layers of gesso to dry had to be endured, but over all I'm having a blast this afternoon!

 

More layer as these two layers should be dry and ready for the next several processes, which includes some ink/pen techniques and then more layering.  I see some numbers and text in this piece as well. 

 

Tomorrow I will have some fabric samples to show and tell. 

In the Mean Time

Cotton fabric dyed with procion dyes and surfaced with fabric inks, created well over 12 years ago.

Experiments in Sketching

Layers of ink, water color, and pen on watercolor paper. Inspired by Lascaux.

Suprise You've Got Ink! D'Uva Inks

These arrived in the mail today, no return address, just a postmark from someplace in Nebraska that starts with a "P".  I have to admit I'm curious as the label states that these are for fabric... can't wait to try them out later this evening.

Ten colors in this pack, very nice!