Day Two

A quote from my favorite poet. I'm not sure I could offer this one for sale because of copyright issues (though some people say very short and attributed quotes are OK). Next time I'll look for something that's definitely in the public domain. The postcard was downloaded from a site that has lots of old images, some for free. (I can't now remember which site but there are lots.) No need to scour junk/antique shops any more for that sort of thing!

Challenging myself

I recently came back from a wonderful vacation. No prizes for guessing where we went!

I'd also been to Scotland to visit my father earlier in the month, so March wasn't very productive work wise. Now I'm trying to re-establish some good habits and therefore I'm setting myself a challenge - 20 new pieces of art work in the next 20 days. Here's piece number one.

I don't have any particular theme in mind and obviously they can't be too big or complex if I'm really going to do one a day. It'll be interesting to see what emerges.

Bird Collages

Here are some of my recent bird collages grouped together. Apart from the subject matter and the format of these 6 x 6 inch panels, I'm not really thinking in terms of series, but it's fun to see which ones work with which others in terms of color and degree of abstraction. I guess of these the only pairing that doesn't really work for me is the last.

Trying something new

I recently saw work by the artist Rogene Manas. She uses paper clay to create bas relief art work. I don't know what her recipe for the paper clay is, but I decided to try doing the same using the mixture I had made up for making my little 3-dimensional birds. It was on the wet side and tricky to use. I know there's a commercial product available that I might try another time. But in any case here's my design in paper clay on a wood panel. The white round the edges is from gesso that I applied to the sides of the panel.

I painted the whole thing dark grey, making sure to get my brush into all the nooks and crannies.

I then brushed the blue background just on the surface so that the grey would show through. The surface was quite textured. Some of it is just the way the paper clay is, but some was added by rolling it out between layers of plastic wrap.

And here's the final piece. The 3-dimemsionality is less obvious now that the color is there. Part of me thinks I might prefer the all dark version. What do you think?

Name that chicken

To celebrate getting to 50 items in my Etsy store, I'm holding a little competition. The best name for this chicken (as judged by my friend who will not see who's posting ideas) will win your choice of any item $12 or less from my store. I'm also running this on my Alison Kolesar Illustrator page on Facebook.

Collage step by step

I've been making a lot of collages recently so I decided to document a bit of the process.

At this stage I've already made a lot of the decisions - background color, color of the sides of the panel that the collage will sit on - but nothing is glued down and I'm still playing with the placing of the various elements.

I liked the shape of this little bird, but gave it different colors to fit better with my overall color scheme.

I'll often draw on the back of a previously painted piece of paper and then cut out the shape. It's fun to see just how the colors appear on the right side afterwards.

Starting to stick the various elements down. The berries on my table were the inspiration for the now cut spray on the table to the left. The wonderful textures in the background are made with alcohol inks.

Adding the bird, along with a longer branch to sit on.

That bottom left corner seemed a bit empty even after the berries - trying to decide whether to add another plant shape there.

The finished piece. It'll go in my Etsy store once the varnish has dried and I've taken a few more pictures.

Hand carving stamps

I recently found a blog by an artist living in Mexico, Geninne Zlatkis, who, among other things, makes wonderful hand-carved stamps. She wrote a book about how to do it too, Making An Impression: Designing and Creating Artful Stamps, which I got for Christmas. Here are a few photos of some stamps I carved recently.

Pencil images are very easy to transfer to the stamp carving block. I used Moo Carve which is easy to cut and good at not crumbling. (I had used a different product before which wasn't bad, but this stuff is better.)

Here you see my first prints of the tree and birds. The exacto knife beside my sketch book is used for trimming the outside of the block.

This picture shows the lino cutting tool used to cut the lines in the stamp and a couple of ink pads. I was given the lino cutting tools years ago but hadn't used them in a very long time.

I decided to add veins in the leaves and the fox, as well as trying the tree in different colors. I don't have a lot of different stamp pad colors - the green one is from a kids' stamping kit that is rather running out of juice.