Cat's Eyes

This is a painting I did in the spring of 2017 that uses alcohol inks on yupo paper. I dripped alcohol inks into the eyes and parts that have color. I used permanent marker, fine and ultra fine, to mark the fur and black stripes. I removed some of the stray alcohol ink with a swab and alcohol, but mostly I left it as is. There are also bits of fluid acrylic here and there. I was able to paint acrylic and water color right over the alcohol inks because the water doesn't move the ink.

ALCOHOL INKS 101

SUPPLIES YOU WILL NEED

Alcohol inks can be an inexpensive, fun way to create. Above you can see some basic supplies:

(Left to right) a small palette, sprayer bottle, dropper, alcohol inks, 91% alcohol, stamper and pads,

permanent markers, cottons swabs, small brush - NOT A GOOD ONE - a straw. I SHOULD HAVE INCLUDED PLASTIC GLOVES - this can get messy. On the right is a ceramic tile. You can also use ANY NON-POROUS SURFACE, such as yupo, plastic (light switch plates), or shiny metal.

There are several good brands of alcohol inks, and I don't have a preference. Tim Holz Adirondak, and Jacquard Pinata are two I've used. You can buy them at a craft store or on Amazon. The Pinatas can be purchased in a 9 or 10 pack, and that seems to be a good value. Most of the Tim Holz are sold in packs of 3.

Below is an good way for beginners to start:

ALCOHOL INKS WITH PERMANENT MARKERS

You can just scribble on some marker and just make a design. But I've included here a way to create an abstract sunset. When using markers, don't put alcohol on the tile first. The inks will not come out of the marker if you do. 

 First, using two colors of blue, make some horizontal lines on 1/2 of the tile. 

Spritz with alchol to make it run--keep it at an angle to it can run.

Then, when that has dried, on the other side, use yellow, orange and red markers.

Cover the blue (like with plastic) to protect from alcohol spray, and spritz those colors.

Again, angle the tile so the colors run together. 

Next, when that is dry, wipe a circle clean with alcohol on a swab, then color in some 

orange and yellow for the sun. Swip some narrow pieces of the blue water with a swab.

Color in with some yellow. Then spritz slightly to let the colors run.

Finished. You can go over this with blue marker or other color that needs to be touched up.

EFFECTS

Spritzing lightly with alcohol makes these tiny white flecks in the painting.

This pink one has gold mixitive in the left hand side. Mixitives are heavier,

and they can be mixed with the ink directly or dropped on or swirled in.

STAMPING blends all the colors together.

ALCOHOL INKS

 When using the alcohol inks, you can spritz the surface with a little alcohol first so that the inks move around a little better. Drop a few drops onto the tile. (A LITTLE DAB WILL DO YA)

You can blow the ink around with a straw. But these inks DRY QUICKLY, so you don't have a lot of time.

Adding a few more inks and blowing with a straw. See the red-orange circle in the bottom left pink area? That is made just by dropping the ink into another color. They tend to push against the other color, not really mixing much at this point. 

Spritzing with alcohol again. It creates textures. 

Taking my stamper and stamping all the colors together. 

I dropped some yellow into that. Then "painted" the rest. To paint, you drop a little ink into a plastic palette. At this point you can mix colors and/or add mixitives in the palette. I dipped the brush into green ink and "painted" leaves onto the dry red surface. Thin the paint or clean your brush and palette with alcohol. 

USING A FIXATIVE

When you are done, your piece is already waterproof. But to preserve it, you can put a fixative on it.

You want to make sure your fixative is GLOSS, not matte. The Polycrylic on the left is a heavier duty finish. The acrylic sealer on the right is fine if you are just using it as a decoration. 

There's a little trick if you don't want to get more spots on your piece. Hold the spray 18 inches or so from the piece and LIGHTLY spray. This will help hold the color in place. If you try to heavily spray on the first pass, you will likely move the ink, because a lot of these sprays contain some alcohol. After about 15 minutes (or whatever the can directions say) you can apply a heavier spray. If using for a trivet, either use the polycrylic or several coats of acrylic.

Masa Paper and YES Paste

We started another masa paper project. The basics have been posted in previous blogs. 

I just wanted to add some things I've learned.

After finishing most of the painting - I like to paint a lot before adhering it to another surface - I'm ready to glue it to a surface. In the past I've used Alene's glue or matte medium. This time I wanted to try YES paste. This is not cheap, but it is archival, and book binders use it.

YES paste is very thick, and looks a bit like petroleum jelly, only thicker. It can be thinned, but I decided to use it the way it came from the jar. Using a wide blade palette knife, I scooped it out onto my surface. (You can put this on any archival surface: watercolor paper, art board, treated wood panels, canvas board,etc. ) I then used a squeegie to spread it around. 

I set the masa painting over the glued surface, centering it, then pressed gently. When it was in place, I set wax paper over it all and, starting in the center and working outward, I used a roller to flatten and remove air pockets.

I was pretty pleased that my paper did not buckle because there is little moisture in the paste. It dried much faster, and I was able to continue to work on the painting sooner. 

PS: I ordered YES paste from dickblick.com and it cost about $12 for a pint.

FINISHING A PAINTING

You can continue to work on your painting even after mounting. You can very gently lift areas, add more paint, etc. If you have tiny details, you may want to use some watercolor pencil to define those areas. Or pen and ink. On the picture above I did use some goauche white to calm down some areas. 

If you feel like you've totally lost an area, try this to reclaim it: use some scrap of masa paper cut or torn into a shape you need, paste it over the overworked or unwanted area with glue or matte medium, and when it is dry, repaint it. 

MORE MOISTURE FOLLOWS LESS MOISTURE?

My first winter session at the Barn started Thursday. I wanted to do something with fog and mist.

First we talked about what it means for "more moisture to follow less moisture." That always confuses me. So I think of it as a sponge. If you have a puddle to clean up, would you use a dry sponge or slighly damp sponge to pick it up? Answer: a slightly damp sponge will wick up the puddle quicker than a dry sponge. The area of more moisture--the puddle--is drawn into the less moisture of a damp sponge. It will resist the dry sponge. (And yes, my students said they'd just use a towel.)

If you have too much water or paint on the paper and need to pick it up, you have two choices: you can dab it with a paper towel or tissue, which can leave the paper with a hard edge, sometimes soaking up all the color. Or you can attack it with a "thirsty" brush: one that has been dampened, but the excess water squeezed out of it. That will soak up extra paint and water leaving a softer edge. Both methods have their uses.

Another reason to remember this is when you are trying to create a smooth wash. If you have wet the paper, the paint is going to be attracted to the less wet...but not dry...areas.

If you are getting (or want to get) blossom effects, it is because an area that is wetter is placed next to an area that is drying but still damp, and the wetter area is trying to move into the damp area, creating blossoms.

Also, this concept is used to create soft edges in things such as fur, shadows, sunsets, and fog.

This idea is necessary to keep in mind if you want to create a picture with fog, mist, or "lost edges."

This picture was inspired by watching two other artists work on foggy pictures. One is David R. Smith, and the other is the Frugal Crafter, Lindsay Weirich. I will include the youtube addresses so you can watch their techniques. This is really a fun exercise. 

Start by taping paper down to a board so it can be tilted and warps less. Prop the board up at a slight angle so gravity can help move the paint. Wet the paper with a large brush. Keep it shiny but not puddly. With a 1" brush paint in some color for the sky. I used quin gold, quin magenta, and some paynes gray with French ultramarine. You can do this on the diagonal or horizontal or vertical. Then I put in some horizontal swishes of color in the bottom. I want to leave as much white passage as I can at this point. then, while it is still wet, use a flat brush to put some distant trees or bushes in the foreground. Have a clean thirsty brush handy to soften the bottom edges if they become hard.

Dry thoroughly. For the trees, spray some dots of water over the sky area. With a rigger brush, draw some tree trunks through the water dots. The color should spread a bit but still leave the impression of tree trunks. With a wedge cut from a kitchen sponge, and thoroughly saturated with paint, sponge in some tree branches. Don't overdo tis part. You want to leave plenty of space between branches for an airy look. 

You may have to use that thirsty brush to soften bottoms of trees as you go to maintain the foggy look. Have fun!!

David R. Smith

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLlr_kdhYqM

Frugal Crafter
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbxTdJJKrfQ

NEGATIVE PAINTING/ZENTANGLE CHRISTMAS CARD

This project can be done with any repetitive shape: trees, snowflakes, etc.

        

1.       Begin by taping down card if doing card size, leaving ¼ inch edges. 

2.       Draw some circles for ornaments. Leaving some white, paint background and add some salt for snow effect.

         

3. Paint around the other ornaments in the next value. I plan to go greener as I go, so I used cerulean and pthalo.     With each new layer, before the paint dried, (but was still damp) I spattered with water to keep the snow effect.                                                                                                                                                                        

 

                                                                                                                                                    

4.       Draw in some small background circles for ornaments.

Paint around those with darker value…I used turquoise and green.

You can go darker if you choose. As the paint lost its shine, I

Continue to spatter with water droplets for snow effect. I also darkened some “shadow” areas on the small blue ornaments.

                      

5.       I added some color to the ribbons.

 

6.       I outlined with ultra fine sharpie. Then I used the Sharpie to create a zentangle design on the ball I left white. I could also do the zentangle on some other places.

 

7.       To finish, I cleaned up some of my edges. I added a small touch of quin gold to the white zentangle ball. I also lifted out a faint ribbon for the blue ball beneath the white one. Then I spattered with gouache.

8.       WHAT I COULD CHANGE: I should have been more careful with making the ribbons perfectly vertical. I could add iridescent medium, but I am printing this, so will wait to do it on printed cards.

MORE ABOUT NEGATIVE PAINTING

Before going into the lesson, let me cite several good references on negative painting. Steve Mitchell's Mind of Watercolor youtube has a very good lesson on negative painting. I highly recommend it. Linda Kemp has written two books on the subject, one of which is Watercolor: Painting outside the Lines. Gordon MacKenzie's Complete Watercolorist's Essential Notebook
has several good pages on negative painting. See the end of this blog for 4 other blogs on the subject.

Today we did three exercise to try to understand what negative painting is. Here is a simple explanation: The positive is the shape of an object and the negative space is the space behind the object. In this picture (the stencil) the positive shape of the leaves is on the left; the negative shape is on the right.



To do the first exercise, first use two colors to create a background. Salt to create a little texture.
When it is dry, trace the stencil and paint a color two values different around the shape. That is the negative. When that is dry, draw another shape, and paint around both of those shapes slightly darker values. Dry, and continue to draw and paint around the shapes until you are pleased with the picture.




For The second exercise, draw three circles onto the paper, and paint BEHIND them. I used yellow. T
Dry and draw three more circles, some ovelapping. Then paint around all the circles. (I used pale green) Now you can see white and yellow circles with green background. Then make three more circles, and paint even darker around those. Now I have white, yellow, and pale green circles with a darker green background.

The third exercise is pretty simple monochrome.  Draw a wavy line at the bottom of the page, and paint everything above it a pale value. Dry. Draw another wavy line above the white and into the blue. Then paint everything above that second line a darker shade. Dry, draw a third line, and paint everything above that line darker. Continue until you have several values of the same color. It will look like mountains or ocean waves. 

So why do negative painting? Rarely are any of my pictures totally negative painted. It's usually a combination of positive and negative. Negative painting can make things such as a grove of trees easier to do. 

You can see several of my other blogs on negative painting for more. 

8/13/17  water lilies

8/04/17 Trees

6/03/16 leaves

5/26/16   leaves

Pen and Wash

In class I demonstrated three ways to use pen with watercolor. The pens I used were Sharpie ultra-fine, Micron 005 and Micron 003. You need to use bleed proof, permanent inks, not waterbased.

Pen and Wash: Bee Eater,inked first

Probably the most common method is to ink the drawing first, and then apply washed of water color. When inking you can use several techniques to shade: cross hatching, stipling, scribbles, etc. This bird is a bee eater, and you can use almost any colors, since there are many varieties of color in these birds. I used cross hatching (curved around the branches to accent the roundness of them) and some stipling. It was a snap to wash over these with bright colors.

Pen and Wash: Old West Cabin, sketched in paint first

IN Watercolor Artist magazine, December 2012, DeAnn L. Prosia presents a different approach.
You first draw the basic shapes with your watercolors, not drawing or tracing in pencil first. Lay down sections of color that represent shapes in the image. In this first picture, you can see that I've just sketched with paint.



The second step is to go over the picture more exactly. Draw the actual image on top of the shapes of color. She uses black colored pencil or pen for the foreground, dark indigo for the middle ground, and a medium warm gray for the background. Parts of the drawing may match up to the sections of color that were first laid down and some may not. But it adds interest to the picture.

Then you can go back with a second layer of wtercolr to give more depth. Sometimes more drawing is needed.




Pen and Wash: Old West Cabin, over toned paper

Wet a piece of paper and apply some spatters of color. Allow to dry.



Then, using an ultra fine pen, draw in the picture. Then use smaller pens to add details. Fill in blocks of color. I just liked this with just two colors.