06.13.09
Create your own stamp from 3-D objects
I came across this technique in the book, Altered Book Collage by Barbara Matthiessen. She calls it “monoprint background” – which of course, it is – but I think of it more as a stamp. It is an easy and simple way to get some really cool looks. I think of it as sort of “negative stamping” – where the item or object is ‘blank” and the background has all the ink or color.
Get a block of fairly thick foam. I found a garden kneepad thingy at Target for $1 and it worked just fine!
Lay out the 3 dimensional objects you wish to use to create your stamp and put them on a sturdy surface.
Heat the foam using your heat gun.
**CAUTION: As always, use care and precautions when using the heat gun, do not get it too close to the foam, yourself, or flammable objects, and to be on the safe side (because I don’t know what kind of chemicals might be released when the foam is heated) – I would advise having good ventilation. Mathiessen also gives no caution about fumes, but foam is synthetic so who knows what kind of chemicals might be present. Always be safe, whatever you do! If you attempt this procedure, you do so at your own risk.
When the foam is hot, press it down on top of your objects. Remove. Let foam cool.
Voila! You now have a stamp that you can use with ink, paint, or what-have-you to make a really cool impression! Better still, when you are finished, you can heat the foam again to “erase” the initial impression and reuse the foam to create a different stamp using different objects.
The blue impression and the pink foam "stamp".
Lessons learned:
It is best to have all objects be the same approximate thickness.
Very thick objects may be difficult to remove from foam when you reheat to “erase” it. For instance, I was able to “erase” the keys in the foam – but after two tries, my locks still have not totally “disappeared.”
© amateur-in-art, 2009
03.09.09
Inspiration from Inchies!
A little while back, I came across the 1000 Squares site by ArtJunkGirl, and I perused the whole thing! It is absolutely fabulous! I started at the beginning of her site and followed her project forward in time until the end. Her goal: to create 1000 “inchies” over the course of a year. And she did it!
Besides just being interesting and inspiring artwork, in general, what was truly inspiring to me was to see her completed project. She created a mosaic using all 1000 inchies – and it is amazing to see exactly how large and how impressive that is. Each single inchie is its own work of art, created with care and attention to detail. It is stunning to see 1000 of these tiny works of art, all together in one unified work, and to think about all of the work and time and effort and dedication that went into the project.
The overall lesson I take from this: You can accomplish a HUGE project by taking small, simple steps on a diligent basis, everyday. Her project truly is inspiring, beyond “just the art” (pardon the expression). I’ve thought of this when I have to make my money stretch, work on large projects for work, or anytime I’m feeling overwhelmed (which has been a lot, lately). I think of those 1000 inchies – one inch at a time – and the impressive end result – and I gain inspiration.
Kudos to ArtJunk Girl for her project, and for sharing it on the web to inspire others! You can visit her 1000 Squares site or look at images on flickr, or visit her general blog to see what else she’s been up to.
© 2009, amateur-in-art
01.23.09
Soul Journal – Day 18
Yay! I finally have a page I like, out of this “collage potpourri.” And as I’ve said before, I’ve been liking the process on these prompts, just not my outcomes. Until now!
As before, Sarah gave us a list of things to do – we just had to mix up the list so we didn’t do them in the same order. (You can view the prep work for this page, here.)
Here’s what I did.
1) Write the alphabet quick and angry. I had trouble with this, because the rough texture of my page made it hard to write quickly. If I couldn’t write quickly, I found my letters didn’t have as much “anger” to them. Of course, I had to use red for the anger part.
2) Add something metal. I had some jewelry embellishments that were silver diamonds, relatively small, so I put a few of those on the page. I used a big blob of jewelry glue, which seeped out around the edges (and I left it there) because only a tiny part of the embellishment actually made contact with the paper, so I figured I needed to go heavy on the glue to make it stick. I thought this would be interesting, adding the metal this early in the process.
3) Add a wash of color. I chose a “sunny disposition” yellow. I thought it would make a nice contrast to my “angry” letters. I’m running out of colors that I haven’t used before. And those that I haven’t used, are generally going to be colors I don’t like. Which, I guess, is just another way to “stretch my boundaries.” Yellow, in this case, is fine. It is still within my “comfort palette.” I tend to avoid purple and orange, more than any others. I think that might also be part of why sometimes in the end I don’t like some of my pages. I used a color I normally wouldn’t use, because part of the instructions say “use a color you haven’t used yet” – and so that’s what I get. I’m not complaining, mind you. It is “good for me” the same way eating my broccoli is good for me. It’s just that sometimes I would choose different colors if I could.
When I did this wash of paint, it was weird how my stamped-on page number on the left page stayed fairly intact, while the one on my right page ran into obscurity. I used the same stamp pad on them both. Guess I still haven’t found that “permanent” ink, yet. This time it didn’t bother me too much that it ran, though. It just gave it another small punch of color.
4) Next was another magazine stencil.
original image
I used green calligraphy ink on this one. I think it is absolutely hilarious how they both ended up with such wavy, curly hair!! Obviously, I have not yet mastered the art of impeccable stenciling, with crisp lines. I’m not sure where I went wrong, because I thought I was being very careful, and the original image is on slick paper, so it wasn’t like it bled through or anything. I still like the way it turned out, but it was kind of funny when I peeled it up and saw the result!
Then, I just couldn’t resist using the back side of the stencil, too – I love that there is a “chain” running down the back of the man. (Wonder if that’s how he feels?) I pasted my stencil down on the opposite page, face down. It sort of matches the outline on the right page, in terms of positioning.
5) Next, dry brush. I did this technique better, this time, probably because I changed brushes from what I have used before, and made sure my brush really was pretty dry, even with paint on it. Again, difficulty using a color I haven’t used, but I ended up with a kind of watermelon-pink color. It was interesting to see how this worked out with the metal embellishments. It actually had the effect of making them look almost clear, as if you were looking through them to see the paint strokes below them – even though they were actually on top. This aspect doesn’t translate well to pictures.
6) Use something unusual as a stamp. My fascination with coasters from the dollar bins at Michael’s continues! This time it was a felt coaster, with a great cut-out design!
Instead of using ink, I used paint and spread it on the coaster, then stamped it and rolled over it with a round-handled paintbrush to get an even impression on the page. I still had some paint left on it, so I made another impression on the left page without “re-inking”, but it turned out more spotty. (I was going to wash off the coaster to re-use, but I set it aside and let it dry. It still looks great – so maybe I will use the painted coaster itself in some future project!)
7) Write a list of things you did today. I used a magenta watercolor pencil. The color goes nicely with the other colors I have going on here, and it also provides just a hint of text. It’s easy to not-notice that it is there (below).
8 ) Gesso out a part of your page. Add more things on top of it.
I decided to use some of my gray gesso here. And I just randomly put some on the lower left corner. After it dried, I used some Pastelo chalk to make scribbles. Sprayed with fixitive. (It’s still smeary. Need some fixitive lessons, too, I guess.)
Then glued on some foam hearts. I figured as long as it was a couple, I’d go with the romance theme. After they dried, I grabbed a hold of the corner of one of the hearts and tore it up from the page – and hoped it would either not tear straight or easy, or maybe pull up a part of the page with it – but as it was, it just tore as a regular “broken heart” image – which was fine, but a little too cliche for my taste at this time – and so I glued it back down next to where it came from.
I found a “Lover” tag in a box of clearance-priced tags I picked up at Michael’s and made that the finishing touch on the right page.
I really like this one – not just visually, but also because once I had the image of the couple on both the left and right pages, with the underlying “angry” alphabet and everything that came since then – I kept thinking the page was a story about a couple in trouble. Was he feeling “chained” to her? They loved each other, once. But he broke her heart, and found another lover. Or something like that. I liked that the page turned into a story, instead of “just” “random” art.
© amateur-in-art, 2009
01.11.09
Soul Journal – Day 16
OK. I’m warning you. Today it is going to get very ugly, very fast.
Sarah gave us a list of different things to do, with the instruction that we were to do them in a different order than the one she had listed. My first step was to use a little bit of masking tape.
Next, I wrote adjectives.
I don’t know why, but a few political words showed up. Maybe it is just “the season.” I also decided to be weird and use a few color words, but write them in different colors than the words they represented. (Like writing the word “red” in green, for instance.) I deliberately avoided (for the most part) writing on my coasters, which are the circles.
Here’s where things began to unravel. Or get messy. Even ugly.
Now, Sarah warned us to use permanent markers. So the fault is entirely my own. I was using markers from Le Plume. I got some of these some time back, because I had heard how wonderful they were. How versatile. How you could use them on rubber stamps. The colors were bright and varied. A brush-like tip or fine line. On and on. How wonderful. And, for their price (over $20 for about a 12-pack) – they should be pretty wonderful. Well, in my enthusiasm, I didn’t read or double check to see if these markers were permanent. I just naively assumed they were. I mean, if you were using them to rubber stamp with, sure, they might be easy to wash off while still wet, but surely they’d dry permanent, right? WRONG!!!!!
Once I realized they were not permanent, I tried to come up with alternative ways around the problem. First, I sprayed my pages with fixative. Like you are supposed to use on pastels and charcoal. Nope, no good. It still comes off on my hand when damp. OK. So I’ll try my old stand-by (because I’ve never had much luck w/fixative anyway, even when using it on pastels, etc.) – which is hair spray. Surely that’ll give it enough of a coat that it will seal it and I can then paint on top or etc. No. Guess again. Alright, well, I found to my surprise at my art store that gesso even comes in clear – so I bought some of that to try. I dabbed it on the page numbers in the corner – and all I got was smeary. So – it was clear by now, that I was sunk. So – I just valiantly went forward, even though I knew this page spread was now doomed.
Ick! Here’s what happened next. This is my “wash of paint.” I used a small brush, and a hot-pink watercolor. I hoped that maybe small brush + watercolor would mean less smearing, but it was all a lost cause anyway.
You can also see my step #4, which was to use pencil. I used a regular pencil and drew squiggles around the edges of the two pages.
Here’s the rest of the steps I did:
#5 – write a list somewhere using your non-dominant hand
How hilarious. You really can’t see it very well, but I wrote with a regular ink pen on the right side of the left page. It is completely illegible. I decided the horrible writing fit in just fine with all of the other chaos that was happening on these pages. I liked this idea, though. I could see filling a whole page with writing from my non-dominant hand. Cool!
#6 – dry brush
I chose to do this on only one of the pages – the right one, and used a yellow ochre kind of color. This was actually pretty tricky to do, because I needed to keep my brush dry – but it was getting muddy from all the markers running. I didn’t want to ruin my paint by dipping in for more, when everything was bleeding like this. I just made sure to brush my brush on a paper towel to get rid of any “contaminants” before going in for more paint.
This is what it looked like after I did all but the last step, which was the magazine stencil. In the picture above, in addition to the dry brushing on the right hand page, I’ve also done some small splatters on the left, in yellow and black, which are just barely visible here. I couldn’t get too carried away with the splatters, because my workspace is very small, so I had to make sure all the splatters stayed on or very very close to the book. “Controlled splattering” is not the easiest thing to do! I also made some random markings with an ink pen, which also really don’t show up much.
Now on to the fun part! The magazine stencil! I deliberately knew I wanted to keep this for my “last thing” to do on this page. Here’s a picture of the woman I cut out for this piece.
And almost just as cool – look at what it looks like from the opposite side! I like this almost as much! – And it gives me great ideas for other future methods. Cut out a picture on one side – but use the opposite side to paste down, instead. Sort of a “picture within picture” technique!
I moved my stencil-woman around several places on my pages, and decided to have her leaping from one page to the other.
Doesn’t she look great, just as she is, on top of all of the chaos I’ve created?
I really was tempted to just paste her on, as-is, and omit the stenciling technique. But that’s not what this exercise is about, so onward I went! I knew that I would have some difficulties with this, because of the hinge in between pages, and also the raised surface of the coasters. But I also felt like I really didn’t have anything to lose, since I had already made a mess of everything to start with!
So here’s what it looked like in the end.
I didn’t feel like there was quite enough definition in the lines around the stencil, so after it dried, I went back and used a fine line Sharpie to outline the stencil, on the inside. It is subtle, but I think it made an important difference and strengthened the outline of the orange.
Well, I think, in hindsight (it always takes me a few days to post, after I’ve done the art work) – this may not be as “ugly” as I first assumed. Messy, yes. Chaotic, yes. Not what I was hoping for? Yes again. But I think in the end it is OK.
And I’m ready for next time. I went out and bought some permanent markers, so I can paint away, without the worry and grief of having “runny” words!
© amateur-in-art, 2009
11.09.08
Embracing My Inner Third-grader
It only takes me several months to read through my magazines. Recently I was looking at the July/Aug. 2008 issue of Cloth, Paper, Scissors.
I often compare my artistic abilities to that of a third-grader (no shame, it’s just a fact) and I’ve found yet another reason to embrace that part of my art, as well. In their column “Popping the Question,” CPS asked their readers to write about how their artwork has been inspired or influenced by children. This provided an opportunity to read about the joy and exhuberance of children’s artwork. And in fact, children’s art is often not about the end product, but the sheer joy of creating. Of getting messy, of feeling the paint or the crayon or the paper or the clay. Of exploring while you create. It’s about the journey, not the destination.
So maybe saying I have the artistic skills of a third grader is not so bad after all. I should “embrace my inner child” – and let her go where her enthusiasm takes her. Run away, wild child, and I shall follow you! 
© amateur-in-art, 2008
