Daily Painting once a Week Continues!

Lots of learning! The e would have had a crisper background on a smoother surface and F would have been more what I had in mind on the canvas one. Trying to get the F as I wanted it lost me the original plan of making it look very equal with either F right-side-up.

 

I started out thinking I would be doing quick palette knife paintings and learn a lot about using them, but I keep designing things that need brushes. So I played with a small knife on the F’s when I wasn’t liking them anyway. I’ve considered taping a note to the back of each one with all the things I would change or do differently …

A-B-C-…..

Deliverer, and a relatively simple design. practice with balance, shifting values, fine writing with paintbrush. i'm liking canvas' texture for having more color interet from bits of others showing through. I'm pleased at the daily small painting concept's success in enabling me to use small bits of time and actually finish things (even though they are imperfect, it's easy to tell myself that's OK as I am doing them to learn)

I already forgot I started putting these on the blog…

 Weeks two and three! I’m really happy that I’m actually doing one per week -- and I’m almost done with a couple more, so if life gets too busy I have some leeway without losing my goal. I think after spending nine months last year on a very complicated and large piece (that didn’t make it into the intended show), this is really helping me enjoy learning more about painting. 

Beloved Son

And week three, Creator.

There are plenty of things I would do differently or even fuss with fixing, except the idea of daily painting (even if I'm doing weekly) is to do them quickly and not stress or fuss but move on and learn. I can always paint over them some day if I feel like it or go back and touch-up when I want to. Some of them looked better halfway through than "done", part of the education ....

Meanwhile it fits really well with our current schedule - I can do pencil work for designs during slow times in the office. I even used the x-acto that happened to be in my desk drawer when we got our office spots to cut a stencil for Creator (using letters I designed based on Julie Wildmans' "The Inside Curve" class I did during covid lock-down, thanks Julie!). I can use short bits of time easily to tone the little canvas board or paint a bit, etc. I even have kept bits of palette paper in an air-tight watercolor palette I got so I can more easily use a bit of mixed paint another day.

Meanwhile I can consider what we were told recently in a devotional - that taking the upon us the name of Christ means (among other things) taking on or developing His characteristics. So Creator fits right into this project :)

One downside is that I assumed I would work with palette knives mostly - to be quick and to learn more about using them, but I keep planning things that need to be done with brushes and I only have some cheap ones. 

If anyone happens to know something I could use for Q, X or Z, feel free to let me know....

Daily Painting Weekly

 

I’ll try to make a really long story as short as I can. Some of you may know we were are doing mission service again, this time in Salt Lake CIty at church headquarters where we work with the Mission Department 8-5. 

I have a harder time with life when I’m not involved in something creative and evenings don’t work well for me to do this, so I brought the sketchbook I took to Brasil and pencils to work on graphite lettering, to design things and possibly practice brush pen lettering when it’s slow at work. I did do a bit of this and I started on an idea for designing  pages for a possible accordion book of names of Christ.

An unexpected offer of a set of water-soluble oils came my way  (my medium of choice for painting) from an artist in SLC who hadn't used them for the project she bought them for, so I had an option I hadn't planned on.  But I couldn't quite figure out to use them in a way that worked for my schedule, space, lack of other materials/equipment.

A second bit of serendipity came when we were able to get another desk, so now I have the plastic table we bought for art and the desk for study and I can leave everything ready to go and not spend my bits of time just moving things about and prepping. So I got the book "Daily Painting" and a supply order from Dick Blick. I figure there's no way to do daily but possibly weekly.

The next hurdle was that I’m not great at drawing so just designing/sketching something to paint could take up my limited time and energy — until I realized (in the middle of the night) that since I’ve been mulling for years over ways to combine my lettering skills with oil painting, I could do letters as the subject(s), which I have been drawing and studying for years. 

Just days later when our Sunday School teacher invited us to create a personal token to remind of us of our covenants and how they bind us to Christ - I suddenly realized I could put it all together! and do little, fairly quick paintings of letters representing name of Christ and viola, it all came together and I already have one "done" (might need fixing) and two more over half done and two mostly designed! This one is A for the Great I Am and also Alpha and Omega. Only 6” square and still wet. 

I often tend to study/ponder scriptures and quotes through my calligraphy so this works for me in many ways and we'll see how  well I can keep up. I might actually start using Instagram and see if I can post a little painting every week. Maybe since I have a bit of head start I can keep it going. Obviously there are plenty of flaws in this first one, but the idea is to do fairly fast and small ones that help you learn techniques and get practice without stress of investing a lot into it, so if its not good you can scrape it off and paint over it or even toss it, so I may or may not work on it more. Maybe some evenings when I want to dabble a few minutes I will see if I can improve it but then again, I might make it worse :) that's part of the learning too.

Update, as part of reporting on our Sunday school challenge the teacher showed photos and left mine up on the big screen for a while during the next part of her lesson.  Seeing it greatly enlarged convinced me to to do some clean-up :)

STEP 7: Fixing your polymer clay papercasting mold

Every mold is going to have some imperfections - until you look at a casting you can't tell which ones matter. Sometimes dents or bumps in the mold do't show at all in the casting, sometimes they show a lot but are hard to find on the mold.
The most serious defects are those that keep the casting from coming out cleanly (or at all). You should take your test casting and hold it next to the mold to figure out what changes are needed. You may have to look closely to tell if a rough part of the casting was due to the mold or simply didn't have enough pulp in it. An Optivisor or reading glasses can be helpful.

Where a bit of pulp stuck, you may have packed it in too tightly or you may have roughness or undercutting that is grabbing the paper.

There are two main ways to fix; scraping away and adding clay.
If there are bumps or rough areas, you can gently and gradually scrape with the x-acto knife, being careful not to scratch up your smooth surfaces with the tip. If you have done some real undercutting, you may want to scrape away the top that overhangs, but more likely you will want to add in clay. Roll tiny snakes of softened clay, smash them down in with your clay shaper, smooth away the excess with the clay shaper or other ceramic tools. If you add clay you will need to bake again, but if it is tiny bits you may only need 5-120 minutes. You can keep test casting and improving, but making too many times can really add to air bubble bumps.

If there is part of the mold that you cut wrong or just don't like, it is possible to fill it in with clay and cut/impress anew - what tools depend on whether you are working the baked or unbaked parts. You can carve into baked clay but be careful, you can chip off pieces you didn't mean to. Liquid Sculpey can be used to fill in or smooth a lower part of a mold for major repair (like when you cut a part through too many layers in a multi-layered project)

If parts of the design are too tight or narrow and it was hard to get pulp in or out, you can open up shapes without changing the design much by gently scraping more of a "V" shape, widening the top but being careful not to cut into the bottom layer. You can also cut or scrape along edges to make your letters or pattern more even or more bold.

If pieces of the mold (counters in your letters usually) came off into the casting, you might have left waxed paper under them. This rarely happens if you make sure it is cleaned off and use some Sculpey diluent/softener under small pieces. Sometimes after long use things will break off. You can reattach - the best way I've found is using a tiny bit of superglue gel. You can use a bit of clay and rebake, use E6000 or jewelry glue, even a gluestick for temporary (one-time) fix.

Feel free to send me close-up photos and ask for advice in fixing problems in your mold.

It may be that you like it just fine-- after all, this is hand-made art, so as long as the casting comes out, you might not want to do anything else to it - and often practice in filling the mold is the best way to get a sharper casting.

Remember, I'd be happy to come teach you in person, we'd do several small projects to "get the hang of it" and learn various techniques, then prepare designs and do a larger, individualized project.

Making a Carol DuBosch Pen Burrito

Last Summer I attended the international calligraphy conference "A Show of Hands" in North Carolina, where I was privileged to learn more about making and using a folded pen from Carol DuBosch. She had envisioned and then created a "pen burrito" filled with her collection of folded pens. I immediately knew I needed one too! In case anyone else is interested, she graciously gave permission for me to share the simple process.

I started out without referring to my notes, so I bought more plastic than I needed. The Joann's where I purchased it had 50" width so I only needed 20" and that would make two if you make them 25" wide (25 pockets). You want it to be a medium weight - not thin but not too stiff.

Here's what mine looked like. If you want about 30 pockets, use a piece 30" by 20", folding the long edge up a little over 4" as shown. I used masking tape to hold things in place. That leaves over 15" which gives you a nice generous flap to fold down over your pens.

To make it easy to sew pockets fairly even and straight, I used more tape to mark them. I slid the yardstick underneath and put a piece as straight and evenly as I could midway between every other inch. That way I could sew along the edge on both sides for pockets about 1". You could make them bigger if you want to stuff in multiples or fat pens.

By letting the tape go over the edge, it helped hold the plastic in place as well. I chose some fun multi-colored thread I had in my book-binding stash and sewed with a fairly large stitch (4.5), reversing the beginning and end for security.

That's really all there is to it. trim threads, slide in pens (they might be a bit fussy to get in the first time, as the plastic likes to stick to itself but it will get used to the new shape), fold down the top flap, roll it up! Your pens travel safely, are easy to see and select. You could adjust to any size - if you make one too big, just take scissors to it.

I'm really looking forward to Carol teaching at LetterWorks next summer in Utah! Hope to see you there.

My first ever podcast

A few days ago I did an audio interview with Mormon Artist for podcast. http://mormonartist.net/podcast/episode-7-joan-layton-merrell/
I rambled a bit more than ideal and didn't really answer everything, but at least nothing seems too embarrassing! It was a fun experience and if I could go through and rewrite it all, it would be pretty good.
The transcript version includes images of the art discussed so if you are interested you might wan to read or to scroll down the transcript as you listen.

I'll update this with some pictures when I'm home on the computer.