More Gelatin Print Practice!

I made another batch of prints yesterday from the same gelatin plate I used before, only I managed to turn the gel over for a smoother side to print these. However, one of the places where I imprinted with a wooden ring on the first side came all the way through, and in pulling the prints it kept coming out, so I finally just left it out and let it be a white disk.

These are made playing with two different strands of fun yarns, a stencil, and a feather. Again, I used what was within easy reach. I can't wait until I get my workspace organized, so I can find what I need or want to use. I may, or may not, add to these prints sometime, but for now I'm just enjoying the process. I love the process!

Wish the feather quill had picked up! I may have to add one! This print is on Speedball printmaking paper; the rest are on rice paper. The rice paper is more absorbent than the printmaking paper and looks duller. I think I prefer the printmaking paper with the brighter colors, but I guess it depends on my mood, plus a mat will do wonders for any of them, I'm sure. :)

Ghost print left from the first print...

First print...

Ghost print pulled and flipped...

Ghost print after I rolled some paint over the yarn and feather...

First print...

Ghost print...

First print...

Ghost print-Doesn't the hole look like a medalion?

I retired the gelatin plate after this batch, because it was beginning to come apart anyway. I'm thinking I may try a round container for the gelatin plate next, kind of like a mandela. I'd like to try some smaller ones than these 9x12" ones. and some different papers, too, so we'll see what turns up next time. Be back later...

First Gelatin Prints

Hello out there! I have not abandoned my blog. Life just took over for a while. :)

I haven't done much creatively in a few weeks, but a few days ago I saw gelatin printmaking on Utube and thought I'd give it a try. I think it was Linda Germain demonstrating. These are my first attempts. Unfortunately, the gelatin wasn't set in the middle when I put the tin foil cover over it to set it in the fridge, and when I pulled it off it pulled a chunk of gelatin off with it, thus my gel plate wasn't smooth, as it should have been. Rather than start over though, I just went with what I had. I found a wooden ring in the junk drawer and impressed it into the gel three times, then took a fork and ran the tines along the edges and made a few jabs around, just for added interest.

I used only what I had within reach, bottles of yellow ochre, ultramarine blue, and magenta Golden fluid acrylics, and my roller and plate still had some black on them from the last time I used them, which mixed in. Four of them are on Speedball printmaking paper and four are on rice paper. They are 9x12". A couple of them turned out a little dark and muddy looking, but, hey, I'm experimenting here. :)

The one above was pulled from the gel plate with only paint rolled on. The marks are from the torn gelatin.

This one was pulled from the plate after I rolled paint on it, added magenta paint drips, a handmade stencil, and layed some wild turkey feathers on it.

Another one pulled from the plate with only paint rolled over the torn gelatin plate. This one is a little too blue for me, but if I look, I can see all sorts of images in it, which I love.

This is a ghost image off the blue print, meaning I pulled a second print before adding more color.

I layed turkey feathers on top of the paint and pulled this print. The circles are where I pressed the wooden ring into the gel. I love the imagery, but the background colors got a little muddy as they dried.

Paint, paper I had cut a heart from, and feathers.

Mostly magenta paint, paper I had cut a butterfly from, and turkey feathers that already had paint on them from other prints.

Paint, stencil, and feathers; the feathers already had paint on them, so I layed half the feather on the white paper, causing half the feather to be in reverse color. Pretty cool! I think I'm beginning to get the hang of this!

So this is my first batch, and I can't wait to do some more! I love printmaking, and this was so much fun! Maybe I'll pull a few more off this plate while I wait for a smooth one to set!

Have fun with your creative experiments! :)

Play and Draw Happy pages ...21 Secrets Plus Some

Some extra pages I did in the Childs Play and Draw Happy classes after I completed the workshops.

This page, using magazine pages, was inspired by Alma Stoller in the Childs Play class. I have done a little bit of a lot on it. I machine stitched around the edges and all over the papers, gessoed it on both sides, and left to dry.

The dream words were cut out of the front of an old knit sleep t-shirt gown and machine stitched onto the front. You can see evidence of bubble wrap stamping in the white dots under the layers of fluid acrylic paints. I also used some oil pastels on top.

I'm thinking I may add something else later and use it for a journal cover, but this is how it is for now.

The next two sketches are the same page, only the top one I scanned as a magazine photo and the other was scanned as a regular photo. As you can see, the top one didn't pick up all the color, but I like it.

It's an extra drawing from Jane Davenport's class in Drawing Happy and Doodling. I used a sketch and wash pencil and watercolor pencils with a damp brush. She was born of my imagination, then had a pink flower cut out of scrapbooking paper and pasted on with gel medium for some flair.

Not perfect, but she has character, don't you think? :)

My cousin sent me an email with a lot of cute animal pictures in it, and I couldn't resist doing a quick sketch of these two. They were in two separate pictures, but had similar expressions. I used a mechanical pencil and the lead is light unless you really put the pressure on it. It's a cheapie from Wal-Mart, but I like it. :)

I also finished reading "The Curse of the Holy Pail" by Sue Ann Jaffarian and thoroughly enjoyed it. The protagonist is an overweight middle-aged woman, so I can identify with her, except that she's feistier and braver than I am. There were lots of twists and turns to the mystery, plus humor, and it kept me guessing right up until the end.  I look forward to reading more books in the series and solving more mysteries with Odelia Grey.

Thanks for visiting! I hope something on here made you smile! :)

3 Little Words Poetry Journal Pages-21 Secrets 2

These pages were inspired by Aimee in her 21 Secrets workshop Three Little Words. I learned how to take word strings and create poetry and a journal page with them. I love this class. It's one of my favorites, but I would hate to  have to pick THE favorite workshop from all of them, because I have learned from and enjoyed them all, and I still have 5 to take.

I've been taking a little break to do some cleaning and stuff that needed doing badly. When I do art, write, listen to music, or read, I tend to ignore everything else, but eventually I have to play catch-up, or at least clear a path for walking. :) My workspace is also in shambles, because I started organizing and cleaning, and right in the middle of it I got sidetracked and haven't gotten back to it. Right now, I can't find anything, and I wouldn't have a space to work if I could. So I'm catching up on my reading until I get re-situated and back into my journaling.

I have discovered the world of electronic reading via Kindle on my pc. Love it! I read "God Don't Like Ugly" by Mary Monroe a couple of weeks ago, which was hard to put down, and I'm now reading "The Craggy Hole In My Heart And The Cat Who Fixed It" by Geneen Roth, also very hard to put down. I purchased these two, but there are tons of free ebooks and short stories that look interesting on Amazon, and I've downloaded a couple of those, as well.

Whoops! I got sidetracked again, but when I find something that I enjoy I love to share it. :)

All three pages are on 8 1/2 x 11" cardstock, the phrases are from Anne Rice's book, "Violin (I love Anne Rice!)," and I used fluid acrylics in different ways, such as fingers, brush, spray, stamping, etc. I kind of overdid the background on this one, I think, and the gold glitter butterfly and swirls don't show up in the scanned image as pretty as they are, but you get the idea.The face was drawn and painted over the background, but before the bubble wrap and the glitter glue. The journal phrase is in the necklace around her neck, and it says, "Dizzying golden swirls Touched her check."

This page also has collaging and cut-out butterflies, one from scrapbooking paper and one from a text page, a page from an old dream dictionary, and black "stitching" with a Pitt pen. The poem says:

I reached out full of hope

Just to rest, to be free

The words melted like a veil from my soul

Stood in fear, shut my eyes in the rain

Caught the light, opened my eyes

No longer afraid of all memories or the unknown

Stomped my foot!

Confessed with laughter!

For some reason, I am really into purple and pink this summer. What do you suppose that means? Anyway, I used pages from the old dream dictionary to collage the background, sprayed them with thinned fluid acrylics, then added some torn shapes from the same book that I had already painted pink over a resist word (Faith) on at the bottom. I cut the upper butterfly from one of the pages and used it as a stencil negative to spray over, leaving the bottom butterfly pinkish and the top one purple. Again, I used a black Pitt pen to "cross-stitch" the torn paper with the poem to the page. I'm not sure I'm finished with this page. It seems to be calling for something else, but I'm not sure what just yet. I love my poem though! The poem says:

A dipped pen

Grand purple ink

Just the moon, mellow and soft

Caught in transcendence

Expressed my soul in that moment

Shut my eyes

Let it go



These pages got covered up, along with my friend's birthday card, for a few weeks, during the re-arranging of my work space, and I just found all of them a couple of days ago, a week after my friend's birthday. :/  So she now has her card, and I can share another of my workshop projects with you.

I hope you enjoyed your visit and that something on here made you smile just a little. :)

I'll be back soon!

Still Here

I hope you had a great holiday weekend. If you're like me, it was a busy one. :)

I just wanted to say hello and that I'm still out here. I have had a couple more of the 21 Secrets workshop projects finished for several days, and I was going to scan them to share here, but I started cleaning up my work room/space, and in the process misplaced the pages, along with my friend's birthday card. Her birthday is today and I still haven't found either. I know they're in this room, but I don't know which pile they're in. :/

Not much time, or space, to work on art for several days. Too many other things, called life, going on around here at once, besides the really hot weather.

Two of my buddies, Cooter (goat) & Miko

 As soon as I find the pages I will share them. Meanwhile, I hope you are having a wonderful creative summer wherever you are. Later y'all! :)

Improvisation Station-21 Secrets

This page was inspired by Natasha Reilly in her workshop "Improvisation Station" in the 21 Secrets playground, and it was so much fun that I actually started and finished it in a little while. This is a class in improvisation and intuition. I love these processes of intuitive art! I learned a lot about myself in the process, the most important being that I am much more than I think I am, and that's a biggie!

Since I have my work room dismantled and piled up and I can't get to my brushes and stuff, I used what I COULD reach and my fingers. I hate for anything to be on my hands, so this was a biggie for me to apply gel medium and fluid acrylics with my fingers. :)

The large background piece is and 8 1/2 x 11 1/2" sheet of cardstock that I wrote a stream of consciousness prayer on with pencil. I filled the whole sheet. Then I took another sheet and wrote who I am, and who I really am on it.

I glued half the sheet to the middle of the large sheet, over the writing. I swirled paint (what I could reach) in 3-4 colors on over the whole thing, and I must admit that playing in the paint with my fingers felt awesome...until it dryed. :/

The page looked kind of stormy to me, and I thought of the story about the little bird singing in the midst of the storm. My two randomly drawn theme words were "exceptional" and "smile", and for some reason, the words seemed to fit, and because my mind just works like that. :o I took my pencil and sketched what was supposed to be a wren, because they are my favorite little birds, so tiny and, yet, so brave and fiesty. I also sketched in an umbrella and some rocks, then filled in the drawn shapes with torn papers and gel medium. Again, using my fingers I applied fluid acrylics over them. Details were added with shish-ka-bob wooden stick point, gelly roll pens, and inktense water color pencils. The words were written in white gelly roll pen.

I almost forgot! I did use my new favorite tool; my new pointed waterbrush pen, which holds its own water, or ink, etc. I don't know why I hadn't tried this pen way before now. It's awesome with watercolor and inktense pencils. I'm anxious to try it with ink. I also want a flat brush one. I LOVE it!

The wren was going to look like a wren, but it insisted on being white, so it turned out to be an albino wren, but that's okay. He's beautiful, at least I think so. I meant to let more writing show through, but it didn't turn out that way, and the umbrella is a little wonky with too blue shadows and uneven polka dots, but that's okay too. I like wonky, and I learned some valuable lessons from Natasha. That's the important thing!

I also have a self portrait workshop and a 3 little words workshop in progress, which are almost finished. I only have 4 workshops left that I have not started projects in, and I have not taken one yet that I didn't enjoy tremendously and that didn't teach me new things about myself and my art!

If you're interested in learning what she and twenty other amazing teachers have to offer, the 21 Secrets playground has been extended to the end of the year, and many of the teachers are going to be adding new techniques and video how-tos to their classrooms as we go along. Just click on the button on my sidebar for details.

On top of that, and this has nothing to do with 21 Secrets, I learned about making prayer cloths yesterday from Jane Lafazio on her blog  "Janeville." She is taking part in a bigger project and is making one a day for so many days. Hers are just gorgeous, and I can't wait to try one!

Now I know why I spent so much time when I was growing up learning sewing, embroidery, crochet, crepe paper flowers, coloring and trying to draw and write, among many other hobbies I learned from Mama, Daddy, my grannies, and my aunts. They have all come together now in my Senior years to combine and be useful in mixed media projects!  I am so thankful to have had such a rich heritage from so many wonderful influences in my life. They loved doing these things and took the time and patience to pass them on to a little girl wanting to learn, and when I do them I lovingly think of the ones who taught me how.

Beautiful You, Radiant You-21 Secrets

Okay, this is a combo mandala dream board page in my Moleskine watercolor book (the big one). I learned how to make it, after I did the inner work, and was inspired by Ingrid Murray in her workshop Beautiful You, Radiant You. I learned about all sorts of techniques from her, then just let myself play. To start with, I wrote down things I wanted in pencil around the center. That, over the background, painted with acrylic inks, is as far as I got for several days. I just couldn't figure out how I wanted to proceed and with what, so I kept it in mind while I worked on another project.

Then the other day we got a Real Simple magazine in the mail, and there they were! All these wonderful images and words that seemed to jump out to me, just begging to be in my journal. So I happily started tearing, cutting, and gluing. All of the images are from this months issue, except the watch and the words "find your essence," which came out of an old Marie Claire magazine.

I know we're not supposed to use the magazine images just like they are, because of copyright issues, but I just couldn't bear to change or cover them. I'm not going to sell the page or anything. It's for a class project and my own personal use, so maybe it will be ok.

I am now a Senior Citizen, so the young girl boldly striding across the page carrying grapes represents a huge reminder about health, exercise, and eating right. The terrarium and birds represent my love of nature, and I can not imagine my life without animals in it. The two older ladies and the music signify that I want more art, music, and dancing in my life. The cross drawn on the watch top is my faith, and the watch is a reminder that my time on this earth is swiftly running out, and I need to make the most of every moment I have left. Friends and family are included in the writing.

I forgot a place to hide secrets, and I know I could have meshed the images together better, but I like it so much, just the way it is, that I can't bear to cover anything up. I like the openess, yet the connectiveness of the images, so I'm leaving it as is. Following my heart on this one! I will probably add some writing among the images later on, but for now it is what it is, and I hope I don't get into trouble for sharing the images with you.

I have left spaces on all the pages I've shared to go back and write personal things later. For now, I'm learning and enjoying the process of creating the pages. I eventually want to start printing off my own photos and using them in my journals instead of borrowing magazine images, or maybe combine the two?

Keep creating!