More InkTense Chickies

Believe it or not, I TOTALLY ruined this girl. I sprayed the page next to her with my stupid new sprays and got horrible black spray ALL OVER her. I mean, all over. It was bad and I was sad because I liked her.

So I painted over her with white paint, then gesso. Then I rescued her!! Not quite as good as the original, but I'm still happy with her. Patting myself on the back for this rescue mission. Normally I would just have painted over her and made a totally different page. But I was able to FIX something. I'm so proud of myself!

Then I made this poor, ugly girl.  First, her nose is too long. I used a ruler to line up the features, which I haven't done in months and STILL, her nose is freaky long. Also, I just could not figure out how to fix her left eye. I mean, I could see that it's wonky, but no matter how many times I erased and redrew it, I couldn't totally fix it. And besides, cross-eyed girls need love too.

And yet another...I can't seem to stop! These pencils are freaking fun to play with, you should try them!

You Suck Monday - InkTense Pencils

So, I've been wanting to get some different InkTense colors since I don't really have any good portrait ones and portraits are what I draw most of the time. Twice I've been to Blick's and gathered all the ones I wanted and then put them back. But the peeps decided they wanted to do InkTense for YSM, so here we are.

First just graphite:

A little shading:

Since I don't have any portrait colors, I just went with sun yellow and tangerine:

Here I added a little baked earth to the face, apple green for the background. The more I worked with her, the more I liked her, which is TOTALLY unlike me!

I used bark for her hair, which is a really cool kind of purply brown, and leaf green for her shirt. Then I went to bed because I sort of liked her and I felt like I must have been punchy for that to be true.

After she waited all night, she STILL wasn't horrible! All I did was add a little to her background and lips...

 Then I redefined her features a little with more graphite, and then Kelly texted me a picture of her girl and I realized that I hadn't colored her eyes, so I did. The colors kind of leaked out of their pencil lines and I'm absolutely fine with it! Normally I'm much more of a control freak than that. What's up with me?!?

Next I want to get real portrait colors and try the InkTense on canvas. Maybe a new journal bag.

YSM - Make Your Own Gesso

All right, it's simply white glue, water, and baby powder. It smells pretty good, but other than that, it's crap.

It's SUPER thick, but not in a paste-y kind of way. Sort of like it's dry in the middle and just covered with something wet. That doesn't make any sense, but it's how it seems. Like you have to "punch" through to get it on the brush, and then when you brush it on something you have to push really hard to get it on the substrate.

I tried it first on book paper, just so see how it reacted to paper. It was OK, it went on fine, but it's a very strange texture. Write on it was like writing on sandpaper - it worked, but if you were to blow on it the pencil lines it comes off because it's mostly just dust.

I painted her with watercolors and it was HORRIBLE. The "gesso" isn't permanent because I used elmer's glue so the water kept activating it and making a big, smeary mess.

This was through a stencil, obviously. on Stonehenge printmaking paper. The gesso activated the alcohol inks that were on the stencil, which surprised me because alcohol inks are permanent, but that's why it's blue.

Theoretically I was going to do a gesso resist, but it was REALLY thick, and it didn't resist AT ALL. Yuck.

The prismacolors over it were horrible, also. Trying to blend them made the stuff flake off in chunks.

Theoretically, I was going to show you the same techniques using store-bought gesso and my gesso. I really, really, REALLY wanted my gesso to work! But since it didn't, here is a couple of the same techniques with Liquitex gesso.

This is the gesso over book paper. The prismacolors still don't work very well, but it's a MILLION times better than the stuff I made. It's a lot thinner, dries practically instantly, held on to the graphite, and even let me erase a little when I tried it.

This is on Stonehenge printmaking paper, through a different stencil. This is a resist. Gesso first, through the stencil, then paint, then a little water, then rubbed with a towel and voila! It came out pretty cool.

So, the verdict is: homemade gesso is fine if you want to add texture, but not so much just for surface prep. Don't use Elmer's glue because it's not permanent. For me? I hate all gesso and just use plain white paint when I have a need for covering things up! 

YSM - Joint Compound

That's right, peoples - You Suck Monday is back and will be better than ever! We're excited, we're crazy, we're caffeine-addicted. What could be better?

So, we were trying to find some YouTube videos we'd seen of someone using joint compound in a syringe to make texture. We failed. But, I did find one by The One Minute Muse and she just slapped it on a journal cover and dug into it with stuff and made shapes and it looked like fun, and we were pretty sure we'd be able to find the other video, so I got some joint compound. Well, I went to the hardware store and to the spackle aisle (it annoys the shit out of me that "spackle" comes up in spellcheck - it's a freaking word!!) and I hunted for joint compound but I didn't find any. 

So I picked up two little jars of spackle, a "lightweight" one:

And an all-purpose one:

Then when I finally asked about joint compound, the idiot man tried to take me back to the spackle aisle. When I pushed and said I already had spackle, but I was looking for joint compound he told me it might be with the sheetrock.I wanted to ask if he knew that most people said "drywall" these days, but I didn't. Joiny compound is MUCH cheaper than spackle. Three times as much for the exact same price. But I couldn't get a tiny little bucket if it, like the spackle, so I had to get a big thing of it. Hopefully I'll fall in love with it and want to use it a lot, or else open up a little nail hole filling business. Anyone need a nail hole filled? Twenty-five cents. Oh, and you'll have to come pick me up because I have no car to get to your place. 

Anyway, here it is:

When I got home I wanted to try them all at once, so I put down a stencil and slapped all three of them on to it. This way when I painted over it, it would be easy to compare them since they were all right there. I used a plastic putty knife that was 98 cents at the hardware store. The light one was ridiculously light. It's the texture of marshmallow fluff without being sticky. The other spackle was more wet than I expected, but still really thick, and the joint compound was thickest. They all held their shape just fine as they dried.

Here I added alcohol spray to one side (like glimmer mist) and paint to the other. The light, marshmallowy one feels like foam, even now. The other two are completely solid. The paint worked exactly the same on all three. The ink, you can see at the top, soak in differently to the light one. Then I rubbed at the dried paint and ink to see what would happen. The light one held it, because it soaked in. The other two, the paint rubbed off. 

I had an idea about adding some texture to a painting, and since this one was gray and I was looking to create a dark blue, I used it.

And a blue paint I created myself with glazing liquid:

I put down a plastic doily that Kelly gave me and slapped the blue stuff over it and here it is drying:

I'm hoping to use it more as I go through the Fairies class. I'd like to see what happens when I mix the white ones with mica powders or iridescent medium for fairy wings. I'll try to keep you up to date on how it works!

CHristmas ATCs :)

I LOVE how these came out. I got the idea from Christy Tomlinson. She did a canvas with all her toys and stuff while mine is just leftover paper scraps, but they make me happy and several of them are in the mail, on their way to surprise friends right now! 

This is what I used for the background. Remember this page? It's from YSM Brain Dead Journaling. I loved the page, but I always want to DO something with my backgrounds. I'm trying to not have that need - to just be able to fling paint around and say it's done, but I can't. A background needs a foreground. So I cut it all up and used it and now it has a purpose!

I also made this little canvas for Kelly:

Dont' worry, I already showed her :) I'm not good at those kinds of secrets!!

You Suck Monday (on Thursday) - Brain Dead Journaling

Also known as "art-a-long". Here's my paper:

Step one is just slap on some color:

Step two is a darker shade around the edges:

Here's a couple of steps combined, oops! Texture, stamping, etc.

Drippage:

Some more stamping and I'm done!

I inked around the edges, too. It's hard to tell in the picture. Also, the first layer is SUPER shimmery, and some of the sprays I used are glimmer mists

You Suck Monday (on Thursday)

Just in case you're not following along there, we switched YSM to Thursday nights so I can be there. So, this week's topic for YSM was COLLAGE. I'm super, super, extra horrible at collage. Can't help it. I just stink at it. So what did I collage for you? Inchies. They're pretty hard to screw up because they're tiny.

I did about...what is that, 16? I cut them first, then sort of smooshed them together and used a plastic doily to spray over in two colors, and then just collaged my buddy's pics on top. I'm either going to write or cut out words for them, I think. They're pretty dang cute, I'm actually surprised!

You Suck Monday - Cheap Thoughts Journal

Cheap Thoughts Journal. I'm in love with this way of journaling (which some of you won't think is  "real" journaling. I have mostly cheap thoughts. I don't spend my time worrying about who I am or who I want to become or where I want to be in the future. I'm an "in the moment" kind of chick, mostly, so this kind of journal is perfect for me.

I'm particularly in love with this "home page" (that's what we call the one where we write our appointments, etc). If you look closely, you'll see Zombie Bunny (he was the original and inspired all others), a teeny calendar of the entire month, and a shiny bit of a Cadbury Cream Egg wrapper. I heart it.

Please notice the tabs - they are randomly placed on pages that have NO special meaning and contain bar codes, pieces of chicken McNugget containers, and bits of music. Oh, and one is made from a piece of tape.

This is my cousins at Stirling castle in Scotland three years ago...

This is an envelope...

Holding a picture of my son snuggled up on the couch in a quilt I made for him before he was born when I didn't know if he was going to be Liam or Lorelai:

This is a drawing I made with one of those pens that had the four colors of ink in it:

This is a cake:

This is my iPhone:

This is just random ugliness:

I dislike the word "junk" (even when you spell it "junque"). To me, junk is trash. I don't keep trash. Ever. No junk mail, no receipts, no "scraps" of paper. I love throwing things out. So this is NOT my junk journal. Yours can be your junk journal if you want, but mine is not because it isn't trash. It's not filled with trash, my thoughts and feelings are not trash, my pictures are not trash, my art is not trash. This is a collection of the ridiculous things people say and the even more ridiculous thoughts in my head and the random colors I want to splash around and the things I keep for absolutely no reason. It's unique and it's me and it's not beautiful. I don't need it to be. Doodle. Make ugly stuff. Write ugly thoughts. Stick in pictures you took on your phone that have no where else to live. Smile.