Canoeing

This past weekend was busy for me! I woke up Saturday morning, the earliest I have in a long time, at 5:45 am! I could barely sleep the night before, as my body seems more accustomed to going to sleep between 1 and 3am and waking up at noon.

I was up this early to join my sister Michelle on her company trip to the Downriver Canoe Company somewhere between Bentonville and Luray, Virginia to canoe down the Shenandoah River! The drive there was pleasant and made me realize I really should be waking up earlier because the quality of light and the cool air is refreshing and kind of energizing.

Me in front of the cliffs just after the rapids

The place we went to is apparently just over the mountain from Fort Valley, where our cabin is. I haven’t been yet this summer, but there’s a chance I may go this week or next week to start clearing land so that we can get someone to demolish the cabin that currently has two trees in it.

We went on a 15 mile canoe trip! The most canoeing I had done was when I went to Camp Rim Rock in middle school and high school, and two other times canoeing on a lake with Michelle, but I had never canoed for this distance.

Of course, I just wanted to chill and float down the river at times, whereas my sister had a party to get to and complained near the end I wasn’t paddling enough. It’s tough to be a team when we both have different priorities. Such as the two times I wanted to canoe right up to the cows in the river, whereas my sister did not because they smelled and a few were using the river as their restroom, so I’m sure it was comical to see me paddling towards it and her away from it. We got close enough to make me happy, much to Michelle’s chagrin.

Michelle Canoeing near the cliffs

This canoe trip was a first for us as well: the first time we’ve been on rapids! There were two class 2 rapids, so not too big, but enough to cause us concern. The first rapids was about 4 miles into the trip, and just after that was the stop where everyone met for lunch, so the ones who got there early got the entertainment of watching their coworkers coming over the rapids, half of which had capsized and came floating down in their life vests.

Michelle and I managed not to capsize! It was close, as we hit the rapids bow first, which was promising, but then we were perpendicular to the river and we were told this was not good.

Yelling at each other, we mananged to paddle in line with the river as we came rocking down the rapids filling our canoe with water, however, we ended up stern first and heard laugher across the river as we flowed backwards into tree limbs hanging over the river. Good times.

Michelle Taking a Swim!

The other level two “rapid” was a place called “The Ledge” which was just a two foot drop, which we successfully navigated, but the dip motion caused a lot of water to slosh into our boat, which I managed to scoop out for the most part using the empty lunchables container from lunch.

Woody the Dog in a Canoe
After that, there was a fork to an “Old Mill Run” near the 12 or 13th mile of the trip, only navigable in times when there is higher water (it was higher than normal apparently so we decided to take it in hopes to see an old mill). Not only was this part of the river more shallow, but the river ran faster, and there were grasses and trees and mounds of who knows what throughout the tiny but meandering stream. We tried our best to paddle around these, but managed to run into everything, and much to Michelle’s anger, into tree limbs which she would grab hold of, then then release to fling back towards me. It was a little stressful, but it was pretty! And the Old Mill looked like it was renovated into a house, so the stone foundation was the only part that looked like an Old Mill.

Me Near the end of our trip!

Coming Soon: My Blog

Hello! I am planning on making this a blog centered around my love for art- the process of making paintings and prints, thoughts and findings from art history, and anything that brings inspiration and encouragement to me. I hope to eventually make this more interactive by posting pictures of my work in progress or making a few posts about my search for grad schools or artist residencies.

Incomplete Projects

05/18/2012

I'll admit one of my faults: I have a difficult time focusing on completing work or following through on ideas, especially now that I'm out of school. From a still non-existent sleep schedule, to just learning I was severely iron-deficient anemic (no wonder I was always fatigued! I thought it was left over from mono or just sleep deprivation), to the flow and ebb of my interests, many factors contribute to how long I keep up with a piece. I'll start a piece and after maybe one or two sessions, I stop. I'll lose interest in the subject. Or I'll recognize how many more hours it's going to take to accomplish what I want to do and be intimidated or more often, I just think that the idea is not worth pursuing or wasn't good from the get go. So, I'll quit, figuring if I've lost my love for working with the piece, I may as well move on to something fresh. I believe my best pieces came out of love some way or another, be it I'm having a good time in the throws of the process or I enjoy what I'm looking at.

Recent Example: In my last post I had just started this painting. I only spent one other afternoon on it (4/02/12) and then stopped, since the blossoms fell off the tree and I busied myself with other projects.  I don't think I knew what to do next- I wanted to fix that door and the picnic table, but on some levels I thought I should tone down everything, or put something else between me and the picture, since it's really flat. Something seems off to me, besides it not being finished. Maybe I was too distracted by those blossoms, they kind of overpower everything but the yellow green trees in the background.

I know that I need more structure and discipline, and I have constructed several "mini curricula" for myself to follow, from elaborate plans on what to do each week experimenting with elements of art or going taking inspiration from different times in art history, to more simple "paint one oil painting a month" demands on myself- even that I haven't been able to stick to. I come up with more ideas for projects than I execute- so my sketch book is brimming with my ideas for future books or series I imagine myself working with. Its executing those ideas, or following through with the projects after that first go that I'm trying to deal with.

I sometimes feel constrained because since I'm living at home for the time being, there's not a lot of space for me to work or store work, and I'm more hesitant to make messes. But I also recognize that could be interpreted as complete bull because shouldn't I be able to adapt to my surroundings? Shouldn't I be finding ways to work, in spite of these "restrictions"? I have been doing many smaller, quicker sketches, but not many larger works, complete to my satisfaction. We'll see if starting a job soon will help give me structure to my days; I may find it easier to work on my art once I have a schedule in place.

Here's to recognizing my faults and here's to working to change it!

But good news: since I first started composing this post and photographing incomplete work a couple days ago, I have since started a fun little oil painting series which I'll share soon, I hope. Well, I've made two paintings (in one day!!!), but I've been imagining how I'll go further with it already. AND it's still life- kind of. I haven't oil painted a still life since school.

And here's a selection of photos of incomplete projects I've had lying around in wait:

A watercolor of my backyard in the fall that ended as quickly as it began. Also the maple tree on the left is no longer there :-(

Almost the same view of my backyard as above, however, this time in pastel on newsprint.
I know, this was more of a sketch, but I had wanted to work on it in a bigger scale on actual pastel paper.

So I may have shared this on a previous post, but I want to return to this at some point, maybe. So its still in my room, with the painters tape on it (no longer sticky though :-( ). It relates to a similar print I made last year, but the print was 1x3 inches

I started this drypoint earlier this spring, but I stopped working on it mostly because I've been meaning to get this bit holder (I forget the name) for my dremmel so that it can hold the tinier engraving bit I have. This was mostly made with the tiny engraving bit that kept falling out and a larger engraving bit that fit, but made thicker, less delicate lines than I wanted. Its very hard to control the dremmel on such a tiny plate. Even with incremental breaks my hand continued shaking for a couple hours after.

And this is a sketch of part of an incomplete project. These are sketches of swans I was incorporating into a larger illustration/piece for a friend of mine who wanted an piece based off of the fairy tale called The Seven Swans. I have about 15+ other larger sketches of this multiple scenes I was planning on combining into one, but I ended up hating most of them. I just didn't know how to make a singular piece based off an entire story with strikingly visual scenes (princess cursed to not talk else brothers permanently swans, bird brothers hauling princess over water, princess living in cave, princess saved by prince and taken to castle, princess in cemetaries scrounging for sacred thistles, princess about to be burned at the stake). Not very fair for my friend who wanted the piece, but I wouldn't want to hang what I was making in my own place. Although at this point I've taken so long to get back to it, she probably doesn't expect anything, but I'm going to try to return to the project soon!

Okay, so this was another sketch in my sketchbook but I really wanted to finish it and then paint it (I used watercolor pencils!)

I started drawing this view of my backyard from my window, but clearly I got distracted at some point

This is tracing paper leftover from a woodcut I was planning to work on from the fall of my Senior Year. This is a project I've been meaning to get back to, ever since I had mono and subsequently gave up on this.

However, as you can see, it has a ton of layers of color. Which I can do. But I was having a difficult time planning it, as I was going to do a reductive woodcut. Maybe I need a second block. Or make parts of it screen printed. Or Make myself stencils. Either way, this is a perfect example of one of those projects I've stopped and not continued because it's a little daunting.

 I'm planning my next post to be about self portraits and other sketches I've been doing. Come back to check that out hopefully by next week. And then the post after that will be about the new painting series I started doing and other side projects.

March. April.

04/02/2012

I finally got around to uploading my photos from March and today!
Below are photos and captions on some of what I managed to photograph during this month. When I figure out how to fix my phone's USB connectivity, I will show photos from the results of my woodcut for the food bank print exchange and photos of a dremmel tool drypoint/engraving self portrait I started working on!
  

I got an easel for Christmas and haven't put it together until now!

Naturally it didn't come with very clear instructions, but I found a video online that went through the directions step by step.
Despite that, I still managed to put a few parts on backwards and had to dismantle and reassemble it.

Ta Da! Finished Easel! Yay!!! It only took me 3 hours!

Lucy had to check out the new easel right away! (Easel is left in shadow)

I sketched Michelle one morning on a McDonald's napkin. I made her head a little big, but I wasn't really measuring either.

I started to make a painted version in black and white, but it puckered too much and I eventually gave up on that piece, but I saved the work, so maybe I'll continue it later. It had been a while since I painted, so I started with just plain black and white acrylics.

Grad school Updates! Today I heard from the last school I was waiting for. Rejected. But I don't feel too bad, because I was accepted at PAFA and RISD.

I was accepted at RISD for the MFA in Printmaking program, so before I decide(d) to go there, I felt I had to check it out just to make sure it's somewhere I want to go before I (well, my parents) invest in it. Naturally, my dad and I visited on the one day in March in which it's 80 degrees and beautiful, but I tried my best to imagine the city grey and cold, and I think I'll be fine there in that weather as well! I also got to meet up with my amazing Big from NKE and meet her fiancé during my trip!

View of the capitol in Providence from the hotel!

Totally awesome wallpaper in the bathroom at the RISD Museum of Art. It took me by surprise! I wasn't sure I could photograph the work in the museum, but I figured I could take a picture of the bathroom. Ha

RISD Museum of Art!

The main printmaking building! At least three floors of awesome! It looked great to me! I can work with it!

The Hirshhorn! Song 1. For I Only Have Eyes For Youuu!
I thought this was very interesting, I think I want to go back and watch it again before it goes away. Maybe on my own.
It was mesmerizing! I love the idea of projecting film on buildings. I think I've seen it before a couple of times. It was funny that after this Hirshhorn show, I noticed film on buildings in The Hunger Games in their version of the Capital. I could see more film on buildings in the future. Whether it would be art or advertising or some kind of brainwashing propaganda, I cannot predict.

My boyfriend took a picture of me in Old Town Alexandria, because I told him to, ha ha.

Ducks in a fountain in Old Town Alexandria!

I started an oil painting today! I've been itching to paint ever since plants and flowers have started to bloom, so here's a start.

(Shiny sorry). Definitely have a long way to go, but I blocked in a lot. I can't wait to add in the blossoms! The sky isn't that blue, although I like the color a lot, but its not natural. Maybe I'll scumble it back with some other color? We'll see! It's no masterpiece, but I'll keep at it, give it more love, and who knows.

In this image, you can kind of see a green blotch in the sky above the yellow-green-ish tree blob. That happened when the wind blew the easel straight towards me, right when my brush was loaded with that yellow green color. I've got to figure out a way to fix that blob. Or I'll just turn it into a tree, or my parents suggested a hot air balloon, ha.

This piece also reminds me of the painting I made last summer, kind of in this long horizontal formal.
Also, I got a really bad sunburn because I didn't think to put sun tan lotion on. I'm currently slathering on some aloe vera! At least I wore a hat. I can see where part of my glasses, t-shirt- and apron strings were. My family joked that I just need to paint in the opposite direction soon to even out the tan.

On a random note, 60 minutes had an interesting show yesterday (that I only saw today). Not only did it talk about how sugar is toxic, (timely for me, considering this is the third week on the Atkins diet for me! I've lost at least 10 pounds (yay!) and got a gym membership to get strong and healthier, just in case I'm asked to lug heavy litho stones around, or try engraving, you never know!) but the 60 Minutes show did a story on the contemporary art market and talked to Tim Blum of Blum and Poe and later Larry Gagosian. I read the book 60 days in the Art World last summer, and that's where I first read about them.

*edit: I totally had a whole paragraph here before, and when looking at my post again, it's gone! 60 Minute's reference to Hans Christian Andersen's Emperor's new clothes is an apt comparison or metaphor to this art market of today.

Anyway, here's a link to the art show, entitled "Even in tough times, contemporary art sells". A link to the segment on sugar should be on the side as well:  http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7403948n&tag=contentBody;storyMediaBox

Enjoy! I think I'll look for the 1993 show "But is it Art?" that they refer to in the video. I think I've seen it before, but I could probably stand to watch it again.

Experimenting...

02/29/2012

So recently (as of last Friday, I believe), I've been working on an edition of prints for the GMU Print Guild's Share Print Exchange, of which what is left over is going to be auctioned off as a fundraiser for the Arlington Food Assistance Center food bank. So this edition is going to a good cause! Here's a link to the AFAC's website: http://www.afac.org/

This edition had to have a theme relating to the not-so-dark sides of hunger, sharing, and food or anything in that genre. I'm not too original, but I knew that I wanted to do something bright, colorful, and relating to food, so I did a still life of what I found in my house: bananas, pears, oranges, baby carrots, and apples. I set up a still life I liked and photographed it and I based my print off of my photographs. It wasn't until late I realized that it kind of looked like a smiley face. Wow. Hopefully it will be subtle enough that it's not a blatant smiley, but then again it's supposed to be a bright, happy print, and if sneaking in colorful shapes that make up a smiley face will do it, then so it shall be!

Quick pastel sketch of the still life with my initial color idea I washed over with a brush.

My translation of it to tracing paper. It was at this stage I realized how... happy... this print is.
Also I like how this looks on it's own.

At first I was thinking of constructing this composition with a tetradic color combination, but as I was using yellow, orange, and red, I started leaning towards having an analogous color scheme and making the shadows and last layer a red-violet. Although I imagined using a purple at first, but then I remembered this ghastly colored print I did a couple years ago that was yellow and purple, which I assumed would work as complements, but it was too jarring, so I'm hesitant to use purple for this print, but maybe with the orange and red, purple wouldn't be as bad.

Naturally, I've made this print way too complicated for myself. I initially thought it was a smaller edition size, so making 5+ layers was no problem given the timing. But then the edition size was upped to 30 and then deadline moved from April 1 to March 12. So I got moving! I transferred the drawing to the block with sharpies and then shellacked it. The shellac naturally made the sharpies bleed (I expected that much), but also I'm reusing a block I had initially drawn on at school and decided not to continue with, and painted over that with a grey or white acrylic wash, so the texture was already strange. The layer of shellac I put on was thicker than I thought, or could see in the dim lighting of my garage, so after propping it up before it was actually dry, the shellac dripped down and dried, kind of creating an additional texture I didn't expect. 

Here's the block with the drawing pre-shellaced!
You can also see the grid of lines I drew for registration purposes!
Those lines are very, very useful! Especially with my stencils!

In planning this print, I knew I didn't necessarily want to build it one layer at a time since I figured that would take longer to dry and carve. So I decided to make a series of stencils that I would use instead. So I made stencils for a white layer (I was using BFK Rives tan paper), a yellow, an orange, and a red layer, too. I coated both sides of the stencil with matte medium before I cut out the stencil, which, thank goodness, has helped it be a much stronger stencil, and by coating it before I cut it, it's less smoother and less sloppy than if I coated it after I made the cuts, and it made cutting it out easier.


The white layer! You can see that some of the paper ended up tearing. Mostly because I painted the medium on it directly with the table under, so now my table has a ton of medium/paper stuck on it that I mistakenly tried to use a razor and denatured alcohol to remove it. Whoops. The lessons I learn from this!



The yellow stencil! Yay banana and pears!

So here's my leftover shapes from the stencils. I'm really considering making something from this, I love the assortment of curvy shapes!

Another decision I made was that I wanted to hand print this. Mostly because it's a hassle to print my thicker woodblocks at GMU since I was told not to use their press blankets but mat board, which I found left odd impressions on my prints with my print, Angie at Night I showed on my blog earlier. So I printed the white layer there! I'm only printing 36 and I'm keeping my expectations low on having a "perfect" edition, since I'm not only hand printing, but I've also decided to mix my colored inks using oil paint. Which brings me to even more experimenting (beyond stencils!)

Set up for my first layer. Unfortunately the white layer came out much fainter than I wanted and so for my future self, I advise myself to put plate oil or something in it so that the ink spreads a little more and appears more evenly opaque, if that's the effect I want.

After the white layer I painted another layer of shellac on it to smooth out the surface, and I carved out what I wanted to remain tan and white!

Carving! You can see the shellac lines on here more clearly. It showed up prominently in the white layer. I went back with sandpaper and steel wool to try to make it more even for the colored layers, but because its in that first white layer it will show through. At least it kind of looks wood-like and goes with the grain so it doesn't appear completely out of place!

Set-up for my yellow layer!

So I decided I will print the yellow, orange, and red layers at home. And I don't have yellow, orange, nor red printmaking ink. I tried to research online if I could use oil paint (I mean, I've used oil paint for monotypes before, I'm only guessing I could use it for relief!). A quick google search led me to a website that suggested mixing the oil paint with a transparent base to make it more usable for reliefs. Also a side note: I'm not sure if I would ever use oil paint for my ink if I hadn't shellacked my woodblock first; it may soak into the wood or something! Which could be interesting, too.  

I needed the ink to be less oily and loose, for oil paint is even looser than color etching ink. (Hmm. there's a joke in there somewhere.) Anyway, for some of the pronto plate lithographs I did at George Mason, we mixed in magnesium carbonate to make the ink stiffer, which, I don't understand the chemistry completely, but I figured that this pure white powdery substance both absorbed oil and worked as some kind of additive or binder that didn't detract from the ink's properties too much. I looked at the price of the magnesium carbonate they sold at Plaza and decided it wasn't worth investing in yet, so I just bought the transparent base and the cheaper Plaza oil paints so I don't use my nice Gamblin oil paints for this potentially risky ink. Also, I think when I went to buy these supplies I figured I'd print the edition at GMU which has magnesium carbonate, but then I didn't think to get some while I was there printing the white layer.

Sorry, the last paragraph is just leading to this: I decided to add baby powder to my ink. A quick google/wikipedia search for the chemical properties of talc vaguely gave me the sense that baby powder is very much like magnesium carbonate, and in fact, talc sometimes comes from magnesium carbonate, depending on the grade and how it's extracted, since it comes from varying geological sources. But mostly Talc, or baby powder, is a magnesium silicate, and is apparently not soluble in water, and is apparently used in paper making, paints, and cosmetics. So I figured this could still work for what I wanted, although I'm nervous that about the "fragrance" ingredient in baby powder and I wonder if that will effect it.

Unlike the white stencil, in which I used to block white ink from getting on the paper, I rolled the ink on top of the stencil to ink part of the block. I think this in itself looks neat, with the carved lines, sharpie lines, and the staining from the prior drawing/staining I had.

At GMU I initially used a brayer and paper/plastic to roll over the paper. At home I'm using a rolling pin over a piece of red craft felt I've had for years, which I think has been helping. It's a little squishy and more flexible than paper so I think It can sink into some of the carved out areas effectively. And then I've rolled my rubber brayer over just to be sure, and it's been working!

Some of my prints from yellow layer. I don't have a drying rack so I just set it out on my table and bed. I've considered stringing ribbon across my room and using clips to hang dry them, but I haven't figured out the best place to do that yet.  

So I'm also nervous about using oil paint because I know the oil has the potential to spread out from the inked areas as it absorbs into the paper over time to create a darker halo of sorts. It's kind of like when you first learn about how lipids, or the grease in greasy food, get absorbed on a brown paper bag, it's the same principle.

Orange stencil after I was done!

Several of my prints after the third printed layer! It's starting to come together!

So, using oil paint also means that it takes it longer to dry. So, waiting 24 hours wasn't completely long enough, hence, the yellow ink residue on the block, but at the same time it didn't look like it affected the prints too much.

After the orange layer! You can also still see stripes on the table from my mini matte medium disaster. Hmm "Mini Matte Medium Disaster" sounds like a really artsy band name, and oxymoronic.

So I finished this print before dinner. When my family and I got home, I came to find that one of the cats must have gotten in my room and laid on my bed near my pillow... on top of my prints. Four of my prints were dented! And had cat hair in the fresh ink. I'm convinced it's from our cat Sherlock based on the hairy evidence.  I shall look for ribbon and clips, but I fear the cats would try to tear that down, too.

There will be more pictures to come when I finish the print! Two more layers to go! Must finish it before I get my wisdom teeth removed next Monday and figure out when I'm going to deliver them! 

Also... for those of you who read to the end, I have heard back from two grad schools: one rejection, and one acceptance with a little $. I'll share more later!