fifi’s graffiti

I have a hard time keeping up with art challenges, but I stopped in at just the right time for Michelle Ward’s monthly Street Team crusade focusing on the use of tissue paper as a texture/layer element.

I’ve used tissue paper before but not this way, so I really didn’t know what to expect. I used white gesso to coat some bright magenta tissue and some lighter weight brown. I then painted the tissues with yellow and gold acrylic and used rubber stamps with paint to imprint some designs and words. I also used some markers and pens on some “untreated” brown tissue. I tore the paper and layered it onto paper, canvas, and board using thinned white glue. This canvas was the result I liked the best. The glue added some sheen to the tissue, and while the markers bled, the pen lines did not (see upper left corner).

I didn’t have a plan for a composition. I was just experimenting. I decided this made a good playground for some of these little “helmet fish” I’ve been drawing lately. I drew the fish on some scrap paper and glued them down. After I finished, I decided the composition looked better upside down, so that’s how you’re seeing it.

I like old comic strips; they’re a favorite source of models for drawing practice. This was a truly obnoxious character from 1900 called Mischievous Willie. He makes Dennis the Menace look well-behaved. At least most of the mischief caused by Dennis seem inadvertent rather that premeditated.

Wanna be normal? Take a pill. More collage thoughts in the sketchbook. I like how the pages take the glue stick, but if I come back later to do a wash on the back side of the page the glue starts dissolving.

I’m trying some ideas for future collages in my new sketchbook. I’ve lately been enamored of some 1950s cigarette cards found in the New York Public Library Digital Collection depicting rockets of the era. I use the images for drawing practice, as the forms are fairly simple and good for a beginner, I think. I’m hoping to emulate these old color combinations, too. In the meantime collage will have to do.

Putting the new sketchbook through its paces has stimulated some experimenting. Yay!

Here’s the inside cover of my new art journal/sketchbook. I tested some of the pens I’m using to see how they would react and how they would look on the new paper. A most happy surprise has been an old Bic Brite blue highlighter I found in a drawer. It makes the nicest color, not too overpowering, and it doesn’t bleed through even the moleskine pages.

I was bummed with the way the first page of the new sketchbook was glued to the inside cover. It was about 1/8 inch overlap in the gutter, which isn’t very elegant. The outer page of the first signature in the book has already begun to crack. That doesn’t bode well for longevity.

I love the little moleskine notebooks, but my pens and markers tend to bleed through the paper, leaving the other side almost unusable. I’m now testdriving a Hand Book Artist Journal. Same dimensions as a classic pocket moly, 3.5 x 5.5 inches, but with 128 pages of thicker stock than the moly’s 192 pages. The Hand Book is thicker than the moly and has a nice fabric cover, but the elastic band feels really cheap. The color of the paper is similar to that of the moly, but it has some tooth. Price was $8 compared to $11.50 for the moly.

I’m not sure I like the new notebook. The pages don’t lay as flat as those in the moly and some of my pens don’t want to write on the paper. The pages do seem to take paint and glue a bit better, but I’m not sure how well the signatures are going to hold up. I should know more in a few weeks, as I plan to put the new book through some abuse. It’s really kind of exciting: inspiration to keep on keeping on often comes from unlikely places.

I’m still waiting for the thermometer needle to move over beyond 40 and stay there!

Doodling again….micron, gelly roll & pitt pens with colored pencils.

Micron pen with marker in moleskine. As long as I call these things “doodles” I don’t feel so bad about posting them. Doodles are fun.