Postcards: Watercolor Sunrise

Inspired by Lucy Bellwood's recent Inktober drawings and Joan of Art's sketching tins, I have tried some watercolor landscapes recently.  I haven't tried this out in the world yet; I start with a photo I've taken with my phone.

Thinking About Tattoos

I have been thinking about my next tattoo for a while now, and drawing it is an important step.  And redrawing.  And being dissatisfied.  Which brings us to today's crackpot theory.

Artists learn just like children without realizing it; we play with something until it breaks.  Or at least I do.  I think teacher's are better than your average bear at realizing there is no common sense.  Sort of.  Common sense is what you have known so long you no longer remember learning.  If you never learned it, it must be because everyone knows it, right?  I learn what I do by failing.  Taking my art past where I should have stopped.  I draw it, and redraw it, and overdraw it.  Somewhere in the first 30-60% of the process was my best work, but I can't see it at the time.  I just keep going.  More lines, or thicker lines, or more color, or different color.  Futzing about instead of starting afresh.  You may remember that I have touched on productivity vs perfection before.  Through the images below, you can follow the path from the rough idea to just a pile of overlapping "maybe it needs."  If this ever becomes a tattoo, it will be completely redrawn by the artist; no more than the first image needed.

Hopefully I learned something.

Postcards: The Wages Of Sin

As you well know, if you are a regular reader, is that I struggle with quotes.  Choosing them.  Laying them out.  Writing them legibly.  All of it.  You might think I would keep that in mind when adding someone to the postcard exchange, and you would be wrong.  I asked Pam if she wanted an image or quote, and she went with quote.  That was silly of me.

As usual, I turned to Terry Pratchett for my literary needs.  I considered “She was already learning that if you ignore the rules people will, half the time, quietly rewrite them so that they don't apply to you,” but I thought that might lend itself to discouraging, which is not the goal of postcard exchange.  “If you trust in yourself. . .and believe in your dreams. . .and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy” is really great, but I have already used it, and wanted something unique for Pam's first card.

So I went with this.  

Below you can see me struggling with layout, which is 100% my MO.  I wrote the quote out once in grey, and knowing that I was early in the process just went ahead and wrote over it with the red.

I think it was around here I started whining to Jen about layout.  Here I switched the line spacing and went at it again.

Unhappy with the uniformity, I changed orientation, hoping to find a way to emphasize certain words.  I end up using less than half the space, but stumbling across a format that allows for emphasizing Death.  

Orientation not being the problem, I rolled back to the horizontal design, but incorporated the line split after Death.  The stamp in the corner solves some of my spacing issues, and is, in my opinion, cute.

Jen suggested I go with a brown background.  Actually, Jen suggested a hot pink background, or an institutional beige background, or a pink and brown background, a photo of an officer worker as a background, or someone being run over as a background, or a halo, or TGIFridays's green stripes.  I aimed for institutional beige and landed on sandwich bag brown.

Because any artistic process has to be as frustrating as possible once you have a goal, I put the stamp in the wrong spot.

When masking the card, I made the lower border two millimeters larger than the other three borders.  I then stamped the card upside down.  Luckily I have a tool for correcting this sort of error.

And there you have it.  Is it perfect?  No.  If it were digital, I would play with spacing until I had everything just so.  But is it as good as I can draw it by hand?  Probably.

Postcards: The Collage Process

Sometimes I am driven by an idea.  Rusty sink orange?  Great.  Let's go make a card.

Other times I am making a card because it is my turn to send a card.  That is my goal with the postcard exchange, always reply.  This occasionally results in me just staring at my supplies, hoping a postcard makes itself.

Better to have anything than a blank card, so I glued backgrounds to three cards.  That's like having accomplished something, right?

I continued gathering collage supplies, and sorting them into piles that might work with each background.

When assembling, I'll let the design bleed over the edges of the card.  When I am finished assembling the card, I flip them over and trim the front flush with the back.

Tah dah!  

I have a calligraphy card coming up, and progress on those tends to be verrry slow.  Knocking out a few collage cards in a single sitting helps me maintain an average rate of at least one card per week.

Postcards: Postcard Duo

I don't remember why now, but I wanted to make two postcards that formed one image.  Just the natural next step to postcard making for me.

I started with just messing around with a single sheet of watercolor paper, with guidelines drawn in pencil to indicate the borders of postcards.

The next step was two tape two blank cards together so I could work a single image across them.  Here I used a wedge stamp with the walnut ink my father made to create those wisps.  The border along the bottom was my sister's suggestion.  

I inked up my hand and printed across the two cards.  After that, I removed the masking tape, and turned to my original paper for guidance on the lettering.

And there you go.  Two cards that work (hopefully) side by side or individually.

Postcards. Rusty Sink Orange.

I never know where inspiration will come from.  It is part of being easily distracted.  I was talking with Maggie about weird colors named to avoid the wrath of Pantone.

And boom!  There it was.  Challenge accepted.  Why can't we have rusty sink orange?

It took a while of talking with friends, listening to various rust gathering schemes, before I started.  Once I had my preferred scheme, I got to work.  I taped down one of the blank cards.

I used a light wash of ink mixed with vinegar and salt to get the surface damp.  I then dipped pennies, nickels, and a steel gear into the vinegar, and then hydrogen peroxide.

Once the peroxide got things going, I placed the metal bits on the card.

As they stained the paper, I moved the items about to get color everywhere.

A quick use of my signature stamps, and boom!  One of my most satisfying cards.

What do you think?  

Goulet Pens Monday Matchup

I am at home sick, so I finally have a chance to spend a moment on Goulet Pens' Monday Matchup!

As many a lefty know, fountain pens can be unkind.  The first time a friend of mine let me write with his TWSBI Eco stub nib, I fell in love with it.

You can definitely credit that experience with me getting into postcards.

Heh.  I forgot the postcard was drying with a paper towel when I turned the scanner on.  It looked cool, so I scanned it that way.

Boom!  The Twsbi Eco with J Herbin Emerald of Chivor.  The background is a watered down Rohrer & Kilnger Scabiosa.

Postcards: Maren's Last Supper

Before she left us for Texas... an idea I still have some feels about... Maren asked me to draw a Barista Powers Last Supper for her.  

It was in my Field Notes; it must worked on.  I began with researching the Last Supper and doing some sketches.

And from there onto the actual postcard:

After getting this far, I started scanning my progress, convinced I would ruin the card at some stage.

From left to right: Benish, Maureen, Sarah, Melanie, Pam, Maren, Rob, Burbol, Geoff, Ben, Doug.

And there you have it.