Fishy

Fishy is how my attempts to use gesso turned out, yesterday and the day before. One portrait (Joni) worked beautifully three days ago and then, for no understandable reason, the next two gave me hell. What a difference it makes when all your media cooperate with you! After two days of struggling with gesso backgrounds, I went back to using just the staining inks and watercolors on untreated watercolor paper and wow what a pleasure it was!

I created a background, I drew and inked, I painted without bleed, and everything worked. I made this piece tonight in half the time it took me to make either of the paintings from the two days before, and I would say that it's so much better than they turned out to be. No beading up of paints with rough textures and spots, no discoloration or adulteration of the paint by the ink, no resistance at all (and it's not sticky!). I'm not saying I'll never try the gesso background again, but it will take a series of experiments to solve the problem before I go there.

This is a two-days-late little birthday surprise for my friend Kj Allison, who did me the immense favor of pretending to be a fish in a photo with her daughter on Facebook. I hope her daughter will forgive me that I replaced her pretty face with this cheerful goldfish and his little buddy giving us the side-eye. I couldn't resist either of them, once I searched Google for some good fishy pix. Kj had plenty of nice photos with her smiling into the camera, but hey, these paintings are supposed to be wonky, and what's wonky about a smile? (unless it's an evil one, or vaguely threatening, which Kj's were not!) So Kj is swimming with the fishies (but not in THAT way!) in underwater glory. I adore these Daler Rowney acrylic inks! They stain, they blend, they glaze...

I feel like shouting "I'm BACK!" But it's after midnight, so I'll just do it here in capital letters.

Pencil, Uniball ink pen, Daler Rowney acrylic inks, watercolors, collage, gesso, on 140-lb. Strathmore watercolor paper, approx. 7x10 inches.

Media malfunction

After yesterday's struggle, I didn't pick up the gesso'd piece of paper for this drawing until it had dried for two days. The background colors went on nicely, and I thought, So far, so good. But just in case yesterday's issues repeated, today I drew the art in pencil and did all the watercolor first, before adding the pen outlines. I started to recognize yesterday's behavior when the watercolors beaded up on the gesso surface and, rather than covering uniformly, just moved around wherever I moved my paintbrush, but I did the best I could, in some cases waiting for it to dry and putting on two coats to get it semi-opaque.

I wanted to keep all the colors fairly light in this one, so I used a medium purple for the hair instead of brown, and kept some of the pastels in the background while watercoloring over others with a thin coat of Opera Pink. I put a coat of gesso on the eyes, the teacup, and kitty's muzzle, and took a lunch break while everything dried.

Later, I came back and went in with my Uniball pen, and was dismayed to discover that, just like yesterday, it was either refusing to go onto the surface at all, or it was bleeding. I managed to outline everything I wanted to, and again left it to dry, later patching up mistakes. But I never even had to break out the India ink to do shadows under the cat, under the chin, on the arm and hand; I just drew my small paintbrush alongside the Uniball line and picked up enough black bleed to put in the shadows.

Until I figure out the problem, I'm going to revert to inking, painting, and staining directly onto the watercolor paper, only using gesso as a base white for highlights on the pictures. Fighting your materials is antithetical to the act of creation!

One thing I couldn't decide on this one, so feel free to offer an opinion and/or an idea (words): Should the book have a title?

Gesso, pencil, watercolor, Uniball pen, gel pen, on Strathmore 140-lb. watercolor paper, approx. 7x10 inches.

This is 60?

Today, my friend Susan Sabo turned 60. I'm embarrassed to say I didn't remember it was her birthday until I saw it on Facebook, but I immediately jumped into new Wonky mode to paint her a birthday picture. What a challenge it turned out to be!

I did "lesson 3," which includes an undercoat of gesso on your paper in which you make marks, which gives your paint lots of nice texture. I don't know what happened this time—maybe the gesso coat was too thick, maybe it's that I'm using different paper (I ran out of my Fluid and started using Strathmore, which I don't like much but had in the house), or maybe there was just a weird combo of heat and humidity today, but whatever it was, "mess" was the operative word.

The paint beaded up and rolled off the gesso when I tried to do colors for an undercoat. Then I did my drawing in pencil, went over it with my Uniball as I always do, waited a few minutes for the ink to dry, and jumped into watercolor/ink application, only to discover that the Uniball ink, which is usually completely waterproof once dry, was running as if it was water soluble! All my yellows immediately went muddy, the face tones grayed out, nothing was working. Because I didn't want to start over again after working on the thing for hours, I kept plugging away, renewing colors where possible, and dealing with the rest in various ways.

The other problem I had was that nothing would cover. Everything was lifting above the gesso and running around the page. And once everything finally dried and I tried to do ornamentation with my white gel pen, it flat-out wouldn't write on the surface. It would write on the black gesso background, fortunately, so I was able to do the lettering, but the rest of the face, which was going to be quite decorative, is instead very plain—no white dots or spots, no circles or flourishes, so basically, no "wonk." I did manage to make her eyes look like they belong to a fish, so there's that...if we consider that an advantage. And the dogs turned out pretty cute. Small consolations are in order at the moment.

I may try this again on watercolor paper without the gesso and see how it goes. Meanwhile, Happy Birthday, Susan! Lookin' good, girl!

White gesso, pencil, Uniball pen, Daler Rowney inks, watercolors, gel pen, black gesso, on Strathmore 140-lb. watercolor paper, approx. 10x7 inches.

Blue

I'm not sure exactly where this one came from. Let's walk through the process: I've been listening to music on Spotify while I work, and I've been indulging in all the music from my teen years. I was looking at the four colors of blue Daler Rowney FW acrylic ink that I now own, and I thought, Blue! as in, I want to do something monochromatic, and then that made me think of the Blue album by Joni Mitchell, one of my favorites in my middle teen years, and I went looking for photos. I didn't want to do the photo that appears on the album, but I wanted to do one that was recognizably Joni. The hardest part, frankly, was finding one where she wasn't smoking a cigarette—it's a wonder the woman could sing at all. I finally found a rare one in which she was holding it far from her face, and simply cropped out the hand.

Even though I was going to do a monochromatic, I couldn't resist putting in some Deb Weiers luscious red lips for the one contrast, and that (along with the beret) led to the association with the quote. Somewhere in this house I have a SWAK rubber stamp that I was also going to add to the mix, but the chances of my finding one 1/2-inch rubber stamp in the bowels of my studio was next to nil. When I eventually come across it, I'll add it if I still have this piece of art.

Gesso, pencil, gray gel pen, Daler Rowney inks, watercolors, LuminArté sparkly paint, Uniball pen, white gel pen, on 140-lb. Strathmore. The lettering is based on the Athens Condensed alphabet from the Solotype Typographers Catalog, designed by Dan X. Solo.