Flow

Let me tell you about Tuesday night.  My index card prompt was water.  There should be a million creative ways to use the idea of water, but I was stumped.  I think it's because I'm still really hung up on using red and I'm way too literal to equate red and water in my brain.

I started painting a bunch of different red backgrounds - wavy red, spattered red, dripping red, etc.  I wanted the background to have water-like qualities, but unfortunately when you create water patterns with red paint it just ends up looking like blood.  I'm really questioning the red thing at this point, and I'm no closer to a vision for the finished card.

So I start thinking about the "path" theme, and how water follows paths.  I had vague, nagging sense of a saying or proverb related to this, but no amount of googling could find it.  Finally I realized the phrase I was looking for was "Water seeks its own level".   This seemed fitting, as I am always trying to find balance and equilibrium in my life.

Thinking of water and paths also made me think of plumbing and I have this great old DIY book about installing a second bathroom in your home.  (Found at the library book sale for $.50).  I decide to try some image transfers of pipe diagrams in spite of the fact that all my previous image transfer attempts have ended in teeth-gnashing, foot-stomping, hair-tearing tantrums.

So, if you're keeping score at home, we now have:
1. a color I don't like
2. patterns that look like blood
3. a technique that drives me insane
and
4.  no sense of purpose

Things are not going well.

I get some pipe images transferred on my cards with mixed results.  I seriously do not like this project.  I  wish I'd taken pictures at this point so you could see the depths of my despair.

I need a focal image.  I start flipping through magazines and googling for pictures of faucets.  I cut out some photos, I print and cut out some clip art. I try laying various images in various positions.  I try more image transfer.  Not rocking my world.

One simple clip art image kind of grabs me.  It's got a black background and a white faucet and a clean graphic look to it.

I don't like it just sitting on the page, but I'm inspired to pull out the x-acto knife and cut away blocks of white.  I'm liking this.  I lay it over one of the cards and the background shows through the part I cut away.  The black background only covers half the card, so there's red drips showing through the cutaway, and red drips on the bottom half.  I stamp my words on the bottom half and I think I kind of like it until I back away and see that it looks like a faucet picture plunked over a candy-striper uniform.  FAIL!

I am seriously ready to throw in the towel.

But then.....something shifted.  The creative juices started to flow.  The best part of the candy-striper card was the cut-out, so I wondered how else I could work with that idea.  First I traced the image onto a styrofoam tray to create a simple monoprint:

Kind of interesting, but the lines kind of ran together and it's not as crisp as I'd like.  Might be worth trying again on a different piece of foam with finer point.

But THEN I decided to turn it into a stencil.  I traced it onto a transparency and cut out all the little bits with an x-acto knife, and  I was so darn happy with the results I started stenciling faucets all over the place.  Well, look!  Here's a few now...

(except I really hate the letter "Y" that came with this alphabet set and I always forget I hate it until it's too late.  All the other letters are so angular and the Y is so curvy.  Guess the stamps were in the dollar-bin for a reason)

So what about that "candy-striper" card?  I'd been tempted to tear it up into tiny pieces and use it as confetti at my pity party, but since I'd set it aside I decided to see if I could salvage it.  I painted the cut-away part of the faucet with white gesso, and covered the ugly part at the bottom with black gesso.  It was looking dreadful, but with some smearing and some drying, it suddenly had a lot of potential.  I'm not done with it, but I'm sort of fascinated by the way it's evolving.

Suddenly it's midnight (again!) and I'm forcing myself to turn off the faucet and go to bed.  Tomorrow I might go back to the cut-out idea.  And I think the faucet image  would make a cool stamp, so maybe I'll do some carving.  And the success of my first stencil-making experiment has made me thinking of all kinds of other stencils I want to make.  If I hadn't promised myself to work within the themes and prompts for September, I would have certainly abandoned this project and gone back to my beloved-but-safe orange and turquoise paint smearing.  Instead, the initial flood of frustration (which nearly drowned me in the sea of despair) found it's level and turned into a fountain of inspiration.

Too tired to write about this one tonight

What now?

Every time I hear someone mention the great class they are taking, or the group they are part of, or the challenge they just posted, I have an almost physical need to join.  There are so many incredible things to choose from, and everyone seems to be having so much fun.  I want to do them ALL, but there are only so many hours in the day, dontcha know.

How do you decide what classes to take, groups to join, etc?  Sometimes I realize I'm interested in something just because someone I admire is involved.  I want to join so I can be one of the cool kids.  Maybe not the best criteria for decision making - I'm going to end up doing "30 days of crocheting with your eyes shut" if I'm not careful.

So I'm taking my finger off of the "join now" button, and I'm.....

One thing for sure - I'm sticking with the Index-Card-a-day project and this month I'm trying to follow Tammy's prompts.  As a result, this card isn't my typical style, but I guess that was my point.  The prompts are encouraging me to try new things (and SEE, I didn't even need to join a new group!)

And since you're still here, so kindly reading, I'll show you my cards from yesterday.  (yes, cards, plural.  Some days one just isn't enough)

Clear glaze pen and water color resist, inspired by a little saucer I bought in the dollar section of Target.

I got 18 pounds of tomatoes and a gazillion red peppers as part of my farm share yesterday

Crusade No. 55

Michelle Ward has done it again!  This month's crusade is crazy-fun.  Before you even read this you should just click on over to her site to see the challenge and her gorgeous work.  Aren't you totally inspired?  Don't you just want to play along?

(Okay, if you can't tear yourself away from my riveting blog long enough to check that out, here's the scoop:  paint a background with 2-3 colors, paint a stamp with the same 2-3 colors.  watch the way parts of the stamped image "disappear" when matching colors align.)

I decided I would simultaneously work on my new index-card-a-day challenge while working on the crusade.  (because you KNOW I couldn't give up ICAD, so I've signed up to play along in September).  Unlike my summer index cards, I'm going to follow Tammy's prompts in September because I think they might challenge me and keep me out of a style rut.  The color theme of the month is red - a color I rarely use, so right off the bat I'm stretching.  The topic theme is "paths" and the style theme is "curves".

So to start my crusade I lined up a bunch of index cards and worked with red and turquoise paint.

I got out my favorite swirly, curvy rubber stamp and applied the paint.  Interesting, but I'm not sure I like these.

I tried it with 3 colors by adding some black:

Wild, but kind of ugly too....

Let's switch pallets and try red and orange.  

In addition to the swirly stamp I'll use some big foam stamps I found on clearance and never use.

Better, but not enough contrast. 

 Let's add some black, and let's spray the background with water first to make it more splotchy....

Now let's stamp with red/orange/black

Cool! I'm loving these.

And I haven't tried stencils yet....

The results are interesting.

I even managed to pull an interesting mono print from the circle stencil before I lifted it off the background:

Time to switch pallets again.  When I use red at all, I use it with black and grey.  

These turned out to be my favorite of the whole bunch.

Instead of using my red craft paint on those I used my red Liquitex Basics.  I like the way it's kind of shiny and semi transparent.  

Now....which of these will I choose for my index card today?  Surprisingly I went for one of the garish red/turquoise/black ones.  Since the topic theme for September  is "paths" I was picturing a path with a sign that says "This Way" - and that immediately made me think of the hilarious little bit from Dan Zane's version of the song "Side by Side" in which Dan and Father Goose get lost in the woods on the way to a party and fireflies come along to light up the way, and he introduced the most excellent word "bashment".  (If you have children born in the last decade you might know what I'm talking about.  Otherwise you'll have to take my word for it because I can't find any youtube clip of the song)

STILL reading this?  Turn off your computer right now and run to your paint supply and play along with this month's crusade.  If you don't paint (and I surely don't understand why you wouldn't) please follow the fireflies to the bashment.  I hope they remembered to bring the snacks.

Note

Paint Party Friday

I need some advice.  I've got this painting hanging on my easel, and I don't think it's done, but I don't know where to go next.

I made it a few weeks ago, right before we left on vacation.  We were totally packed and ready, but had a few hours to kill.  I wanted to paint.  I wanted to challenge myself.  I wanted to make something different - unlike any of the other big paintings I've done on this pad .  So I plugged in the iPod and attacked the page.

I decided to start with brown because I NEVER use brown.  I scraped a lot of paint on with a credit card in my best willy-nilly fashion.  I love blue and brown combinations, so I scraped some aqua paint on top of the brown.  And then I decided to stamp, with more  brown paint, using the strange "string of blobs" stamp I made.  It's not pretty yet, but it's certainly different.

Next I painted a sheet of newspaper with aqua and white and ripped it up and glued it down.  This reminded me that I had some aqua circles painted all over a sheet of tissue paper laying around somewhere.  Found it, cut out some circles and pasted them down.

Before I knew it, I had pulled out a variety of round things and was stamping brown and aqua circles all over it.  and BOY was I happy.  Better spray some brown ink on there so it's nice and splattery.

and then I step back and realize it looks like everything else I make.  I always come back to circles.  so much for "different".

So here it is, and I'm liking it, but it still feels more like a background for the world's biggest art journal.  I feel like I want to add something.  Some kind of focal image?  A silhouette?  Use some kind of stencil or mask so that only part of the background peeks through.  I can't decide.

IF THIS WAS YOUR PAINTING WHAT WOULD  YOU DO NEXT?

Is this the end, or just the beginning?

I did it.  The index-card-a-day challenge has drawn to a close and I managed to make a card every single day from June 1st - August 31st.  Here's my final card of the summer - it seemed fitting to use orange and turquoise since the colors dominate my stack of cards.

You can see them all together on my flickr stream by clicking here.

I was feeling a bit sad about this great project drawing to a close.  It's been a grounding point all summer long - keeping me creating, and inspiring more creativity.  Imagine my delight to see that Tammy has something up her sleeve for continuing into the fall!  She promises more details sometime today and I can't wait to learn more.  Congratulations to all my other ICAD friends for making it through!