Iron Your Artwork!

What!? That was my reaction the first time I read someone suggest this. Seriously? How do you iron artwork and why? Only recently have I been creating artwork that could or should be ironed. With the exception of quilt making all my previous artwork was acrylic paint mostly on stretched canvas or canvas panels. Not things I would think to iron. But more recently, I have been doing watercolor or collage on heavy paper. As it turns out both of these types of works can benefit from a little ironing. To iron a piece of painted collage I place it between two sheets of parchment paper and iron it with a dry iron. This helps flatten the paper and smooths out the surface of the collage but stills leaves plenty of texture. And it seems to me to make the colors brighter! I'm not sure about that but I like the overall result. I like the results so much I will probably go back and iron some of the other collages I have done in the last couple months.

These are a few of my recent collages that were ironed. You can't really see the difference here but they are smoother, lie flat and scan nicely.

Painted paper and tissue paper collage

These are a few collages made from old calculus pages, maps and painted paper towels:

 

Butterflies are Easy

Sometimes when I am uninspired, unmotivated or just plain undecided on which project I want to work on I just sit down and draw a Butterfly. I have source books with thousands of examples of butterflies from around the world and countless imaginary ones to dream up. It is an easy shape but with endless possibilities for use of colors and patterns.

Today was one of those days so I tried something new. I used water based markers that I knew would bleed to draw parts of the butterfly and watercolor crayons to fill in the remainder of the colors. This was the result of my experiment:

Telipna transverstigma

Controlling the watery colors and the bleeding of the ink is a new challenge for me. I didn't want the black and orange to run together and become a grey mess. I think it came out OK but I plan to do more experiments like this.

After I took this picture I decided this plain little butterfly needed something more so ran it through a few photo filter apps on my iPad and settled on this conposition:

There are so many options in these apps that it is sometimes hard to decide what effects to apply but that is also the fun in playing with them. I usually end up with multiple pictures that I like and save them all but I liked this sunny little butterfly for a sunny day.

BTW, this is my little drawing spot, complete with sleeping cat:

 

More Art Journal Pages

Way back in February I started working on an Art Journal I made out of old Manila folders. I have been collaging and painting a few pages at a time since then. Well, I am almost done putting something on every page. I posted some of those pages here (http://aileenbiser.blogspot.com/2012/02/folder-cover.html) and have a few more shown here:

Multitasking Art

I've been busy working on multiple things at the same time while reading as much as I can from different art instruction and mixed media and art journaling books. There are not many days that go by without my learning or trying something new. I'm trying some new things with my watercolor crayons (I'll post some of those pictures later), I made some fabric paper that I don't know what I am going to use it for but had fun making it, and I am still working on painted collages and still struggling with those compositions. But I think I am moving in a positive direction and learning from my not-so-pretty creations. And, barely a day goes by without creating something on my iPad. That is instant art satisfaction without the mess!
Here is a little digital collage to enjoy:

Digital Compositions

Putting together some acrylic and watercolor painted pieces into digital  compositions. 

 

watercolor butterfly on acrylic painted and stamped page

 

watercolor butterfly composition on watercolor page

 

watercolor butterfly on watercolor and pen page

 

 

Too Many Colors

I keep trying to use either too many colors or the wrong colors together and end up with weird results. I feel like I need to go to a science class to learn everything I need to know about the different kinds of paints, colors, pigments, properties, ...  Some paint is opaque, some translucent, some mix nicely, others don't, some colors are stronger, others get lost in the mix. So many of my experiments end up looking yuck! Then some happy accidents happen, something unplanned and not reproducible, but something I like for no particular reason. Art is so strange.

This is the test page where I was just experimenting with colors. I like how this unplanned mess came out better than the painted collage pieces I had been working so hard at!

 

I was trying to make something with an Easter Egg theme but I overworked it.

I'm not sure where I was headed with this, but yes, 

this one totally got away from me! 

 

Fail! Another attempt at an Easter Egg collage that ended up scrambled.

 

But I ended up learning some things about colors and the paints I am using and I experimented with a paint stamping method using a folded up piece of wax paper that I painted and scribbled a pattern on. That was just an "I wonder what would happen if I did this..." kind of moment that worked out nicely.


Finally, this was the post I was working on before my Internet connection sputtered for no apparent reason. In the meantime, I have been doing more watercolor pencil and crayon pictures and still experimenting with acrylic paint and collage. I'll post some of those pictures later.

Odd Combinations

I have been dividing my time between doing some watercolor crayon art or collage with acrylic paint art, but I can't resist putting the two together with PSE8. 

watercolor butterfly on acrylic paint and collage background

I will try to post more later but my Internet connection has been spastic lately and not very cooperative.