I really like how this one came out. It is a photo of ink washes and then a big splatter applied to paper stock that had some brown in it. I used two studio lights with different temperatures to illuminate it for my camera. The result is that there was a lot of different color in the image I could work with.
Prints available at Fine Art American where it is called “At the Edge.”
This piece is simple, but there were several distinct steps behind its creation. First I created the line with ink and a folded ruling pen, much like several other pieces. I have been reasonably happy with this process, but the lines themselves have been a bit grungy, in part because of the texture in the paper I have been using. This is a neat effect, but I also think it takes away from the smooth curves of the line. For this one, I tried something else. After drawing the line and taking a photo of it, I then used Shape, which is an Adobe application for the iPhone (free). Shape basically takes lines, simplifies them and creates vector shapes. So it smoothed out the lines considerably. To get it into my phone, I just took a photo of my monitor. Then I emailed it to myself (as a jpeg) and opened it in Photoshop. From that point, it was easy to select the line, fill it with black, and then put in a gradient background. Here’s the final result.
Mixed media in every sense of the term. I used various items to create the various shapes and patterns. You can also see ink strokes in there as well as narrower lines created by a very sharp ink pen. The pigment is watercolor on heavy watercolor paper. I’m calling it “topographical” because it resembles a photo of the earth from an airplane.
This is an experimental piece, where I tried to create some interesting looking brush strokes starting with kind of a “plop” in the mid/upper right area of the paint. It is acrylic paint applied with a Japanese shodo (calligraphy) brush.
This is acrylic applied to heavy stock paper with a Japanese calligraphy brush. Nothing particularly subtle here. I was just trying to play with broad strokes and the brush lines. In addition, the lighter elements show some wet-on-wet effects.
I started this piece by laying down some watercolor washes. Then after the paper was fully dry, I created the black lines using a folded ruling pen to apply ink. The ruling pen is still a new tool for me, but I love the straight lines, angles, and other effects that it makes possible. I should also say that while this may look like an Asia language to some, it is not. Inspired by calligraphic writing I’ve seen someplace? Quite likely, but there’s not a direct connection to anything as far as I can tell. These pieces sometimes “create themselves” and so any deeper background influences are hard to discern.
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