Studio fun!

Goofing around with crayons is fun. I love the smell of them (ahhh! first memories of art making smell) and they keep me from being too serious. They got me craving 'grown-up' crayons- pastels. They're so creamy! I love pushing, blending and scraping with this medium. It's so sensual! I'm letting pastels be a medium for "play art" not anything I plan to show. I find it freeing. In the end it feeds my work.

Here's some more fun from the early art days. In grade one our teacher squirted black paint from a dishsoap container onto our paper. She gave us a straw and had us blow the paint around to make a tree. You get some really great shapes with this! I don't know what kind of formula she used, because acrylic even watered down doesn't move very well. I think she may have used kid's tempura paints (more good smells). I figured I'd try it with ink, since that would move well. Fluid acrylics might work too.

There is a small issue with the ink. Each time I placed the straw full of ink down on the paper and blew, it made a great big bubble that burst leaving these funny, circular growths. Since cropping is always possible, that's not such a big deal.

Jace told me about a way cool site The Daily Monster.

It has videos where the artist, Stephan G Bucher, drops some ink onto his page, takes some compressed air (you know those cans that you use to clean out the computer keyboard? at office supply stores) and from the resulting shapes he makes a monster. It's fascinating and relaxing to watch. He also has a blog by the same name where you can share your ink monsters. I think I'll try the compressed air next time to save some puff.