Waid's Woods Mixed Media Series done!

I ran into a lot of technical difficulty, but these are finally completed!

 

Here is a video talking about what each one contains....

The process behind "Walnut Blues"

Today doing a visual tracing of the development of "Walnut Blues."

Got my walnut inks in the mail, and couldn't wait to play with them. I used the back of an old print, partly because I hate to waste paper, and partly because I though the printmaking paper surface would be a lovely absorbent surface to test out the inks! so used some walnut ink, and also diluted a mix of FW acrylic inks. 

Then I played around with layering some old handmade paper (slightly spattered with ink) and a page form one of my flea market antique books. 

i put the papers on wax paper to save the work surface- and thought that was a waste of ink, so did a monoprint of sorts with the raw wood panel to pick up the excess walnut ink. loved the pattern it created! 

played around pulling together different collage elements..ik

toying around with the idea of adding a willow twig

then gently taped them tougher with painted tape to make it through the sewing machine....

so I had a collage sewn together...

I adhered it to the panel, embellished with some graphite, ink, and wired that willow twig on 

(after coating it with walnut ink and spraying to seal it!)

http://www.cherylholz.com/art/detail.php?artid=129539

Probably not what my mom had in mind...

...when she taught me to sew!  I can't really pinpoint what motivated me to do this-maybe all those lovely papers I've been collecting and altering?  All I know is that I kept waking up in the morning with the urge to sew these papers together, so....I lugged the sewing machine to the studio, wrestled with the tension knob, and started sewing!  I love the pattern stitching makes- even without thread, but then there are of course a whole palette of colors of thread, and the lovely little threads that are like fringe along the edge.  And bonus- I can immerse them in wax as well so they can play with my encaustic works! 

Here’s an example of how one came about...

arranging and selecting the papers/shapes/textures...
(an old intaglio print that I painted on,
(see this post http://holzstudiosampling.blogspot.com/2015/10/altered-papers.html),
banana bark paper, a page from an old encyclopedia of Britannica about louis XVI...)

stitching some of the layers together...

considering the background...

keeping the threads out of the way from the blowtorch and wax...

auditioning it on its panel...

adding some more layers of texture and staining- and i think she's done.... 

Fall Art Practices- Leaf Impressions.....

This week I’m still making seasonal art since I need to do this type of work while there are still leaves alive on the trees!  Unlike last week’s post where I was trying to make them very flat and take all the moisture out of them, for the cavo-rilievo technique (Italian for hollow relief), you need pliable sturdy leaves.  If they are too dry and brittle, it just won’t work.  


I love this process I've discovered for encaustic!  Although it took a bit of experimenting to find out exactly what temperature the wax needed to be, once I had that down it was so very fun to capture all the different types and shapes of leaves- and each and every vein!  

In very simple terms, you press a leaf- vein side down- into warm wax and burnish it in. You can paint around the edges of the leaf lightly with encaustic pain and fuse every lightly if you want a contrasting color in the background.  Carefully peel it up, and you've got an exact impression.  

For me, the fun comes in then rubbing oil paint into all the crevices to see the veins become more visible.  For this one, I used a turquoise blue which changed everything...I love that you can see some of the brushstrokes of the paint coming over, and a little bit of the background layers of color show up.     

  

Here's the whole batch of them and some detail shots....

Just after taking the impression ...

  

...and after the staining...

 

 

Happy Fall!

Flock o' Geese ATCs

Sometimes while working and focusing on one piece, it will overlap or flow into another.  Sometimes its just a practical thing- using up the end of a palette- but often times its because you didn't say everything you wanted/needed to in one piece.  I think a little bit of each happened here. While working on a portion of the large project I’ve taken on (see Midwest Shrine),
http://holzstudiosampling.blogspot.com/2015/04/planning-for-next-big-thing.html

 I shaped a portion of Aldo Leopold's book, "Sand County Summer” into 2 gothic shaped doorways. As I was carefully screening them on, I was reading the text about flocks of geese arriving in the spring.

 

Totally not planned,  the text ended up on the ATCs because I hate to waste art supplies- and I had a fully loaded screen with ink, took a look around- and found a fitting place to deposit it. But then I wanted to see actual geese, not just the text describing them.  So for the small ATCs I was working on, I made a screen of geese in various sizes and positions to include over the text describing their arrival.  Those led me down its own path and imagery, and now love these little guys.  Two have the text in them- then I went a little “goose crazy” and started flying geese into quite a few ATCs….

the beginning....

 the middle..

the end! 

 More examples- before and after staining....

  

"going with the flow...."