Steampunk ... still steaming along

Yesterday my friend Mary Ann Russo and I took over her two-car garage for a day of art-making.  (Her husband is a saint for letting us use the space this way, while the cars sit in the driveway collecting pollen!) 

Mary Ann and I were launched into this particular project by a Jane Davies video we had watched --
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkS0SWUQb40

The India ink is brayered onto synthetic sheets (Yupo), then dried slightly, then spattered with water  (or a water-ammonia mix) and scraped with a squeegee.  Another technique is to draw into the ink with different tools and again scrape down over the surface with the squeegee.  It's a subtractive (also called reductive) art process -- covering a surface with color and then selectively removing color. 

 

Typically, Mary Ann followed Jane's directions, while I went off on a tangent -- I used India inks in colors, rather than just the black; and when I fell in love with the look of the inks brayered across the white Yupo, I balked at spraying and scraping away some of the color.

 

Overall, I wasn't happy with my results, but then I have always had a hard time getting what I like from Yupo.  I plan to use all of the results as substrates for making monoprints using the Gelli Plate.  That's what MA and I will be doing next week.

 

Meanwhile, when I got home, I chose one of the Yupo sheets for going a little farther with the subtractive/reductive technique.  I simply covered it with one of my 9"X12" stencils -- Steampunk -- and sprayed a bunched-up paper towel with Windex; I was careful not to soak the paper towel because that would have caused "run-under" (also called "roll-under") -- which can blur the stencil design so much that it's barely recognizable in the end-product.

 

Holding the stencil in place with one hand, I rubbed with the Windex-wet paper towel to clean out the open areas of the stencil.  When I lifted the stencil afterward, the results are what you see at the start of this post.

 

I'm not knowledgeable in the book arts arena of art-making, but I think Yupo, being a form of sturdy plastic, can be used to make covers for these handmade books, with the help of a punch strong enough to puncture it with holes along one edge. 

 

In my hands, Yupo -- easy to cut yet impossible to tear -- goes into collages and onto the faces of greeting cards.

Is It Just Me?

Okay, I've already admitted I'm a heavy-handed artist.  But does anyone else agree that the little foam "mittens" that come with the Pan Pastel applicator will wear out before you're finished with even the very first usage?  I switched almost immediately to using a blending stick, a.k.a., blending stump (carried by Jerry's Artarama, Dick Blick Art Supplies, and many others) as well as the type of cotton swab that has one or both ends pointed (such as the Fran Wilson Makeup Eye-Tees.)  It's true, too, that foam-topped plastic makeup applicators can be found in some dollar stores -- but those proved as flimsy, for this purpose, as the one that came with the Pan Pastels. 

The top image above shows two greeting card covers cut from marbeled printmaking papers (first shown in their entirety in my posts of October 20, when I listed the steps to take in marbling paper previously stenciled with white modeling paste.)

Second in place is a close-up of a heron-cover greeting card.  This shows the effect achieved using the tools I've listed above, with Pan Pastels.

Back when the heron first emerged from the marbling bath, it resembled the heron in the similar print below:

Both herons were created via spreading white modeling paste across my 6"X6" Heron stencil, letting it dry, and dipping the printmaking paper into marbling solution.  And in both cases, the marbled background held so little contrast with the white heron that the resulting image was too subtle for my liking.  This is the reason that I have now outlined the uppermost heron in pink, using a wide-tipped Sharpie, before going in with Pan Pastels -- I wanted to create contrast to make the heron "pop."  

In the top photo you can see the white oil pastel crayon that I used to highlight areas of the heron.  If you click the heron to enlarge the image, you can see where the ridges of the dried modeling paste have formed texture that "caught" the white of the oil pastel crayon.

The right-side greeting card, in the top photo above, was created with the same modeling paste, applied thru my 9"X12" Steampunk stencil onto printmaking paper; after the paste dried, the paper was marbled.  (For full details describing that process, scroll down to click on OLDER POSTS, then scroll to the multiple posts dated October 20.)

The 6"X6" Heron stencil is available here:

 http://www.stencilgirlproducts.com/product-p/s175.htm

The 9"X12" Steampunk stencil is available here:

http://www.stencilgirlproducts.com/product-p/l201.htm