Citra-Solv Tea Ceremony

Tea Ceremony          6.5" x 6.5"                         © Eva Macie

The ongoing disaster in a country that is near and dear to my heart, Japan, and the wonderful Japanese people have been on my mind. Looking through my Citra-Solv papers I discovered what I perceived to be a figure of a Geisha. With few added brush marks I was able to bring the ghostly image forward.
 

Please Help The Victims Of The Quake

                                                     ©  msnbc.com

I captured this haunting image of these precious children from the NBC nightly News. I hope it will inspire you to donate at least $10. to your favorite organization that is helping these people. You can find them at this link HELP.  On behalf of these wonderful people I thank you!

Citra-Solv Collage

                                                   'Wanderer'                                              ©Eva Macie
The comforting sound of pots and pans rattling in the kitchen makes me proud of some of my accomplishments in life. This one is my son, John Allan, who is living with me now. He is a trained chef and is busy making vegetarian lasagna from scratch. I mean pasta and all! The sink is full of freshly wash vegetables that he bought at the farmers market and the counter is heaped with all sorts of goodies and a pasta machine.

The reason for all of this wonderful prep is that my grandson is coming for a visit. Branden has been interning at a Buddhist meditation retreat. We thought he would bring a friend along, but there has been a change of plans. After a few days in Atlanta, Branden will be on his way to work at an organic farm in Tennessee. He really has become a wanderer. I hope he finds the fulfillment that he is looking for. I created the above digital college from one of my Citra-Solv pages and I thought it was a fitting illustration for the current situation.

Steampunk Digital Collage

"Better to see you with, My Dear"                                © Eva Macie

Because of my upcoming cataract surgery I have had eyes on my mind. The digital collage above that I created obviously reflects this. As I blogged earlier I took an online digital collage class to brush up on my skills. It was a Photoshop Elements class and since I use Photoshop CS5 there were some things I wanted to know about this program. Although it was strictly a PDF class and the focus was exclusively on extraction, I learned a lot and enjoyed it.

I decided to use ‘steampunk’ as my subject matter. It is very popular now and I love the idea of recycled parts and vintage elements to create something new. I used a model from a magazine so I guess this is the only place I dare show this. As for the goggles I was given permission to use them by their creator, a super craftsman and artist, Nicolas Chambon. You can see these and his other fantastic goggles and creations at his website atomefabrik.com. Be prepared for a treat if you like steampunk.

Overload, Magic Jack and Citra-Solv

                                              'Overload'                                           © Eva Macie

This has been one of those weeks when everything has happened at once. I’m taking another online workshop to brush up on my Photoshop skills. I’m also trying to get my tax information together and deal with the State of Georgia’s new online filing system that doesn’t work any better than the employees. No one knows what they are doing so they just seem to make up stuff. Then they say they can’t understand why they are flooded with calls. This explains the sixty minute wait and longer on the phone. Thank goodness for Magic Jack! For $20.00 a year I have unlimited calling minutes and it doesn’t tie up my other phone. My son also has one so now we both have a private line. It was a bit tricky to install and if my son wasn’t here I’m not sure I could have done it myself. To add to the overload one of my email accounts has become un-assessable. I have spent hours in online Yahoo tech chats trying to solve it and no one knows what the problem is. (Apparently Georgia isn’t the only place that incompetency rules!) It looks like I may have to abandon it and try to notify those who contact me at that address. Ugggh!

The above Citra-Solv image really illustrates my state of mind. Overload! I was fascinated by the graphic elements and the distressed lettering. I could have digitally cleaned this image up but decided not to for now. The only manipulation I did to add a touch of clarity to the image, was to add the number 15 to an area that looked like a tag. I may have to take a break from my Citra-Solv fun as I have a full schedule ahead of me and looks like I’ll remain in ‘overload’ for awhile. I have discovered so many things that I can and not do with Citra-Solv that I think I could teach a course on the subject. Hummm.... another thing I could add to my overloaded schedule?

The Peekaboo Principle

Robert Genn, painter and author of ‘The Painter Keys’, on February 10, 2011 wrote a great post about "The Peekaboo Principle”. This principle term was coined by V.S. Ramachandran, who is a professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of California, San Diego. Ramachandran, looking into various brains, including the brains of people who look at art, came to the conclusion that things are better when they are less visible. According to Ramachandran, concealment works because we are hardwired to solve puzzles. People get turned on by problem solving.

A friend of mine and wonderful artist, Susan Faircloth said “I've always loved mystery in a painting. It keeps me coming back to look for more in it. If it's all spelled out from corner to corner, I get bored looking at it really fast”. She also said it was the reason she enjoyed looking at my abstract designs. Thanks Susan, my goal of intrigue has been accomplished. Hopefully my above digital collage ‘Celestial Runner’ meets this standard.

You can read the entire Robert Genn "The Peekaboo Principle” post by clicking here.

Citra-Solv Collage

After all of the excitement of playing with Citra-Solv, I came down with the worst cold I have had in years. I usually use Zicam nose swabs when I feel a cold coming on and it would nip it in the bud. Unfortunately there were a lot of bad reports this past year about people losing their sense of taste and smell from using them. Needless to say I threw away the remainder of the package I had. After three days of a painful sore throat and cough, I surrendered to the Zicam Cold Remedy Tablets. They helped my throat, but the cold had taken over my system so I’ve had to deal with it.

Confined to my room with my box of tissues and herbal tea, I decided to play with the Citra-Solv decorative papers I had previously scanned into my computer. Photoshop is my angel in times like these. I have had a great time creating digital collages with the scans. Inspired by the many circular shape in the transfers, I made a couple of an organic circle brushes to add to my brush collection. I went a little overboard with the new brushes as I put circles in every image! Above is one of the first images I created. There is no meaning behind it, just a collage of textures and shapes. I’m looking forward to the end of this cold and being able to venture back into my cold basement studio to do some actual collages.

Citrasolv Fixation ~ Affixation

I became aware of National Geographic's image manipulation with Citrasolv last year. I had about a half a bottle that I had purchased several years ago. Remembering that it was difficult to find and that it was expensive, I sparingly painted a few of the pages. Nothing happened! After several tries I gave up and forgot about doing it. A friend of mine emailed me that she was hooked into creating Citrasolv pages for her collages. When I saw her wonderful collages I knew I had to try to master this technique. I went to the Citrasolv site and found some technique videos. One of the videos is by mixed media artist, Gary Reef. Gary has a great Ning site, Loving Mixed Media and I've been a member for a few years. Gary made me aware of what I was doing wrong. I wasn't saturating the page with enough Citrasolv. Too bad I didn't heed his warning about doing this outside. I love the orange smell of the product and thought it would be a great way to freshen my studio. It did that and more, it went through my return air ducts and took over my house! I woke up with a sore throat and my son had nightmares all night. My other warning is when you pull the saturated pages apart and see the results you become addicted! It is the most magical thing I have done in a long time.

Gary points out that if you are going to use these as a final piece of art, avoid using any with recognizable images as they are copyrighted. I have no idea how much of any image or type you can use, but I haven't heard of any law suits resulting from the thousands of pages all the artists have used doing this or other collages. I plan to use mine in my journals and as inspiration for paintings so I'm not concerned. Try it (outside) and you'll be hooked too. If you can't find it locally you can purchase it at Amazon.

Artists Journals & Sketchbooks

As you know I have been consumed by a workshop I’m taking for creating visual journals. Everything has been put on hold since I started and continues to be the reason why I have not posted lately or visited anyone’s blogs. I am enjoying this course, but I have not created a page I care to show the world. I have given myself permission to create anything that occurs to me no matter how silly or lack of artistic taste it is. As a result I have created some awful naive images. I even tore two pages out of my journal because they were so trite they embarrassed me! With encouragement from the other students I glued them back in with the idea of returning to them at a later date and reworking them.


My dream journal would be like the ones found in the above book by Lynne Perrella, titled ‘Artist’s Journals & Sketchbooks’. You can explore and purchase it at Amazon.com. This book may not be for absolute beginners, as it is not a recipe or a step by step instruction book, but anyone who is familiar with mixed media techniques will benefit from the mini instructions and suggestions. I like this book not only for the well organized instructions and examples, but also that it covers everything from creating the pages to the cover and bindings. The showcase of other visual journalists creations are absolute eye candy. After I finish the Strathmore series of three workshops that I signed up for, I hope I will not be too burned out to utilize the ideas presented in Lynne’s book.

Anything Is Possible

                                              
There is a wonderful art series on PBS titled ‘Art21’, which focuses exclusively on contemporary visual art and artists throughout the world. The series includes the Peabody Award-winning biennial series "Art in the Twenty-First Century." You will be able to observe the artists at work, and hear their thoughts as they deal with the physical and visual challenges of achieving their goal.... If you are not busy starting off 2011 creating new art, maybe this series will inspire you. Visit the ART:21 website


I am involved in the Strathmore Visual Journal Online Workshop Series which I wrote about in an earlier post. Journaling in this manner is relatively new to me. I have lots of sketch books filled with notes a few sketches, etc, but I would not consider them visual journals. This workshop is going a little slow as the lessons are posted once a week and we are just working on one page or two pages. There is no input from the instructor, except for the video, so we are at a loss as to what to expect or how far to take our pages. I am having trouble with the supplies we are using, i.e. oil pastels (mine are old) and covering my images with a light coat of gesso. I didn’t thin the gesso down enough and it killed my work. Someone said, “start another one, it’s just paper”…. What??? After all the work I put into it? I wonder if they would say that to Picasso? I don’t put myself in his class, but I do know that I worked very hard on this one and a do over would not be the same. The energy is lost. I’m hoping that the next step will salvage my pages, and as William Kentridge said, “Anything is possible”.

After Thought

It occurred to me that my last post may have sounded like I was boasting, about the sales I had before Christmas. That was not my intention. I was meanly trying to illustrate, what I believe is, the importance of consistency if one is trying to build a reputation. I have had some budding artist ask me to look at their site and I am often amazed at the variety of styles. Although they obviously have talent, it appears they are trying to cover every market and taste. This may work for some artists, but I’ve never been that successful with it. Choose something you love to do, do it well, and then market, market, market! Do shows, get an agent, send slides to a gallery that features your style and by all means get a website with your name or business name, and dedicate it to your specialty. Forget about my sales, they are just a drop in the bucket as to what you can do!

Advice from an Old Paint Slinger

                                   'Moving On'    12"x12" acrylic on canvas                              © Eva Macie

The sudden flurry of sales the past couple months of my paintings and prints was a reminder how important it is to stay true to one’s style. I have dabbled in just about everything since I retired from the art circuit and will continue to do so. However, it has been the work that I created and made my living with that continues to sell. If there is any advice that I could give to budding artists it would be to find you niche and grow with it. The above painting, ‘Moving On’ is a small 12”x12” painting that I painted earlier this year and is typical of the work I have created over the years . It has been sitting in my studio waiting to be signed, while I’ve been playing around with other things. I spotted it the other day and said to myself, “you need to get those acrylics out again and return to your easel”…Self said, “Huh?” It remains to be seen if I follow my own advice. Not having show and commission deadlines to pressure me I tend to paint when the mood hits. This is certainly not what an aspiring professional artist should do. I have proof that years of hustle and bustle and sticking to your style, will continue to pay off down the road.

Exhausted

The last greeting card went out today and I am exhausted! I always say next year I will start earlier and I did this year, but I had no idea I would run into so many problems and interruptions. I wrote about some of them in my last post so I won't go into them again. One pleasant interruption was my grandson's graduation from college last Wednesday. I was very proud as they recognized him for being the first to graduate (with honors) from Kennesaw State's new Interdisciplinary Studies. He majored in Environmental Policy. When they asked the students who had a cell phone and was texting and also who was on Facebook, he was one of a few who didn't raise his hand. He is a very quiet, sort of a New Age hippy. No computer, cell phone or any other electronic gadgets. He loves to meditate, paint and garden. He plans to be an organic farmer. Needless to say I'm pretty partial to him. He loves coming here to paint and talk about meditation. He plans to travel a lot. I will miss him when he takes off on his own.

If you are looking for a new project to kick off the New Year, Nancy Standee, a super artist and blogger, wrote about an upcoming free online journal workshop. It is sponsored by Strathmore journals and the first one starts January 1st. I signed up for the one that starts in March as I need to recoup!

Have a Merry Christmas or enjoy your traditional Holiday celebration.
Peace and Love,
Eva

Christmas Cards

Every year I try to do something creative for my Christmas greeting. The past few years I have created a video, posted it on YouTube then emailed the link to friends and family. This year I did not feel up to the challenge and decided to return to the traditional way of sending cards.The image above is not my card. It's a copy of a Dover stain glass coloring book image. In the middle of creating my own cards, I switched gears as usual, and came up with an idea of making some Christmas ornaments using some old shrink plastic from my John Campbell Folk School workshop days. What a challenge that became! I guess the stuff is meant for small charms and jewelry because large pieces warp and fold on themselves when shrinking. Fun, but frustrating to watch my hard work shrink into odd balls of plastic. Then I tried Fimo polymer clay. I do not know why, but I have never been able to get that stuff to a pliable consistency and I have a pasta machine that I purchased solely for that purpose. I bought some soft Fimo and that was difficult to knead also. As a last resort, I am using air-dry clay. It is not waterproof and a bit fragile, but I tell myself that hand painted glass decorations are fragile too. I am still not sure they will fly, as I have not finished them. I am still in the experimenting stage. I may get this done by Christmas! Along with more Christmas shopping, house to clean and decorate, this is a busy, busy time so I may not be blogging for a while. Happy holidays everyone!

Autumn Walk With Me

                          



The last days few days of autumn in Atlanta have been beautiful. I decided to take my camera along  on my walk to record the leaves before they returned to the soil. The video is a little bouncy, but I did not have a rolling movie cart to make the trip a smooth one. Our little neighborhood park is one of the joys of this the area. I told my son to spread my ashes here because it is where I have always found peace. Unfortunately, we live near the county airport and the planes seem to get louder every year. Along with the nearby traffic, peace is becoming harder to find.


The image at the end of the video is another Photoshop CS5 creation. When I am not out walking, I am deep into a stack of books by my recliner and working on the computer. I will be back in my studio next week to create some Christmas cards and gifts. In the meantime, I am wishing everyone a very Happy Thanksgiving!

Reality or Illusion

Sudoku is not my excuse this time for my absence. I have been reading and studying spirituality and quantum physics. I still do not understand much of what I am reading, but I am definitely fascinated. I am not going to defend or try to start a religious discussion, as I think everyone is entitled to believe as they chose, including myself. However, it brought up in my mind the illusion of art. I do not remember which artist, maybe Picasso, when a critic said his portrait did not look anything like a woman, replied, “That is because it is not a woman, it is a painting.” Even if the artist painted a photorealist image of a woman or took a photo of her, it is all an illusion.


Since one of my computers is next to my recliner, I took a break from reading to refocus my mind and for some reason I found myself creating a Photoshop image that was a first for me. I opened a file of a Yupo painting I did earlier in the year to see if it needed any further editing. I will post it in another post. After I played with it awhile, for some reason I added a new layer, filled it with white and began to erase areas with different brushes, some of which I created. Intrigued, I started cloning and painting new shapes. I am excited about the possibilities this opened up. My mind then associated all of this to what I have been reading, reality vs illusion. What I did was manipulate pixels, not paint, which are a tiny dots of light that are the basic unit from which images appear on the computer. For more information click HERE All of which, to my limited knowledge, consist of a binary code made up of 0’s and 1’s. I know someone reading this will say I don’t know what I’m talking about and they would be right. However, this much I do know; it is not acrylic or watercolor paint. Other artists, like Vik Muniz, who is using things like sugar and chocolate syrup to create images, and mosaic artist Ken Knowlton , who create portraits form various materials based on the pixels he generates in his computer, are masters of this art of illusion. A great book, which features these and other great artist, is Masters of Deception: Escher, Dali & the Artists of Optical Illusion.


Back to my books and disappearing into the world of words.
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Sudoku

I have noticed as I age that my memory is slipping. Every time I hear or read about something recommended for memory loss I check it out. In one of the Real Age newsletters that I receive, the game of Sudoku was their latest recommendation. I went to their online game site and let me tell you I was shocked at how something that appears to be so simple was such a brain drain! It is like a Rubik’s cube with numbers! Not to be defeated I have spent days trying to master this thing. I finally was able to beat the beginner’s level and I stopped, since everything has been on hold since I started. I have not picked up a brush, or pasted a piece of paper. I decided to do a digital collage of the game to justify all the left-brain stuff that has held me hostage. If you are interested in escaping for a few hours, or like me, days, you can find the game here. Enjoy!

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Busy Minis

This has turned out to be a busy time for me so I have only created a few mini paintings. The one above is on the back of an old business card. I do these in the evening while I am listening to the TV. For this one I used Caran D’ Ache, which is a watersoluble artist’s crayon. I love the intensity of these crayons and the ability to scratch into the color.

The rest of my time has been filled with going to appointments; getting my house ready for the winter, packing and shipping online art orders and my grandson visiting. The appointments have been for my eyes. A cataract that I have had for years is now at the point that it can be removed. As much as I want better vision, the thought of surgery on my eye, or any surgery, is unnerving. Getting my house ready for winter has involved adding more insulation and my son and I installing a pair of folding doors in the master suite to isolate the sleeping area. It is so warm today it is hard to imagine winter coming.


My grandson’s visit was fun. He is in his last college semester and is a new age hippy! He reminds me so much of myself when I was his age. We went to an organic farmer’s market to buy some veggies. He is writing a paper on fermenting vegetables and is pickling everything in sight! The last time he was here, the art books I am working on inspired him. He brought along several abstract paintings he painted and wanted to make booklets out of them. I showed him how to stitch them together and he took it from there. I cannot tell you how much I enjoyed being with him.


My final duty today was voting. I hope you all have or will do so!

Free Art Class

                                   © Steve Aimone’s ‘Expressive Drawing Class  sponsored by AARP

No, I am not teaching a class now and that lovely woman in the above picture is not me. However, earlier on June 4th -'Marks', I blogged about a book I bought by Steve Aimone, ‘Expressive Drawing’. As much as loved reading the book and looking at the wonderful drawings, at the time I was exploring painting on Yupo and I never got around to doing any of the exercises. I just received an email that Steve is offering a free online class. Here is a link to the class overview video and the info to join the free class. Looks like fun! Maybe I will set aside all of the other things on my schedule and try it. Possibly, you will too?


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More Black Gesso

Eclipsed ©      8"x10"  primed rag paper

This is the second black gesso painting, which I titled Eclipsed. It was not my intention to do a series of black gesso paintings and this painting did not start with it. However, I was not happy with the direction it was going and decided to paint over it with the gesso, saving only the areas that interested me. I scratched back into the gesso to relieve the opaqueness of the paint, and then added a few more marks and numbers. It works for me now.


Eclipsed is a good description of my HP computer lately. I have been having trouble with some of the programs and the email accounts not working properly. I have several email accounts for various purposes and I use a web mail notifier. Unbeknown to me it started dropping the accounts so some of my emails went unread. Then one of my favorite programs, Evernote, stopped working properly. The only thing I could think of that may have caused this was downloading a freeware program, Open Office. It is a huge program, takes up a lot of space, and since I have Microsoft Office, I decided to remove it with YouUninstall. This program is very through; it clears out all the stuff. I hit the start button and went on to something else. When I returned, it noticed the uninstall program was still running like crazy! It was wiping out my computer! I have no idea what the program or I did wrong. Fortunately, I had an old image of my c drive and a recent restore point. However, it did not have all the updated programs. I spent most of the week reinstalling programs and taking new images of my drives, then verifying them. Now everything seems to be back to normal. My son says I have not been a good steward of my computer and it is a mess. He wants me to clean it out and start all over. Uggh! I will put that off as long as I can and save copies my important stuff on my portable drive.

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Black Gesso

'32nd Matrix'    8" x !0" acrylic on primed rag paper

 

Several artists have raved about the quality and many applications for Utrecht's Black Gesso. I recently bought some and decided to use it as a substitute for black acrylic paint. However, it took over my painting. I fell in love with the creamy feel of it and its opaque matte coverage. I do not know what my fascination with black has been of late. For example, my portfolio cover and the black ink of the touch drawings, (see previous posts). To my knowledge, I am not depressed. In this painting, I think it is the mystery of the color that is intrigues me. Possibly the way it ties the elements together. The negative space blends with the positive and flattens the picture plane. In any case, it is a change of pace from the watercolor paintings on Yupo and since I have retired, I am all about change of pace.