success!

 This painting  ended up being a few inches shy of 3x4 feet after I stretched it.

This one is about half the size of the one above...sorry I didn't make any standard measurements. I get caught up in the process of painting and forget about practical things like documenting the progress or writing down the sizes. 

I'm excited because this is the closest I've come to replicating the look of my business cards in a large scale. I ended up using a lot of gesso and absorbent ground, but these paintings are on canvas, not watercolor paper which means I can blow up the scale even larger- I could go 7' by 12' if I remember my canvas roll sizes correctly. How cool is that??

 I added gold acrylic paint to my usual paint ingredients, so there a subtle luminosity that happens

The usual tools

 The first few layers

 A few progress shots before I got too covered in paint to safely use my camera

I painted my island two different shades of gold. I'm thinking that they will peak through the tape layers I'll be adding to the frame.

 I cut 72 business cards

 ...but I ran out of drafting tape.

 I purchased a different brand of 300lb water color paper, and I found out that even with the drafting tape the paper layers were separating and tearing after taking the tape off. I wasn't expecting that, so I need to revamp my game plan.

Winter projects

 I've completed my new color chart

...Finished one obsession and started another.

I recently got hooked on Kendama, which is a traditional Japanese game. Learning the tricks is challenging but fun. Plus it makes a really satisfying wooden clink. I've been using it as a focusing tool, and it's improving my hand-eye coordination. 

In less nerdy news, I started prepping some large canvases.

 I didn't have any stretcher bars at my studio at the time, so I just tacked/taped the canvas over some boards. I'm priming them with acrylic gesso (which I haven't used in years) and absorbent ground. I'm hoping the absorbent ground will create a paper like surface- something that my rabbit skin glue paint can stick well to. I had been using 300-400lb water color paper, but it was really expensive and there were size limitations. 

I haven't worked with absorbent ground before, but a former CCA grad student Conrad Ruiz  uses it for his larger than life watercolor paintings, so I figured it wouldn't hurt to try it out.

The weather has been rainy and cold, so it takes a while for everything to dry. I started playing with some paper scraps I took from a free pile at work while waiting for the layers of gesso to dry.

 At first I was thinking about topography, and building the layers slowly.

Then I figured I could make it function more as a frame. Right now I think of it as an island, and that I'll build the land with layers of my leftover tape. 

I gessoed the surface and painted the base a textured silver. It was fun to make waves with impasto paste. I still have a bunch of layers of absorbent ground to prep, so I'll be jumping between my canvases and my little island for the next few studio sessions.

I wanted to spend the day there today, but last night my back got all out of whack at work, which is alarming because I've spent a small fortune on chiropractic care since it first reared it's ugly painful head in October. Plus I noticed that the bundle of palm muscle between my pinky and wrist on my dominate hand is really sore today, and it hurts to close my fist. I just hope that these things are minor little flareups. I've had to deal with injuries this winter that prevented me from working, and the  depression that feed into it. I really want to make these paintings- I want them to work, I want them to be beautiful but most of all I want one less thing to be frustrated and bummed about. I need to catch a break. Maybe letting you all know this will motivate me to make my own fortune. Send a kind word or thought my way as I get through the next few days. I'm going to spend my birthday on Thursday and Friday in the studio and I'm very excited to have some big chunks of time. Fingers crossed that my body let's these aches go and doesn't start protesting again.

Process photos

Yesterday I spent around 7 hours at the Compound Gallery working on my second batch of business cards. The vast majority of the time was spent tediously taping the cards to a board so they won't warp when painted. Anyone who has worked with me at any job or had a studio class with me can testify for my fondness of labor intensive work. I've discovered that anything I figure out how to do myself is always more drawn out/difficult that what most people do. I don't mind that it takes forever or that body parts go numb or start to ache. I just shift, stretch a little and go at it. There's a meditative connection between myself and whatever I am working on. I feel connect with the past, and sometimes a sense of pride that I am continuing a task or tradition that has been outdated by technology and human ingenuity. Plus I stubbornly try to distinguish myself from what my peers might be doing, and usually that means I meticulously make things by hand.

  Taped cards

The materials

The setup, painted cards and paper mounted on wood panel miniatures

Paint 

( The blue tape is where the emboss will be)

 There are 64 business cards drying right now.

the blues of business cards

Sometimes I neglect things. I get so distracted by what's happening around me that I forget what I was doing at that moment or why I am even there in the first place. Textures, sounds, colors, juxtapositions- those strange moments where little things ache with poignancy, leave me staring dreamily.  It's just the way I am. So my few dear readers, this is my apology to you. I have been running around experiencing the little worlds of Oakland, scooping ice cream for the never ending line, reading here and there ( Middlesex was fantastic by the way) and basically doing anything that kept me away from any art. Pain and pleasure are measured and experienced by the same neurons in the brain. That's why some things hurt deliciously, or there's that split second where you're not sure if you enjoyed that or not, but you certainly felt it.
Right now, art making hurts. It's not the sensation itself, but the context. Being studio-less leaves me tripping over the little paintings scattered on my bedroom floor and bumping into wood panels tucked into makeshift cubbies.  There's a need but no direction. No projects to fulfill, no classmates, teachers or clients to impress. I have the post-BFA blues.

Is there a cure? Yes, and it's probably along the lines of sucking it up, so that's been the plan. Being stubborn and hard on myself has lead me to tinker with the way I think about my relationship with the world, and the role of my artwork. How can I interact with people about my work within my aesthetic range? What is the most time consuming but minimal way to do this?

Business cards. Hand painted embossed business cards. An individual painting, waiting to be exchanged with a handshake. An impressive but understated gesture.

Hello first test-run cards. You were measured and cut from Arches 140lb cold press cotton paper, and a bit of bristol board just to see what would happen. Tenderly taped and exposing a brief little rectangle you waited to be painted. Then you had to dry overnight. The tape was carefully pulled back, the embosser positioned just so, imprinting my website domain into your blank edge. Hello my pretties.

I don't like to waste materials. A perk of making things yourself is that you can control the amount of waste. The tape from the painting process will be transformed into paintings after I carefully select and position it. It's exciting to have tangible potential. It makes my fingers want to scratch. I'm beginning to crave the sweet hurt of making. 

A website is born!

Big news everyone, I have a real life website now!

It's under construction, but I've already added a lot of images so there should be plenty to look at.

Here is my finished hat (sorry for the delay).

Today after staring at an ink-stained yogurt lid I've had on my desk for months I scratched this into it.

Spontaneous imagined portraiture is brought on from days of rain I guess.

I prepped some illustration board today as well, hopefully I'll have some paintings soon.