July 21, 2008

• Art Day: Zoology!

     
  12:00 NOON

  This week I need your help!

  Last night I posted a little pulse asking for some suggestions for people's favorite animals. Me, I have an affinity for owls and squirrels (couldn't you have guessed??), but I am pretty much a big fan of all critters, large and small. And that includes the crawly bitey ones as well as the fluffy snuggly ones.

   

  When I was a teacher, I used to keep a copy of the Macmillan Illustrated Animal Encyclopedia in my classroom (it was my favorite book as a kid, and is now hard to find; it has beautiful drawings representing just about every vertebrate on the planet, and a facing page full of facts on every one), and I used to challenge my students to try and draw their favorite animals. As a treat, we also played a game where the kids would try to stump me by naming any animal and seeing if I was able to draw it from memory.

  So if you love animals, name your favorite, and we'll see if i can draw it. (I promise not to peek in my encyclopedia too much.)

  At the end of this project there will be a special surprise.....

  ---

  3:00 PM

  Well, that seriously sucked. Had a wee bit of technical difficulty, but everything seems to be working smoothly again. I've been painting and taking pictures in the meantime!

  First, a shot of the workspace and some of my supplies.

  

  • My animal encyclopedia
  • two sheets of transparent Polyshrink paper
  • Fine grit sandpaper
  • Sharpies!!!
  • Watercolor paintbrushes
  • tempera paint
  • watercolor pencils
  • iridescent watercolor medium; I've had this bottle for ages but have rarely played with it.
  • Brush tip markers

  1:00 PM

  I'm going to start by sanding the sheets of shrink paper, first in horizontal strokes and then vertical strokes. This gives the surface a little "tooth" so it will absorb color.

  

  You can see the scratchy texture on it now.

  If you don't sand it first, water will just bead on the surface.
  

  But when sanded, the water & pigment have something to cling to.

  

  Now I'm ready to add color and drawings; here are some of my drawing and painting supplies.
  

  I'm so bad, I really love using kiddie art supplies, especially poster paints and crayons. The colors are always really bright and cleanup is way easier! Plus people think it's really funny when you tell them what you use to draw with, haha.

  I'm going to begin with some blue tempera. i get my brush wet and pick up a bit of color.....

  

  And then I lay on a light wash. It's really watery and doesn't soak into the surface very much, so the brushstrokes stay fluid and sort of meld together.

  

  I finished this page, using mainly cool colors.....
  

  And then started a bolder, warm colored wash on the other sheet.

  
  
  2:00 PM

  After letting the first washes dry for a bit, i went in and played with some detail effects. If you get your brush really wet- with just clear water, or pick up a little paint- you can override the wash color and paint in detailed designs.

   here, i'm making dapples using drops of water. The water spreads out from the drop and pushes the color outwards.

  

  

  3:00 PM

  I've got a lot of effects going on this page. Drips, dribbles, dapples, etc.

  

  This is the other page, after the wash dried. I haven't messed with this at all, but check out that weird line effect where the brushstrokes meet. I kinda like it.
  

  
  

  ---

  3:30 PM

  I thought i might try my drip technique on the plastic sheet.

  It kind of made mud. Pretty mud, though!

  

  4:00 PM

  After waiting for the watercolor to dry ( i have to be patient, since the surface is plastic), i went in with the felt-tip caligraphy marker and added some details.
  

  Since I will be adding animals in the next step, I started to think about this background as being a kind of ecosystem for them to inhabit.

  

  I'm not a big proponent of Creationism by any means, but it is interesting to think of building my own little watercolor planets.

  

  Perhaps....... I am a wrathful and avenging art-creator goddess!

  

  .......Or maybe just a messy goddess.
  

  ......or one that is a freaking slob and has to do laundry this week.
  

  Did i mention i like to use washable kid paint? yep yep.
  
  

  ---

  4:45 PM

  Here's a list of all the suggested animals so far. Lots of kitties and fishies, hehe.

  

  An Elephant, in honor of Mister Matt, who single-handedly saved Art Day today!
  

  And an unlikely aquarium starts to take shape........
  
  

  ---

  6:00 PM

  Well, i've almost finished the fishy page!
  

  say hello to Mister Octopus. Did you know they are highly intelligent invertebrates, and will kill and eat sharks??
  

  I thought i might take the iridescent medium for a test drive.....
  

  I liked it okay, but mostly it just pushed the paint around and made things only slightly shimmery. Feh.
  
  

  ---

  7:00 PM

  Okay, i've drawn most of the animals.

  Turns out? Stuff like aardvarks and lemurs i can draw straight from memory. But kitty cats? I freaking have no clue.
  

  I guess i just don't pay attention to them, ha! But this one turned out okay. This is a requested kitty.

  

  it's a freaking zoo!

  
  
  

  ---

  7:15 PM

  I took a ruler and started drawing lines on the back of the drawing, dividing it up into rectangles.
  

  I tried to make each rectangle contain [most of] an animal......
  

  I'm just going to post this picture of this pair of scissors, and let everybody freak out for a few minutes.
  

  because, yes, i am going to CUT IT INTO PIECES!!! muahaha.

  (don't worry, i took pictures of the original )
  

  ---

  7:30 PM

  I hope you don't hate me now : )

  

  I cut the animals into regular rectangles, and the fish are sort of amorphous shapes.

  Time to pre-heat the oven! (275 degrees Fahrenheit)
  

  ---

  
  8:00 PM

  But first, the hole puncher!

  

  Before i put the pieces in the oven, i want to put holes in them so I can use them as pendants. It's a lot easier to do this before they're uh, hard....and, uhh, thick. So I'll take care of that while the oven is heating up.

  

  I laid them all out on a piece of cardboard, and put that on a cookie sheet. They will stick to metal and it leaves marks on the backs of the shrunken pieces; sometimes i put additional pieces of cardboard on top of them to keep them from curling or rolling around in there.

  

  See? When they hit the 275 degree mark, they start to undulate around and become curly as heck. This is when i start to get nervous; but really, you just have to be patient. Once the plastic softens they start to flatten out. The whole process takes less than ten minutes, but i like to sit in front of the oven and watch the progression.

  

  9:00 PM.

  Then i took them out of the oven and let them cool down;they're still a little soft so i gently pushed on the curved ones to flatten them. Later i will put a clear gloss on the surface of each one to protect the design. The colors & designs are really intense, because basically they've been concentrated on the surface of the plastic.

  Let's see what we've got:

  

  

  

  Here's the whole set:
  
  
  I'm going to put a little varnish on each one, and then affix a loop through the holes i made and put them on ribbons.

  Soooo..... i dunno if you remember, but at the beginning of this post I promised a surprise. Since you were all so helpful in suggesting animals for me to draw, I thought it would be only fair that you should each receive a piece of this artwork, if you so desire. Even if you didn't mention an animal, I'll still send you a piece if you would like one. One per person!

  Of course quantity is limited (I've got about 28 good ones), and although I'll do my best to send you the animal you named,  i can't really fulfill specific requests. As you can probably see, it's kind of a jumble.

  (And i already have dibs on the octopus and the turtle, because they are special-made for another project!)
  
  For those of you on xanga, send me a message with your mailing address and I'll send you a piece. Or you can send me an email (moontree.studios@gmail.com , subject line: "Zoology") and send me your address that way.
  
  Thanks for hanging out with me in my blog studio today!

  • 5:02 pm
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