Sunday, April 19, 2015

Blowing bubbles

I've been blowing bubbles with Jackson's Indian Ink on paper and encaustic:



I would never have tried this with previous indian inks as they are relatively expensive - the Jackson's Indian Ink is however very economical and comes in a large bottle making it easy to play with. Though its success did lead me to try some of my more expensive ones too...

The key to getting good bubbles is to use a decent detergent - the only one that I've found that does work available here in the UK is the original form of Fairy Liquid. You will also need to add water and ink. Experimenting with the quantities is part of the fun - start off with minimal water and add more if you think you need it.

Use a straw to blow the bubbles and make sure you only ever put the non-inky end in your mouth! I put a little piece of masking tape on mine with an arrow to show which way was up.

I tried several different ways of working with the bubbles - the best was putting them into a very shallow tray and blowing the bubbles big enough that they were over the edge of the container and I could "print" them onto paper without touching the edges of the dish.

Update 10 August 2016: Please note that the link to the ink will take you to Jackson's where you can buy this ink and in the process donate a few pence to me too!

If you have never shopped at Jackson's get a 10% first order discount using this link.

Saturday, January 17, 2015

Year of the Spark

Hello!

My 2012-2014 were spent selling, renting and finally buying a house (with a separate studio - yippee!)... during all this upheaval my poor blog lay fallow... now for some art on line again!

2015 is the Year of the Spark - being lead/taught by Carla Sonheim and Lynn Whipple... just what I need to get me back to posting.The class is very active on FB but I will be posting my longer contributions here...

I took an Art of Silliness class with Carla in 2011 - the only blog post I have to show for that is here.

Carla's first lesson this year should have been easy for someone who'd previously drawn along with her... however for some reason my left hand absolutely insisted on drawing at the same time as my right hand...

I have a big pad that I often sit with on my lap and doodle in when Jim has the TV on... previous pages have been covered quite happily using just my right hand to draw, for instance this was a pre-Christmas page, whilst I was working on our Christmas Card - see my only blog post from last year for the final Christmas Cracker Card.

Christmas Doodles
Pre-Christmas - drawings using right hand

Here are a couple from my big book drawing with both hands - actually the bit that made me laugh most as I did this was attempting to write the date at the top - IT was a bit hit and miss... and yes that's the clue to why I carried on and in fact let both hands draw together for hours on end - it made me laugh!

Animals drawn side-by-side simultaneously with left and right hand  Vases of flowers drawn side-by-side simultaneously with left and right hand

Rock art white on black drawn with left hand whilst drawing... Rock art drawn in black pen on white paper with right hand

Using colour to re-interpret one of the figures drawn previously