My prismacolor pencils finally arrived yesterday, weeee! I’ve been playing with them the last few days, mostly trying to figure out how to blend them. I still need to buy paper stumps and a decent pencil sharpener (argh, I have like the half of 2 or 3 pencils because of a crappy sharpener)

And you also get a sneak-peak of an upcoming project (pssst, Patty ;). My sketchbook is a standard sized notebook with unlined sheets (20×25 cms 50 grs paper).

I have no fancy sketchbooks, though I’d love to have a watercolor paper/heavy weight paper one, but I’ve looked for years and the only thing I’ve found is 90grs Bond paper. But it works pretty well because it’s the same size as the rest of my notebooks and I don’t feel guilty to discard a page if a drawing turns out awful.

That little birdie is a Chincol (Rufous collared-sparrow) which is a little sparrow very common in my city, I see it everyday at my faculty because it eats everything and it’s very confident around people. I really like it, and it’s not the first time I’ve used him on a project.

I hope to work a little more on this card over the weekend :)

Oh well… they do say that old habits die hard, or not? :P I can’t stay too long from doing something more “artistry”. Rubberstamping is an art itself, but I can’t help but going back to my “roots” -watercolors and drawing.

This is a WIP (Work in Progress) and I hope to have at least one of the ATCs ready for Monday. I wanted to make a Koi fish ATC and, while Google-browsing, I came across Shanti’s blog (her artwork is GORGEUS!) and she mentioned that she used Gesso to give texture to her paintings.

Hum… I want to do that too.

Off I went Google-browsing again :p After a while I found that there was a chilean art supply company that sold premade acrylic gesso (I was getting all confused trying to figure out a “recipe”) but I wasn’t really sure I’d found it in my city, so I was very happy when Claudio recogniced the container from a picture I showed him online. I bought the Gesso (around $7 for 500 c.c.) and a block of heavy watercolor paper (300 grs.).

Oh, I also got a case of 12 prismacolor pencils, but that’s another story, LOL (because it was through eBay… they stared really odd at me when I asked for those pencils locally :( )

Anyway, back to what I was talking about… I cut 3 ATCs from a sheet of watercolor paper and had some spare scrap. I gessoed it with a spatula for some texture, used a hair drier to hasten the process (what can I say? patience is not one of my virtues when it comes to art) and painted over it. I bet it is the worst koi drawing ever, but I loved how the background looks :) (you can see it a little better on the Flickr page… I’m so not going to scan a close up! *shame*).

At least I have an idea of how to blend watercolors over this new base. Stay tuned!

Materials: Acrylic Gesso (Artel), Fabriano Watercolor paper (300 grs.), spatula.

When I first saw kusudamas this was the model that first draw my attention. A diagram for it it’s impossible to find online but yesterday, while Google-browsing I found out someone made a video for it (it is actually a series of 5 videos).

The name of the model is sakuradama and was made by Toshikazu KAWASAKI. This particular sakuradama was made with pieces measuring 3″ x 1,5″ from regular photocopy paper. The patten was downloaded from the CANON Papercraft site.

Somehow, my model ended up with only 22 units, instead of the 30 ones that the video shows. It seems I can’t make a model correctly, I always end up with silly mistakes, lol. But I learned and will be better next time :)

I like assembling kusudamas, but the first part of folding the individual pieces is really tedious, at least for me. I think next time I’ll fold the undividual pieces in series through several days, and not all at the time in one day like I’ve been doing. Maybe that way it won’t get so boring.

By the way, I don’t know if I’ll be able to post tomorrow, since I have to take a psychological test to apply for a job. This year will open the local casino of Antofagasta (which is also a hotel) and they are taking applications for *every* job. I hope you understand.

Oh yeah, and a little WIP pic of this ;)

Edited to change picture… so much better now :)

By now, everyone and their mothers know that “Yatta” means “I did it!!” (Hiro, my favourite character from the Heroes t.v show, popularized the word). And it was like I totally felt today, when FINALLY Claudio brought me the damned toner photocopies of images I printed.

Milly, the colorless blender thing didn’t worked for me :( I tried several times with different images and different papers and solvents until I found one that worked. My best results were on a smooth paper (for marker coloring) and using nail polish remover as my transfering medium, LOL. I found that better results are achieved when rubbing nail polish remover both on the front of the paper where I wanted to transfer the image and then on the back of the image to transfer. I even could transfer some color from some laser photocopies :)

On the left one I applied solvent both in the paper to transfer and in the back of the image and scrubbed with a spoon. On the right one it was only on the back of the image to transfer.

My only complaint is that toner photocopies are really expensive. I mean, it is $1 for one letter sized sheet, and it was $0.50 for the laser photocopies, which is also pretty expensive for me. I mean, being a student I’m used to photocopy for 2c each one on photocopy center around the university. I’m not really used to this thing of going to professional photocopy center.

I’ll have to go, though. Because in my experiments I used almost all the images I had in mind for the definitive ATCs. I’ll work on getting a better “collage sheet” over the weekend so I can send it to photocopy on monday or so :3 I want to paint a background for them and then transfer the images.

Argh, I always make it so hard on myself on just little card. I should probably start making easier things for trades, so I won’t take so much time doing then. And my hand were sore for scrubbing so hard with a spoon D:

ETA: If someone has clear/white embossing powder to spear… could you send me a small sample? I really really want to make some ATCs (3 actually) with embossing resist and $10 (jar + shipping) seems too much for a little jar >.<! hope someone can help!

Also known as “My last and ultimate artistic frustratioh. Gah”. I have two make 2 ATCs for a trade with a user on ATCards.com. My first intention was to draw and paint with watercolors, as always, but for some reason the subject of the cards didn’t turned out fine =/ (vintage nudes, lawl).

Since collage isn’t my thing I didn’t know what to do. That until I was surfing some links posted on the Art Discussion forum and it came to me: image transfer. It seemed nice, because I could paint my background and apply the picture over and it’d look ancient and distressed and pretty. Besides, it seemed like a easy technique.

EASY my @$$ :(

I tried first printing with my inkjet printer over the smoth side of a transparecy the rubbing it on the paper with a popsickle. While this worked on a small image with only one color (black, and white background) it didn’t turned out with a more complex one :( Then I tried printing on a normal paper and rubbing alcohol over the image (partially worked, probably because the image was printed way before). Finally, normal paper and acetone (no luck at all with this one, LOL).

Most of the sites I browsed on Google mentioned that it worked with laser photocopies (color or b&w). I’d have to try that on monday after my classes. I have to go send some envelopes and there are many printers and photocopy centers in the way :) Other sites talked about inkjet printing over photo paper.

Does anyone ese have a tip on image transfer? I would appreciate anything that uses common and cheap materiales.