Dodecahedron

As a supplement to their math textbook, my high school students are working from Thomas Hull's Project Origami. We are using his PHiZZ units to produce geometric objects. To show them how the units lock together, I made this dodecahedron out of wrapping paper scraps I had at home. I am thrilled with how it came out! The colors kept reminding me of something from childhood, and I finally remembered that these are the colors of the wallpaper of my room when I was little.

This is a beautiful object to hold and turn. I can't help it; I am going to build the buckyball structure next. The students are planning to build something even bigger.

More Studio Tests

More materials testing! I've decided to devote all of January to testing materials, since I have developed some new interests.

I have always loved tonal drawings. Leonardo's sfumato is something that I hope, one day, to be able to achieve in my own drawings. With this in mind, I picked up a block of olive green Derwent XL graphite to see what it could do. I liked it so much with the pear subject that I think I will go back and get the rest of the colors!

It is hard to show in a reduced size picture what this looks like in person. It's very moody, very smoky. I like it a lot!

Here is another set of testing. Quite a boring page, but I'm including it because it shows some of the playing around with materials that I do before I settle on a way of working. On the left, I drew a block of green, and sprayed it with water. It didn't budge, so I then dropped water on in large droplets. Nah. Didn't work. Then, I tried a color block with drops of  isopropyl alcohol- something I use frequently in my watercolor and acrylic paintings. Still no movement, so that was abandoned. Then, I dipped a brush in water and dragged it over the block and attempted to paint with it. It was hard to get anything to show up- quite unlike my watersoluble graphite pencils. I abandoned this idea, too.

The next test was drawing a small landscape, just like I did with the pear. This was better. The detail was lost in the photo, though, so I'm not including it here.

I think I liked the graphite block best for the still life of the pear. But I really, really liked it for that!!! I am going to try a few more experiments with different papers. I think I also preferred the sketch paper I used for the pear to the drawing paper used for the landscape.

I'll be posting more testing throughout the month of January. Thank you for reading, and stay warm!

Pen, ink, and watercolor trials

The past couple of weeks have been a time to reevaluate my artwork, decide what is working, what is not, and, therefore, what I want to change. It's all part of a New Year's assessment, and a commitment to myself to draw more frequently.

A new sketchbook purchase didn't work out as well as I had hoped. The multimedia paper did not absorb enough of my fountain pen ink to prevent smudging (though it was great with Microns). I think I am going to end up back with my tried-and-true sketchpads that I've used since my college days.

Here are some images of the trial-and-error process. When you see pretty sketches in a book or online, you don't usually see all of the preliminary testing that allows an artist to draw in a certain style. Every component is a variable, and must be tested together in various combinations. For me, my variables are: sketch paper, type of ink or pencil, pen nib width, and watercolor.

In this picture, you can see my favorite way to test materials. I draw a little clover flower, which allows me to see how much tiny detail I am capable of getting, and then various lines and squiggles. I then wash over the lines with water or watercolors to see what happens. On the right hand page, I included some pens that I knew were not waterproof (like the Flair), as a reference. Sometimes I like the look that these pens produce.

In this picture, you can see some of my favorite fountain pens. From left to right is a Pilot Kakuno, a Lamy Safari, and a Pilot Metropolitan. I have other favorites, too. These are just the ones that found their way into the photo because they are so colorful. The Metropolitan pen is loaded with Herbin Orange ink that matches the barrel color almost exactly, and smells absolutely heavenly... it's scented like orange blossoms. This is my new favorite for notetaking.

I think I've settled on the Kakuno for when I need a lot of detail. The Fine nib does produce a very fine line, as you can see in all of the mosquito drawings on the page (click to enlarge). The mosquitoes are a bit of a joke. The Kakuno's packaging is entirely in Japanese. I took a photo of the instruction page, plugged it into a language translator, and was told that it was a fountain pen of mosquitoes! Pretty funny. There must be a subtle nuance of interpretation of one of the kanji. One of these days, I need to learn Japanese.

The Lamy is my favorite for general sketching. I seem to get a lot of line variety with it. On this paper, the Sailor Nano black ink doesn't smear too much.

That's an inside peek at the beginning of my New Year materials testing. I'm also testing different brands of acrylics, and water-soluble oils. More on those later!

Time for art!

Today was a lovely day spent with family. In addition, I had time to spread a bit of acrylic texture around on a few canvases to get them ready for painting. Opening up jars of paint and holding a palette knife or paintbrush brings me great joy.

I love that beat up old brush. It gives me textures that I can't get with a new one. The canvases on the left were gessoed. The one on the right has been spread with acrylic texture medium to prepare it for painting.

My paintings are taking many days of prep work, lately. It is a little difficult to hold on to the spark of delight that led me to want to paint each scene to begin with. I guess I've been spoiled by my acrylic paints. Oil painters deal with this all the time, unless they only paint alla prima.


I also had a chance to do a bit of sketching today. In my Christmas stocking was a Lamy Safari pen, so I have been trying it out. I am able to get a bit of variation in my lines, which was not the case with my fiber tipped and technical pens. I'm going to load it with a more water-resistant ink and see if I like it combined with watercolor. I've never been an ink/watercolor sketcher before (always preferred the softness of pencil!), but ink shows up better when you are sharing sketches online, so I'm giving it a try. And I love the raspberry color of my new pen!