Shoshiplatypus

A bit of a mish-mash, hotch-potch post today.

I wasn’t going to start a new project until I’d finished the Organic Journal but couldn’t resist! I’ve only got one page left to complete in the Organic Journal and already have plans for that, but I wanted to do something creative from the comfort of the recliner yesterday, so I started something new.

Black Botanicals Album

Back in mid-August, my hubby took me to The Works, which was having a half-price sale on all its art materials, and I stocked up.

In the foreground you can see three spiral-bound albums that I bought. I have wanted to work on black paper for quite a while because it really makes the colours pop, and also it’s brilliant for work with iridescents of all kinds.

During our recent visit to Castle Drogo, I bought a magnificent book full of botanical illustrations, called “Botanicum.”

It is stuffed with gorgeous art inspiration! I decided to use this as a kick-off for the new project, an album using The Works’ black one, to be filled with art related to plants. There is so much diversity in the plant kingdom, and so much scope for mixed media too.

The trouble with spiral bound books is that the spiral binding gets in the way if you want to cover the entirety of a double-page spread. However, many modern spiral bindings are now very cleverly constructed to have gaps so that the pages can be removed without damaging their perforations. The row of gaps in the binding wires is usually situated at the back of the book, inside the back cover. I was able to take my black book and quite easily take it apart.

The front and back cover are black, like the pages, but considerably thicker. They are also fitted with ribbons to tie the book closed, but I shall probably dispense with these because I don’t like them much. If I have any kind of closure at all, I would prefer something of my own making which is a bit more imaginative.

I have set the covers apart for now, because how I embellish them will depend on the content of the book, and at this stage I don’t know how this is going to turn out.

Silver leaves

I began with the first page (a right-hand one, again ignoring the inside of the front cover). Another advantage of the removable binding wire is that you can reassemble the book with the pages in any order you choose.

I discovered that if I draw on this black paper with the white colouring pencil from my set of Derwent pencils, and press lightly, the line can easily be removed with a normal eraser. This is great, because I had no wish to use chalk or pastel for this, as it would so easily rub off before I was finished. I sketched the outline of a sprig of leaves, and then painted them with Perfect Pearls (using the colour Perfect Pearl, which is actually silver). These mica powders are very versatile and very shimmery and iridescent, and the metallics are very solid and reflective. There are also several interference colours which are gorgeous. Several years ago I made a palette with them, using one of Tim Holtz’s empty palettes. I put a little of the powder in each section and then added a little water. The binder in the powder held the pigment together as the water evaporated, so I ended up with the equivalent of watercolour pans which I can use with a wet brush. This is a lot easier to conrol than dipping a wet brush into the pot of powder.

Here is my completed painting.

I took another photo with the page at an angle to reveal some more of the reflective shine.

I painted the leaves and stems with solid silver to begin with, and once this was dry, I was able to add the black lines with a fine archival black marker pen.

Beginning the Ginkgo spread

Turning the page, I began work on the first double-page spread, drawing the outline as before in white coloured pencil, of a branch of Ginkgo with its beautiful leaves. I find this tree to be fascinating, with such unusually shaped fan-like leaves.

You can see how I have drawn right to the inside edges of the pages, covering the perforations. I am planning to paint this with Pebeo fluid acrylics.

This is all I have done so far.

Losing and finding things

Why do things disappear with such frustrating regularity? I spend so much time looking for things and this can get pretty irritating when I want to get on with something else.

I have noticed quite a few collage artists using a ruler to tear paper against. This gives a nice straight edge, which is also slightly feathered and less harsh than a cut line with scissors or a paper trimmer. I knew I had a 12-inch steel ruler somehere and had searched high and low and couldn’t find it. I was using a plastic ruler but this wasn’t working as well as I knew the metal one would – it was too flexible, and I was often getting spoilt tears. Yesterday I had another search, and eventually thought of looking in my large sewing caddy, where it definitely should not have been, and lo and behold, there it was! This ruler is quite old, and it is lovely and substantial and rigid, and perfect for the purpose. I have already tried it on a paper in the office and it works a treat.

I also used to own a long steel ruler, about 2 feet long if I remember correctly. This was also quite nice and substantial, and it had a blue plastic cover to keep it in. I have not seen this ruler since we moved here in 2013 and have made several fruitless searches for it. My hubby swears he hasn’t got it.

I have a large roll of blank newsprint paper which the removal men left behind over one of our house moves many years ago, and they didn’t want it back. I have used bits of it over the years for pattern drafting, and now, with all the gel printing, mark making and mixed media I am doing, it is really coming into its own. The roll is very wide and extremely heavy, and I have to lay it down on the floor and unroll a bit and cut off what I want. I’ve never been good at cutting straight, and using the ruler is great for this. I recently bought a nice long steel ruler but it is very thin and whippy which makes the tearing operation very difficult. I wish I could find my original ruler…

Replacement iZink

A few weeks ago I mentioned that ne of my new iZink sprays by Seth Apter (the Goldmine one, which is full of mica) had developed a clogged spray nozzle, and nothing I did would solve the problem. I got in touch with the supplier I’d got it from, and they offered either a refund, or a replacement “with my next order.” I wasn’t very pleased about this because I think they should just have replaced it with no strings attached, so I opted for the refund, and ordered another one elsewhere (unfortunately it was more expensive). It came this week. I am keeping the other one as a refill bottle. So that problem is now solved. I am going to be very careful to invert the bottle for the final spray of each use, to clear the nozzle, and at the end of the studio session I am going to wash it out, to prevent it clogging again. This seems to be the general advice given for sprays of any kind that contain either mica powder, or any kind of glue or fixative which can dry solid and block the spray.

Nice to have this gorgeous gold spray available to me again!

Progress on my DIY Ogura Lace paper

Following on from previous posts where I described getting some open mesh floral gift wrapping from AliExpress in an attempt to mimic the beautiful Japanese Ogura Lace paper, I have at last succeeded in producing a sheet of several pieces of the floral gift wrapping layered together.

I initially tried to bond them together with acrylic polymer, putting them sandwiched between layers of plastic sheeting with heavy books on top. The polymer failed to dry after a couple of days, so I removed the books and the top layer of plastic and allowed it to air dry. Some of it stuck together but a lot of it was not stuck, so I painted on liberal amounts of gel medium and repeated the process. When the medium was partially dry, enough to hold the layers together if they weren’t disturbed, I removed the books and plastic and let it dry. Success!

I laid the centre layer of the three at right angles to the others, because there is a slight direction to the pattern in this stuff, as you can see here, in a single layer:

and here, in use:

I also tried melting the layers together under a hot iron, sandwiching the pieces between baking parchment, but it wouldn’t melt. This stuff is plastic. I thought that if I couldn’t get the layers to stick together with the gel medium, I could layer them as I went, on a project. I know this stuff will stick down onto the page with heavy body gel medium, so I could add further layers as required. It’s another option, at least.

Calligraphy brushes and more open fibrous papers

Today I ordered a set of inexpensive Chinese calligraphy brushes to practise (and perfect) my intuitive scripting as per Robyn McClendon’s inspiration, and on the same site, I found some interesting open-structured papers which also resembled the Ogura Lace, so I ordered some. I will now have plenty of options to choose from, when I want to incorporate this kind of texture into my work. I’ll show some photos of these products when the parcel arrives in a few days’ time.

Microwave madness

Now for some retail weirdness that I can’t figure out at all!

My microwave has died. It was a Sharp combination one which I have had for years – it seems like forever! I used to use the combination feature a lot more than I have since we went whole-food plant-based, as I do most of my cooking on the stove top these days, mostly using my large saute pan and cooking in bulk and freezing ready meals, which then only need to be defrosted and microwaved to heat them through.

My hubby removed the heavy defunct microwave, and brought Mum’s small one through from the flat. This is a very basic, cheap one, which is very underpowered, but I thought it would be sufficient for our needs, to save me having to buy a new one. However, cooking lunch today was an extremely frustrating experience because everything took twice as long, and I couldn’t get two bowls of stewed apple in at the same time. I realised that this little microwave is fine in an emergency to tide us over, but no way was I going to find it satisfactory for permanent use!

Thinking about how infrequently I used the combination feature in the old one, I decided to go for a microwave-only one. This is actually going to be a lot easier to clean because it doesn’t have the heating elements top and bottom. My hubby took me to Curry’s/PCWorld and dropped me off so that he could visit his 94-year-old friend for a cup of tea (he has recently lost his wife) and agreed to pick me up, plus microwave, a couple of hours later. I was happy to mosey around the shop looking at all the tech and the massive TV sets and dream about the latest iPad, and to ask a young male shop assistant about which laser printers would print on papers other than normal copy paper, and be amazed as he displayed a level of ignorance about the products that was staggering!!

When I first arrived, I was introduced to a man who was supposed to know about the microwaves, and there were two identical Kenwood models which would meet my requirements, the only difference being the colour, and the black one was on offer at £113 as opposed to the silver one at £170, so I said I’d go for that one. He said they had plenty in stock, so when my hubby turned up, we could buy it then, rather than cluttering up the area behind the counter with it. I was happy with that, so off I went for my trundle.

When the time came, another shop assistant helped me, and informed me that they were out of stock of that model on offer! I told him what the other man had said and he told me that that individual wasn’t very good at checking the stock! I told him they shouldn’t be displaying something they weren’t able to sell, but he said they weren’t allowed to take it off the shelf. I asked if I could buy the display one but that wasn’t allowed either, so my only choice was t go for the £170 one in silver. I complained about this and said how wrong it all was, and he totally agreed with me, and that he had been in retail for many years and didn’t understand the reasoning, either. With a resigned air, I accompanied him to the checkout, and we had a conversation with the lady behind the desk who agreed how stupid it was. The man went off to consult the manager and ask if they would honour my request to sell me the silver one at the offer price under the circumstances, but this was refused.

I was about to pay for it, when he said, “Hold on a minute – I think there’s a bundle offer on this!” He said that if I had a toaster and a kettle as well, I could have the microwave for £145 instead of £170. I said I didn’t want to buy a kettle or a toaster, and he said I didn’t have to buy them – they would be free!

Hang on a minute – I could buy a microwave on its own for £170, or I could buy a microwave, a toaster and a kettle for a total of £145? Both assistants agreed that this was the craziest thing out!

I went for it. I now have a toaster and a kettle that I don’t want or need, and my hubby said he would sell them on Ebay for me – brand new and unopened! I have looked at the prices of both items, both at Curry’s and what people are asking on Ebay (for the toaster, anything between starting prices at auction of £7 or £8, or averaging £20, or in one case, £1,000!!! Are people crazy? Who’s going to pay that? – and to add insult to injury they were charging £4.50 postage as well! Hahaha!) and if I can get a good average sort of price for both items, I should end up with a microwave that has actually cost me less than the original one on special offer.

Crazy. Madness. You couldn’t make it up.

I put all this down to the rise of AU. Artificial Unintelligence. It is taking over the world. If the people with power over us (I dislike the term “elites” because this implies that they are somehow better than the rest of us, which they aren’t – quite the reverse, actually – in case you haven’t yet realised it, they do NOT have our best interests at heart), are the people responsible for developing the AU, you really can’t expect it to exhibit any kind of intelligence, artificial or not. People can’t make stuff that is better than themselves, and it’s usually worse.

Anyway, I am glad to have got the silver one. It looks good alongside my black and silver Robert Welch knife block, and the black and silver built-in oven.

Smart, isn’t it.

It also gave me the opportunity to give the area behind a good clean. This is dead space in the kitchen, in the alcove to the left of what would have been the original chimney breast (the pantry fills the right-hand alcove). This space beyond the window is impossible to reach even without the microwave being there, and is useless for storage for that reason, and it gets pretty grubby in that corner! To clean it, I have to get my little stepladder, and climb up and kneel on the worktop.

My hubby and I are going to need to consult the instruction book for the first few days when using the new microwave. He only uses it to make his breakfast porridge or to heat the occasional drink, but for me it is something in constant use, and as he said, it will soon become second nature. It’s pretty simple to operate, really.