New experiments

It was a long weekend and you might expect that I got a lot of art done. Well, not quite, because I am still very busy with setting up my show. But now, finally, most things are taken care of. What remains is mostly sending out invitation emails to those people who didn't get a post card (probably Wednesday) and then hanging the show on Friday. As the reception is almost a week later, that gives me plenty of time for everything else that may come up.

And I did do some art work. Actually I worked on two things. First of all did some monotypes again. I like this "painterly printmaking" as it is sometimes called, because it achieves interesting effects you cannot get easily (or not at all?) with normal painting. Monotype, in essence, is a one-of-a-kind print. One way to do a monotype is to paint not on canvas but on a metal or plexiglass plate. Then put paper on the plate and run both through a printing press. Running the plate through the press definitely modifies the painting so this is a one-time print. The remaining image on the plate can sometimes be printed a second time as "ghost" image. As the name suggests you get a much weaker impression. But you can paint over the ghost and incorporate the first painting into the next monotype and make a whole series of pieces this way. That much for theory.

I experimented a bit with oil paints and hand-transfer (meaning I didn't use a printing press but just rubbed the paper with a baren) on watercolor paper. The results were varied, but one piece came out quite interesting. It is shown on the left.


The other experiment I did this weekend has to do with the medium I used a lot in the past year: burlap. Many years ago I once saw a painting on canvas that was not stretched on normal stretcher bars but was stretched inside a frame using string that went through grommets in the fabric. That idea stuck in my mind for years now and finally it clicked that I had to try this with burlap and the earth tone oil paints I'm using. But first I had to figure out how to do this stretching technique. I needed to try building a prototype. The picture below shows the result. It came out relatively well, I think.

I used burlap thread, for obvious reasons. The outer frame consists of 4 regular stretcher bars. Ideally, this would be some different (aged?) wood. And there are multiple possibilities for attaching the thread to the frame: Here I just wrapped it around the frame, but I could also use hooks or screw-eyes inside the frame and string the thread through there. Many many possibilities. When I have some more time I sure will try some of them out. In the meantime... here is what this prototype looks like. I noticed that there are a lot of tricky problems to solve to get a well stretched piece of fabric this way. I guess there is a reason why this isn't done all the time ;) also it's really quite a lot of work to put these grommets into the fabric. But the effect is really neat.

A bit more colorful again...

Now that all the pieces for the show in June are put together I can play a bit more with colors again (the show will focus on earth tones). But I do like intense color as well so it was time to play a bit in that space for a change. I made two pieces and one of them is actually quite interesting (see picture).

Other news... I went to Silicon Valley Open studios today (this was the 2nd weekend out of three, so if you don't know about this, you should check out this site ) I saw a lot of very nice artwork, some soso stuff too, of course, but a lot of that depends on one's taste too. The neatest thing I saw was a place called the Alameda Art Works, a large building that used to house an ice rink. Now it's converted in lots of little studio spaces. I saw a lot of cool work there but was most excited about the studio space I have to admit. I wish I could find something like that for myself - only closer to where I live!! And the rent was very reasonable as well!

I realize more and more that I do indeed need to find a better work situation for my art work. It's just unacceptable that I still do everything inside my apartment. Especially as I make my own paints (I'm working with dry pigments - not healthy when you do that in your living room, even with a dust mask and when you are very careful). So that really will be my goal for the next few months: a better living situation (I can find a much smaller apartment when my studio space is elsewhere) and a real art-workspace! I also don't want to have dinner with my drying oil paintings any more. Meaning. I would like to have dinner without the smell of fresh oil paint overpowering the smell of my food.

The goal is to have this (affordable) work space in reasonable distance from either work or home. Or somewhere in the middle? An alterntive is to find a living situation where it is together in two separated units but I don't know if I can afford going the house-buying route. We'll see. As I said, if you have suggestions, let me hear them...

The Return of the Jumping Peanut

It has been way too long, but finally the wait is over *drum roll*. I just updated the store page on my web site. The "Jumping Peanut" web store contains a couple of items based on a selection from my artwork. The selection is small because the peanut is just a regular cafepress store. This means that you can have only one each type of products in the store (one mug, on large mug, on white organic cotton tshirt, etc). Should there be significant demand and items sell well I might upgrade the store to a premium store again and that restriction will fall away. But as the premium stores cost money this makes sense only when I sell at least 5-6 items a week.

Here is direct link to the Jumping Peanut Web store but you can also get there from the store page on my art site.

I hope you'll like it. If there are specific pieces you'd like to see in the store, please leave a note on the blog!!

The large flower

This piece has been completed a couple of weeks ago already but I never had a chance to post it to the blog, so here it is, finally. I called it "The large flower" which is not very creative, but at least quite descriptive. This piece is the largest one that I have done on burlap with my own oil paints (so far). The format is 40" x 28".