Hello !
Getting old has it's challenges, although it IS good to get older as it means you are still here ! Still being here is a GOOD thing. My Mom and I teased one time about, from the time you are born and old enough to know anything, you KNOW that one day you are going to kick the bucket one way or the other, accident, disease, old age, but you never seem to hear about all the in-between as your body starts to fail you, one slow piece at a time! It's a thing ! LOL
The most current annoying thing is for me is, I am now COLD in SUMMER ! What?? Yes ! Starting 2 summers ago, I started feeling cold in summer when my A/C was on and blowing cool air around and it's NOT because I have my thermostat set on 50 degrees or anything, it's nearly always set around 72 ... or it was. Now one thing is sure about me and if you have been around my posts for any amount of seasons, you will know that winter is my least favorite season, because I don't like being cold. I don't like wearing heavy coats or shoes either, so you get it. Summer though, ALL happy here most of my life. Thing is, it's ok if the temperature is 70something, I am fine as long as no cool air is moving, so I'm still a little bit warm natured and can get too hot, just like always, but turn on some cool blowing air and I'm FREEZING ! Revolting ! That first summer, as I began to understand that I was cold when the A/C was on, I really began to dread the coming winter as I thought, if I am freezing in summer, I'm not going to make it through winter. That winter though, warm air blowing?? ...oh ! I'm fine ! Oh thank goodness, so, so far, my revolting body change has not made winter colder.
Of course I am changing things as I can figure them out, like letting it get cooler at night when I normally use a sheet to cover up anyway, then in the morning I can turn the A/C off for a while. The house is cool and nothing is blowing. I know I could wear a jacket and all that, but it's summer for goodness sakes!... and I don't want too ! It will save on the power bill though I guess.
Isn't that terrible ?? It is to ME ! I don't even want to know what is going to fail next. Please..... don't tell me !
Now for today's little art share.
I am continuing to try to learn more stuff about Mixed Media art that most of the times includes paper collaging. No papers today though. A couple of nights ago, my desk was clean, I still had a couple of hours before bedtime and I didn't have my next project idea in mind, so I decided to try out one of the small gelli presses that I bought sometime back. I think I showed some printing I did before to make collage papers on a bigger one that I purchased at the same time, but I had never played with the little ones. With the bigger press, I would make half sheets of colors and designs to tear up later and use on my projects, but I had seen an artist on youtube use her smaller ones to add designs to pieces she was working on at the time, so I wanted to test that out and see how it worked.
The little gelli press is only 3 X 3 inches. You roll some paint on it and you either lightly draw some design in it with a not-too-sharpe tool or you can lay a stencil on it first.
Then you take the stencil off, pick up the gel press and flip it over onto the piece you are working on to make an instant design. Instead of looking like you stenciled it, it is the opposite, which it is called a mask.
I decided to test it out on a page in my art journal. I learned a couple of things really fast. When the paint was thick and you flipped it over, you don't press it down ! I did that a time or two and as you can imagine, since the gel plate is "jelly" and not stiff, it just smoozed the paint together and pretty much left barely any design. Uh oh... ha ha.... but I still did it a time or two more. Turns out the first pass should be laid on, not pressed and taken right back up fairly quickly to leave most of the design that was on it. If you want to do a second press with what was left when there was not so much paint left on the press, it was ok to put a bit of light pressure on the back of it.
In my past play in my journal, I have only been painting on the right side. When I am finished with the journal pages doing that, I think I will turn it upside down, start at the back and do the opposite page, or that is what I am thinking now, however, for this little play/learning session, I did a few on the opposite page as you could see in my first photo, because the right side had too much on it already and I wasn't through testing it.
It did make some fun designs. Some of them that you can see have multiple colors on the print are because, I put paint on, then a stencil, then take it up and lay it on the art page and when that happens, it always leaves some of the paint residue on the press. THEN, I just squeeze some paint of another color on top of that, roll it out, use another stencil or make a design with something else and when pressed, some of the old and new paint come off on the design. That part is pretty neat and you never really know exactly how it will look bill it is done.
I think it adds some really neat happiness when they pick up and mix. This was the one I first put on the opposite page and i was glad I did, because I really loved it and it wouldn't have shown up so well if I had added to the already over-printed right side.
After I had put more paint on, I had taken some different sized caps I use to make designs by hand and sqooged them around on the back before flopping it onto the page. To make the circles uneven widths, I held the cap down and moved it around in a circular motion instead of just touching it down and picking it right back up. I loved the colors and the design, so as I played a little longer, I left most of it uncovered.
Closer up for more detail of the designs and layers of paint.
Like all of the parts of learning this new-to-me art style, it was a lot of fun and even in that one session, I learned a lot about using the small press this way. Thing is, if you use it like this and apply it directly to some project or art piece you are creating, you still can't be quite sure exactly how it will turn out until you pick the press back up from wherever you put it. I'm sure with time you would develop a better feel for it and it may be mostly predictable, but you would still never have 100% control over it. That is one of the good things about the nature of this art. Sometimes you get a result much better than you had thought you would and if not, you just put more paint over it or a pretty piece of collage paper an keep on going !
It's right before noon on this Saturday morning. I stayed up late last night, but not till 5 am like last Friday 😄 I still slept in a little. When I got up, a grocery order I put in last night arrived withing about 45 minutes. I put on some coffee, checked all the expiration dates put the refrigerated stuff away, confirmed everything I ordered was there.....and came here to make this post. There is plenty to do around here as always and I will certainly being doing some of the chores and things, right after I finish a couple of cups of coffee while deciding what I will do first.
I'm sure I will play at my art desk off and on through the day and ALL evening if nothing surprising comes up. You never know !
Hope you are all feeling well and that none of your old parts fall off today. LOL If you are younger, enjoy it while it works !
Love ya !
Jacey
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