CranberryCloud Laurel Martin

 The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it ~ Oscar Wilde

I'm not sure I agree with Oscar Wilde, but my temptation to play in my journal is fairly benign.  It's always calling me when I should be paying bills or cleaning or cooking and I do often yield to the temptation.  Apparently playing in my journal yields very tall and strange plants!

Obsessed with a technique called "Chine Colle", I've been locked away, experimenting.  Chine colle is a method of adhereing paper to your background paper and then printing on top of it.  Wikepedia explains it better than me.  I am not using a press and I'm not a fan of the oil based inks I tried, so I've had to adapt, and I think I have finally come up with a method that works! I may be reinventing the wheel but it took me a while to figure out how to adhere the tissue without tearing it or having globby glue on my nice printing paper.   I finally hit on a method using wax paper and methyl cellulose, which is a granular powder that can be bought at art supply stores.  Wax paper, as far as I'm concerned, is one of the best things ever invented!

That's my picture tutorial!  Amazing what phones can do these days!
1. Dampen some wax paper (yes the water beads up but you just want to be able to stick down the tissue with water) Place your tissue on the damp wax paper upside down.
2. That is a little jar with methyl cellulose in it and a nylon over top. The nylon lets the right amount of methyl cellulose fall out.  The tissue should be damp, not soaking.  Sprinkle the methyl cellulose onto the tissue and wipe off any excess grains and water that are around the tissue.
3 Turn the wax paper upside down and place it on the paper you will be printing on.  The beauty of the wax paper is that you can see through it so it's easy to put the tissue in the right place.  That thing in the upper right corner is my old brayer that I use to press  the wax paper and tissue to the paper.  You can use your hands or a barren.
4 Carefully peel off the wax paper and Voila!  You may want to let it dry under a book so it doesn't warp.

After it's totally dry you can print on top.  This method is a little fiddly and delicate.  I can't imagine my husband trying it with his big bear paw hands.

I'm now trying to colour my own tissue paper and new problems are arising!  However, I think that will be a different blog post.
Happy experimenting!

I've fallen down on the blog posting here because I've been totally wrapped up in making some new linocut prints.  You may not believe it but I make about 20 or more prints for everyone that makes it to my store.  It's a learning process and judging by the number of rejects I have I'm learning lots!  This is a test of my stamp.  You'll be seeing more of it because I finally made a few prints that I'm happy with.  Sometimes, when things are not working out, I feel like this little guy.  His intention is to kick the whole city of blocks down!  When I saw the word this week, it was the first thing I thought of.  I'd just love to see it all come crashing down: D

She was capable of seeing all kinds of imaginary things.
She is also something that I saw when I looked at a page in my journal with random paint spattered on it.  There is actually a name for this phenomenon: Pareidolia.  It's the ability to see significance in random stimulus.  It's common to see faces and I see them everywhere, along with figures and houses or cities.  This capability apparently developed as a way of making the random chaos of the world more intelligible.  I like following it where it leads into a world perhaps less intelligible. It's also a lot of fun!

This is one of those happy pieces that just seem to paint itself.  For a few days I couldn't think of what to paint, but once I thought of the horse, everyone else came along for the party.  The tea is actually gold mica flakes.  I love those things.  I think I'll go get some tea now, the green, not the gold variety!

Dreams are so interesting because one event flows into another without the usual restraints of time or space.  They are fluid!  Oh my mind is racing off on a tangent...our bodies are 60 to 75% water and our minds are 80 to 90% subconscious...  Is there a connection???  I can't wait to see what other artists have done with the word "fluid" for Illustration Friday.

Back to the here and now, this is my new mixed media painting about dreaming.  I've quoted Robert Louis Stevenson's poem, "The Land of Nod".  I've nearly finished a second painting on the background I showed in my previous post.  Just putting on the varnish: )

You may have noticed that I've finally figured out how to put a watermark on my image.  I've been meaning to do this for at least a year.  It was surprisingly easy to do with GIMP and instructions from ScottPhotographics.

It's been a while, but I'm finally working on some new paintings.  They start out like this, with the paper flying and not much planning.  After the paper is glued on with a mixture of white glue and water, kind of like paper mache,  I always have trouble continuing because I hate to cover up the lovely papers.  However, I soon get over it.  I've got some ideas of what I want to paint percolating.
Tomorrow I'm going away to a family wedding out of town so I won't be commenting or posting anywhere for a few days.  I'll hopefully have more to show next week : )

I must admit that I'm not very good at withstanding suspense.  When I read a book, I read the first pages and then the ending.  Then, I can relax and read the middle part.  I enjoy finding out how the ending is arrived at.  I'm no good with suspenseful movies unless someone has "spoiled" the ending for me.  Yup, I'm a total wimp.  This is a quick sketch in my art journal of my daughter, who can stand suspense in her books.  I like to use up paint from my palette by scraping it on blank pages and then I come back later and draw over them and lastly add random words I have found in magazines.  This technique makes for some wonderfully strange pages!