When I designed my Neato foam stamp, it was part of a suite of designs all based on some mid century modern stamp rollers I found in a vintage shop. I named all the patterns after slang words from the 1950’s and for the most part they were pretty abstract designs… except Neato just always reminds me of a fish LOL!
It’s kinda funny when you make a bunch of patterns and they really are just non-representational forms… but the more you work with them and get to know them they start to represent something. This is definitely what happened here and I am not alone either – a lot of you out there have seen the resemblance Neato has to a fish and I love that! We are on some similar mixed media wavelengths here :)
One of the first projects I made with Neato were these fish-themed Valentines. I hope you like puns too because I came up with a surprising amount of them… and I bet there are even more out there!
My Creative Squad got in on it too – in this art journal page Maura Hibbitts created an underwater scene using Neato and even an element from my Batik stencil to emphasize that sleek fishy body.
Marsha Valk created a series of cards and collage papers featuring Neato as a fish too, and she admitted it was hard to not add an eye to the stamped design haha.
But ok, maybe Neato doesn’t have to be a fish if that’s not what you are looking for… in fact I really like using it as a border in an art journal spread!
Neato can be just another abstract design that you can use as a tool for mark making in your artwork. In the above I combined it with my Far Out and the back of my Space Oddity foam stamps to create a more complex pattern.
And finally here is my friend Kim from one of our playdates where we used Neato and other foam stamps to make shrink film earrings – pretty Neato accessories if I do say so myself.
So whether you see a fish or just a cool looking design, I will of course never get tired of seeing just how you use my Neato foam stamp! Tag me and share your projects with me, fishy or not :)
“I have to remind you that Your Kindness is Due! ” – We can definitely use some more kindness :)
I grabbed a bunch of different stencils (Art Deco Empire, Art Deco Fairview, Amsterdam, and Toledo) and I used them with a blender tool and Distress Inks and Distress Oxide Inks which I applied through the stencils.
Lady liberty is stamped with green acrylic paint onto printer paper and cut out. The “I have to remind you” is from an old letter copy that I cut out. The tag is old – no clue – it was in the magic drawer LOL. I adhered these all with my fav glue stick.
But before I collaged in the tag, I traced it with a Derwent water soluble sketching pencil on the top and dissolved some of the pencil with a brush inside the traced tag. Then I added journaling with a thin black Posca pen.
This art journal page came together in many stages. First I glued down collage paper like old letter pieces and parts of a pattern sheet I created a while ago (with my Mini Motifs and Triangle Love rubber stamp sets) using Gel Medium. I didn’t really know where this page was going to go – and so I just let each step inform the next. Hence the wildness of the page :)
Next I added some pink acrylic paint with a palette knife to tie the collage pieces together. I placed my Santa Fe Stencil on top and scraped some gesso over the stencil with a palette knife. It is raised but very thin, so it still works well in an art journal.
After it dried I used a water-soluble Derwent Pencil to sketch out the face. Instead of going over it with a brush, I used a Faber Castell white brush pen, creating a grayish, brushstroke-like effect. Later I went over it with a green acrylic pen as well. I then used a Posca marker for the journaling.
I finished up the page by stamping my Actually I Can rubber stamp.
This page reminded me how much I love playing with heavy body paints or gesso through stencils- and I definitely will visit this again. It is funny how play can sometimes remind you of techniques that you used to use a lot, that maybe you moved away from as you continued on your path and the next stage in your artmaking. If I pull out my earlier art journals I can definitely say for me it used to be all about actual texture in my journals.
Hello from my Creative Squad! Today we have a post from Jordan Hill who is sharing with us a bit of mail art using my Triangle Love and Birds stamp sets, “The World’s Pinkest Pink” powdered paint, and our theme: Wish You Were Here – This time let’s think about those old travel postcards, or someone you are missing or haven’t seen in a while, or maybe a place that you are missing. The message is loud and clear: Wish you were here!
Hello everyone! I’m very excited to be back with my project for September; I thought a fun way to interpret this month’s theme of “Wish You Were Here” would be to create a postcard! I love working in a smaller size, so the 4″x6″ base was perfect for me. I hope you enjoy following along with this process!
A friend recently sent me a powder pigment that is marketed as “The World’s Pinkest Pink”, and I really wanted to experiment with it. I mixed some of the pigment up with water, then painted it over my background in a very haphazard kind of way. The brightness of this particular pigment is so intense that I cannot show it accurately in photos, but just know that it is very bright!
Once the pink background was dry, I used Nathalie’s “Empire Triangle” rubber stamp with some Black Archival Ink to create a repeating pattern over my background. These small motif stamps are perfect for creating patterns!
Next, I started to create a figure with a piece of collage. This particular piece started out as a full illustration, but I cut the body and hair away from the face of this particular scanned image, then glued it down. Sometimes partial images can be a great way to give yourself a jumping off point without committing to anything too intensely.
I then followed my typical illustration process to give the face a body and hair. Once that had been completed, I then used another of Nathalie’s stamps, this time the “Nightingale” stamp, to stamp onto white tissue paper. I then glued that image to my postcard using Mod Podge and a paintbrush, to make it look like my figure had a bird on their shoulder!
To finish up this postcard, I used a dip pen and some Speedball Calligraphy Ink in Super Black to add a border around the edges of my postcard, as well as to write the words “missing you” in the upper right hand corner of the card. I thought that particular sentiment matched the theme for this month, and it was a nice final addition to the postcard!
Though this month’s project is more on the simple side (for me), I quite like the way this card turned out, and I’m excited to get it in the mail! I hope you enjoyed following the process of creating this postcard and that you try creating one of your own!
Thank you Jordan – love how you used the Bird on her shoulder!
Give it a try: you can find all my Rubber Stamps in my Online Shop and in addition to her collage bits, here are some of the supplies Jordan used:
Looking for more inspiration from the Creative Squad? Follow them on Instagram here.
Happy Monday and welcome to another pattern in my big vintage ledger! This time I’m using my Solid Hex Small rubber stamp and a stamp from my Hex Set Small rubber stamp set – the Space Oddity Small stamp. I am really digging the simplicity of this pattern and would actually love to have this as a tile floor at home – although maybe in another colorway lol. Enjoy the video:
Strolls through my hood get me out of my studio, they help me get unstuck and often I get inspired by what I see and get new ideas to create something. It is part of my philosophy about Artful Adventures in Mixed Media – which is the subject of my book. Here are some photos that I gathered in the last couple weeks.
I don’t know what happened but our fig tree in the garden that never yielded in more than one fig a year is on steroids this year. I am not exaggerating to say I had about a 100 figs at least- the picture above is just one day’s harvest. My favorite way to eat them is sprinkled with feta cheese and then baked in the oven …nom nom nom – so good as a side with all kinds of things. That being said – I really hope next year will be another fig year :)
I got a lot of messages about the flooding after the storm a couple weeks ago. It was terrible- but we personally have no damage – we had some water in the basement – but many of our neighboring businesses and friends and family have not fared too well. It is heart breaking to see people being displaced and all the personal belongings on the side of streets. Many places in the city that never flooded before were flooded and given the fact that this is going to be a more occurring phenomenon in the future, I hope we all are doing more to change our behaviors to do our part regarding Climate Change. It is real !
After the storm due to water problems we had a 4 day water boil advisory in place. Another terrible side effect of such storms. Throughout the city were some of those water “thimbles” and stations to get bottled water. In such an event you realize how privileged we are with our clean water …never have to think about it when washing our food, brushing teeth, giving it to our pets etc. I am not complaining – I am just saying it is a humbling experience and we were again lucky, at least one county in NJ (Passaic) had a boil water advisory for at least 2 weeks in place.
I am never getting tired of this view when biking down to Liberty Park.
I left a little mailbox in the park – I am not sure if someone found it and wondered what the heck this is, but it makes me smile to think someone did – maybe a kid – that would be cool. I know I would have delighted in finding this as a kid :)
In cat news …Mingus is being hilarious as always …He loves the banister and railing – we do not like that too much as we are afraid one day he is gonna fall badly.
Bobby Pretzel loves being on my desk- sometimes trying to interrupt me while working on my computer. He is sleeping next to my keyboard as I am typing and if you watch any of my webinars ArtCollab or Spill your heART, he is 90% of the times also right next to me then :)
another ride in the park – this one was a little fall indicator before it got crazily hot again.
Mushroom galore!
Loved seeing some life jazz music on this corner …It is funny how it really changes the mood of people when they walk by and then stop in their tracks and enjoy some life music.
Some new murals! This one is by Distoart , he always amazes me.
“This one is for the workers that built the tunnels. This one is for Gene from DPW. This one is for the David’s throwing rocks at Goliath. This is for those rocks mined from the tunnels being the ones that smash the windows of Kushner’s skyscraper. This one is a reminder that the truth always wins.”
“Shauquethqueat’s Eutrochium. A so-called Joe Pye weed, (not a weed but a native wildflower here), rises with the sun, facing off the skyline across the Hudson. A vision of Nature winning, of plants being the ones towering over us for a change, putting us back in our place. May we learn. May they come back.”
Hope you enjoyed this stroll through the hood. See you next month for another one :)
Be careful Mingus!
That train looks like it’s going into a real tunnel…wow.
I always love your strolls. As a child I would have been THRILLED to find that mini-mailbox.
It felt so good to be back at MoMA last month – since I haven’t been there for 18 months. On our anniversary we went for a nice day in the city and a fantastic dinner – and so MoMA was a big part of the nice day.
I am not obsessed with cars, in fact most of you probably do not even know that I never had a driver’s license- yep …true city kid here – but …if you would give me this car..I would def. get one LOL. What a beauty!
Love this painted car hood by Judy Chicago. Judy Chicago actually enrolled at an auto body school in order to learn spray painting after she completed her masters of arts.
I did love this mobile – I forgot the name but it was something with snow …which makes sense. If it wasn’t something with snow..well, I am sticking to it …it should be ;)
I have never seen his pieces made out of steel wire- they were so cool – the movement and shadows!
So fun!
I would take this little marquette- it makes me so happy and it would fit perfectly into my studio ;)
The other big exhibition at this time was Cézanne’s Drawings – a gazillion sketches and studies by him. I have to admit I wasn’t really taken by this exhibition. Although I do love to see sketches and studies and where they are going, it felt just so repetitive to me and it felt more like a sketch dump to me than really a curated exhibition. But then …what do I know …I also didn’t do the work to read anything about the show to see if that then would make more sense. But I loved the Study of Trees above.
As well as this sketch and the drawings below
because they were so different and I would have loved to actually see if they resulted in something else
Love how Cèzanne painted the pattern on the curtain!
In the permanent collection some changes- loved to see this piece by Roberto Matta “Here, Sir Fire, Eat!” from 1942 . There is a lot to see in this painting and I am still not sure what alludes to this title!
This painting by Sonja Sekula “The Town of the Poor” 1951 – oil on canvas- was just stunning. the blue and yellow washes – the lines depicting the view from her downtown NYC studio which she sahred with John Cage and Merce Cunningham.
Now to pieces by William H. Johnson – Jitterbuggs II above and below Blind Singer.
Both pieces are Screenprints with hand additions.
Norman Lewis, Untitled 1949 …it is funny sometimes I am cool with no title and sometimes I think “lazy Dude” LOL.
And then you have titles like this “Five Feet of Colorful Tools” by Jim Dine …stating the obvious but nonetheless pretty cool :)
The Family by Marisol Escobar – paint and graphite on wood, sneakers, tinted plaster, door knob and plate. Marisols sculptures made primarily with blocks of wood combine painting and figurative drawing with found objects. “In the beginning, I drew on a piece of wood because I was going to carve it, and then I noticed that I didn’t have to carve it, because it looked as if it was carved already”
Tom Wesselmann – Still LIfe #57 – speaking of lazy titles LOL.
And in this potpourri of artwork – my favorite of that stroll – Noah Purifoy – Unknown 1967 – painted wood with parasol armature and handle, found wood, pasted papers, backgammon and poker chips, fishing pole, wire, birdcage parts and other materials.
“As a young artist in Los Angeles, Purifoy was profoundly influenced by the 1965 Watts Rebellion, six days of civil unrest by residents of Watts and other predominantly African American neighborhoods of the city in response to decades of racial injustice. In the event’s aftermath, the artist collected charred debris form the streets and assembled it into a series of sculptures, a technique that would define his practice for years to come. Unknown, though more joyful and playful than other of his works, is a rare surviving example of his early assemblages. With its easily identifiable castoff objects, it suggests a question central to Purifoy’s practice “How …you tie the art process in with existence.” (MoMA wall plaque)
Join me tomorrow, September 24th at 12noon ET for my latest Spill your heART episode! I’ll be chatting with 3 artists who I interviewed last year as part of my Artists in Residence interview series – when we were all in lockdown and “artists in residence” at home.
Mario Robinson, Natalya Khorover, and Rhian Sweirat will be here to talk about what they are up to, how those lockdown projects turned out, and to let us know how they are approaching their artmaking these days.
Spill your heART is my monthly webinar series where I get together with artists from around the world to discuss the nitty gritty of being an artist, creating, finding inspiration, staying on top of things, navigating social media, and so much more! It’s a great platform for sharing experiences and advice and best of all, our audience gets a chance to participate in the discussion in the live chat and can even ask the panelists questions live in the Q&A. Register to attend this live event.
“Strive to create a world you might never live to see!”
I stamped my Row Houses foam stamp with acrylic paint onto the ledger and then added a sketch of the row houses on top. I also used some collage paper – an old letter and old prints of mine.
I had initially painted a lot of the background with yellow paint but I didn’t like it going over the top of the building so I toned it down a bit with a Gesso wash.
Then I added some stamping with my Mini Motifs rubber stamps and speckled some paint.
Love the message and the sneaker.
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