Leaf Ghost #33

Back to firsts. This is my first try with Koi water-based markers. They worked pretty much the same as the Tombow markers, so I’m pleased with the result. That’s XBR-237 Light Sky Blue, XBR-125 Sky Blue, XBR-130 Sap Green, XBR-27 Yellow Green, and XBR-49 Black.

I made a handful of mistakes, which you can spot if you look closely. I guess I got distracted by the impending end of the Thanksgiving break. Still, it was nice to complete one more creative project before the end of the month.

This was also a mini milestone of sorts: I’ve reached the midway point in the sketchbook I’m using for leaf ghosts. It has 60 pages, so I should have made it to the middle three ghosts ago. But I’ve done three of them using paper and board outside the sketchbook.

Leaf Ghost #32

It’s been a year of many firsts for the leaf ghost project, but this entry is a last. I’ve decided to stop using Noodler’s Ink. I used Dragon’s Napalm, Black and Blue, and Black for this ghost, and when I was done I threw the lot of it out (along with a bottle of Sequoia Green).

My primary motivation for the move was the controversy surrounding the labeling of some of the company’s products. I was also disappointed in Noodler’s response to the problem. A lot of its renaming struck me as passive-agressively petulant. I don’t know these folks personally, so for all I know they may not actually be malicious right wingers. But at the very least this whole mess represents a lapse in taste that drags politics into the realm of art supplies.

I’m a big fan of political art. I’m even capable of appreciating the design skills of artists with whom I ideologically disagree. But when I sit down in my creative space to work on something peaceful and meditative such as a leaf ghost, I don’t want my art supplies reminding me of the tense, contentious mess all around us constantly that I’m trying to shut out for at least a little while.

That said, I admit I’ve also had technical issues with Noodler’s stuff. It’s designed for fountain pens, which might have something to do with the trouble I’ve had getting it to flow evenly using dip nibs. And though I don’t know this for a fact, I suspect it’s best suited for paper types other than the mix media sketchbook I’m using for most entries in the leaf ghost series.

If nothing else, I get annoyed with its tendency to smear. The green in particular took forever to dry. This one wasn’t too bad. I got a little smudging from the red, and the black would have made a mess if I hadn’t saved it for last and been careful to avoid getting it on my hands while I was working.

It’s a shame, too. The label art on the Noodler’s Ink I bought was what first drew me to it. The colors are good (assuming one uses it for pen work rather than applying it with a brush). This should have been much better than it was.

Earworm – All alone at the ’64 World’s Fair

Continuing the tradition started with the last earworm, I’m not going to be coy about the source. This is from “Ana Ng” by They Might Be Giants. Recently I’ve been watching a lot of videos about Disney theme parks, and references to the “Small World” ride always remind me of this song.

The obvious inspiration is Mary Blair’s design work for the ride and other Disney properties. But I wanted it to look cold and commercial rather than warm and human like her watercolors.

The text proved tricky. My original plan was to use Stenciletta, which has separate faces for the left and right sides as well as the full characters. But to my chagrin, I found that the sides didn’t match up precisely.

 

So I switched to Phosphate and did the slicing and coloring manually.

I drew the doll heads myself and used Adobe’s skin tone swatches to vary their colors.

Metal Earth Model – Chandra X-Ray Observatory

My 25th Metal Earth build. Here’s a link to an excellent site about the real thing and the astrophysicist it’s named after.

This model had something I’ve been wanting from an ME kit: the trickiest part of the assembly was at the beginning. Sure, there’s a stage at the end where eight pins have to fit in place at once. But the tough part was getting the B4 and B5 pieces to bend and attach correctly. I also ended up putting on A29 sideways, which I didn’t notice until it was too late to do anything about it.

Otherwise this was a straightforward, relaxing assembly.

Leaf Ghost #31

Earlier this year I did some color testing with bottles of Higgins ink that I found in a container in my basement (right after I bought a bunch of new ink, naturally). But I just now noticed that I hadn’t used them for an actual leaf ghost. The green is green, but the brown turned out to be more of a reddish grey.

I know some of the other media I work with produce more visually dramatic results. But I find the ink-only pieces more psychologically soothing to create. There’s just something meditative about all those repetitive lines. Add some soft music, and it’s a great segue between a difficult semester and a much-needed Thanksgiving break.

Leaf Ghost #30

This one went all kinds of crazy. As a result, I learned a lot from it.

My original intent was to pay tribute to all the bright red leafs on the trees right now. So I decided to start with a solid watercolor leaf and then use ink to create the standard ghost effect. So basically like Leaf Ghost #21, only instead of airbrushing the watercolor I decided to wet-on-wet paint it with Art Creation Scarlet.

So the first lesson of the day was a reminder to work top to bottom. I ended up smearing a mess of still wet paint at the base of the stem, with the smudge going all the way past the bottom of the sketch. At an earlier stage in the project, I would have written this off as a loss. But this afternoon I found it kinda awesome. The result looked like a cross between a crime scene and a Rorschach blot.

I almost just left it the way it was. But then I decided to try some more subtle tricks with the ink. I used Winsor & Newton Sunshine Yellow for the background, starting with a tight cross-hatch at the top and then adding more space between the lines for each row going down. The result varies depending on how you look at it (literally rather than figuratively). If you see a smaller version of the image – or if I take my glasses off – the yellow fades from top to bottom. In a larger, more detailed view, the lines with more negative space around them actually stand out more prominently than the tighter patterns higher in the composition.

The ink on the leaf itself (Winsor & Newton Deep Red) follows the same cross-hatch patterns. Toward the top it disappears into the paint almost entirely, while at the bottom it’s much more visible. I did the shadow in the same color, and there it looks like dried blood (playing along with the crime scene theme).

I will definitely try this watercolor technique again, though I’ll try to be more careful about smearing next time. Though the fading effect is interesting, I’ll likely go back to inks that stand out against the paint rather than blending in.

Leaf Ghost #29

A brown autumn leaf on a wet sidewalk on a rainy day. Transformed into its former vibrant colors amid swimming pool blue. A brief meditation on a season gone by.

Tombow water-based markers for the first time since Leaf Ghost #1. The inks are 451 Sky Blue and 452 Process Blue for the background, 192 Asparagus and 177 Dark Jade for the leaf, and N25 Lamp Black for the shadow.

I should have done a better job cleaning my straight edge after the last marker ghost, as there was some leftover orange that bled into the blue (visible in row 5 column 2).