Ima (as my college friends say) attempt to organize what I did today so I can remember.  I am experimenting with glazing, ie putting small amount of medium (linseed oil, walnut oil, walnut alkyd, maybe plus oms or spike lavendar oil(which smells confusingly like earl gray tea, except 8 billion times stronger)), and then a tiny drop of paint and beating it in. Really a tiny drop on two bristles, otherwise it isn’t so glazey.

So all of this is day 1 of these projects, or else day 1 of the new incarnation of these projects, or whatever, nothing is done or close to done.

So first, this is wet paper I glued onto board.  I was thinking about my friend Casey’s latest piece, which reminded me of icons of loved ones, timeless yearning of the soul, ancient wedding dresses and babies, and was beautiful.  He uses a lot of tape.

Walnut oil and then a lot of paint on the toilet, so not really glazing.

This is watercolor and ink, also not near finished

I went back into this with a micron and colored pencils.

Raw canvas, made it wet then beat it with walnut ink

Board end.  I sanded it with sandpaper by hand, which I like doing, and then I got out the dremel stylus with my new tungsten carbide saw attachment, and then it started raining.  And I hand carved some stuff on top, this is going to have other things on the surface (after I finish shaping the surface): draw into it, draw into it and add charcoal in the grooves, paint with acrylic in thin lines, over top of which will be silver or other metallic acrylic.

I am still obsessed with this thing.

My dremel stylus.  Gloggh.

This is from last summer.  Went over it with fake copal, which since it darkens and yellows I thought would look interesting.  The company (Grumbacher) says that since the product darkens and yellows, they don’t recommend it except for impermanent painting.  I was going to exclaim over that, but now that I think about it, I guess impermanent painting exists, why not.  I like the idea of things being definitely non-archival too.  Fuck all that museum stuff and grandchildren stuff, let it decay, right?

Now glaze.  Undercoating. Walnut and Chromium Deep Green (sennelier).  I also have Chromium green light, which is a yellow-green, and sap green, which is quite like chromium deep–the last being Old Holland paint.  This is such a light wash that it’s totally different from the stuff straight out of the tube.

Walnut Alkyd and Pthalo Turquoise (Williamsburg).  Also totally unlike straight from the tube which is a beautiful peacock kind of color.

I did a couple others, linseed oil and red, yesterday, and then went over it with fake copal today, and then did another red one with walnut alkyd and copal which was a horrid mess, added some oms and it all disintegrated.  In general the copal treats me like stand oil, very sticky and beads up.  I’m not a scientist, reader, I don’t want to know what the problem is, I just want it to come out of the bottle and feel good and copal and stand oil don’t feel good to me.  I do like spike lavendar (thinner) but it does stink.  I like oms too.  Haven’t used turpenoid in a long time because it just is so freaking toxic, which is why I haven’t bought dammar varnish and venetian turpentine either.  I did get a bottle of Gamvar which I can’t wait to use but apparently must wait to use.  Some other kind of varnish too.  I love shiny things.

resurrecting an old frying pan painting I started last summer.  This has linseed oil, fake copal resin, and I think walnut oil. Three different greens too.  Top left is chromium green light, right of that is sap green, bottom is chromium green deep.

Grey gesso and black acrylic, then white-out and the fuzzy white stuff is Daniel Smith watercolor ground.  Not sure where this is going.

Larger panel.  I started with walnut alkyd under this and the panel makes it dry fast.

Routing into my heart. Ahem.

Upstairs in poorly-lighted cement staircase, under the roof, where I feel like the mad troll of our building

other half of mad troll lair

Our bathroom

And our living room.  I’m moving all that into my studio next week.

This is Old Holland oil on pre-gessoed boughten panel, linseed oil medium.  Did I tell you I have decided never to wash my brushes? I just keep them in a can of olive oil.  I did buy some oms just in case I decide to clean them, because cleaning them with olive oil and soap is just not really that great.  I have a whole list of things I want to try, walnut oil and alkyds and dammar varnish as an intermediate glaze, and gamvar, and venetian turpentine…so many other things too.  And I got a dremel stylus for mother’s day and it is wonderful.  I pretend I am the dental hygienist who left to become a laser hair-removal person. Debbie.  Sweet.

So the above is a little sculpture or painting.  What’s the difference? It’s definitely an object.  It’s totally dry in this picture but the paint is iridescent violet and (I am choking on drool as I write this) so hot in person.  The substrate is mineral gel gesso, Galeria brand.  Drool drool.  I used to feel this way about fabric, in fact I still do, but I had no idea that that is actually the very point of it all.  The materiality.  Among other points, of course.

Is that the world on fire over there?

Soon we will go through the process of making a mold of this.  Soon.

To me the above oval is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever made or had a part in making.  Totally serious.  It’s plaster.

Oh reader, this was fun and I wish you had been here with me.  I went out this morning with a little bucket and collected broken-down concrete, from sand to little pebbles.  Then I mixed up some plaster and put all the aggregate (that’s the right word, isn’t it?) in and splopped it all over a board which this morning I cradled (using an electric screwdriver and a drill, also very enjoyable). And I have about five different spatulas to use to spread it around! Frosting! Gack! Enjoyable!

Funny that, because a girl from school said that Koi watercolors were most enjoyable, so of course I ran out and bought some.  They are also non-toxic, unlike my other ones.  This was fun, the colors are indeed bright, but somehow because it was her thing it was not as enjoyable as my thing, which is also watercolor.  Whatever.

This was from a while ago.  Thanks, dragon mom!

Above is a medium drawing of pens.  I’m thinking in this case my drawing teacher was right when he said my tight rendering of things are medium at best.  This is not a great drawing.  On the other hand, he thought my mark-making was beautiful.  Something else he liked, what the hell was it? Reality? Lines.  Oh yeah, materiality.  I like materials.  I love art school.

So here was the downside of the Koi watercolors, this became quite drab, except for the sky which is ink. Oh ink! I love you ink! So luminous.

I hate this, which probably means it means something that I don’t want to think about.  I was so antsy last night, restless, uncomfortable.  I think I know why, but I’m usually wrong.  Anyway, byproduct or product of that above. Bye!

2. long panel that I made and cradled, frog creature

3. large canvas with grey gesso and white out

4. tiny canvas with modelling paste

5. small wood panel with casein underpainting and silver acrylic

6.  small canvas with glue and then “silver glimmer” spray fabric paint $^#&#&^ clogged up

7.  ink and watercolor on tissue paper and tracing paper.  Must get archival of same.  then tear and cut and collage onto drawing on canvas.

8.  thinking about paper mache and other messy things

9.  thinking about painting with slip (clay)

10.  statuette.  mold?

11. abstract sculpture.  requires molding.

12.  Large watercolor on etching paper

13.  My new arches 300 wt watercolor pad which I am afraid of!

14. Drawings

Reader, you have no idea how annoying it is to clean all this up every day. Or maybe you do.

I’m listening to Philip Glass, “the hours.” Right on. Reader.

I miss Mike Simanoff.

Do you know what’s going on, reader? Oh. All right. I don’t either.

Periodically it occurs to me that things I’m eating are doing weird things to me.  What makes Hot Tamales hot? (the candy, not the tamale) What is that stuff? And there was something in my Turkish Coffee.  No, you’re weird.  No, you’re weird.  No, you’re weird.

What’s new with me, well school just finished and I have so many paintings and drawings that I am unable to deal with it all right now.  Plus I have to take real photos of them for my real art blog.  Plus…summer time and the living is whatever it is in summertime.  I like daily life.

But geez, reader.  Geez.

If I experience love, that is so forceful that it shines through that web or frozen mantle and I can see the whole again.  But the brain never ceases to spin and freeze and concretize.  I am always thinking also about the layer of crust on top of molten lava–I can feel the motion and the stuff under there, but I’m standing on this shiny, beautiful, rigid surface.  When some switch flips, I don’t know how, I feel the motion and see the colors and heart the sounds–like a tree full of parrots, red and green and rustling and doing birdy noisy things.

So how does one get rid of this imaginary, self-created barrier? It can happen miraculously, which is nice.  I think to avoid it, it’s like avoiding any sin–not by delving into it and trying to understand it–that’s just more web.  Maybe it will always exist because our brain is always there.  But we can see through it.  We can go straight through to what’s underneath–without trying, that is the most important part, because it’a presumptuous to attempt something like that, it’s impossible, it doesn’t need us to try when it is the basic ground of existence.  Whatever is real in the self is always there anyway, always felt.  The sovereignty of the web-maker is what has to be exterminated–that’s not the real self anyway, that’s brainy fabrications and lies.  Does this sound crazy? I wonder.  Does the rest of the plastic, Disneyfied, self-mutilating, guilt-ridden world sound crazy to me? Yes… That is what has to be ignored, although it is so distracting and full of child molestation and the other terrible news of the day.  That’s the work, rejecting that over and over.  And then grace…whatever that is, that provides everything, it already is everything.  Bye, reader!