gymnopedie

Yea.. I think I'm going to have to forget about NaNoWriMo. I've got less time than I thought I would to illustrate the children's book (My Dad Can Beat Up Monsters)



( Full Size in here )

http://www.flickr.com/photos/spiralunwinding/3421305369/

http://www.spiralunwinding.com/

I See.

Tea, pencil, white paint.

Tea paper, gold & red gouach, black ink and pen.

couple of touch ups I missed in the ink... i'll fix it tomorrow. my eyes are zonkedout.


tea (Darjeeling tea), Japanese Sumo Ink (I swear this bottle is like 10 years old, finally almost empty!), and gold gouache. Let this sit for a while because I couldn't figure out how to lighten her up. Darjeeling tea stains dark very quickly, not light like some of the other's I've used, but I'm not fond of the flavor so it's been reduced to stain tea. I'll just have to keep remembering to hold off on the third 'coating'.



16x20'ish. ...not for sale until Gencon.

a sexual attraction to trees or plants




roughly 4x6in, tea paper, gouache, watercolor
$25 + shipping (3 states, 5 elsewhere) laura@fallenlights.net

AAAAAAAAAAAAH! IT WORKS! *Squeals in delight*

Had scraped the painting I was trying to do for the Stilt walker, and was teaing the backside using the usual process (enough tea it goes under the paper, soaks all the way through)

and I just flipped over the paper to give the blank new working surface some texture and the stilt walking painting I'd started WORKS

pictures will be edited in if they come out *eating right now*


( Images here )

The more I look at this, the more I see a squid. Hrrrr.

Not sure if she's 100% done, but I've been 2 inches from her vines on and off this week and I need to look at something else.

Might do 4 of these.

The brilliance that I am, while painting this in the other day "Damn... the blue turned green"

No duh!

Tea paper 11x14 roughly...



sketch - http://fallenlights.net/WIP/east.jpg

Finished this one up tonight as well.

Another piece for someone else. They weren't sure what they wanted, so I sent them tea examples and I got an email back with 30 "!'s" in it :)

WIP, some reason this pose looks really familiar, and I cannot remember if I've used it before. Maybe just sketches.


only the top section, her vines trail off at the bottom.
I'm thinking I might try something different with painting her. we'll see.

Well, that wasn't very nice! Sneaking up on the poor girl and startling her.

almost there. watched 4 episodes on TNT of Law & Order yesterday and the last half of Perfume (straaaaange movie, really awesome soundtrack!)

have to line her, and another layer of paint.

sketches > http://gymnopedie.livejournal.com/480548.html


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oh... anyone that's sold art on Ebay? Can you throw me a few pointers? I'm guessing doing a sale that ends on a weekend is bad, and instead to have it end on like a tuesday/wed? No one seems to be online on weekends.

I want to put my emerald swampy girl up for sale and give it a whorl.

from this sketch: http://fallenlights.net/portfolio/traditional/emeraldqueen_lrg.jpg
which I might actually do a different version with more faces. but blues...
i might even do a red one?



roughly 10x20in.

I'm thinking I might try ebay with her. I had a lot of people interested while working on her at Gencon!

(click for larger)



Tea stained paper & watercolor 11x18

Rapunzel anyone?

Going to scan in the tattoos tomorrow, I think I've got a migraine brewing and I really don't want to fight photoshop and 8x18 drawings.


So.. here's something I worked on while watching 28 days later (since 28 weeks later is coming out next friday)





coffee & pencil so far. it's not really this bright, but I wanted to show the lines, so I upped the contrast. I like it like this, so I'm going to have to muck around with yellow paints.

I wanted to post this here because a lot of people elsewhere were always interested in this very simple (yet time consuming) process.

I'm sure you can mimic this with digital, as you can watercolors, oils, etc... but I've been doing traditional art since I was 2 (i'll be 27 soon, so it's been a while!) so I'm a bit biased when it comes to prefering the 'real' stuff.

this is a material that gives your work smell for a few weeks plus it's fun and can be messy if you bump your work space.

There is no right or wrong to this, accidents are GOOD.

What you need to do to prepair

1. Large work space that can be free for a WEEK or more.

2. Garbage bag. what ever size or color. size depends on your piece of paper. you want it to have a 'protective edge' so that the tea doesn't drop off onto the floor or table. you WANT it to puddle under the paper.

3. paper. I use watercolor paper for this. the good solid heavy stuff. I'm working on a paper illustration board right now, but I'm not sure if I like that better. It warps a bit too much.

4. tea or coffee. Tea stains light. Flavored tea sometimes does leave behind a slight tint. coffee is a nice rich color.


Get a container. Cup/teacup/bucket/bottle. Fill it with hot water (brews faster). Place what ever ammount of tea you want in there, or save the left overs of your morning coffee that has NOT been sugared and creamed. I start off with 3-4 bags in a normal drinking cup. This produces a mid-tone stain. Let it brew for how ever long you want. save the tea bags, you'll want to refill again, most likely.

While tea is brewing:

Rip garbage bag down one side (the kind I use were made from two plastic sheets, then melted together at edges and bottom). rip open bottom.

Lay it down on the table, leave wrinkles if you want, or pull taunt and tape. I prefer the wrinkles

Now, how I usually work is a blank piece of paper, then an image'll pull out of it as I work on it after it's all dried. (like looking at clouds, sometimes you 'see' something). The paper gets laid down WORKING side down. the 'wrong' side is where I pour my liquids. But, keep in mind, you might like the wrong side better in the end.

Why? Because over time, the tea will seap through the paper, as well as puddle around and fall off the edge of the paper (hense why bag needs to be bigger, this way it goes and collects underneath). smooth bags won't leave any creases in the staining, but wrinkled bags, where ever the tea can't collect, you'll have a lighter color'd tea.

Pour the whole cup onto the paper, smooth it down so that the whole paper is covered. Let it soak. Repeat as often as you want, though I usually let it dry a bit before adding more. Once the whole paper is covered, you can start pouring tea more on one side rather than the other. My newest piece I've got drying downstairs was done in this fashion because I already have a painting in mind and it needed one side to be darker.

I will also sometimes flip the paper around and stain both sides, then flip it back a day or two later.

It'll look like this:





Those pictures were taken a week into this process. It's a layer of almost dry tea, with about a cup of coffee for the wet spots.

I use my kitchen table since it's only there for storage anyways ;) My fiance and I don't use it for eating. But, since we walk past it every day, the table moves slightly, shaking the tea this way and that, then we leave for the day and it settles, drying where it had moved on it's own.

I came across this process in college for advanced drawing. We were making collages and the majority of it could not involve drawing. I soaked paper in a bin (about 2ftx3ft). I'd soak for a day, take it out, let it fully dry, soak for a day or two, pull out, etc etc etc. It turned the paper into this leathery texture. I did this for a [i]month[/i]



this is only one half of the picture and it's not really that yellow (blame walmart's lovely photo center for that). My father took this 4ft long collage of paper dolls in victorian dresses away from me and it's hanging in my parent's living room 20hour drive away. All those wrinkles came from the teaing where the paper got soft and crinkled a bit, then dried and the crinkles remained.

*****I HIGHLY RECOMMEND! That if you work with tea for longer than a week, that you dump out any tea you've been using and make new batches. Tea will rot if you leave it in water for too long and smell DISGUSTING.

I also do not know how long tea/coffee will last, but I'm guessing it's alright. That egypt collage was made back in 2000 and it's still fine.

Try to stay away from tea that's not 100% natural. (amazon tea, anything already pre-bottled/canned)

For painting on tea, I prefer using watercolor, acrylic doesn't sit too well on top of it. Inks work as well, as does drawing on top of it with pencil/pen.

here are some more examples of what it does:



(lighter areas are where the bag touched the underside of the paper, and the darker is where the tea was allowed to pool. some of the tea that soaked through leaves marks as well on the underside.)

(this was painting with tea w/brushes, then mixed black ink or white into it for shades)

it's pretty much the same with tea as it is with how i paint.

if you leave it undisturbed, the tea will leave lovely edges as it dries, pulling back to sometimes leave rings, etc.

Remember, this can take well over a week. Pouring, letting set, etc can be a day or two between. I tend to use a LOT of liquids, so the drying can take -days-

(click for larger at DA)

Tea, acrylic wash and pen on watercolor paper.. full image (including border) is 12x18in

Tea soaked paper! (I've got one more piece left before I have to take over the kitchen floor again. I'm thinking I might draw the druid birds on that one)

Kin to the Forest Goddess