Fiesta San Antonio Travel Journal

I created my travel journal about our April trip to visit friends in San Antonio quite some time ago but only today had the time to scan and photograph the book and its pages. 

This journal is an accordion book in a box, a re-purposed cigar box that's slightly larger than the 7 1/2 inch square book..

 Pieces of ephemera, postcards, maps, and brochures, that didn't make it into the journal are stored in the box along with the book itself.

I used a full sheet of watercolor paper which was painted randomly with bright colors to represent the excitement of Fiesta, and I brushed some thinned down gesso over areas of the paint to bring light into the colors. The reverse side is also painted but not in the same colorway, and will probably be treated as another trip journal someday.
The paper was folded into 7.5" sections to form the book and I strengthened the folds with bookbinders tape on the back.

While we were traveling I kept a journal of observations and sketches in my little Moleskine notebook that I carry with me all the time and didn't work on this until I returned home. I took care to collect ephemera of all kinds that could be used later in this travel journal.

What I look for includes postcards, maps, brochures, coasters, pins, name tags, and tickets.

Repurposing Children's Board Books

Children's board books, the kind with super heavy pages, make great substrates for small paintings.

PREPARE THE BOARDS:

1. Tear the book apart, page by page. Leave the tatters on the edges.
2. Tear strips of cotton fabric, any weight from gauze to heavy duck, whatever you have. The strips should be approximately the size and shape of the boards. It's okay that the edges won't line up. This fabric helps cover the original images and colors and is used to add texture. Skip this step if you want smooth pages.
3. Use any white glue (Elmer's, Sobo, PVA, etc.) to glue a strip of fabric to each side of each of the pages. Allow to dry.
4. Optional: Coat all surfaces with acrylic gel medium to seal in any acids.
5. Apply gesso liberally to all surfaces of the fabric and board. Dry.

USE THE BOARDS

1. For the above book I painted, stamped and stenciled my designs onto 5 prepared book pages, allowing paint to dry between coats.  I set 2 grommets in each page on the inner edges where one page would attach to another, and then used short chains to bind the pages together.
2. I have used some of the single pages for the substrate for small paintings. Sorry, no pictures available.
3. Some board books have large holes which can be useful to create a niche by gluing a page with a hole on top of a solid page and then put something into this niche.
4. Of course one could tell a new story on the painted pages.

Calla Lily - finished

Calla Lily
22 x 30"
acrylic on paper

Here's the completed painting. I like it more every time I come back to have a look.  If you click on the image you'll be able to see some of the detail. I'll put it away and put up another sheet of paper and see what happens.

Portrait of a Calla Lily

Painting again
I've been painting again and it sure feels good. It's been way too long since I felt the need to pick up my brush and move the paint around. What set me off was a bouquet of white calla lilies with their long stems and graceful shape. I very nearly waited too long to start... the blooms had started to turn brown on the tips before I set up at the easel. But since I don't want to worry about realism in my approach to the canvas I didn't let a few dead bits stop me.

The painting isn't finished but here's an early view to show you that I'm actually working.

And you can also see a bit of the area where I've set up my easel. It's a tight fit between a bookcase-turned-paint-storage unit and my flat files-turned-taboret. This isn't a perfect setup, mostly because the light is bad, but I'll play around here for awhile and see if it grows on me. I do like having the easel against the wall instead of in the middle of valuable floor space, and it's positioned so I can easily get a long view from across the room or even out in the hall.

Catalog as Journal
The Anthropologie catalog arrived in my mailbox a couple of days ago. Now mind you, the clothes in that store don't suit my style but whoever designs the catalog appeals to my sensibilities in a big way. The pages are spare with lots of negative space that just cries out for journaling and the beautiful scenes are perfect backdrops for more collage. Maybe Little Jo will go visit India along with Anthropologie.

My plan is to take the catalog apart by removing the staples.  Then I'll sew strips of fabric to the spine of each double page to stablize it, and add more bits of fabric and lace and collage bits here and there with machining. When I've redesigned the pages to suit myself I'll sew the pages back together and into a more sturdy cover, and I'll end up with a new daily journal for the rest of the spring.

My blog buddy Susie LaFond had a similar idea and posted about it on her blog today. Click here to read what she has to say.  I loved her encouraging words, "Go out and find a puddle to play in". Amen!

Painting Papers for Collage

I did it. You can, too. Here's how...

GATHER SUPPLIES.
Paper, white
...art tissue, wrapping tissue (not so strong)
...washi (aka Japanese rice paper)
...sumi paper
...copy paper (don't reuse paper printed with inkjet)
...book pages
...children's homework
...old drawings (why didn't I think of that yesterday?)
Plastic
...Large sheets of plastic such as painters use
...Cereal box inserts which are made of plastic. Cut off the rough edges.
...White trash bags, cut open at side and bottom to flatten
Paint
...Fluid acrylics
...ink
...tube or craft acrylic thinned with water to consistency of milk
Small plastic containers such as yogurt cups or deli cups, not paper cups
Brushes, cheap chip brushes or other flat brushes
Water. 
...one bucket
...one or two water bottles,
...spray bottle
* Optional: Several large trays covered with plastic wrap and taped to protect from paint. I use old plastic food trays once used in a school cafeteria.

You'll need a large table, several if you can manage, your kitchen counters, or a large expanse of floor or deck that no one will be needing for several hours.

SETTING UP TO WORK...
1. Cover your surfaces with the plastic dropcloth.
2. Put a layer of the large white trash bags on top. (this is so you can move    the wet paper elsewhere to dry once it's been painted)
3. Place papers in a single layer to cover the surface.

4. Mix paint with water. I used about 1 measure of paint to 2 or 3 measures of water. It takes about 2 tablespoons of the mix per large sheet of tissue paper.

PAINTING THE PAPER...
Work with one color family at a time, i.e. reds, oranges, yellows.
1. Spray the paper with water.
2. Paint the paper evenly with the paint/water mix.
3. Set aside to dry.
Continue until you run out of time and energy. 
Walk away from the papers and let them dry, depending upon the climate.

TIPS...
* The trays some in handy when I've run out of flat work surfaces and want to continue painting more papers. I protect the tray with plastic, build a sandwich on top of the try with painted papers interspered with layers of plastic. When I have 5 or 6 layers of painted paper/plastic sandwiched on the tray I stack the trays and set them aside. When other paper dries I peel it off the plastic and cover the surface with the individual wet layers from the trays.
I'm a bit obsessive about my painted paper. I iron it! I set up the ironing board, set the iron temperature to cotton, and iron everything flat.
There is absolutely no earthly need to iron your paper. I just like how it looks.

Many of my inks are iridescent and they create a wonderful sense of reflected light in the finished paper, but iridescent and metallic colors don't photograph well, so think of your end use. If you're making greeting cards that will be printed, don't use reflective paint.

Painting Collage Papers... again



Painted tissue

 You should see the mess in my studio! Yesterday the whole room and all the surfaces were tidy enough for company, but now a mere 24 hours later it's a royal mess. 

Painting Papers

You see, I enjoy using papers I've painted for my collages and although I hadn't run out of collage papers what I do have seems a bit tired to me and I wanted some fresh colors to work with... encouraged by once again watching Carrie Burns Brown DVD on preparing papers, Water Media Collage Workshop.  So last night I cleared off the big work table and covered it with 2 layers of plastic and a layer of tissue papers. I got out my box of Golden Fluid Acrylics, some water and some brushes and got to work.

First thing this morning I ran to the studio to see the dried papers. WOW, they're beautiful. So of course I spent most of today painting more pretty papers and now I'm waiting for them to dry. If I lived down south I could work outside and the acrylic would be dry almost immediately But this is Oregon, so I wait. It'll be worth it.  Then I'm paint some more until I'm satisfied that I have enough for awhile.

Wet papers drying on the work table

Acrylic paint has a limited shelf life.

Fluid acrylics, as well as tube colors, have a limited life. The fluids start solidifying after a couple of years, even capped and stored upside down. After awhile the product more closely resembles the consistency of acrylics that come in tubes, and after a few more years they go solid on you. Same with tube colors. They solidify in the tubes.  I had to toss a few and am determined to make use of what's still good.

Moral of this little story:  Buy only what you need. Use what you have.

Entering Easter, plus Worship Painting

Painting by Mike Lewis; music 'The Resurrection' from 'Passion of the Christ'

I don't know the details about when and where this worship painting was done but certainly in front of a crowd.   Easter Sunday at our church my friend Veronica will do a worship painting, starting with the 9am service and continuing through the 11 am service. I'm anxious to see her work.  A couple of months ago Anneli Anderson painted at our church and yesterday I helped hang a show of her work on the walls of our worship center.   Some day soon it'll be my turn. I'll let you know when just in case you want to come watch... and pray as I work.

So what is a worship painting?  It might turn out to be anything... there's no knowing ahead of time, but it's usually done in a church or at a retreat or a conference either during a time of singing and prayer or during the sermon and is the artist's response to what she/he feels God is leading her to do.  She might step up to the canvas with a clear plan of what she'll do, or she might step up totally empty of direction and simply start moving paint around until something happens on the canvas.  The expectation is that God will direct the brush to create something meaningful.

The purpose is not for entertainment but is a way of showing others how an artist might worship God... just as a singer or instrumentalist might do, or as a dancer. We are all different in how we approach God because he made us to be individuals with different minds and thoughts and understanding.

Fiesta San Antonio

 

Jo was in San Antonio

I suppose I should insert some mariachi music here to set the tone for this post... we've just spent a joyful week in San Antonio visiting old friends and going to some Fiesta events. Let me tell you that traveling from Oregon to South Texas is a shock to the system. The day before we left the temperature at home was 37 and it snowed briefly in my back yard; when we arrived in SA the temperature was a sunny 94 degrees. Believe me, I said a prayer of thanks for air conditioning in the car and in the house. 

What's with the shadow photo, you ask? Sometimes we get home without a single picture of me in our stack of vacation pictures so I've started taking in-situ shadow photos to prove that I really was along for the ride.

Tree moss, similar to Spanish Moss



San Antonio Library



Making Photographs

I've loved taking photographs since school days and though I don't call myself a photographer I own a huge box of old cameras and use two, a pocket-sized Canon PowerShot SD700IS for note-taking and a Canon Rebel XTI. I carefully take photographs as a means of remembering and as a form of sketching when I don't have time to stop and draw. Through years behind the viewfinder I've developed an eye for composition that's translating in a strong way to my collages and paintings. I've learned to frame images... to avoid placing the focus smack dab in the middle of the frame, to let the images touch the edges of the frame and feather off, to balance objects even if it means that I lose some of the actual elements of the scene, and I've learned to shoot photos that will transpose into paintings or at least inform future paintings as far as color, composition, pose, and so on.

at the Alamo

We visited two of the five missions, Mission San Jose and the Alamo.  San Jose was unusual to me because the only others I've seen were in California and this was quite different with its walls enclosing several acres of open courtyard. Rooms were built into the walls making them tall and difficult to penetrate.  On the other hand the Alamo had low walls and wasn't so easy to defend.  No one forgets the Alamo and the great loss of life there and in 1891 a group of women organized the parade called Battle of Flowers to honor the heros of the Alamo, now called Fiesta.

Mr. Bull

We attended a Lutheran church service where Fiesta Princesses in colorful gowns with long trains made a processional down the aisle to a mariachi band, with a silent auction and raffle and picnic in the parking lot. I won a Kindle in the raffle and a metal sculpture of a Texas longhorn bull in the silent auction. Anyone want to buy a bargain Kindle? You can't have Mr. Bull.

Riverwalk is a central SA destination... it's a place where the San Antonio river makes a big loop in the downtown, its route directed by manmade concrete walls and locks to control the waterflow. Riverwalk is where you eat in center city... lined with dozens of restaurants on 3 levels, all with open air dining. We enjoyed lunch there one day and dinner the next at the famed Fiesta River Parade of lighted boats filled with local dignitaries. We were guests of people who had reserved riverside seating.

My husband and I both have a thing for trees... he grows them in our tree nursery and I draw and photograph them.. and we love to visit botanical gardens wherever we travel. The one in San Antonio is quite wonderful, almost too much to see in one visit. One section of the garden replicates a bit of the Hill Country with its rolling terrain and plants.



Farmhouse at San Antonio Botanical Gardens



Texas Bluebonnets

Apparantly one doesn't go to south Texas without visiting the Hill Country and we went, too, hoping to see fields of Texas Bluebonnets, a member of the lupine family of flowers. We saw a few, mostly in patches beside the road, but no fields of blue because of the severe drought.

Live oak trees at Lukenbach, Texas post office

But I was taken aback by the beauty of the live oak trees that cover the hillsides and grow in most yards. The trees are quite contorted and the older ones are majestic.

LaFonda hostess



And on our last day we had lunch on the patio at La Fonda, an excellent Mexican restaurant where the surroundings were gorgeous and the hostess was lovely.

Yes, I was there, too.

Dwelling - House with red roof and a map

House with Red Roof and Map

5x7 collage

Little Jo plays in the front yard of a very strange but wonderful house. Door photo with implied architectural features and giant flowers.



Dreaming of a Brown-eyed Beau

Little Jo - Dreaming of a Brown-Eyed Beau

5x7 collage with photos

The background of this collage is composed of 3 different red painted papers. the photo inserted is me with my future husband at a fraternity valentine party, c. 1958.