Hey!

Who wants to watch the season premiere of 30 Rock a week early?

Me & My New Bestie

Gouache. You cheeky bastard. You had me fooled a few years ago. I thought you were annoying, stupid, impossible to work with. I will blame this partially on the lack of gouache technical direction I got from my design teacher. I tried to treat you like any other paint, but you weren't like that. You were your own animal. Why didn't anyone tell me?

I became reacquainted with gouache through the work of Kara Walker:

Untitled, 1996

They Say Water Represents the Subconscious in Dreams from the series American Primitives, 2001

Middle Passages, 2004

It's opaque and much more textural than watercolor. As I veer further and further away from literal translation of imagery (i.e. photorealism) and start to experiment with collageing and photo techniques, I think that discovering how to use gouache will be very useful. First, I already know it can be used to make very nice and graphic text that also looks slightly distressed:

This is the cover of a book I've been working on for my (now finished, whoo 8 week classes!) Japanese paper making course. I traced the type from my computer and then filled it in with white gouache. This is a look I really respond to because it's hand done but it looks really graphic and doesn't venture into Holly Hobby the way hand written text (especially text hand written by me) tends to.

I also like how it can be used kind of like white charcoal--and opaque white line on a darker paper.
This is a very simple collage on page one of the book--> the girl was a line drawing done on a darker grey paper that I cut out and glued onto the eggshell white of the page. The text on the pager was once again traced from the computer, but this time I lined it out in watercolor. All of the shadows and atmosphere color has been created by watercolor. Once again, I like the line this hovering between graphic and hand done.
I don't feel that this page spread is quite as successful as the last one, but this book was really more experimental so I'm not overly concerned. One thing I learned was to always make sure you have really sharp Exacto knives if you're going to insist on doing a detailed cut out. That was not fun. Actually, just steer clear of Exacto knives and get a surgical scalpel. They have a much more ergonomic design and are MUCH sharper. I mean, they're meant to cut through layers and layers of skin with great precision, so they can probably handle some 120 lb cold press paper. You can pick them up at Talas Online. I recommend going with handle #6 and blade #25.

Anyway, I prefer this spread:
I guess only wish I'd worked a little more of the gold into the other side. It looks a little violet heavy there.

There is more, but I'm effing exhausted. I'll post the rest tomorrow.

Also, everyone's favorite stuffed bear, Paddington, made it onto the google search page for his birthday!

This was a while ago (Oct. 13) but still, happy birthday, Paddington!

Finally, this comic made me laugh because I just turned in a (very bad) chapbook for my advanced poetry class a week or so ago:
A la pictures for sad children.