Experiment ~ acrylic gesso and gloss gel medium on matboard

...and finished with Ranger alcohol ink. I've wanted to give this a try to see if it would work and I'd say it was successful. I used a dried bloom of a large ornamental grass and embedded it with Liquitex acrylic gesso onto 3/16" white matboard. I've done this before with dried oak leaves (link) . I then gave it a coat of Liquitex Gloss Gel medium diluted with a little water. When that was dry I rubbed walnut ink over the entire surface and wiped away the excess. The walnut ink ran into all the nooks and crannies and gave the piece an antiqued look. I could've stopped there but I wanted to see how Ranger ink behaved on the gloss medium so when that was dry I gave this another light coat of gloss medium. It served to preserve the effects of the walnut ink and gave me a slick surface to apply the alcohol ink. Then I added the ink and found it moved well on the gloss surface. I had a bit more control than on Yupo but the effects were basically the same. I used Ranger's Caramel, Clover and Copper mixative.

Merganser ~ drawing

I may have been silent for awhile but I have been working on a few projects. One project is an experiment and is still in the works. I'll be posting about that in the near future. I did get this drawing of a merganzer duck completed and it's ready for transfer to working paper. I will probably be using watercolor to complete this one.

I'll never forget the moment I saw my first merganser. It was a very large female with her brood of 10-12 duckings. She was resting on a large flat boulder near the shoreline of Lake Michigan, her babies scurrying all around her. Mergansers have a impressive auburn 'DA' on their heads and I thought she was the most amazing duck I had ever seen. I can only hope to do this duck justice with paint.

Note: My reference photo is courtesy of Sandy Witvoet, an avid birdwatcher and fellow gardener. Sandy has a Michigan birding site, complete with interactive forum. If you are interested in joining or would just love to see all the incredible photos on the site, please check out Michigan Birding Network .

Mr Doob Crows

I'm feeling much better but my time away from my art has left me searching for renewed inspiration. I've browsed my photo files but found nothing that excites me so today I played with Mr Doob. The weather here in northern Michigan has begun to shift from arctic tundra conditions to something near normal and it's brought out a flock of crows which I've enjoyed sketching. My sketches are crude so I decided to try my hand at some digi art. For those not familiar with Mr Doob (link) it's a free digital art program that tests not only your drawing skills but your skills at maneuvering a computer mouse as well. If you follow the link I provided, click on the color wheel icon on the menu at the top of the page to use the sketching features. I did put the top image into GIMP photo editing program to 'feather out' the feathers.

A Cemetery Mink

Sometimes I don't feel like making happy, beautiful art. Sometimes it's fun to explore something a little darker in nature. For some odd reason I've had a quote from an unknown author running through my head lately and at the time I first read it, it evoked a visceral reaction that has stayed with me long afterward. It's from the book 'Silence of the Lambs' by Thomas Harris and although it was printed in italic(making the reader assume it's a quote) no author has been named. How delightfully mysterious. In context, it appeared as an errant thought/reaction FBI agent Clarice Starling, the heroine, had when observing the villain, Dr. Hannibal Lector during one of their encounters:

He's a cemetery mink. He lives down in a ribcage in the dry leaves of a heart.

How deliciously creepy! For all the descriptive passages I read regarding Dr. Lector, this quote made me truly feel the character. I thought of a black mink that had made a home by burrowing into an old grave and setting up home in a cage of rib bones, cushioned by rotting funeral garb. Makes perfect sense to a mink...right? As an analogy to a man though...well, it speaks volumes toward this character's 'creep factor'. But anyone that has read this book or seen the movie already knows 'creep' doesn't begin to describe Lector. One aside: I took a good friend to this movie when it first came out in a local theater. To this day I don't think she's forgiven me.