Project 8: Lightning T-Shirt

Click pictures to enlarge

Materials:

• T-shirt
• Acrylic paint
• Fabric medium

I'm somewhat obsessed with lightning motifs. The design for this shirt has been in my head for a while; I knew it was more suited for a DIY project then to waste my time looking for a version for sale.

It was fairly simple – I marked off the shape in masked tape, mixed the paint and medium, and went at it. After it was all dry, I hand washed the shirt, roughing it up a bit in the water to eliminate some of the paint's stiffness.

The pictures don't pick it up well, but the blue has some silver mixed in for a sparkly metallic finish. I also like the irregularities in paint color and line. I'm all about the irregularities.

Project 5: Hollow Book

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What do we have here? It appears to be an ordinary book:

A dirty, beat up book.


But wait!


Materials:

• Hardcover book
• Glue
• Acrylic paint
• Tea

It's one of those exciting secret hollowed-out book. Look at all my exotic contraband:


Yes, that is an Altoids tin, a package of candy cigarettes, an Exacto knife, a tube of peanut butter, and army men. Why do you ask? I am clearly a sexy and mysterious person.

After I hollowed out the book (following this tutorial) I painted the inner cavity to make it look more finished. It doesn't turn out well in photos, it just ends up looking like a black void:


After the hollowing and painting, I decided that a brand-new looking hollow book was not nearly as exciting as an old one. I used various methods to get the effect above, including sanding, filing, washes of acrylic paint, and tea staining.

Funny story about the tea staining (and a bit of a failure on my part): I like tea staining paper with loose tea leaves because once brushed off, they leave a cool speckled effect. However, I applied the leaves over the glued-together edges of the pages, and now they won't come off:


Oh well. It still looks kind of cool, ne?

Project 3: Bird Painting

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Materials:

• Canvas board
• Found/recycled objects
• Acrylic paint

This painting is for a friend of mine. It was created through many alternative techniques; I finger painted, smeared, sprayed, dripped, poured, and sponged, only using a limited amount of brushwork. There's a feather embedded in the paint as well as some glitter. I still have to seal it, though – all I have is satin finish fixative and I want this to be matte.

A little back story on me and painting:
For most of my life, I took art classes – drawing, painting, sculpting, whatever. I find the techniques I weren't taught the most satisfying, however; there's just something gratifyingly visceral about dipping your fingers right in the medium and following your instinct rather than planning something. I find painting realistic pictures boring. Any artist who has been through as much training as I have can manage that; I take my joy from unrestrained creative activity rather than the product.

It's usually how I work, in any case. My original ideas for paintings are always much different then the final work; my thoughts are always evolving. The process of creation defines the outcome rather than a preconceived plan. I always use tons of paint; this piece took so long because there are so many layers of paint I had to let dry. I like seeing a piece evolve layer by layer, but I also like experimenting. Sometimes I take risks, try techniques that don't work, so I just have to deal with my mistakes in the next layer. I barely ever feel like a piece is "ruined", it's just going in a new direction.

I take the same sort of joy from painting that kids do. Children don't care about whether they are "good" painters, they just have fun doing it! Why shouldn't we be the same way?