Day 3/100

This is where it stands today. I think it's probably time to let this one rest and work on something else tomorrow. It's easier to tell what needs to be done when you have fresh eyes.

Day 2/100

 Today I concentrated on one piece. Printed a texture on another old surface, but this is the one that received the most attention.

This was where it started. The first layer, which is thankfully obscured, was a truly awful watercolor of an iris. It was a vertical format. Over it I printed a layer with burnt sienna, then another with magenta, and then a third (one of the plates in yesterday's post) with burnt sienna and payne's gray. The colors from the original still show through, but abstracted.

This is where I left off today, after pulling out some of the shapes. I worked with acrylics and watercolor crayons, and it still has a ways to go. Tomorrow I might push this one a little further along or get another piece started. I tend to work best when I have a lot going on at once.

One of the things I am liking in working this way is that nothing is wasted. Not only am I rescuing old paintings from the trash, but at the end of the day all the leftover acrylic paint gets smeared onto a plate so it can be printed. Yay!

Hello Again

This poor neglected blog! It's actually surprising to find that it is still here. Having messed with Instagram for a while, I'm missing old fashioned journaling. So here goes.

Last year I found the 100 Day Project really valuable and actually made 100 little gouache monotypes. It was an intro to printing processes for me; very exciting and has made me want to incorporate printing and more mixed media in general into my artwork.

I want to take a run at the 100 Day Project again this year, but don't think completing something every day is a goal I can sustain. Instead, I am aiming to get myself out of a slump by committing to do something every day, working on giving life to old pieces that failed or were not completed for some reason. I have drawers full of work like that! It would feel really good to rescue some of them.

Lately the printing process I've been experimenting with is somewhat related to gelly prints, using a silicone baking surface instead of the gel plate. These can be transferred directly on to old watercolor paintings or on to tissue paper for collage. Today I prepared several "plates" for printing.

Realistic messy studio shot

Here they are, with different types of marks on each one. A limited palette seems like a good way to start, so these all include a good amount of burnt sienna. That should make it easy to use them together.

The plan is to do my day-to-day documentation here and on Substack. I'm hoping to go the distance again this year and to learn as much as I did doing this project in 2025.