Saturday, January 24, 2009

Caustics

n. 1. A caustic material or substance.
2. A hydroxide of a light metal.
3. The enveloping surface formed by light rays reflecting or refracting from a curved surface, especially one with spherical aberration.

Edit: jgr (who is a very talented art journal-er, go check her page out) asked how I made this, and I'm a little embarrassed to say that it just sorta happened.
The two pages started out as an experiment with acrylics, white crayon and papertowels. They stayed vague backgrounds for months until I was playing around in my smaller journal and found a watercolour mix that blew my socks off and I knew this new colour needed to be on a larger page with a fishie in it somewhere.
First I played some more with a colourless wax crayon that Patti gave me, then I took my favourite tapered wc brush and painted circles with my new favourite colour mix. I let that dry (and while waiting I drew the apples down below) then got out my trusty white Permapaque marker and went over the crayon resist, following any lines or patterns that I found interesting. Then I drew the fishie, also with the white marker. I suppose he's more catfish than carp but I'm no ichthyologist, so meh.

3 comments:

Patti Sandham said...

Awesome! The refracting light is done so effectively.

jgr said...

WOW . . .This is unbelievable - Can you talk about your technique? I would love to know how you did this! It's amazing!

-Jane

mergatroid said...

I love your fishie! You are so talented! I love the refraction, and the colours are fab!