Alida's Art Journal

Carnival Ringleader, originally uploaded by alida saxon.

Aaaaand it's done. I'm quite happy with it.

How to make Tea-stain paper, originally uploaded by alida saxon.

Items you'll need:
Masking tape
hard board or wood you can pin paper to
tea leaves (rooibos to match what I did)
spray bottle with water
pushpins
watercolor paper

1. Tape down your pieces of watercolor paper to the board as uniformly as you can with masking tape. This secures the paper flat for drying and creates a sharp edged boarder at the same time.

2. brew 1/4 cup or more of tea leaves in just enough boiling water to thoroughly wet. If you enjoy drinking tea, just save your tea leaves for a few days, storing them in the fridge. But DON'T allow the tea leaves to be in contact with sweeteners or milk. You don't need to be introducing mold to your art papers.

3. Spray watercolor paper lightly to wet. When cool enough to handle, scoop wet tea leaves and splatter paper as seen, working around into whatever patterns you like. Spray a little more water if there are dry spots, then put the whole mess somewhere it can dry for several hours. During the summer under a good sun, it can take as little as two hours.

4. when dry, brush off the dry tea leaves (you can save them for a second go at it). Peel the tape off and then rinse each tea stained sheet under cold water, lightly scrubbing with your fingers any tea still clinging to the surface until it's smooth.

5. Tape won't work now, but using pins at the corners (and sides if an especially large piece) secure your wet paper to the board again to dry. Drying pinned will stretch the watercolor paper flat again. Leave several hours and you're done!

I use the paper under drawings. They're also great for making rustic looking maps (think homemade campaign maps!) and when scanned, you can add them to your texture library.

Additionally, it's not just tea you can make interesting stains with. Hot water will activate a lot of things to release their colors and stains. Not all of them are going to be stable for creating artwork on, but they can be excellent for digital art - and far more complex in color and range than some computer made textures.

Never Learns, originally uploaded by alida saxon.

Now this is inspiration that should've struck a month ago. Still, I had a laugh making them. They're small squares of tea-stained watercolor paper painted with deep scarlet watercolor and accented with black ink. What's fun with these is you can put them in any order you want, or get a couple sets and watch kitty really never learn - repeatedly.

I'm getting a couple sets of prints done up for myself to gift, and it was suggested I offer it out to anyone. So if you'd like any for yourself, here's the info:

Set of 4 4"x6" photoprints (or trim them yourself to 4x4 if you can find frames that size)
Here's links for paypal (also put them above in the description)
$12 Shipping included in the US - paypal pay here
$14 Shipping included international - paypal pay here
If you've got any questions or special requests, send me a note at alidasaxon at gmail dot com

The Fire
9.5" x 15" Colored pencil on Lokta paper
In the private collection of erica.r

I've had this done a couple days but I didn't have time to fuss with the scanned pieces until just now. Blue's still scanning a bit hot, but not in a particularly bad way so I'm not going to fight it further. Here again is the two Vincent Van Gogh quotes I was given to use as inspiration for the piece:

"Love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well."

"One may have a blazing hearth in one's soul and yet no one ever came to sit by it. Passers-by see only a wisp of smoke from the chimney and continue on their way."

Fire wip6 At the table, originally uploaded by alida saxon.

Just about done in this shot, and I took a photo to try and get a better representation of the colors. It's on my drawing table under my true-color working light.

Off to the side you can see one of my important working tools. A spoon. I use the back of it to burnish down the paper. Lokta's almost felt-like at times on the surface, and sometimes the fibers don't want to stay where they're supposed to.

Fire wip 5, originally uploaded by alida saxon.

That blue is still fluorescing madly on my scanner. Ah well. Anyway, added crimson red to the ribbon, along with some shadowing with tuscan red and blue violet. The letters have been done in deco orange - a really soft almost pink pale orange. Next time you see this, it will be done.

Fire wip 4, originally uploaded by alida saxon.

Tackling the background at this stage. From blue-violet, mulberry, henna down to goldenrod at the bottom. It's very important to work on the background first because it changes the intensity of the colors in the foreground (figure & ribbon). What might've looked like a great red in the ribbon could turn to something unpleasant and I'd have no way to fix it, if I worked on the foreground first.

Oh, the blue is just a bit too intense, thanks to my annoying scanner. Hopefully a better representation of it on the next step - which may be the completed piece. There's a stage in a piece where there's just no stopping to take pictures because it'd break the momentum. I have a feeling this next bit is going to be that way.

Fire wip3, originally uploaded by alida saxon.

The hard work is done. Hand lettering does take a lot of time - in spacing things out, and being paranoid about spelling mistakes. Unlike on the computer where you can kern and push to your heart's content, I have to get this close to right the first time. I really enjoyed it though - I don't use type often enough in my art.

You can't quite see it, but there's some outlining of the figure down, and the lettering I did with salmon pink (white's just too hard to lift if you must correct). A little scarlet lake (red) down as well to define the shape and path of the ribbon. It's a lot of layering of colors from here on out.

John Kitchen, originally uploaded by alida saxon.

"John Kitchen"
Character illustration for Talisman Studios
Colored pencil on tea stained watercolor paper.

It seems like a big leap from the last work in progress, doesn't it? But it isn't really, as far as time goes. The changes took about an hour. If you look carefully at the previous shot, you can see the creature in the shapes the tea stains made. I just defined them, and darkened them with colors like tuscan red and black grape. Over all he got a lot of touch-ups with terra cotta, tuscan red, black grape, goldenrod, and a host of pale colors for the highlights. The eyes were also scraped back and re-tinted after I got a little more art direction on what is going on with this particular character. He's a man ridden by a malevolent spirit, and I decided to show it kind of like the old spirit photographs of the 1800's where they'd use their tricks to show ghosts and such.

kitchen wip2, originally uploaded by alida saxon.

A little more substance now, and looking flatter at the moment after coats of terra cotta and other earthy colors, with a touch of blue in the shirt. From here out I'll be evening out some colors, and starting to work in more highlights. It comes along pretty quickly once you've got the foundation created.

kitchen wip1, originally uploaded by alida saxon.

This is one of 8 character illustrations I'm doing for a project with Talisman Studios ( talisman-studios.com/ ). I've recently become attached as another artist for them.

This here is a character called John Kitchen. He's from a story called The Legend of Five Shadows which I was given to read a few weeks ago. Hopefully I'll have more to link to about shortly. I'm having fun getting some use out of the tea stained watercolor papers I made some time back. I'm first building up a rather monochromatic drawing, over which I'll start layering in more lifelike colors. Not unlike tinting old photographs, but without that just-broke-into-mum's-makeup-kit look. ;-)

Killer Rabbit, originally uploaded by alida saxon.

Art from me has been a bit scarce, hasn't it? I am working on a few things, some are too boring to post, others I can't post until I either get to a certain point, or clear it with clients. More soon though.

This is just a quick little illo I did today coming up with a design for a tshirt I'm doing at home. We'll see how well I do with tshirt painting. I'll post the results if they turn out. I may have to leave this kind of thing to the professionals. ;-)

I didn't go in intending to make a Monty Python reference, but I'll go with it. I just like contrasting cute with cranky. But who doesn't like the killer rabbit? I might just have to put a holy hand grenade on the back.

King Skull and the Fire Serpent, originally uploaded by alida saxon.

I got invited to a birthday party / poker party tonight, and I was told the fellow's very much into dark art, so this is what I quickly whipped up. I know I've swiped the floating crown from at least Mike Mignola's Hellboy work. ;-) I don't know where else I've seen that - but a couple places at least. Hopefully the guy likes it!

King Skull and the Fire Serpent
5"x7" colored pencil on lokta paper.

The Swinging Rope, originally uploaded by alida saxon.

The Swinging Rope
Prismacolor pencils on lokta paper
14.5" x 9.75"
Buy a print on Zazzle

What inspired this image is thinking about all the things a tree has been witness to in its long life, and the ghosts of the past that might linger around them.

More notes on the lokta for artists or those who just like more of the details: This lokta paper is oh so gorgeous, but a real trick to work on. It's a bit like trying to draw on felt where if your pencil is too sharp or you work an area too long, it fluffs up, lifting some of the top fibers. Also, can't erase easily at all, for similar reasons. When it came to drawing the woman, I had to do it on a piece of white paper, cut it out and move it around the page until I found the spot I wanted her. But for all those difficulties, I think it turned out rather well.

I'm going to try sealing a piece of the lokta paper with a matt acrylic glaze for a small piece and see if it solves the fiber lifting somewhat. It may just make the surface too rigid and unaccepting of the pencils, but we'll see. I know some people do pencil work over acrylic so it could go well. I haven't tried using a kneaded eraser yet, but that's on my list two for future experiments.

Older Than These Bones framed, originally uploaded by alida saxon.

A quick documentation before I send this away. I was really struggling with how to frame this one, until I saw an (artificially) weathered frame on ebay. I abused it even further with a hammer and a seashell of all things. I put the spiky sea shell on the frame, and hit it with a hammer, its nubs and bumps making the indent. If I'd just hit it with a hammer alone, there would have been some rather uninteresting crescent shape marks.


(My reflection is making the mat look all ripple-y, dang it.)

Older Than These Bones, originally uploaded by alida saxon.

This is gift art for the very nice guy who gave me a bundle of Rapidograph pens a little while back. It's a little 7x7" piece done with the pens (naturally) antiqued with a wash of watercolor.

The person its for also happens to be a musician, so I'm hoping he'll like this. I actually wrote a longer verse for it, but I found the two first lines were the best (I'm not much of a poet/songwriter) and this way it didn't crowd the piece.

Below is the concept sketch I did a couple days ago.

Dragon, originally uploaded by alida saxon.

Still having some technical difficulties, but I forgot to post this last week, so there's something to upload. This is my piece for a challenge proposed by vormator.com. Everyone uses the same eight elements, with a tight set of rules on how you can use those shapes, with the goal of creating an interesting illustration. It was fun and a nice test of vector creativity. I was particularly happy with the horns on this one - can't say why, really. If you work with a vector program, you might enjoy joining the challenge yourself.

Additionally, since this dragon is riding the wind, I'm calling this my Illustration Friday submission for this week, on the theme "wind".