watercolor ground Archives - Melissa Dinwiddie | Create the Impossible™

June 3, 2014

Blue Is Just A Color – Mixed Media Painting, 8×8

Title: Blue Is Just A Color

Media:

Mixed media (acrylic, watercolor ground, Ziller ink, walnut ink, watercolor, pastels, linen thread)

Dimensions:

8″ x 8″ x 1 1/2″

Creation Notes:

This is an example of a piece turning out nothing like the original direction it started in.

Sometimes a canvas will sit around for a long time before I figure out what it wants to be. If it sits around long enough, I’ll often cover the surface entirely and start again from there.

In the moment, that may feel like a bit of a defeat, but in fact, those “failed” canvases that I paint over often achieve a depth and richness that the original never could have possessed.

Kind of like life: our mistakes and do-overs are often our greatest treasures.

For process pics of how this piece evolved, visit this post.

It’s For Sale!

If you want this piece for your own wall, leave a comment below sharing WHY you want it, and how much you’re willing to pay for it.

The normal price for an 8×8 painting is currently $200. Your bid must be at least $15 (to cover shipping in the US — if you’re international, contact me for shipping costs).

Bidding closes on Thursday, June 5, at noon, Pacific Time.

(Please allow a couple of weeks for varnishing and curing before I ship!)

Questions? Just lemme know!

PS — Pssst! Know someone who might benefit from seeing this today? Pass it on!

June 2, 2014

The Evolution of Blue Is Just A Color

Sometimes a canvas will sit around for a long time before I figure out what it wants to be. If it sits around long enough, I’ll often cover the surface entirely and start again from there.

In the moment, that may feel like a bit of a defeat, but in fact, those “failed” canvases that I paint over often achieve a depth and richness that the original never could have possessed.

Kind of like life: our mistakes and do-overs are often our greatest treasures.

Here’s the evolution of a recent piece, Blue Is Just a Color, which I completed at my Create & Incubate Retreat in May. [Read more…]

January 2, 2014

Yet MORE Wedding Behind the Scenes: the Ketubah Saga Comes to Completion

My Pop, signing the ketubah at the signing ceremony, the morning of our wedding!

It seems everyone is writing their New Year’s posts, declaring their alternatives to New Year’s resolutions, announcing their Theme Word For The Year, etc, but it’s going to take awhile for me to do my usual end-of-year/start-of-year processing.

Let’s face it, New Year’s Eve was pretty much eclipsed for me by the fact that I got married on Saturday, three days before.

No last night of the year partying for me. Miracle Man and I spent a quiet evening at home on the 31st, curled up in bed watching a movie.

In fact, the movie we watched was the video of our wedding ceremony. And we laughed and got all choked up for the nth time.

Yes, we are romantic dorks. 🙂

(Did you see the video of the song I wrote and sang for Miracle Man as part of the ceremony? If not, click here. But then come back to see the rest of the ketubah-making saga. Though you may want to read part 1 and part 2 first.)

There was some doubt in some circles about whether I’d finish the ketubah in time for the wedding. Ahem. Yes. Well, I did finish it, and this post is a documentary of that process.

I want to say first, though, that I’m still really tickled by how much fun I had, and what a difference creating this wedding was from my creating my first wedding.

Twenty years ago, the first time around on the wedding-planning carousel, the theme was perfection.

As in, “if the wedding is perfect, maybe my life will be good.”

As in, “if the wedding is perfect, maybe my marriage will be okay.”

If this had been true, of course, I wouldn’t now refer to that marriage as my “practice marriage,” and there would have been no wedding #2 on Saturday.

When I planned my first wedding, I did not yet think of myself as an artist. The idea that I might make my own ketubah, or heaven forbid write a song for my beloved, those were not even on the radar of “someday” possibilities at that point.

Instead, I hired creative talent. I acted as the curator — which was certainly a creative act, don’t get me wrong — but I was way more concerned about beauty and perfection than about having fun.

Really, much as I hate to admit it, I think my first wedding was about wanting to impress more than anything else.

This time around it was about wanting to have fun.

I’ve already shared my struggles with resistance around making the ketubah, and the first part of the creation process. So let’s pick up where we left off, shall we?

Now that I’d honed in on the English calligraphy style, and mixed my ink to the proper density, it was time to calligraph the text for real. But first, I had to line up the paper. (The “drafting machine” that came with my old, industrial drafting table comes in very handy for this type of thing.)

I squeezed some ink into my favorite inkwell (the bottom of a plastic wine glass — the perfect size and depth for a dip pen, and does not tip over!)…

And started writing:

You may wonder why I started in the middle of the sheet, and not at the top.

Shhh!!! Calligraphers’ secret!

I’ve learned the hard way that it takes time to get into a rhythm, and I’m usually also kinda nervous when I start writing a big project like this. If I start at the top, with the first word of the document, it’s a sure bet that those first few letters are going to look really bad!

So instead, I start somewhere lower down the page. Then by the time I get to the top, I’m in my rhythm, the nerves are mostly worked out, and the start of the document will invariably turn out a whole lot better!

Another calligrapher’s trick: when you take a break — whether to go to the bathroom, get a cup of coffee, get some sleep for the night, or simply dip your pen into ink again — it’s best to stop not at the end of a line (as you’d think), but rather in the middle of line, ideally in the middle of a word, ideally in the middle of a letter.

Why?

Well, as I’ve mentioned, calligraphy is very much about rhythm. Each time you stop and start again, your rhythm will change just a little bit. If there’s a gap between those stops and starts, the eye will pick it up in a flash.

But if the stop/start is in the middle of a block of text, it’s less noticeable. Plus if you stop in the middle of a letter (as in the E at the end of promise above), you’ll have a stroke or two to get back into rhythm before leaping to the next word or line.

All was going quite smoothly, and I was happy with how the English was coming along, and then… DISASTER!

Somehow, without noticing, I’d managed to smear ink on the bottom of the paper! Oh, noooooooo!!!

If this were a piece for a client, I’d have started all over with a new sheet of paper, but there wasn’t time for that. Plus, the beauty of working in a spontaneous, modern, abstract style is that anything goes. I’d simply have to figure out a way to resolve this problem as I went along.

For now, I’d work on getting the Hebrew text done. I’d solve the ink smear issue later…

First, lettering tests, to determine the size pen to use. The top two rows below were done with a Mitchell 5, the bottom two rows with a Mitchell 6. (And the white paper in the back is the computer printout to that I used as a spacing guide and hand guard, so my hand — with all its skin oils — rested on the white paper, and not on the watercolor paper.)

Next: lining up the paper for the Hebrew text:

And here’s the completed text:

After inking in the signature lines and erasing the pencil lines, the text block was done!

But there was still that *$&#^ smear to deal with… (The key and pen nib on the canvas, btw, were possible design elements that I later nixed.)

My first thought was to add some more random-looking marks at the bottom of the text block. I even opened up a snapshot in Photoshop and played around to see how additional marks might look.

I didn’t like them. At. All.

Miracle Man suggested collaging over the marks, which I thought was a good idea. So I pulled out some silk fabric left over from when I created a Torah mantle for my synagogue, and started playing:

Missing something… How about this?

Hmm… Or this?

Or..?

What was especially fun about this part was the reading the reactions from my followers when I posted these pics to Instagram & Facebook. (There were some strong opinions out there!)

I kind of liked what was happening with this gold silk… But I kind of didn’t. It really changed the color scheme I had going on.

So… What about collaging on some additional paper..?

Again, VERY strong opinions on Facebook and Instagram. In both directions!

Then one more idea: adding some quilt swatches more in the color scheme of the ketubah:

Or..

Ultimately, I wasn’t thrilled with any of these solutions. So while I let all these ideas stew, I decided to get on with attaching the text block to the canvas.

After consulting with a conservator I know, I decided to use a heat-activated adhesive film, Beva 371, to collage the paper down, before doing the stitching. (Note: I now wonder if perhaps I would have been better off just stitching the paper, without using any adhesive at all… Ah, well. It’s done.)

Here I am applying the film to the back of the text paper, using a tacking iron:

Then peeling off the silicone release Mylar off the film…

And now using the tacking iron to apply the text block to the canvas (covered with a piece of nonwoven material made for just this purpose, protecting the text block paper from being burnished by the iron):

I then turned the canvas face down, and did a whole lot more ironing to get the adhesive to fully adhere, using a bone folder to smooth out any bubbles.

Here’s a badly squared-up snapshot of the collaged ketubah hanging on the wall (next to a small piece I finished earlier this year — yes, I seem to like blues and greens!):

Now for the stitching! This was the one thing I knew for sure I wanted to incorporate into this ketubah. I’ve wanted to sew a ketubah text onto a background for years, but have never had a client who liked this idea. Finally, I got to do it for myself!

There’s something so meditative about hand stitching. But this was also hard work: I used a thimble to push the needle into the paper and canvas, and a pair of needle nose pliers to pull the needle through the back side. (And I had fun making the stitches intentionally uneven, but not wildly so.)

Here’s another shot of the ketubah with the first long side of stitching completed. At this point I also decided to apply clear granular gel over some of the darker squares around the perimeter. Those white spots will dry clear, just like Elmer’s Glue.

Stitching is fun, but can also get tedious. I needed a break. So I tore up the leftover background paper and calligraphed place cards for the post-wedding dinner, using a spontaneous lettering style I developed years ago, a sort of spiky, modern, informal Italic:

These I then pasted onto menus printed onto half sheets of card stock:

Did I mention this was mostly taking place from 4:00am to 8:00 two nights before the wedding, while I was horribly insomniac? Ahem. At least it was a productive night!

Here’s the back of the ketubah, more stitching done:

And the completed stitching! All that’s left to do is resolve that $*#@& smear…

And add some “Yesses” into the artwork (which felt entirely appropriate, don’t you think?):

Don’t forget the sides of the canvas!

And here’s a peek at my ink smear solution:

And the finished, signed ketubah!

And my favorite photo from the signing ceremony on Saturday morning: my nephew “helping” his mom sign his name!

Our ketubah now hangs proudly just inside the door to our bedroom. I haven’t sealed it yet, but plan to do so with Golden acrylic matte spray varnish (and gloss varnish over the clear granular gel sections). But I’ll run tests on some smaller canvases before doing so. Always test and re-test before trying a new technique on a valuable piece!!!

Tomorrow morning we leave on a brief, “mini-honeymoon” (called so in hopes that a longer, more exotic destination may come later). Then it’s back to work, and back to creating!

PS — Pssst! Know someone who might benefit from seeing this today? Pass it on!

Ready to get sparked for 2014?

A deadline like a wedding will get me creating like nobody’s business! But what happens when there is no deadline?

It’s all too easy to let life intervene, isn’t it?

It doesn’t have to be that way!

The solution? A safe, supportive tribe, reminding you that you are not alone. Gentle structure. Encouragement and reminders that yes, you deserve this! Yes, you need this!

Click here to join me for the next session of Get Sparked! starting on January 9th. It could change your life.

December 24, 2013

More Wedding Behind the Scenes: the Making of My Ketubah

Yes, I know much of the world is wrapped up in Christmas right now (no pun intended), but I’m getting married on Saturday (!), so naturally it’s All Wedding All The Time around here.

Except when it’s not…

As I’m sure you’ve discovered, life doesn’t conveniently pause to accommodate life events. Every day for at least a week my intention has been to work for several hours on the ketubah. And every day for at least a week I’ve been re-learning the truth of my mantra:

The thing I do first is the thing that gets done.

In other words, if I don’t get to work on the ketubah (or whatever my big goal is) first thing (okay, after meditating and journaling, but..)

Carload of stuff bound for Goodwill — Yes, I took a carload of stuff to Goodwill instead of working on the ketubah yesterday afternoon… What can I say? When you’re on a clutterbusting roll, you’re on a roll. Gotta strike while the iron is hot! (Besides, I wanted this stuff out of the house, in case any of our out-of-town wedding guests want to drop by! Again, deadlines are magical things…)

…before checking email

…before whatever appointment is on the calendar

…before laundry

…before baking cranberry bread for the pre- and post-wedding brunches

…before driving a carload of stuff to Goodwill (finally!)…

I may never get to it!

But deadlines are magical things, and with seventeen years under my belt as a professional ketubah artist, I’m used to completing artwork in time for someone’s wedding! It always takes longer than I think it will, but it always gets done.

I’ve been documenting my process (mostly using Instagram, which I’m kinda falling in love with), and thought it would be fun to share it here.

I should say that I did the heavy lifting (designing and copyfitting the layout of the text) a week or so ago. In radically reduced shorthand, the next steps are as follows:

1) Paint the canvas onto which the text will be collaged/sewn

2) Paint the paper on which the text will be calligraphed

3) Calligraph the text (which involves a lot of lettering trials, to see what looks best, what density the ink should be, etc.)

4) Collage/sew the calligraphed text paper onto the canvas

5) Add any final elements to the piece

With the layout done and printed onto plain old computer paper as a spacing guide for my calligraphy, it was time to paint the canvas. And oh, boy, “white page syndrome” was hitting me hard!

But I was determined to treat this as a Creative Sandbox project, and not get all precious and perfectionisty, dammit! So after priming the canvas with Daniel Smith watercolor ground (so I could use water media like ink and watercolor paint in addition to acrylic mediums), I broke the ice by “scribbling” all over the canvas using a ruling pen:

I kinda liked that, but knew I wanted a more layered, textural final effect, and that this was just the start. It served an important purpose, though: kinda like the first door ding on a brand new car, it let me relax and just start “making messes,” my preferred way to work.

Next I added a wash of Ziller blue ink, muted with a bit of walnut ink. And when a accidentally splashed a drop of water on the wet canvas, I intentionally added a bunch more water splats for texture:

Then while the paint was still drying, I smeared some random smears of watercolor ground, using an old credit card:

Then added some all-over pastel scribbles (very pale — hard to see here) and three pink pastel spirals (you can see evidence of my testing out different pastel colors on the paper underneath the canvas, at the bottom right):

I sprayed SpectraFix over this (my favorite pastel fixative — no solvents!!!), and while that was still wet, I smeared the pink spirals with my finger:

I felt the canvas was crying out for some spring green, so added some pastel scribbles around the borders:

And when the watercolor ground smears got mushy from all that media, I refreshed them, again using a credit card:

I liked what was happening here, but felt the borders needed stronger emphasis, so went around with a large flat brush and blue Ziller ink (again, somewhat “contaminated” with walnut ink, and perhaps a drop or two of green Ziller — I can’t remember now…). This pic shows the printed template for the text and signature lines on top of the canvas:

As you can see, I was getting my hands dirty for real!

And here’s a pic of the canvas, sans text template (the moiré effect at the bottom is courtesy of my phone and the lights, and not part of the actual canvas):

At this point, although I knew I’d probably add more layers to the canvas, I decided to turn my attention to the paper on which I’d be doing the calligraphy. I wanted it to be a blue-green that complemented the canvas. So I stretched a full sheet of Arches 140# hot press watercolor paper, and went to town (sorry, no process pics here — I forgot to shoot them! This pic shows after several layers of paint already.)

Now I ran into my first big technical glitch: this batch of Arches creates a splotchy effect when wetted. Certain spots in the paper absorb more pigment, making it appear as if the paper is mildewed or something!

I was very unhappy about this splotchiness, plus the color was turning too green/brown for my taste, so I decided to stretch a half sheet of a new sheet of paper, this time on my Boga Board.

Here I am blowing it dry, after several light washes of Ziller + walnut ink, and liberal scraping with an aquarelle watercolor brush handle (for texture, but really because I’d inadvertently added one or two scratches, and if you haven’t figured out by now, my favorite method for dealing with “mistakes” is to feature them):

Unfortunately, I didn’t realize until I’d already wet the paper that the sheet was not Arches, as I’d asumed, but Fabriano Uno. Uh, oh…

I had a Very Bad Experience with Fabriano Uno several years ago, when I decided to try it out for a client’s ketubah.

Bad Move. Never use a paper you’re not familiar with for a client piece, especially when the deadline is fast approaching!

In that particular case, a watercolor tree design, I did the painting before the calligraphy, which is reverse of my usual method — normally I do the lettering first, and add any painting/artwork afterwards. But I was very nervous about this painting, and was afraid of sinking several hours into the calligraphy, only to ruin the piece went I went to paint, and have to start over again.

So the painting was done, and then I made an error in the calligraphy — right in the groom’s Hebrew name, in fact.

Normally this is not nearly as big a deal as it sounds — I almost always make at least one mistake in a big ketubah text. With Arches it’s a fairly simple (albeit slow and tedious) process to carefully scrape off the ink with a scalpel, then burnish the paper down and treat it with gum sandarac to prevent bleeding when you write on it again. I’d done this procedure dozens of times, and it always went off without a hitch.

Not with the Fabriano Uno, however. When I went to write on the “fixed” paper, I might as well have been writing on tissue paper, it bled so badly!

PANIC!!!!

I think I tried at least two more times, and each time it bled worse. Now I was in danger of scraping right through the paper, and I still hadn’t fixed the error!

And did I mention that the clients were picking the piece up the next day?

Um, yeah…

Ultimately, I was able to solve the problem by outlining both bride’s and groom’s names in gold ink, so they appeared to be floating on a gold field. It’s a common tradition to make the first instance of the bride’s and groom’s names extra decorative, so it wasn’t out of place for me to do this. I then added some gold dots as decoration on their English names, to balance out the piece.

Whew… Crisis averted! And the clients were happy.

But back to my own ketubah. After the washes were dry on the Fabriano, I tested some lettering, and guess what? It bled.

Argh!

So back to the drawing board. I pulled the Fabriano out of the Boga Board (there may have been some swearing involved…) and stretched a third sheet — this time my tried and true Arches again.

Here it is, stretched and ready to paint, with the text layout template on top:

Unfortunately, this sheet had the same splotchy problem as the full sheet I’d started with (you can see it looks a little mottled, even without any paint on it.)

But I decided to see what would happen anyway. Here it is with a wash of the same Ziller ink + a bit of walnut ink blend, angled slightly to allow the paint to pool at the bottom (and you can see by the dark pool in the upper left of this photo that I didn’t do a fabulous job of stretching…)

And another pic, from a different angle:

After much blotting with paper towels, and re-applying of washes using a natural sponge (see 15 second videos here and here), my fingernails and cuticles were blue! Even after using my favorite barrier cream, Gloves In A Bottle (highly recommended, both as a barrier cream, and as a kickass moisturizer)!

Thank goodness there were still a few days before the wedding, for the blue to wear off!

And now I had a background I was fairly happy with… even though I hadn’t planned on those %&@*# splotches!

However, given that the rest of the Arches paper was likely from the same, splotchy batch, I didn’t think it would buy me much to try yet again. So I decided to learn to love the splotches…

And when I did a quick lettering test on this third sheet, voilá, no bleeding!!!

Next it was time to tear out the sheet, 7 7/16″ x 17 5/8″. Here I’m assembling my tools:

About to tear lengthwise, paper face-down on my drafting table:

Hmph. It feels a little wide to me…

So I trimmed the printed template to give me a sense of how it would look 1/2″ narrower:

Better…

And yes, definitely better. I could have trimmed even more, but it’s virtually impossible to tear off less than 1/2″, so I’ll probably leave it be. (And I’m happy that the biggest and most annoying of the splotches was part of the torn-off area! Yes!)

More test lettering on a piece of scrap, to try out ink densities, and confirm that this is the lettering style I want to use (very different, btw, from my original plan):

And erasing pencil lines to get a clearer sense of texture, ink density, etc:

Here’s a pic with the lettering test swatch sitting on top of the “real” paper, on top of the canvas (the key and pen nib may or may not be incorporated into the final piece. We’ll see…):

That’s where I am so far. And now back to work! Watch for more pics in another update…

Merry Merry and Happy Happy!

PS — Pssst! Know someone who might benefit from seeing this today? Pass it on!

December 15, 2013

Behind the Scenes Pre-Wedding Drama: Why I Refused to Make a Ketubah, and Why I Then Changed My Mind (With Pics!)

It’s just thirteen more days til my wedding day! Which means thirteen more days to finish making my ketubah.

Yes, Miracle Man and I are getting married on December 28th, which makes me smile, and also shake my head with wonder. I’m rather baffled, in fact, because I never thought I’d get married again.

I never thought I’d want to get married again!

Almost twenty years ago, my first wedding was, rather unfortunately, the repository of all my hopes and dreams for my marriage, and my life. On an unconscious level, I think I believed that if I could make The Wedding perfect, then my life would be okay. If I could make The Wedding perfect, then maybe the flawed relationship would be okay, too.

Of course it didn’t work out that way. And yet with hindsight I can see that planning The Wedding was not only a very convenient excuse for putting off deciding what to do with my life for seven months, it turned out to be the ideal crucible to help me find my path.

Not only was The Wedding an incredibly creative production (my first really big creative effort after what felt like a lifetime of creativity-quashing academia), but it gave me the opportunity to rub shoulders with people who were making their livings in all kinds of interesting and creative ways.

When I met with caterers, I thought to myself, “Gee, if only I knew how to cook, I could be a caterer…”

When I met with florists, I thought to myself, “Gee, if only I knew how to design flowers, I could be a wedding florist…”

When I met with photographers, I thought to myself, “Gee, if only I knew how to take photos, I could be a wedding photographer…”

And when I met with the six or so ketubah artists we were considering to make our Jewish marriage contract, I thought to myself, “Gee, if only I had any artistic ability and knew how to do calligraphy, I could be a ketubah artist…”

The sad thing is that I was so stuck in a fixed mindset back then that it didn’t occur to me that I could learn to do any of those things.

If you know my story, you know that I did eventually figure out that I wasn’t the un-creative, un-artistic oaf I thought myself to be. I ended up doing a deep dive into the art of calligraphy, and spinning that out into a long career as a professional calligrapher and ketubah artist, which continues to this day.

And now, almost twenty years later, I find myself confronting the very surprising opportunity to make my own ketubah, and honestly, my first response was, “No freakin’ way!”

Why not? Well, the obvious reasons:

First, Miracle Man is not Jewish.

(Um, reality check: probably at least half of my ketubah clients are “interfaith” couples themselves. And I, of all people, know that you don’t have to be Jewish to have a ketubah, or ketubah-like-document.)

And second, we’re not having a Jewish wedding.

(Um, reality check: probably at least a fifth of my ketubah clients are married by someone other than a rabbi or cantor. And I, of all people, know that you don’t need to have a Jewish wedding to have a ketubah, or ketubah-like-document.)

Still, for weeks I stalled out. Maybe I’d turn our vows into a calligraphy painting after the wedding, I thought, but I was not making a ketubah.

You’d almost think I was jaded, after seventeen years of being a ketubah artist! (She says, with a facetious glint in her eye.)

Not surprisingly, my “We’re not having a ketubah” position elicited a lot of shocked looks on the faces of people who know me. And I noticed that I felt rather weird about it, and somehow… incomplete.

Maybe I did want a ketubah after all. Maybe my resistance wasn’t about being jaded or MM not being Jewish or us not having a Jewish wedding (ya think?).

Maybe I was dealing with Resistance with a capital R.

In fact, as the wedding day drew ever nearer, I realized that my resistance wasn’t resistance to the idea of a ketubah. It was the kind of Resistance you feel when you really, really want something, but are afraid.

Afraid that you’ll mess it up.

Afraid that you’ll never be up to the task.

Afraid that you’ll disappoint yourself.

Afraid, in short, that you’re not, and could not ever possibly be, good enough.

Ah, yes. Those were the true source of my Resistance: the voices of gremlins, good old self-doubt and self-criticism, disguising themselves as Truth and Wisdom and Rationality.

Ha!

The great thing about gremlin-whispering is that once you’ve got the official Gremlin-Whisperer Tool Belt you can tackle all sorts of Resistance.

Including “I don’t want to make a ketubah for my own wedding” Resistance.

I realized I was approaching my ketubah like a client project. I was spinning on a perfectionist line that had nothing to do with what I really wanted, and everything to do with the bride I was twenty years ago.

Back then, The Wedding was everything (case in point: when my best friend reminded me in the weeks before my first wedding that as long as we ended up married at the end of the day, nothing else really mattered, I had to kind of think about whether I thought that was true or not). Back then, everything had to be Perfect, or the sky would fall.

But I’m not living back then!

I’m living NOW, when the relationship is where the gold is, and the wedding is a small entertainment that we’re doing because it gives us pleasure to do so, and it gives our families pleasure, and that, in turn, gives us pleasure.

I realized that I was angsting over my ketubah as if it were the repository of all my hopes and dreams for my ENTIRE LIFE WITH MM. As if it had to be and say EVERYTHING, for ALL TIME.

Oh, for goodness sake.

No single piece of art can do that. Sheesh, knowing me and the way I change my mind, I’ll probably be bored with whatever I make within three weeks of finishing it anyway.

And I’m an artist, after all! I can make as many new pieces as I want! I don’t have to invest so much importance in any single piece!

Twenty years ago it felt as if everything depended on the absolute perfection of one dress, one ketubah, one flower arrangement. I’d only have that one opportunity, after all.

Well, I refuse to accept that flawed logic anymore. I get to have as many beautiful dresses as I want. If I want a pretty bouquet, I can darn well buy (or learn to make) a pretty bouquet any time I want! And if I want a meaningful piece to hang on my wall, I can make a new one anytime.

So rather than approaching my ketubah like a client project, clearly all I needed was to approach my ketubah like a Creative Sandbox project!

And that, dear reader, is exactly what I’ve been doing.

Instead of an anxiety-provoking pressure cooker, this project has become a total blast!

Imagine that…

I don’t have pics of the ketubah to show you yet, because beyond coming up with the overall design concept and the text layout, I haven’t actually started it. However, I’ve been playing with test pieces, to try out some of the materials and techniques I plan to use with the ketubah. Here are pics of an 8″ canvas that’s been a lot of fun, and which I’m pretty pleased with.

First, I primed the canvas with watercolor ground. After that was dry, I wetted a small palette of various shades of purple that I’d used for some previous project, and added squares of color around the edges with a flat brush.

While those were still somewhat wet, I roughly traced around the squares with light blue watercolor pencil.

Then I re-wetted the center of the canvas and allowed the colors to bleed into one another, splashing some water droplets on for an extra measure of randomness.

Here’s how it looked after the canvas was mostly dry again:

Next I tore a 5″ square of Arches 140# hot press watercolor paper, and painted it with several washes of different shades of purple, blotting with a paper towel before each wash had time to dry.

This created a textured, “parchment-like” finish that I really liked!

But what to write on it? The obvious thing, since this was a test piece, was to use the text from our ketubah. But why not make this piece something in its own right, rather than a test that I’ll simply gesso over later?

Calligraphers love lists (great for practicing our letters!), so I figured why not write out a list of purple words? Up I went to thesaurus.com, where I found a bunch of synonyms for purple, and even discovered two words I’d never heard before (can you guess which ones?)

I didn’t do any copyfitting, no lining up, no measuring — I just dipped my pen in Ziller Wild Viola Violet (find it here, too) and started writing at the upper left. I got a bit nervous when I was half-way through that I’d never pull this off, but miraculously (and no doubt thanks to 18 or so years as a calligrapher), it worked!

This is one of the things I love about modern, irregular lettering: lots of room to stretch and shrink letters as necessary!

Here’s the newly calligraphed square (still curvy from getting wet with the watercolor washes) resting on the painted canvas:

Next step: collaging the paper to the canvas.

This one had me in fits. There are so many ways to adhere two things together, but not all of them are archival, and not all of them will result in a flat finish.

For the ketubah I may resort to Beva 371 film, a heat-activated film and one of my favorite adhesives, which I used to make this ketubah, and this ketubah, and this one, and this one, too. I’m going to consult with a conservator before I decide.

For the test, I tried out using Golden Soft Gel (Gloss). First I fixed the canvas and the front of the paper with Spectra-fix. After that was dry, I painted a thin layer of Soft Gel on the canvas, and on the back of the paper, to help increase adhesion. (This post explains the process.)

When those preporatory layers were dry, I painted fresh layers of Soft Gel on the canvas and the back of the paper, and rubbed like mad to get them to stick together.

Because I didn’t want to stretch out the canvas, I flipped the whole thing over, and burnished from the back of the canvas. (Make sure the surface you put your art on is clean! A sheet of palette paper would work great for this.)

Here it is after collaging:

When I posted this in-process pic on my Facebook page, I got comments asking me why I’d want to add to it. It looked done to them.

Well, I kinda liked it too, but again, the purpose of this piece was to test out things I might want to use for the ketubah. And I had a lot more I wanted to test!

First, I pulled out a jar of Golden Clear Granular Gel that I’d just picked up at the art store. It looked fun, so I added a layer over the darker violet squares in the painted border. The white squares are the Clear Granular Gel — like Elmer’s Glue, it’s white when wet, but dries clear.

I also started stitching around the edges of the paper, using waxed linen thread in a serendipitously perfect shade of violet:

Sewing through 140# paper and canvas takes some effort. A thimble is pretty much required if you don’t want to stab yourself with the back end of the needle while trying to push the eye through!

I also use needle nose jewelry pliers to grab the needle and pull it through from the back:

You can see the Clear Granular Gel has dried clear, adding some rock-sugar crystal-like texture, which I like a lot. The stitching was, as usual, the most tedious part of the process, but it’s also sort of meditative. And I just love the texture that it brings to the whole.

Next step: The finishing layer(s).

Since my goal is to end up with a piece that I don’t need to frame under glass, and since I know paper will degrade if left out on its own without protection, and I know that acrylic is porous and will also become damaged over time by tiny bits of dust collecting in the pores unless it’s varnished or sealed, I want to seal the piece somehow. But I don’t know yet exactly how…

Thankfully, I know a conservator, Karen Zukor, whose workshop on adhesives and collage media back in 1996 is what taught me about Beva 371 film. I’ve got an email in to her to ask her advice on the best way to seal the piece, and she said she’d get back to me on Monday. I’ll keep you posted.

And in the meantime, onward with the ketubah! And thank goodness for the Creative Sandbox!

PS — Pssst! Know someone who might benefit from seeing this today? Pass it on!

Title: Blue Is Just A Color

Media:

Dimensions:

Creation Notes:

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