Blowin' in the Wind

"Art is not what you see, but what you make others see."     Edgar Degas

I decided to play around with something new this week. I've seen this technique demonstrated in various books, blogs, etc., and have been meaning to try it for a while. You may be wondering what I'm talking about. I'm calling it a blown ink design. Blowing ink around a paper through a straw. Here's how I started.

Well, that's not exactly how I started. First I went through many trial runs. The idea is to drop some acrylic ink on a piece of paper and then use a combination of tilting the paper and blowing through a straw to push the ink around the paper in random designs. I tested several different kinds of paper before deciding on the one that worked best. I tried 90 lb.watercolor paper, 140 lb. watercolor paper, bristol paper, mixed media paper, and canvas. The only one that seemed to work for me was the 90 lb. paper. On all the others I found the ink immediately sunk into the paper and did not move around much. So after several tries, the above design is what I ended up with. 

The next step was to add color using some watercolor medium. My choices were several different paints, watercolor pencils, liquid watercolors, and Caran d'Ache water soluble crayons. I decided on the crayons, and the result is shown below. It reminds me of stained glass, which is what I used to do in a past lifetime, so I think it's kind of pretty.

Of course the final step was to tangle. When coloring I made the decision to leave a few spaces white, and when tangling I decided to leave a few spaces untangled. It was during the tangling that I realized maybe the water soluble crayons were not the best choice for adding color. I had some problems with the Micron 01 and 02 tips getting clogged up, I assume from the wax in the crayons. When I used the Apprentice pen with an 05 plastic type nib, the results were much better. Lesson learned for next time.

I turned the paper round and round deciding which way is up, and settled on the above when I saw what looked like a boot in it. My husband says he sees a face. Anyone see something else?