u/Boring_Maybe3798

older stuff

older stuff

trying to find direction again. looking through old failures and successes is helpful. never went to art school so I never learned to edit my work. honestly I never even thought about editing being part of visual art. I was used to it (and bad at it) when I studied creative writing, but never applied it to other arts. with paintings and cyanotypes and such, I just keep going until I collapse.

im trying to remember why I started creating - because I had something to say that i couldn’t speak or write. I’m trying to remember how to speak words and not just gibberish through my art again.

I’m moving on from chemicals. there’s more possibility there, but I made a massive mess of my basement and my eyes were starting to get irritated and I stopped thinking about composition and just became obsessed with process.

need to do something with all these cyanotype scraps. collage, probably. but I don’t want to make the same mistakes.

trying to think more minimally rather than throwing my entire kitchen at a poor piece of watercolor paper that just wanted a simple little design.

idk why I’m sharing this. To instill it in myself, maybe. I don’t care about my art being good. It’s therapy for me, at the end of the day. But when the therapy starts making me insane, I have to reassess and try anew.

im addicted to creative novelty - to pushing mediums past their limits just to see what they’re capable of. But most of it ends up looking like literal dumpster contents. A few things stick. But not every song is a banger, you know?

I have a massive accumulated landfill of failures from my three years of making visual art in my garage and basement - paintings, collages, old nail art designs, fabric, cyanotypes, drawings, etc. it’s not like poetry, where it just lives in an app on my phone that I never have to look at. it takes over my living space and I drag my materials around with me like a slug with its slime trail.

i hate most of what i make in retrospect. not fishing for anything with that - i think it’s true for most artists. but creating is an obsession. the obsession is the act of making. that’s why editing is so hard. it forces me to sit still and when I’m sitting still, I’m bombarded by “the terror” (my mental state lol).

i have a small pile of things I like. My brain never runs out of ideas, but it seems like at a certain point, I stop using my brain and my impulsive bipolar-self takes over completely. that’s why my compositions take a dumpster dive. I start using literal trash to make things because my brain is turned off and I’m just rushing through the process, trying to exhaust the medium in case I die the next day or something. I’m constantly trying to outrun myself and my trauma through the dopamine hits of making, experimenting, learning, and sharing. But where have I disappeared to in all of that? And what of purpose?

art has always mimicked and informed my mental state. and lately it’s not great because I’m surrounded by my own creative chaos. I’m trying to slow down. Seems like my body is forcing me to, honestly. I’ll repurpose some of my nonsense and honestly I’ll probably have a bonfire with the rest.

anyone else? ha

1. mixed media collage of my daughter - markers, wire, cyanotype

2. print of the flower my daughter gave me on mother’s day

3. some chaos

I’ve been interested in working with rust, so I made a container of iron acetate to use in various projects.

As it sat there brewing, I decided I would experiment in using it with cyanotype.

Now I can’t stop…

The biggest thing I’ve noticed is how it changes color intensity, immediately upon impact with ferric ammonium citrate and potassium ferricyanide. I use it with a brush and a spray bottle. Once it hits your emulsion, it instantly turns Prussian blue. It’s pretty cool, like when you hit your final print with peroxide.

It’s been slightly unpredictable, probably because I tend to throw my entire kitchen into my cyanotype work, so many of these also include tannins and vinegar, salt and turmeric, etc. But one thing is for sure - it will deepen the color.

To neutralize, I’ve been rinsing for longer than usual. You could use baking soda I think, but I’ve worried about bleaching work that I’m happy with. I’ll try it and get back to you.

One interesting use I’ve found for this is that you can paint designs or words onto your emulsion-coated paper and they will show in a darker Prussian blue than on the rest of the page, even after peroxide.

You also seem to be able to tone with iron acetate - spraying it on afterwards often shifts the color towards teal. I need to do more controlled experiments with this before I recommend it, but if you have some pieces you don’t care about, it’s worth a try.

Possibly my favorite thing to do with iron acetate is to spray it on the back of an object - like citrus! - and then place the sprayed side down on your regularly coated sheet. You’ll see all the nooks and crannies of the object in a darker blue. I did this with one row of lemons in the citrus painting and you can really see the difference it makes.

The super dark layers in these paintings are tannins, the orange and green are solarfast. The variation between the lighter Prussian blue and the very intense Prussian blue, however, is the iron acetate. I spayed vinegar on it sometimes and you can get some beat textures that way.

Anyhow, I’m neck deep in this chemical painting thing and don’t know if I’ll ever go back.

hurting badly this week.

emdr sessions have been taking it out of me. missed spravato this week and felt it, hard. sucks feeling so delicate, like everything rests on things being exactly as I need them to be or else it all collapses.

im embarrassed by my mental illness. I blurted out to a stranger today that im autistic and could feel her recoil. its not a dirty word. it just… is.

chemical paintings made without paint

have not been feeling right after emdr sessions

anyone know if Junior is still kicking?

I had some funny experiences with him.

I haven’t been to greenback in a while, but it’s one of my favorite places. unfortunately, it seemed to deteriorate a lot between my first and third visits.

this is in Tennessee outside of Knoxville, for anyone who isn’t familiar. Junior originally built his castle to attract women but ultimately found that he preferred building for god.

very interesting fellow. I love his cement work. still have the cement cross with marbles inlaid that he gave me the day we hung out.

would love to share more of my outsider artist visits over time if yall have any interest.

made most of these today. the last two were made last night and inspired the little chemical painting journey I continued this afternoon.

i will make a post about this at another time, but I’ve been using rust water with cyanotype lately. I’ve found that it is deeply unpredictable, tends to intensify the blues, and can be used in toning for a more chemical green-blue color. the issue is that it needs to be neutralized or it will continue rusting on the paper. I’m letting that happen because I think it will be interesting and I’m intrigued by the idea of ever-changing art, but I’ve also tried neutralizing a few of these with a tannin spray (walnut).

the thick black “paint” looking substance is a mix of Cyanotype emulsion, a lot of wine tannins, some turmeric, some rust water, and avocado solarfast. it stuck like paint in most of these. but sometimes it rolled off and in those cases, it was like Cyanotype sunscreen.

a lot of these “paintings“ also include salt, vinegar, turmeric, solarfast (I only have avocado), wine tannins, and walnut tannins. for the people, I was disappointed with the contrast and carved them out with washing soda, which I allowed to bleed down the page.

i washed all of these as normal but will likely experiment with an unwashed print soon, just to see how it changes/deteriorates over time.

i did some more stuff with tannins + emulsion today as well. i coated sheets with a layer of emulsion followed by a layer of tannins mixed with water. this seems to make the blue more of a grey-blue. I will try making one standard emulsion and one tannin emulsion and painting with the tannins to show the contrast.

my paintings over the past few days have not included paint. I‘ve been playing with a mix of cyanotype emulsion, rust water, vinegar, salt, turmeric, tannins, solarfast, and washing soda. really compelled by the play between controlling the chemicals and having to completely relinquish that control.

tbh I got bored of botanicals with my cyanotype work but was in love with altering the chemicals. this feels like a happy medium for me. my compositions are simple because I stopped fighting my desire to create around color, texture, and basic shapes.

I’m curious how these will change over time with the addition of the rust water. the two from yesterday have already started showing signs of rusting on the paper. I could probably seal them to prevent that, but I like the idea of progressive deterioration and i’m comfortable with impermanence.

I use cyanotype chemicals, rust water, tannins, vinegar, citrus, and whatever else I have on hand…

I used:

18x24 watercolor paper

Cyanotype chemistry

Rust water

Turmeric

Tannins (chestnut)

Vinegar

Salt

Solarfast

Lemons

Leaves

Metal

materials include:

cyanotype chemistry, rust water, turmeric, salt, vinegar, tannins, solarfast, lemons, metal objects, and washing soda

materials: cyanotype emulsion, wine tannins, rust water, solarfast, vinegar, turmeric, salt, washing soda, plant matter

trying to figure out where to post my art has been difficult… they’re not quite cyanotypes, but not quite paintings. but I don’t think there’s a sub for chemical paintings. If there is, let me know!

I like chemicals for their unpredictability. After I set my prints in the sun and take them in for rinsing, it’s like opening a present every time.