NFSW. Shibari in Mixed Media 2, in progress shots

I love watercolor.

Like, a lot. 

How else do you achieve the subtle, rose-colored hues of a recently spanked ass suspended in the air? (Well, technically, there are tons of ways to achieve that. But watercolor- for me- is the EASIEST.)

I get easily seduced by working wet-into-wet, so taking the time out to update the blog is a good way to force myself to let the recent heat in the Pacific Northwest do its work before going in to do the detailing on her face. 

I'm quickly re-learning watercolor, having not really touched it since I graduated last year. Thanks to the cleverness of past-Mish, I've still got my palette with a MESS of mixed tones and shades still sitting in it, just waiting to be used. This makes at least half the learning process- the messy, paint wasting part that involves mixing colors- gloriously avoidable.

My hastily constructed watercoloring studio. Really, I should clip it onto my easel and work properly, but then how could I check twitter while I paint?

A note on the blog: If you're particularly sharp eyed, you might have noticed I've made a couple of changes to the sidebar. (And if you're reading this on Facebook, you wouldn't have noticed anything, and can clickez ici to see what I've done.) One of the downsides to publishing on the internet is that I can't have a heavily stickered mason jar with "TIPS" written in black sharpie on the side. Such a thing would be useful right now, since I've got all of ten pages left in my sketchbook and a dwindling bank account. So, I put up a donation button in case anyone feels charitable and would like to flip a quarter or two into the "feed the starving artist" fund in the hopes of being able to buy a new one without straining my poor finances more.

In the FURTHER vein of continuing to feed myself, I'll be putting this piece up on etsy once it's finished for all of your pervy decorating needs. Exciting!

Teaser

Preliminary sketch of a new piece in progress. Look, the lazy artist broke out a reference book! (Hooray for my housemates with more diverse libraries than mine.)

NSFW. Shibari in mixed media

Well, I think this is the first time I've broken out the NSFW tag for something explicitly sexual. Hi, family members I regularly direct here!

This piece started out as a simple figure study, that wound up taking a pose that couldn't really be achieved without a full suspension. So I grabbed some embroidery thread and a needle and did just that.

The concept of combining drawings with thread is far from original- I'm pretty sure I've even seen shibari themed pencil and thread art before. There are some beautiful ink and ribbon mixed media pieces up in the aerial studio I train at that have probably been subconsciously pushing my art brain in this direction. I'd like to imagine there's a "connect-the-ropes" cardboard shibari book out there that comes with a few lengths of shoelace and reinforced holes around naked figures. (If not, why the hell hasn't someone made it yet?)

A shot from another angle to give some idea of how the embroidery thread looks on flat paper. I deliberately left the tie between the ankles loose, in an attempt to make it look as if it were hanging loosely.

It should be clear from this attempt that I am painfully inexperienced in shibari. I didn't even break out a reference book for this, even though I know there's one less than 20 feet away on our bookshelf in the living room. I'm a lazy artist like that, particularly when I'm scribbling in my sketchbook at midnight in front of an episode of Misfits. I've been tying people up in my art since middle school, to varying degrees of divorced from reality, but even I know you can't suspend someone from ankles, crotch and knee points. That's what drawings are for.

I'd like to do a few more pieces in this theme using watercolors, heavy-weight paper, and thin hemp rope. If you look for it, you can see where I mistakenly broke through the paper trying to feed the needle in blind. My subject was very patient with me, despite all the unintentional piercing.

A shot of the back of the page. You can fill in the figure a bit if you know what to look for, but otherwise, I find it to be a really interesting negative of the image.

Inspiration

Pencil sketch from last night, musing about the nature of feeling inspired. Sometimes I feel like my hair could stand on end when I have so many ideas coursing through my head.

Fawn, bound- finished

I ended up working into this more with colored pencil than marker- I still don't really trust myself to pull out soft shading with prismacolors, though my small collection of greys are subtle enough that I trust them a bit more. I've been slowly training myself to work up to dark colors slowly and lay in the quiet shading first.

Cleaned it up a bit in Gimp and put in that cloudy effect around the top of the image. Not exactly the glossy effect I'd really like to achieve someday, but at least I got some practice in.

Art production and focus has a direct correlation to my mental state, which has been set to "off" and "down" lately, for a variety of reasons. Paper and markers continue to be cheaper than therapy.

Fawn, bound

Something I scribbled in pencil in my sketchbook last night. Very rough idea that I didn't think out enough in advance, so there's a lot of messy erasing and drawing-over-drawing in it. I want to go back over it in Prismacolors and lend some greys, greens and dark leather colors to it.

The figure is surrounded by roughed in thorns on vines. I wanted to juxtapose a calm and content creature with symbols of restraint and sharpness, in an attempt to lend some visuals to the sense of centeredness one can feel when at the focus of bound and painful physical attention.

I'm going to try to push myself to work into this in traditional media, then take it into Gimp and try to clean it up into a glossier digital form. I could use the practice, and I think I like this image enough to continue playing with it.

Blog aside: I tweaked the margin weights for this page, so some of the images that I think were getting cut off should be here in full now. I like stretching out into the margins of the page more, too- it feels more comfortable!

Self-Surgery

Got whacked with the desire to work into a new piece tonight and since I'm in dire need of self-care, it started along the path of being somewhat therapeutic and introspective.

I've had the idea of a figure with a heart cut out in my head for awhile. When I still had a studio space, I had the idea for a full sized human cut-out from butcher paper tacked to the wall with a 3D heart-shaped box of some sort in the appropriate place that I could place things in. I can't make boxes, heart shaped or otherwise, so it never came about, but the idea stuck in my head.

I played around with the human form as a physical space for inscription and incision awhile ago in this post, "Parts of Me Were Broken Long Before My Heart Came Into." I'm worried I'll run into the same roadblock with this one as I did with that one, shading large expanses of the human form that isn't the face or hands. I never actually finished that piece.

Some initial sketches and thumbnails for the idea. I'm trying to find my balance between exaggerated and realistic here and it's a struggle.

Reminder.

Every day.

Make something.

Write something.

Draw something.

Do something.