Tag Archives: paper

Who Shall Say Where One Ends, and Where the Other Begins?

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Everything is impermanent.

Everything is impermanent.

A goodly percentage of my friends believe that you can never start celebrating Halloween too early. Since moving to Tucson, I get more excited about All Souls’ than Halloween, and this year I decided to create a Dia de los Muertos feel for the early autumn bulletin board. I also documented a lot of my process. The welcome back-to-school butterfly has faded and died,  and moved on to a new journey via the recycling bin, and we move from a symbol of transformation and life to a symbol of permanence and death: the calaveras.

Sketch done at 3 a.m. the night before, which is pretty good for me. Sometimes I go in there with no idea what I'm going to draw.

All you need to get started.

This little sketch was undertaken at 3 a.m. the night before, which is not bad. Sometimes I get in there with very little idea of what I actually intend to create. This is the first time I’ve ever made a thumbnail. You know that metric ruler belongs to the elementary school, and you know I’m the only one who uses it.

Clockwise, from top left: blank background, dress based on a traditional folklorico design, pieces laid out inside, scalpel for interior details.

Clockwise, from top left: blank background, dress based on a traditional folklorico design, pieces laid out inside, scalpel for interior details.

To begin, I tear down the old bulletin board, then get some butcher paper and create a new background, which takes 2 layers of paper and a lot of staples. I sketch out the individual pieces freehand and then cut them out with a pair of scissors, but for the interior details, I’ll often use a small blade.

Everything went smoothly up to this point; although I often feel a panicky sense of self doubt at the beginning, worrying if my art skills are good enough to pull off whatever I see in my head, getting the shapes out of the paper ended up being a simple process.

Transferring the cut-outs from the table to the bulletin board can be more of a challenge. For one thing, it’s windy out there, and for another, gravity works against me. Pretty much the first thing I did was accidentally dump half a bottle of rubber cement onto all the clothes while trying to place them, so I had to stop and clean that up. After that, things moved slowly, but with less incident.

Clockwise from top left: wind ruffles the first pieces; staples create detail in the sombrero; staples create detail on hem; a few flowers.

Clockwise from top left: wind ruffles the first pieces; staples create detail in the sombrero; staples create detail on hem; a few flowers.

A combination of rubber cement and staples seems to be the best choice for affixing paper to paper. The cemented edges may loosen over the next few weeks, but the staples will keep them from coming completely apart. The staples keep the entire design up; if I don’t use enough, sometimes the wind picks the paper up and steals it away. This has happened a few times, and once I never found it again. So, I try to use the staples as design elements. Instead of adding stripes to the clothing, I’ve used staples to create the accents. When the skeletons were satisfactorily placed, there wasn’t room for much text, and I couldn’t think of anything appropriate, so I just added some more flowers to keep things lively.

This was a relatively fast design: four hours from start to finish. Cutting letters probably would have doubled that. I’m pretty satisfied with the finished product, although I liked the faces better in my sketch. At any rate, this seems like a good way to kick off the season.

Happy Halloween, Samhaim, Dia de los Muertos, All Souls, what have you. In October, things die, and we rejoice in the fact that we're still alive to lament their passing.

Happy Halloween, Samhaim, Dia de los Muertos, All Souls, what have you. In October, things die, and we rejoice in the fact that we’re still alive to lament their passing.

Here’s a Spectacular Hodgepodge of I Don’t Know What

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Finding myself without any pithy observations regarding art, writing, or the intersection between the two, allow me instead to offer a completely random assortment of recent-ish images.

Let's call it a snake in the grass

Let’s call it a snake in the grass: torn paper mosaic from 2013

I’m pleased that today was a good day, writing-wise. Got about 3500 words out on this graphic novel script, which is nothing to sneeze at, although I could have done a few thousand more words if I’d been stern with myself.

Have a pointy mandala why not?

Have a pointy mandala why not? This one puts me in mind of a compass rose. It’s quite skewed.

I also read and critiqued a friend’s essay and discussed it in what was essentially a one-woman workshop. As an old veteran of Iowa-style workshop (I’ve taken 10 of those suckers, 6 at the graduate level) I can offer pretty good feedback. Would that I could read my own writing the way I read others’.

October 2013

October 2013 I apparently cut out some weird looking pumpkins. The one in the center is by far the saddest jack-o-lantern I have ever created.

This bulletin board is one I didn’t like well enough to put in my original gallery of bulletin boards, but it’s OK. Eventually, I’ll get them all up. The quote, if you can’t read it, is from Percy Bysshe Shelly: “There is a harmony in autumn, and a luster in its sky.” Since I have space considerations, and my target audience is on average, 8 years old, I often use small segments of quotes. This one continues,  “which through the summer is not heard or seen, as if it could not be, as if it had not been!”

Time to Learn and Grow

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At least, it’s time to learn and grow if you’re a small child living in southern Arizona, where school gets out in May and starts up again as early as late July. I missed my beloved bulletin board, but we are reunited once again.

I feel like, if kids have to go back to public school, the lease I can do is instill in them a sense of magic and wonder to the process.

I feel like, if kids have to go back to public school, the least I can do is instill in them a sense of magic and wonder about the situation.

This one took 8 hours: 1.5 hours at school on Monday putting up the background and outlining the butterfly, 3 hours at home Tuesday night cutting out the letters, and 2.5 hours Tuesday creating the “spots” and putting all the pieces together. For whatever reason, the school was only stocking 3 colors of butcher paper, so my background choices were black, brown, and yellow. I typically save the black ones for Halloween (for added creepiness) and the winter holidays (to make the idea of lights pop out).

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These letter are hand cut (obviously). I just Googled “magic font” and this was one of the first ones that came up.

The quote came later that night, after I had settled on the butterfly. Typically, I pick a keyword, or a few keywords, and look for quotes that suit the idea, although sometimes I start with the quote or message and choose the illustration based on that. In this case, the keyword was “beginning.”

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I use a ruler to draw guidelines so the letters are all the same height, then sketch and cut freehand. However, when the same letter comes up more than once, I use the first as a rough template to ensure that they look more or less alike.

I had an apprentice for this piece, and she’s finally reaching the age where her help is, in fact, helpful. My stepdaughter wanted the bulletin board to feature school supplies, which I originally vetoed, since I had already settled on a butterfly, but then I realized that the butterfly could more easily have a school supply pattern on it. Originally I intended to just make a torn-paper mosaic, but this was much faster and more beautiful.

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My apprentice gets hands on.

In the past, she’s always wanted to help, which usually resulted in things taking four times as long, but she’s finally big enough to understand and follow directions. She applied the rubber cement to the paper and passed it over, which allowed me to assemble the collage more quickly. She also colored the tips of the pencils, applied the ovals to the crayons, suggested color and placement choices, and helped rip the paper.

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My apprentice feels a sense of accomplishment, and possibly wonder.

I also dropped and broke a stapler in this process, so now I owe the library a stapler. However, I did manage to unjam the one I broke last May, but we’re still down one stapler.

Update 7/31/14

I think I’m off the hook for the stapler.

The Breezeway Part 3

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Spring 2011, a Tree of Knowledge

Spring 2011, a Tree of Knowledge

I’m interested in the idea of dimensionality. Some of the previous bulletin boards used layers to create depth, but I experiment with other methods of making the images pop. For this tree, I actually constructed a number of little books and then attached them at various angles to showcase the third dimension.

Summer 2012, a Sonoran Desert Mandala

Summer 2012, a Sonoran Desert Mandala

Here, I used multiple layers and curled the edges of the flower using the blade of a pair of scissors to create the 3D effect. The species represented in this image include saguaro, prickly pear, ocotillo, palo verde, yucca, fishhook barrel, cholla, and bird of paradise.

It’s always a challenge to create holiday bulletin boards that reflect our local culture while remaining nondenominational.

Winter 2013, Another Ofelia Zepeda quote, paired with my take on the beautiful Mexican tin lanterns. I used layers and string for dimensionality here.

Winter 2013, Another Ofelia Zepeda quote, paired with my take on the beautiful Mexican tin lanterns. I used layers and string for dimensionality here.