The Big Bang

I was ill this week and just as I started feeling better, my mother became ill. As a consequence, I’ve done very little artwork. I feel blessed, because I have this HUUUGE stockpile of older art, and new readers who haven’t seen it.

This is a piece that I did back in 2010. I don’t remember the paper I used, unfortunately, but I did a pretty extensive write-up with the pens and tangle patterns that I used.

Here’s the write-up:

I drew strings with a micron, and then drew Fescu. Then Galatea. Then Bubbles & Quatiny variations. I had a vague idea of turning my Bubbles into Nipa. Color suddenly seemed desirable for the bubbles, so I grabbed some tombows and ended up coloring the page. Little thought here–I know how my colors work together. You follow steps just like you would with a pattern. Blue, then pink, then shades of yellow, ending up with the lightest last. Then a darker blue in corners to make things pop.

So then sparkle took my fancy, and I grabbed up the gellyroll white and metallic gold. I started drawing the tangle Eke, and doing asterisks and stippling, then smearing it all. I even did some Cubine in the upper right corner and smeared it.

During this process of dotting and spotting and smearing, there was a big bang in my head (some people call this an idea, but to me it’s a lot more exciting than that, lol!)

I liked the way the color and texture were building up, and they seemed more interesting than the linework. The color and texture had to dominate. So I continued with my white and gold, going over most of the micron lines, sometimes dotting, sometimes covering, until the line mostly became pattern.

So there was impulse here, and decision. I mostly laid down color or pattern, and my finger smeared it into shading and texture. Other than thinking that I would use certain patterns, follow certain steps for adding color, and deciding to turn most of the lines into pattern–I don’t feel I thought that much. After I finished, I was totally relaxed and refreshed. I had absolutely no idea what my husband had been watching on the TV, and was surprised to find I had taken about an hour to do this.