Hamlet, Prince of Denmark is Visiting Chicago

Hamlet, Prince of Denmark is visiting Chicago! You will be able to follow Hamlet through the city at @cheeruphamlet on Twitter, this Sunday, 5/26/2013.  If you do not have a Twitter account, you can still follow along @cheeruphamlet online see more on Pinterest here.

Watch four hours of Aurora Borealis compressed into three stunning minutes.

Photographer Göran Strand used 2464 raw images taken with his all-sky camera to create this gorgeous time-lapse video. The swirling crystal ball images show the view from Östersund, Sweden, when a when a Coronal Mass Ejection hit Earth’s magnetic field.

Sunspot AR1692 produced a M1-class solar flare and on March 17th, the resulting CME hit our magnetic field, creating this marvelous light show. Strand captured the aurora between 19:20 and 23:35 UT so that he could share the view with the rest of us.  [source]

Art Museum Claims Victim

 

 

I try to warn people over and over again about viewer fatigue.  I tell as many people as I can “don’t try to see it all in one visit.”  Also, these marble benches at the Art Institute kind of hurt to sit on.  Anyone that can fall asleep on one is totally wiped out.  Sadly, I was too late to help this girl.

Loving Fountain Pens

I have been into drawing a lot lately and decided to use fountain pens for the first time in a long time.  I pulled out two old Sheaffer plastic cheap fountain pens.  They are fun but have disappeared from office supply stores, so I bought a nice hefty cigar shape fountain pen from Amazon.  It seems that there are a slew of fountain pens available in Hong Kong and one can be purchased, shipping included, for $5 and up.  They usually come with a refillable ink cartridge inside but no ink.  I recommend buying a pen other shoppers have rated well.

Waterproof inks are not recommended; they can clog the pen too easily.  I am enjoying using a bottle of Windsor Newton sepia calligraphy ink.  The pen did not work right away; I needed to hold the nib under a faucet of running water and then let it dry out and it was fine.  It had dust or something from the factory, maybe a little corn starch so the manufacturer can tell if it was used should anyone return the merchandise.

Part of the enjoyment of returning to fountain pen drawing is how portable a fountain pen is.  You can get a range of line widths more like a dip pen but it is a lot easier to carry around.  This has been fun for making artist trading cards.  I can just put a pen and pencil with some ATC blanks in my purse or bag and carry them around with me.  If I want to add depth, I ink wash in the background later at home.

 

 

DIY Photo Mailer Envelopes & Lazy Mail Art

I was in need of 5″ x 7″ envelopes to mail photographs with and found a free template online that fits well on the page of large wall calenders.  There is not a whole lot you can do with an out of date calendar and I wanted to share the art on this calendar by David Andre with other people.  A blank label gives me a place to write the address for the sender and I use smaller labels for my return address.  I wish I had thought of this idea sooner, as most people have already discarded their 2012 calendars.  I have two others I will be able to recycle into colorful envelopes.  I get a large envelope and lazy mail art in one item!  I also make sure to let the recipients know whose art is on the calendar.  See more work by David Andre at his website here.  I have put up two designs for strong envelopes below.  I use clear packing tape to secure the edges and folds.

How to Art Stalk People

I have been really tired of being indoors, so I decided to be indoors somewhere else!  Someone I came across was cheated out of receiving a hand-drawn postcard for a mail art swap.  I went out for a sandwich and tried to think of something to draw and settled for what was in front of me.  People were coming and going rapidly, so I had to do the best I could with the drawing above.  I went with mechanical pens and waterproof ink since this postcard has to survive being mailed.

The best work for me is when I’m using pencils to sketch and preferably someone that does not wriggle around or move a lot.  I started art stalking in 1994 and have done it sporadically ever since.  You need to order food or at least a drink, settle in behind your order, hug a quiet corner or seat by a wall and try not to look at your target too directly or too often.  It used to be that I had to hope for someone reading or maybe writing, but with everyone dragging around a laptop, there are more opportunities to find stationary humans.  I learned that people messing with smartphones are no help though, they squirm way too much.  You can get a fleeting sketch at best.

Tangle Pattern Design Adventure

I discovered the tangle pattern / “Zentangle” drawing movement through mail art swapping this past year.  At first, doing this technique was kind of hard to do because it is pattern-based and I am used to fine art drawing.  Once I got better at making the patterns, I really came to like incorporating the patterns into what the creators call ZIA (Zentangle Inspired Artworks.)  I’ve only just sent the drawings out in swaps for artist trading cards.

Since it is fun and geared to be accessible to everyone, I mulled over various ideas for a few months set down some ideas that may be newer tangle patterns.  I tried to check these ideas against published patterns as best I could; I am not good at memorizing patterns, and there are a lot published.  At the least, I enjoy these patterns and will use them myself!  I was aiming to make some interesting designs that are fun and have fun names.  Feel free to use these patterns for your own use.  I am open sourcing these designs, please give credit to me as their originator and link-back online if you re-post the images.

Meanwhile, my HBBF is teaching Chicago Public School kids and they are studying propaganda.  I wound up tracing Rosie the Riveter with felt tipped pens which was photocopied and distributed to the kids to color and add their own messages.  This image is at 300 dpi, right click it and open it in a new window, then save the image to get the full size copy.  Put a piece of cardstock or heavier paper in your computer printer and print it out.  I dare you to tangle draw this!

Making a Hand Carved Rubber Stamp

Janice Marie at Fripperee blog sent me a lovely ‘zine on using a plastic eraser for hand-made stamp carving.  I tried it for the first time and had a lot of fun.  Swap-bot users have an internal term: “angel” as a verb {to angel, or angeling} which means to send out, for free, an item because a trade partner failed to mail a trade and left the recipient in a group trade empty-handed.  People angel to compensate for those who do not follow through on sending what they were supposed to mail.

I carved a self-portrait of angeling since I have sent out a few items to be kind to swappers who were cheated.  The rubber stamp is silly and I laughed when I finished it.  I’m glad I went to art school to go on to carve silly rubber stamps.  I used a cheap plastic eraser, drew on it with pencil, cut it out with an Xacto knife and a Dockyard Microtools v-gouge.  You can’t use a light wash of ink or acrylic paint like for linoleum printmaking, the plastic rejects the media, so you have to closely eyeball your cuts.  Maybe next time I will try rubbing some graphite on the eraser lightly to see the cuts revealing the white rubber beneath and still be able to see the pencil lines drawn for the design.  This will probably help me make smoother lines.  The stamp was fun to make and ran me $0.60 for the 2×6 cm plastic eraser.

 

Bump Cat

Use this “Bump Cat” for any online forums where the message threads get pushed down chronologically!  It’ an old .jpg that was viral in the early 2000s.  Ah, the good old days.

 

 

Making a Dotee Doll

Dotee dolls are a newer hand-crafting fad.   I dragged out some quilting cotton, beads and ribbon bling, used fabric paint on pieces of a white t-shirt to make faces and hands and a turquoise eyelash yarn for hair to make this mother and child themed Dotee doll as a gift for someone.  From what I gather, the dolls often have round “dot” faces and part of the idea is to incorporate various beads, fibers and fabrics into what is essentially a small doll and a hanging ornament.  They are small and generally fit in the palm of your hand.  These are popular with online art swappers; just as there are artist trading cards as miniature paintings and drawings, these are a sort of artist trading dolls.  You can find many examples of Dotee dolls on Flickr.   Like artist trading cards, they are both a craft and a collectible.