Tag Archives: Beginnings

Oil For Winter

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I wrote this a little while ago and forgot to post it. I have stepped away from this exploration as i discovered something was missing.

While originally intended to chronicle my exploration of Scrye Dye, with winter and the removal of all but the hardiest of Pansies for color, I have turned to oils for a piece I have been pondering for close to a year.

I originally started playing with paints about a year ago. First watercolors, then acrylics and finally oils. As I explore I have seen the myriad possibilities and am enjoying the learning process of how to get there. I had a # of projects in the works when I discovered Scrye Dye and set them all aside.

Now, it is time to get back to that work, wherever it leads, and instead of starting a new site just for it or whatever kind of categorization my mind might like to place it in, I will display it here along my other artwork.

This is the start of a piece that is part of an anti-consumerism series I have been kicking around for about a year. Now, the politics are not where I like to voice myself, simply stated I am still very much a part of the consumerist machine, but I see the cracks, I see the charades, it’s a Hollywood movie come to life, except we all get to be the stars in our own personalized version, be it comedy, drama or an eternal spin in Dante’s Inferno.

When will I stop my ride? Either when I choose to or am forced to and when that day comes I’ll figure it out. In the meantime, here are my thoughts on what we are doing.

The original sketch

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Filling in the black

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Sharpening the outline of the letters.
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Adding the blue of the ocean
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Starting to see something go wrong with the snake as I color it in.20120102-144010.jpg

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I put on a scale pattern to see if I can get it back on track, while continuing to add other color.20120102-144026.jpg

Shortly after this, as I worked on the mouth it went horribly wrong. I haven’t taken pictures of that yet because I am not sure where to go from here. I am thinking about taking some art lessons to learn some of the things I need to know to reach the next level. Since this was a dry run for the canvas it accomplished what I had hoped it would. I know some of the basic design changes I would like to see to make it really work and then I need to figure out exactly how to paint it how I want it.
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And this is where things come together to start becoming something or not.

Why Scrye?

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So, why Scrye?

I wanted to find a name for what I was doing. I figured while it wasn’t likely a medium which an artist would likely use to paint with, with all of today’s modern choices, at the very least native americans and our ancestors used some form of plant matter to make the colors in their paintings. The closest I found in my few searches were related to using plants as dyes, which is essentially the same, but not entirely.

While some of the same colors are probably found in the plants they used, they are not strictly speaking devised in the same way. For me, extraction of the color comes from taking the petals, leaves, stamens or other parts and rubbing them against the canvas itself to bring out whatever color is on or inside the plant. There are many and there will probably be tons of posts covering this that and everything else regarding to some of the more interesting flowers and or colors I have found and how they come out on different substrates, but for now, let’s just leave it at many.

When you first start rubbing a petal against canvas, you will find that it leaves behind color, moisture and often times debris. It was after trying many different flowers that I realized each one behaved differently, some were dry(leaves of plants and pollens), others were very moist and came off runny(berries especially), some left behind debris which could be bothersome, others were sticky and hard to work with and some dry a completely different color than they start. Here is a good point to mention that many flowers do not give the same color as they appear and often times they can give more than one and other parts might give something else entirely, just like the yellow pollen from the Anther of a Black Lily.

I set out to make a classification system so that I could keep track of which did what and make sure that I did not use some of the more bothersome ones and accidentally ruin what I was working on.

And from that, the name was born.

As of this writing, the letters mean the following things

S – Scented, gives off an odor that may hopefully last after the material has dried.
C – Crumbly, leaves debris, can sometimes be brushed away with your hand, but may be bothersome.
R – Runny or potentially too moist, can also be sticky
Y – Leaf is dry, may require extra effort to get to the color
E – This one had a meaning, but I have since combined it with R, so for now it is just a place holder, until I determine the need for another descriptor.

D – Dries a different color than when it is wet
+ – Requires a lot of material to make swatch of color
– – Requires only a little to make a swatch of color