Good Sharp Blades

"This is no toy," he told her.

"Be careful you don't cut yourself.

The edges are sharp enough to shave with."

-- George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

Razor blades and X-Acto blades on magazine image 11-4-14

"Dull blades are dead blades."

-- Jay Riggio, collage artist

I've been killing time working a collage self-portrait that involves lots of hands cut out of magazines.

As a result, my work room is currently littered with a bunch of random cut-out paper hands and the torn-out magazine pages from which all of the hands were taken.

Anyway.

Good sharp blades are essential when I'm making a collage or other cut paper artwork. A dull, raggedy blade can seriously fuck up the whole process.

So I try to keep lots of fresh new ones on hand.

Fresh New Art Supplies

"Life is about using the whole box of crayons."

-- RuPaul

A well-used lemon yellow crayon 3-27-14

"A box of new crayons! 

Now they're all pointy, lined up in order, bright and perfect.

Soon they'll be a bunch of ground down, rounded, indistinguishable stumps,

missing their wrappers and smudged with other colors.

Sometimes life seems unbearably tragic."

-- Bill Watterson

What is it about fresh, virgin art supplies that makes me so giddy?

I think it is the vastness of the untapped potential and possibility that lies within them -- in each box of new crayons and pencils, in each tube of paint, in each pristine tablet of paper, in every straight edged brick of fresh, untouched clay.

New art supplies still hold the unsullied hope and promise of perfection, of wild and ambitious visions that haven't been dashed by mistakes or blunders or disappointment. They could still become anything I can dream of.

Leo and I went to the art supply store yesterday to re-stock. He needed a couple of tubes of oil paint, and I needed some acrylics. We also bought brushes and I picked up a fresh linoleum block and some Super Sculpey. I got a huge roll of black paper to use as a photo backdrop, and I also grabbed a box of little markers with points like brushes. I always try to find something new to experiment with and they looked interesting.

I don't have any particular plans for my new stuff. But they'll get their chance. Inspiration will strike. It usually does.

My love affair with new art supplies goes way, way back.

My dad was a high school guidance counselor, and when I was little he was also the Santa Claus at the annual high school employees Christmas party. (I was clueless. The suit and beard totally fooled me.)  The teachers and office staff all filled his bag with pre-wrapped gifts for their own kids, and then my dad distributed them as if he'd brought the stuff all the way from the North Pole.

Every year I got a box of new crayons. Not just a regular box, but this HUGE flat of 124 (and not the fat, little kid ones, but the slim, pointy big kid kind) all laid out in a single layer, each crayon resting snugly in it's own little space in the specially-molded plastic tray. 

I have three sisters, and the rest of the year we had to share our crayons, which were all dumped into a jumbled grubby mess in common ratty shoe box. As far as I was concerned, having my very own pristine box of 124 crayons was the true Christmas miracle. 

I was always just a little afraid to start using my new crayons. I didn't want to break the spell. There were colors in there I'd never even seen.

I distinctly remember finding the silver crayon for the first time, with its sparkly metallic flecks embedded right into the wax. I took it to the kitchen to show my mother, cradling it gently in my cupped palms like an injured baby bird.

Me: (breathless) "What is this?"  (I still too young to read the words on the wrapper).

Her: (bored) Silver. (Her unspoken "duh!" rang loudly in the subtext.)

I carried Silver back to the family room floor where I was coloring, and began.

The only word I knew how to spell at the time, besides my own name, was "love," which I wrote in sky blue on a piece of blank paper. Then I colored all around the letters with my new silver crayon. I soon discovered that the harder I pressed, the more metallic glitter it released. So I colored feverishly until "love" was surrounded by a solid sea of silver shimmer -- until my beautiful crayon was a ground down stump in my hot, sweaty little hand.

Resting back in the tray, Silver looked oddly shortened and rounded next to her slim and pointy friends. 

I loved her all the more for that.

Which ... Ding! Ding! Ding!

Brings us to the first ever "One Good Thing Coloring Page!"

I made this special picture of fresh new crayons just for you, so you can print it out and color it in however you like. You can use crayons, paint, lipstick -- whatever. You can even color it digitally on your computer if you want. You can make them any color you want to.

There are no rules, because rules suck. 

Have fun!

New crayons 3-27-14

Real Paper . Real Paint.

"In an age of infinite digital documentation,

paper was the last safe place for secrets."

-- Evan Angler, Swipe

Self portrait, spray paint and acrylic paint on newsprint, 1-13-14

"My life looked good on paper -- where, in fact,

almost all of it was being lived."

-- Martin Amis, Experience: A Memoir

"I am full of mistakes and imperfections 

and therefore I am real ..."

-- Shaun Hick, The Ghost And Its Shadow

Sometimes it feels really good to dust off the old-school art supplies.

Digital art has its place, but it can feel cold and unsatisfying.

Sometimes it feels revolutionary, even rebellious, to make something with my hands, something I can feel, something that gets up under my fingernails, smeared onto my clothes and dripped all over the floor. 

For this self portrait, I taped together a large stencil using real Scotch tape, then cut it out with a real X-acto knife. I laid out the stencil on a real sheet of poster-sized newsprint, held down with a spritz of real spray adhesive, then spray painted it graffiti-style with real spray paint. Then I painted over the spray painted image with real acrylics.

Then (gasp!) I had to wait for it to dry. 

I didn't sit at my desk all hunched over my laptop. I stood at my worktable, and knelt down on the garage floor. I wore my paint-spattered apron, shirt sleeves pushed up to my elbows. I breathed in fumes and made a mess.

My spirit relaxed and said "Aaah."

Instead of a digitized, computer-bound, deletable image, the result of my effort is a big, real, tactile, poster-sized self portrait that makes that same satisfying crinkly sound that my kindergarten paintings did. My scanner isn't big enough to accommodate it, so I did have to take a digital photograph so I could share it here. Alas. The digital part of art still got a piece of the action. But just a tiny piece.

It's also too big for the fridge, but I can hang it on my workroom wall if I want to. 

I think I just might. 

I think it'll look real good there.

Real. Good.