Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
looking for wabi-sabi and finding it all around you
I find that looking for wabi-sabi reminds me to really pay attention to what I see and feel. The wabi-sabi search involves slowing down and observing small pieces of the world. I love going on wabi-sabi walks with my grandson or some of my young students. Children are excellent teachers for adults who live in a hurried world where it is hard to see the trees and the forest is a blur. Here are some ways to relearn how to look with wonder and openness.
Explore your home and yard or your neighborhood. Look at both nature and human-made objects for:
• Aging
• Seasoning
• Humble form
• Simplicity
• Peeling layers
• Plant life growing through objects or pavement
Go to an old part of your town and see what glorious ruined features you can find.
Explore thrift and secondhand stores for objects that speak to you of lives well lived.
Take lots of pictures of what you find, especially close-ups. I'm not a trained photographer, but I find that with my trusty digital camera and knowledge of a few photo-editing techniques, I can take photos that inspire me to create. The photos provide a good jumping-off point for color, texture and line that I can use in my wabi-sabi work.
Besides sight, other senses may help you find wabi-sabi:
• The smell of distant wood smoke on an autumn evening
• The smell of new-mown grass that makes you momentarily long for childhood
• Fragrant flowers at twilight on a summer night
• The smell of the sea enveloping you on a deserted beach
• The sound of bamboo wind chimes at dusk
• Hearing the crashing of the surf on a foggy day on the coast
• Hearing the call of an owl while you are sleeping under the stars
• Touching the pitted surface of a clay bowl
• Stroking the wrinkled face of an elder
• Feeling the cold surface of an old metal teakettle
• The earthy taste of fresh mushrooms
• The sweet-and-sour taste of miso soup
• The taste of home-cooked brown rice and vegetables
Memory can also have a big influence on your wabi-sabi art. I will always remember the sense of peace and contentment I had when I visited my grandmother's house. She decorated with calming colors and lots of inspirational artwork. At the lower edge of her large garden was a slough. My grandfather used to take me out in his rowboat and encourage me to pretend the slough was the Mississippi River.
I remember family visits to the beach. I found lots of shell pieces and agates that seemed magical to me at the time. I find the colors of my grandmother's house and garden reappear in my artwork, as well as misty ocean and river elements. By allowing ourselves to remember, we can visit those places that filled us with wonder.
Wabi-Sabi Colors
Colors that I associate with wabi-sabi tend to be rich, muted and complex. A warm palette might contain red-browns, Buff White, yellow gold, yellow green and Ultramarine Blue. Nature's autumn colors, those of the falling leaves and decaying vegetation, may be the most wabi-sabi colors of the palette. You can create wabi-sabi pieces with a cooler palette as well. Silver, mauve, pastel yellows, cool blues, grays and black can evoke winter and also the aged look of old metal.
I often use bright colors for accents in my pieces, as they can create "sweet spots" of emphasis in a more muted palette. Other times I may start with a bright color and put transparent layers of a more muted tone over the bright one. This suggests the aged and burnishing effect of time and the elements.
During all the seasons, I enjoy taking photos that suggest wabi-sabi colors to me. I'm happy to be able to share some of these photographs with you. For each season, I have included a photo that I've taken along with a traditional haiku that evokes that particular season.
Wabi-Sabi Texture
I think of texture as something I can see and that I can imagine feeling with my hands even if I'm just looking at a photograph. Wabi-sabi texture is varied, rough, stimulating and alive. Children are often encouraged to explore texture by plunging their hands into large containers of rice, lentils, sand and clay. I find that texture is stimulating to adults as well!
I took the photos below in a walk around my neighborhood. On the way to my local coffee shop, I looked for textures that inspired me with qualities of complexity, age, contrast and depth. I'm always delighted with the many interesting textures I can find when I pay attention to what is around me.
Use Your Photo for Inspiration
I took this picture on my first wabi-sabi walk around the outside of my house. On my back porch, two broken pots sat atop a paint-stained table. The burnt orange stucco area at the top of the picture is part of an exterior wall of the house. The pot directly on top of the table has some potting soil in it. Or maybe it's just plain dirt! Really, this is a picture of junk. Or is it? There's still beauty in the shards of handmade pottery and in the glistening colors of what used to be my paint table.
To me the way the colors, shapes and designs are juxtaposed gives me wabisabi inspiration. The colors of this photo have inspired several of my autumn pieces. I had put this arrangement together before I'd ever heard the term wabi-sabi. But I knew the arrangement spoke to me of accidental beauty arising from imperfection and even decay.
Take your own photo of an arrangement that inspires you. Choose a color scheme from the arrangement. From the photo above I chose terra-cotta red, turquoise and Burnt Umber for one of the pieces below, Between, and the shape for the other piece, Chalice. Which colors and shapes might you choose?
Use Your Photo for Setting a Mood
I took this photo on the cemetery island of Venice, again, long before I knew the term wabi-sabi. To me, this picture speaks of the cycle of life and death and the changes that are wrought by time. The tomb in the foreground has started to crumble, the brick of the building is discolored and the gravel is unevenly distributed. The old-fashioned broom adds a piquant note to this picture of change in progress. Even though the picture was taken in the cemetery, the sun seems warm and the overall feeling is one of peace and acceptance.
Inspiration Haiku
In addition to getting inspiration from images and from what we see around us, we can also get inspiration from poems written by the haiku masters of Japan. These exquisite writings have taught me much about wabi-sabi. In the original Japanese, each haiku uses only seventeen syllables to capture a moment in a way that engages all of our senses and emotions.
A haiku pinpoints the emotions and mind state of the writer in a given moment. In just three lines, a haiku can make us feel as though we are in the experience with the writer. Haiku can be funny, sad, nostalgic, brisk and all of these at once. Reading a haiku and sitting with the feelings and mental images the poem evokes can be a vital starting point to creating a piece.
Try reading one of the traditional haiku in this book or look online for haiku. Find one that speaks to you and think of it as you create a piece. The haiku and your work can become a dialogue of expressiveness.
Mixing Acrylics
Now that we've explored photos as sources of inspiration, we're getting ready to start creating our art. For the piece we'll make in this chapter, I'm going to use the autumn colors found in my inspiration photograph of pottery shards on a paint-stained table. There are a couple of ways I can do this. I can use paints that are already just the colors I want, or I can mix my own colors. For this piece I'll go for some transparent colors, such as Nickel Azo Gold, Red Iron Oxide and Green Gold. Other transparent colors I suggest are Ultramarine Blue, Payne's Gray, Viridian or Pthalo Green and Burnt Umber. I'll also choose some opaque colors, such as Titan Buff, Titanium White, Yellow Ochre, Raw Umber and a strong red. Using both transparent and opaque colors creates vibrant contrasts.
If I don't have the colors I want, I mix them as I go. Here are some examples of colors you can mix for wabi-sabi art. (First check the back of the paint tube or jar to see if it is transparent, opaque, semitransparent or semi-opaque.)
Creating Visual Texture
Visual texture refers to an illusion of texture. Your surface may be smooth all over but you can give the appearance of texture by using the techniques below. I love to experiment and see what happens when I blot layers and then use my wet paper towel to go over another area. Mixing it up like this adds to the aged and imperfect wabi-sabi effect.
Drybrushing is another great method for adding texture and for bringing your piece together. This technique is done just the way it sounds. Take a dry brush and put the color on your support with a scrubbing stroke. Your previous layer will be covered unevenly, an effect that adds the look of a textured surface. If you have, for example, a large blue area and a large green area, drybrush a bit of the blue over the green and vice versa. This unifies the piece while retaining separate areas.
USING RUBBING ALCOHOL
Plain old rubbing alcohol can add a lot of interest to your work. You'll get some interesting effects where the alcohol has moved the paint around or has removed some of it. If you have taken off more than you wanted to, just go over the sprayed areas with more of the original color.
USING WATER
I became enamored with this technique following a happy accident. I once carried a slightly wet piece from my detached studio into the house — in the rain! The raindrops created a highly interesting surface. Now I often add a few water drops on purpose. Doing so creates subtle surface texture and can also suggest the effects of a landscape seen through a window or through a mist.
Finishing Touches
To add an aged look, bring the eye more closely into the picture and make the piece appear more complete, try these finishing touches.
Sealing Your Pieces
Trust me, you want to wait until your piece is thoroughly dry before you even think about sealing it. Once it is dry, you can consider a few options. Sealing helps protect your piece, and the methods below will both do that. Beyond that it's up to you what kind of effect you want. I find that some pieces look good with a shiny surface. For these I use acrylic gel gloss medium. Others seem to call for a matte look, so I use acrylic gel matte medium. My favorite sealant, though, is cold wax medium.
Cold wax medium is designed for use with oil paint to create impasto (raised paint) and to provide a more matte finish than other oil painting mediums. The great news is that acrylic and mixed-media artists can also use cold wax over their work. It gives a beautiful, organic, satiny look to the piece and can even make the colors richer.
The Landscape Format
The landscape format is the simplest composition for you to start with. Its simplicity doesn't mean that it is a lesser composition form, however. Lots of artists have created masterpieces with this format. You may do the same! A landscape format means that your artwork consists of two or more horizontal areas. You can suggest a real landscape or you can work more abstractly. Lots of times I've started out with what I thought was an abstract in a landscape format only to find that my mind creates a picture that represents aspects of a real landscape. Landscape pieces don't have to be done in the traditional landscape style with width greater than height. You can also use a square support or one with a height greater than its width. Creating a basic landscape is a great way to focus your experiments on colors, color mixtures, paints and re-inkers and other techniques covered in this chapter.
Painting with Re-Inkers
I love using re-inkers mixed with acrylic glaze medium as my paint in wabi-sabi work. I discovered re-inkers several years ago and was amazed at the rich colors they provided. I immediately began painting with them on small wood panels. I discovered after a while that the re-inkers tended to sink into the wood and that the colors didn't stay vivid. After I recovered from my disappointment, I came up with the idea of mixing the re-inker color with acrylic glaze medium to make the paint film stronger. It worked! The combination of the medium and re-inker produced gorgeous paint layers that didn't fade. From now on when I refer to reinker glaze, that's my shorthand for re-inkers mixed with acrylic glaze medium. You'll find that the re-inker colors are so rich that you need to use less than you might think when you make your re-inker glaze. Experiment with earth colors, bright colors and light re-inker colors. A spot of vivid color can bring an earth-toned piece to life, while a contrasting light color can give a subtle glow when applied over a light area of your piece.
In the following project you'll create an atmospheric piece reminiscent of an old oil painting. Grab your favorite re-inker colors, glaze medium and brushes — and go!
Acrylic Paint and Re-Inkers
Re-inker glaze works wonderfully with liquid or regular acrylic paint. I often add buff or white acrylic paint to a re-inker color used in one area of the piece in order to make a stronger contrast with the part of the piece done only in re-inker glaze. You can also add re-inker and glaze over an area painted with acrylic paint. Adding white to a re-inker color brightens the color and makes it more opaque. In this project I have evoked a cloudy day at the coast, with the hint of a ship at the horizon line. I've also used several aging and blotting techniques to instill a feeling of mystery.
CHAPTER 2
patina of time: creating the effects of seasoning
My inspiration for the projects in this chapter comes from the effect of time and weather on natural and created objects and structures. If you're a mixed-media creator you probably love seasoned and layered surfaces and shapes that speak of time passing and the inevitability of change.
Inspiration for the work in this chapter comes from rusted and tarnished metal, time-distressed wood, pit-fired pottery, peeling layers of paint and paper adorning old buildings and driftwood by the sea.
I think it's wonderful that many organic and fabricated objects become more beautiful as they age. The seasoning of time adds extra meaning and depth to things and to people, as well. There's randomness to the effects of patina that you can reproduce in the process of creating the pieces in this chapter. Your experimentation will result in surprising and pleasing outcomes! As you create, enjoy the process of change that your work will undergo.
In this chapter, I'll show you several ways to use acrylic paint and re-inkers along with an unusual ingredient — aluminum foil — to create the look of aged metal. You'll do some incising into your pieces to suggest the ravages of time on a painted surface. You'll use what you've learned about wabi-sabi texture and color to create work that is meaningful and expressive.
You may notice that in many of my completed projects and my gallery pictures, I have added more aging and patina than are shown in the step-by-step directions. Sometimes this comes about by happy accident when my hands have paint on them that gets on the piece in a pleasing way. Here are more deliberate methods for adding patina and seasoning to your pieces:
• Rub Slate or Mushroom re-inker in various areas around the piece.
• Sponge on acrylic paint in a neutral or brown color and wipe off, as desired.
• Collage a few specks of dry tea onto the surface of your piece.
• Rub your fingers or a towel onto an ink pad and rub a bit of ink onto the piece.
• Rub some instant coffee flakes into the piece.
Spattering, Sponging, Dropping and Wiping
I've been talking a lot about blotting, wiping and so forth. It's time to take a look at ways these techniques and other alterations to your paint and ink layers can suggest patina and age.
You're going to blot, sponge, spatter, drop and wipe when you create your version of the following piece. In addition to alcohol ink and rubber stamps, you're going to use some household products such as rubbing alcohol and aluminum foil.
You can paint your foil pieces before or after you apply them to the support. Adding gel medium to your acrylic paint makes the paint stronger and more effective in covering the foil. If you want just a hint of color on the foil, add a bit of paint with acrylic glaze medium.
Scraping and Incising
I love the term for etching marks into a painted surface: sgraffito. This is an Italian word for a technique that dates at least back to the Renaissance. You'll recognize this term as the parent of our modern word, graffiti. This technique mimics the process of wear and tear over time.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Wabi-Sabi Art Workshop"
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Copyright © 2013 Serena Barton.
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