anika mari

An artist friend of mine commented on the recent stone print I completed and mentioned that she never would have thought of doing it. She then expressed and interest in borrowing my brain for a day. Well, I’m not sure how I’d lend out my brain, but it got me to thinking about what thought processes I went through when creating the stone print, and I realized I glossed over those thoughts in the last post. Consider this a little expansion.

The process that I undertook when creating the stone print embraces the randomness that comes when in the midst of creating art. When I set about to create a new piece, I generally have one of two starting points: either I have a subject I want to depict, or I have a set of steps that I want to take. While the former sometimes incorporates some of the random unfolding of ideas, the main distinction is the spark of the idea. When I start a painting or drawing with process in mind, generally the results tend to be more abstract, and I have no idea what I’ll end up with when I’m finished.

When starting a process focused piece, I might begin with a framework in mind, as I did when creating the black and white drawing below, or the recent tapestry drawing I completed.

in this drawing I started with the v shaped framework and added the details as I drew

The other starting point is a specific kind of mark that I want to make, and the piece unfolds from there. That’s what I did when creating the stone prints–I decided that I wanted to see what would happen if I painted a stone with watercolor and pressed it onto paper.

After the print marks were dry, I added the “cocoons” around some of them, only because they looked a little bare, and not as round as some of the other prints.

I added the lines because there were a few little splattered drops of watercolor that had landed here and there, and I used them as starting points from which I drew lines to connect to nearby stone prints. Can you spy the little green dots from which the swooping lines are drawn?

I filled in the resulting shapes with gray watercolor because the compositions needed a little more weight; something to anchor the piece together.

Hopefully that provides a little more insight into the inner workings of what my brain is doing when I’m making art. It’s not very mysterious; generally I just take it step by step, responding to whatever happened previously, but I must admit, sometimes the results surprise even me!

I just got back from a wonderful week spent in North Carolina with my mom, 2 of my brothers and their families. We rented a house right on the ocean in North Topsail Beach. It couldn’t have been a better vacation. It was beautiful and relaxing and everyone was happy.

One of my favorite things to do, besides swimming in the ocean, was wandering along the shore to collect lovely, ocean rounded pebbles. There were so many pretty ones that I must admit I got a little addicted to collecting them. I went on at least 1 walk a day to search for pebbles. It was slow, painful work (not used to crouching down to pick things up repeatedly), but I couldn’t get enough.

At this point, I probably have way too many stones to know what to do with, but I had a lot of fun gathering them up, and I’m looking forward to sorting through them and thinking of fun things to do with them. My brother wants me to fill a mason jar with a selection of translucent stones. I filled one with random stones as a handy way to transport them, and he liked the way it looked.

Besides that, I’ve already done two artsy things with some of the stones, and I know there are more ideas waiting to be discovered.

One quiet afternoon at the beach house, I sat at the kitchen table and started fiddling with a few stones. Arranging them on some bristol, I traced them. Then I painted a light blue-green background, followed by the gray of the stones. When it was dry I finished by adding the line texture.

I cropped it into a square since the edges were a little uneven. I’m not sure which I prefer. I like how the square format makes it easier to see the detail in the stones, but I also like the uneven painted edges of the original format.

While waiting for the painting to dry, I picked up one of the stones and smooshed some watercolor onto one side, then pressed it onto the surface of a new sheet of paper, making a little “stone print”. I repeated the process and added in some lines and texture details. Finally I added the gray paint to some of the resulting shapes to give the composition a little more heft.

It’s maybe a little odd, but I’m sort of fond of this one. I really love the depth and variation of the green-blue color in each stone print.

I plan to explore the “stone printing” method a bit more.

I also have some more photos of some of the stones I collected that I’ll be sharing in the near future.

I’ve been using the name, “anika mari,” for a little over three years. It was a name I came up with to distinguish my artwork from my graphic design work. Basically it’s my first and middle name, but unless you know that about me, you might think that my last name is Mari. It isn’t, and for some reason it always made me a little uncomfortable, like I was pretending to be someone I’m not. It’s possible that I’m over-thinking it a bit, but I always thought it would be somewhat confusing to have a company called Anika Mari by Anika Starmer.

In the interest of avoiding confusion, I’ve been searching for an alternative studio name for almost all of the three years that I’ve been using “anika mari”. Over the years, I’ve had a few likely candidates, but none of them were “it”.

Now that I’m at a point where I’m interested in setting up an online shop, and perhaps getting my work shown in some places (like, IRL!), I felt that familiar tug to come up with a different name. If I’m ever going to change my studio name, it’s now or never.

After a brain storming session filled with lots of ideas (some good, some bad, and some in between), I’m happy to announce that I’ve decided on a new name! In the near future I’ll be switching over to “a is for anika” at aisforanika.com. There’s nothing up yet, but there will be soon, and eventually I’ll be moving this blog over there too.

I’ll give plenty of notice about when I make the switch, and I’ll be cross posting to this blog for a while as I make the transition. If you happen to read this blog with any regularity, this is just the first notice that I’ll be changing things in the future.

In my last post I shared several recent watercolors, and mentioned that I wanted to enlarge the one titled, “Tapestry”. Well, the idea stuck, and this weekend, I did just that.

I used the same method for enlarging this drawing as I’ve done before. It wasn’t quite as big as my last enlarged drawing, so I only had four letter sized sheets of paper to piece together. The tracing was limited to the basic framework, leaving the detailed line-work to be done freehand, so that part went very quickly. It wasn’t until I’d traced over most of the graphite lines with pen that I thought of taking a photo!

I started this process late on Friday night but managed to finish tracing the graphite lines with ink before heading to bed. Waking up to a relatively cool and breezy morning inspired me to sit in the shade to freehand the details.

While adding the textured detail, I made a few “mistakes” like drawing the right pattern of lines in the wrong triangle or drawing the right pattern of lines in the right triangle, but in the wrong direction. For this drawing those mistakes don’t really matter so much. There is some repetition, but what really makes the drawing more interesting are the variations. They warrant a second look and further investigation of the piece, and that’s never a bad thing.

With the ink lines in place, I moved onto the color. The original was a watercolor painting, but I didn’t have any thick, large paper on hand that could handle the water, so I decided to match the colors using Prismacolor markers.

The orange was pretty similar right out of the marker, but to get the right greens and brown I had to layer several different markers. Although not an exact match, I’m happy with the result considering how close I got to the colors using a totally different medium.

The only thing missing was the depth and variation of the watercolor. The orange in particular was very flat (maybe because I didn’t have to layer other colors to get the right hue?) and was asking for a little something extra. I wasn’t really sure what to add, so instead of forging ahead on the original, I doodled on the tiled printout and tried out several different options.

For the final drawing, I chose to add one single black line along each of the edges of the orange triangles. The simple addition added just the right amount of variance without distracting from the rest of the piece.

I must say I’m very fond of the doodled-on printout. Although the doodled additions to many of the colored triangles don’t really fit with the piece as a whole, it was a lot of fun to be so spontaneous. Art is becoming a balance between planning and spontaneity for me.

The original Tapestry painting was completely spontaneous, without much planning beyond the initial idea. In the process of enlarging the painting, there is a lot of planning, and for the most part my path is set. I just have to go through the steps. Maybe one day I’ll feel confident to be spontaneous on my larger pieces, but for now, I was really glad to have the less precious printout on which to experiment.

Once I’d figured out what I wanted to add to the colored triangles, I quickly finished the drawing. Initially I planned to add the same line detail to all the colored triangles, but once I drew the lines in the orange triangles, the piece felt finished.

In the detail below you can see the lines I added to the orange.

When you look at the original and the enlarged version side by side you can notice some of the differences and “mistakes” I made on the larger version. Click on the image to go to flickr to check out the details a little larger.

After working on the large drawing for so long, I was surprised by how weird it felt to look at the original painting which once seemed to have such a bold presence. Now it feels almost absurdly puny; but I still love it anyway.

As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve been flipping through a bunch of quilting books lately.

The book on Amish quilting in particular caught my interest. Simple is probably the best word to describe an Amish quilt, but that is precisely what makes them so intriguing to me. I find them incredibly striking, and I love the bold colors and geometric patterns. I decided to draw a geometric composition, inspired by the quilts.

I started drawing the triangle pattern from my memory without referencing the book. Once I had the lines drawn in, I realized that it wasn’t quite right, but I went ahead and finished the drawing. I added color with watercolor paints, and then added in some detail and texture with pen. In the end I think the drawing has more of a Native American feel than Amish, but I’m really happy with the result. When I look at it, I’m reminded of Native American woven rugs or tapestries. This drawing is a serious contender to be enlarged. I think it would look great hung on the wall, just like a tapestry.

For the next drawing I referred to one of the quilts in the book, but gave it my own twist.

I purposefully drew it in two sections that were slightly skewed from each other because I didn’t want it to be too perfect. I colored in some of the triangles with watercolor, then added some texture with pen. Initially I intended to add black to the triangles that didn’t have color, but as I was working I liked the contrast that the white triangles added to the overall composition.

The next drawing was a free form composition, but it was a continuation from the geometric triangular forms in the previous two. This time I added some curved lines, and it took on a life of its own.

As I was working, the drawing started to spread apart, away from the grid that I’d tried to stay in. I don’t mind it, and I like the drawing as it is, but I still wanted to fulfill my initial vision.

I drew a one inch grid and then worked within the grid to lay out the pattern.

I really like this pattern. The variation of the watercolor adds a level of depth and interest that I wasn’t expecting, but that I’m very happy with.