Fort Myers Art Festival 2013

Yesterday we went to the Fort Myers Art Festival down on the waterfront in downtown Ft. Myers.  I toured the 200 artists' booths while Wayne reacquainted himself with the two downtown marinas in Fr. Myers.

Katie Wilson (katiewilsonbernatas.com) was one of my favorites.  Everything she had at the show was done in mixed media oil and pastels.  She has a blog with demos on her paintings and I just love the look of the whole process (http://katiewilsonb-demos.blogspot.com/).  I'm going to try doing some of this with acrylic and some of my old photos.

Also liked the textured abstracts from a mother-daughter team at www.MayharArt.com.  They obviously do a lot of commercial work, too.

Milenko Katic' had an appealing style (milenkoartstudio.com) with that combination color and drawing that I tend to like.

When we got back that afternoon I tried some bubble paper.  I've been working on envelope mini-albums down here (3 done so far) and need something for the cover papers.  I watched a YouTube demo and jumped in!

First mix a little watercolor paint (1/4 inch from a tube) with a little water and a little dish soap...or you can use food coloring.  I used watercolor.  I mixed in it a little plastic container that probably holds little more than 1/2 cup, and I had it about 1/3 full of mixture.  Then take a straw and blow into the liquid, raising bubbles!  From then on, it was experimenting with how to get the bubbles onto the paper...

First I tried swiping the bubbles off the top of the container onto paper.  That worked pretty well.  Then I tried just dabbing the paper up against the top of the bubble cup to "stamp" the bubble image.  Worked pretty well, too.

One on left was done by pressing paper onto bubbles in the top of the container (you can see a circle effect in sections) and the one on the right was done by scraping off bubbles onto the paper.

One color application - Alizarin

Second color application - DS Sleeping Beauty Turquoise and Phthalo Green mixed

I tried the same process on a brown craft paper and it didn't work well.  The paper absorbed too much water and not enough color.  Makes me think a paper with something of a finish (as opposed to an absorbent sort) will work best.  The white paper I used is about an 80 lb. paper for printing.  Also tried the process on tissue paper (I use any kind...cheaper the better).  You really have to watch how much "bubble mass" you put on the tissue because it will sink into the paper and make more of a blotch than a bubble print.  See below.

Bubbles on tissue

Open envelope album

Top view.  Cover will attach to small piece on lower right and the far most left page.  I'll post a finished product later.

While I've been messing around with art stuff Wayne has been working some...and doing some fishing off the back dock.  Last week he caught a catfish and a stingray.  We really like our rental this year.  Love the location, most of all.  Close to the art center and with a great back yard/dock:

View out to the yard, dock, canal

Closer on the covered dock