So, also on Monday, Tim told me about an annual Day of the Dead art show at Pura Vida this weekend, and asked if I'd want to put anything in it. Fuck yes I would!

I'd had some other skull comps on the shelf I'd been trying to make something with for a while and decided to finish one of those. lol, and I realized, I had three days to do it.


The basic bits were done already; hand-carved rubber stamps done with oil based relief printing ink. I wanted to tea stain the whole thing (which I'd never done) so I went lookin for some tutorials. Of the ones I found, this one looked like it yielded the coolest results, and sure enough, it worked AWESOME. It wasn't quite dark enough the first time, so I gave it a second go.


I tried a couple different teas. I mostly used rooibos, because I had a bunch of it and I don't like it. It worked really well. Darjeeling on the other hand, didn't work well at all.

Going in, I figured I would put some color in with watercolor. The reality however, is that I suck at painting, and I really didn't think I'd be satisfied with the results if I did it that way. But, I suddenly realized that if tea stains paper, that tea soaked in india ink would also stain paper, in color!

So, I heated some water, poured it into containers, and squirted in some india ink. I then let some tea bags soak up the tinted water for a while. Then, I spread the tea grounds around the composition where I wanted them, and let them soak in. I let them soak a little too long, and the red bled out across more of the composition than I would have liked, but c'est la vie.



Here's the piece after I washed off the tea grounds:


And here's some closeups:



That's about it. After all that was done, I let it dry, sandwiched between some cardboard, and under some heavy weight to keep it from warping. Then I drew in the remainder of the banner with a brush and india ink, and wrote in the text with a calligraphy marker. I then took it outside and burned the edges with a cigarette lighter.

I feel like it's still kinda busch-league, but I'm satisfied with it :)

And here's me at the reception saturday night. HAHAHAHA, LOOK AT THAT STACHE, AAAHAHAHA!

They put me right above this incredibly well done sugar skull by a local tattooist, Chris Stuart. He's mad good. The top-right skull is done by my friend Tim, and I don't know who did the piece below his, but it's incredibly cool.

The show was low key, but really nice. Not a ton of artwork, but mostly quality. There were some cuban musicians performing and they were great. They played El Carretero, which was awesome :)

Anyway, enjoy! Feel free to comment!
-P.