This document provides an overview and reflections on Shalin Hai-Jew's latest artwork series titled "Immersion" which explores alcohol inks, markers, pencils, and digital image editing. The series was started in January 2021 as a way for the artist to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic and its threats. It comments on how the pandemic may eventually become less fatal through medical advances but still impact lives. The work involves experimenting with layering analog and digital techniques to create visual effects through serendipity rather than control. Learning is described as incremental and it takes patience to understand techniques fully. The series includes over 60 artworks exploring various mediums and composites.

1. Immersion
A beginner’s play in alcohol inks, alcohol
markers, drafting pencils, acrylics, and
whatnot
(non)synthetic papers,
light compositing,
and digital image editing… Shalin Hai-Jew
December 2021

2. 2
Overhang
(digital bas relief)

3. 3
Microverse

4. 4
Tinder

5. 5
Moon through Trees
(composite)

6. 6
Perch

7. 7
Fluid

8. 8
Ashes

9. 9
Hard Wind

10. Immersion
• “Immersion” is the latest in the alcohol ink drip playing series that
was started to help with coping with the SARS-CoV-2 / COVID-19
pandemic and its threats and disruptions and destructions. This
series was started in January 2021, and it is thought that this will
continue until the acute phases of the pandemic end.
• Apparently, this pathogenic virus will be one of many threats that will
eventually become part of the environment but with less fatal and disease
implication thanks to medical science.
• We may not have a “You have arrived” moment. Perhaps, all the various
human endeavors globally, all the incremental steps, will one day result in a
focus on other aspects of life. Perhaps there will be fewer signs of failure and
more signs of success, or perhaps, the silence itself will be indicative.
• Soon, we will start Y3 of the pandemic.
10

11. Immersion(cont.)
Meanwhile, I still obsess over some of the
works that emerge from both the alcohol ink
paintings on synthetic paper and the digital
images.
In the prior slideshow “Mist,” the cover
image of the glowing fish has been
something that holds power over me, for its
surprise, its novelty. I cannot help if
something is entrancing, even though I do
not like the sense of personal “capture.”
Slowly, the power will let go. In its grip, I am
curious about what its attributes are that
make it so appealing.
11

12. Immersion(cont.)
• I know exactly the steps I took to create the glowing fish.
• For some of the other visuals, I go through so many digital image
editing steps that I would have to review the image history in the
digital image editing software to recall each transform, in linear
sequence.
• What I’ve learned is that it is not actually the sequence of digital image edits
that are magical, but it’s the sequence in interaction with the particular visual.
There are nuanced dependencies to get a particular visual effect.
• Visual “magic” has to emerge from serendipity and circumstance and time; it
is not deeply “made”. One has to riff off of what is there, with analog and
digital techniques.
12

13. Immersion(cont.)
• With analog, each re-wet or covered-over of the alcohol ink painting
automatically becomes partial background and underpainting.
• With lighter colored backgrounds, the backpainting offers a glow. It enables
silhouetting. With darker colored backgrounds, the background can be moved with
alcohol blends, light colors, white-lining, and other approaches. [Such blends do
ultimately muddy.] There are ways to scrape inks off the synthetic paper, but I have
yet to try this with any seriousness (although one of the works in this slideshow
includes scraped inks—albeit without a pattern).
• The analog idea of “layering” (for re-versioning) helps reaffirm the layering
in the digital image editing tools. (Layering has been a struggle to fully
exploit in terms of digital image editing. Perhaps I need more muscle
memory and practice before the mind fully grasps the capability.)
• About rules, it’s helpful to know them, so you break them purposefully. At
other times, I think there are no real rules, just canvas surface and no
traditions.
13

14. Immersion(cont.)
• It takes a “stalking patience” to actually learn something. And the
learning is incremental and piecemeal and partial. It takes even more
time to put the pieces together.
• Serendipity over control, any day, for the seeding inspiration.
• Some of these works include landscape photos off my Nikon DSLR,
including some washed-out shots from years ago. It’s amazing what
digital image editing allows…and I am still at beginner level.
• This work involves more compositing than in prior works.
14

15. On white synth paper
15

16. 16
Old Morning

17. 17
Exile

18. 18
Overhang

19. 19
Moon Dreams of Water

20. 20
Quiet

21. 21
Dry Heat

22. 22
Lake Sleeping Children

23. 23
Into the Woods

24. 24
Effervesce

25. 25
Earth

26. 26
Bok Choy
(deconstructed)

27. On digital variants
27

28. 28
Fall Foliage

29. 29
Afternoon on River

30. 30
Cold Stream

31. 31
Brittle

32. 32
Moon through Trees
(digital sumi-e)

33. 33
Distant Smoke

34. 34
Veneration

35. 35
Liquid Night

36. 36
Overhang
(pointillized)

37. 37
Undertow

38. 38
Indifferent

39. 39
Drift

40. 40
Bend

41. 41
Winter

42. 42
Changes

43. 43
Sun and Earth

44. 44
Blizzard

45. 45
Iridescence

46. 46
Traces

47. 47
Encircled

48. 48
Flooded Future

49. 49
Tuttle Creek

50. 50
Soak

51. 51
Downpour

52. 52
Night Desert

53. 53
Reefs

54. 54
Muted Sky

55. 55
Ice Storm

56. 56
Wind

57. 57
Last Light

58. 58
Dusk

59. 59
Old Morning
(16 colors, crosshatch)

60. 60
Ephemera

61. 61
Swim