This slideshow captures some visuals originally seeded with mixed media on paper and digitized and edited with an image editing tool as a challenge during a one-week period in early 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic era. This captures a first run at the concept of inartful mixed media on paper...but will include more sophisticated work in the future (maybe).

1. Salvaging Inartful
Mixed Media on Paper
through Digital Means
January 2021
A Week of “Making” in the Continuing COVID-19 Era
Shalin Hai-Jew

2. 2
Message

3. 3
Circle in Watercolor and Ink

4. 4
Embossed Leaf

5. 5
Seeable Complexity

6. 6
Stylus on Point

7. The rules of the game
• Start with pigment on paper with any mixed media, any paper
• Create feedstock for digital editing
• Scan or digitize the visual
• Use any sequence of digital editing on the scan
• The software and computer do the heavy lifting
7

8. What versions to save
• Keep a master of the original seeding image
• Experiment broadly
• Rotate images
• Try different filter effects
• Change up colors
• Change up textures
• Edit shapes
• …but remember your way back…
8

9. What versions to save (cont.)
• Keep a run of edits going as long as possible (until you arrive at
“muddy”
• Save versions that have promise along the way
• Nothing is a “commit” until it goes live
9

10. Masking
• Hide the form of the original where possible
• Go with artifice, but maintain an illusion of natural
• Self-express; play
• Avoid preconceptions
• Explore concepts if inspired
10

11. 11
In the Wild

12. 12
Counter Mirrored Diptych

13. 13
Weave with Forms

14. 14
Polar Florescence

15. 15
Dried Stems

16. 16
Color Halftone Shape Swirl

17. 17
Target

18. 18
Splash

19. 19
Amplitude

20. 20
Fire

21. 21
In Space

22. 22
Parameters

23. 23
Patterned Flower

24. 24
Noise

25. 25
Waved Forces

26. 26
Decomposed Leaf

27. 27
Patchwork

28. 28
Three Liquids

29. 29
Twirled Leaf

30. 30
Brown “Plaid”

31. 31
Pushed Prism

32. 32
Shear

33. 33
Sine Waves

34. 34
Swirled Ribbons

35. 35
Compartmenting
Turbulence

36. 36
Complex Polar

37. Some early lessons
• Seed with mixed media designed for digital aesthetics and editability
(remember the essential move from the material to the “immaterial”)
• “Skill” is in the digital editing (especially making smarter initial moves)
and the common aesthetics
37

38. 38
Seed Swirl