"Waterline" is the latest "slideshow sketchbook" in the alcohol ink drip playing series, started in January 2021 as a way to relieve stress in challenging times.

1. Waterline
A beginner’s play in alcohol inks,
erasers, pencil,
(non)synthetic papers,
neural filters,
light compositing,
and digital image editing…
Shalin Hai-Jew
April 2022

2. 2
Background Moon

3. 3
Patterned Fox

4. 4
Molecules

5. 5
Upper Atmospheres

6. 6
Moon Set

7. 7
Tortoise

8. Waterline
• “Waterline” is the most recent slideshow sketchbook in the alcohol
ink drip playing series, a year and several months after the first of the
series was started in January 2021. The slideshows are a way to
manage stress during the SARS-CoV-2 / COVID-19 pandemic.
• Several of the works in the prior slideshow and several in this one are
unedited digital photos. Some photos already have a finished look,
and the neural filters would be extraneous and perhaps excessively
ornate.
8

9. Waterline(cont.)
• This slideshow has plenty of works close to home, without much in
the way of driving. Given times, perhaps conservation is the wiser
approach.
• Some of the digital scans I used to seed various visuals are highly
minimalist. There may be a few lines, perhaps an ink splat. I then let
the neural filters fill in the whitespaces.
• These seeds are like an occasional dropped comment to a gossip, who fills in
the rest of the empty space with their own imaginings. (A gossip is not a
disciplined thinker.)
9

10. Waterline(cont.)
• The alcohol ink works are overlayers built on former works.
• I will get back to using fresh canvases, but I want to go with actual
paintbrushes and alcohol inks and India inks and other approaches. Right
now, work is too busy to allow the mental space to try these.
• A few days ago, I discovered a scene setting and command dial on my
older Nikon DSLR (features which I had not been aware of until
recently). I was looking at how to do night photography and found a
social video about this. I wanted to see how neural filters would
handle the dark and its inverse.
• Some of the works are from freehand sketches.
10

11. On white synth paper
11

12. 12
Red

13. 13
Motion

14. 14
Orange Revolution

15. 15
Flowering

16. On digital variants
16

17. 17
Hidden Bird

18. 18
Strange Blooms

19. 19
Climb Logistics

20. 20
Conflagration

21. 21
Into Flames

22. 22
To Saturation

23. On born-digital variants
23

24. 24
Stillness

25. 25
Dancing for the Moon

26. 26
Blooming

27. 27
Lit Window

28. 28
Leaning Fence and Barn

29. 29
Lit Tree

30. 30
Glowing Streetlamp

31. 31
Melting Wax

32. 32
Trickle

33. 33
Red Bark

34. 34
Fruiting Moon

35. 35
Golden Bloom

36. 36
Budding

37. 37
Lit Tree 2

38. 38
Tiger in the Grass

39. 39
Rectangles

40. 40
Folds

41. 41
Neighborhood at Night

42. 42
Gray Skies

43. 43
Thin Path Out

44. 44
Shell

45. 45
Downriver

46. 46
Washed Ashore

47. 47
Profusion

48. 48
Kaw Riverbank

49. 49
Beach Wood

50. 50
Freight Train

51. 51
Dusty Afternoon

52. 52
Reflection

53. 53
Breeze
on Kaw River

54. 54
Wave after Wave

55. 55
Entanglements