15 Illustrations: Walking at Two Rivers

Posted on June 5, 2016 by lksukany

This series is called 15 illustrations because that’s how many pages is in my awesome art pad gift – a Canson 11×14″ Illustration art pad 150lb. I am using a blend of inktense pencils and micron ink pens size .005, .01, .03, .05, .07, and .08. This series is inspired by my family and all of the fun and interesting things we do together.

Derwent-Inktense-Pencil-12-350

“Walking at Two Rivers” is pretty self explanatory. The Two Rivers Park Bridge is in Little Rock, Arkansas. It is a pedestrian and bike bridge connected to Two Rivers Park. It is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The bridge is 1,368 feet long. It opened to the public July 23, 2011. We moved to Little Rock November 2008, so when this park opened a couple of years later, we were pretty happy to have a great place like this to walk. My favorite part of this trail is going through a forest of large trees. I used a blend of inktense pencils leaf green and teal green for the forest.

My favorite parts of this drawing are the trees and leaves,

the baby in the stroller, striped pants, and M’s face.

Although the path is asphalt, I really wanted to make it a rock path.

My inspirations for this drawing!

Artist Interview with Wildwood Park for the Arts

Posted on September 18, 2015 by lksukany

As an Arkansas Arts Council Arts on Tour artist, I recently had an art exhibition at Wildwood Park for the Arts. I was interviewed shortly after the exhibition by Wildwood.

What mediums do you work with?
In printmaking, I work with relief printing (linoleum and woodcuts), etching, and lithography. With painting, I work with mostly oil, but at times with acrylic, gouache, and watercolor. I enjoy drawing with different types of charcoal, pencils, and ink. I experiment with fabrics, fibers, and natural materials (papermaking).

Besides your art practice, are you involved in any other kind of work?
I write and record music with my spouse in our band “The Damsels in Distress.” We mostly create albums, but have been working with KUAR Arts and Letters to create music for their productions. We also have created a children’s story called “The Boy and the Firefly” that has accompanying music. We hope to explore more bookmaking and song ideas to accompany puppet shows.

What does a typical day in the studio look like?
I have a large to-do list and organize the project for that day. I lay out the materials I will need in order, and then begin working in a linear way. So, if I am going back and forth with multiple pieces or projects, it’s all ordered in a list of what to work on for each piece. I often will have an audio book (fiction literature – mostly classic literature or adolescent literature) playing or an old black and white movie going on in the background. I am alone in my studio and cannot work with others in my space unless they are intently working on something as well.

What are you presently inspired by – are there particular things you are reading, listening to or looking at to fuel your work?
I am currently working on a Romania landscape painting series. It was inspired from a missions trip I went on last year with Livada Orphan Care to Targu Mures Romania. Because the region was mostly country side, we had to drive each day to the on-site work location. I was completely inspired by the beauty of the countryside and took many photographs during these drives. I hope to finish these paintings early next year, where I will photograph them to place into an inspirational prayer book and donate the paintings to Livada to sell for orphan sponsorship.

What do you hope your work will accomplish? How do you want people to be affected, if at all?
I hope to use my work to connect with and help others. I think for others to be affected by my work differs for each series I work on. For the “Maintaining Life” series, I hope people are able to see how even the mundane can be otherwise from an altered perspective.

How do you navigate the art world?
I still have a lot to learn about the “art world.” In the meantime, I will continue to create, blog on paperopera.com, and exhibit my work.

How would you define a “successful artist”?
Success is such a personal thing. For me, a “successful artist” is an artist who works, who likes their work, and who continues to challenge themselves in their work.

To see more of L.K. Sukany’s work, visit lksukany.wix.com/artist/.

You can also read the interview here.

Painting an Apron for OurHouse

Posted on December 5, 2014 by lksukany

It all started when…

Emily Wood Facebook messaged me – “Interested in painting an apron for the OurHouse apron auction event ?”

“Tie One On” Event

Tie One On is a live and silent auction (of aprons designed by Little Rock area artists) to benefit Our House, which is a shelter for the working homeless in central Arkansas.

I got my aprons from Emily and started working.

I used “The Lady and the Musician” linoleum block to print the patterns on each apron.

I then mixed gesso and acrylic paint and went over the prints

These are what the aprons look like when worn.

I met with Emily to give her the aprons and she gave me two invitations for the event. I invited M of course!

M and I went to the event and it was super fancy! It was at Pavilion in the Park and everything was covered in Christmas decorations.

Both of my aprons sold!

Paper Opera

Posted on July 17, 2014 by lksukany

The creation of Paper Opera

Once I came up with the name Paper Opera – which took a couple of years to define what the art, music, and writing that M and I were doing – I went ahead and purchased the domain name through Reg123. This was August 2012. I knew what I wanted the Paper Opera website to offer (full art gallery, audio and video space for the Damsels in Distress with purchasing options, ebook capabilities, a full shop, and a news or blog update area). After researching my options, the general pricing to build something this significant was about $5,000. With no money in my art account I decided to use the free options and connect them all through one location.

The online components of Paper Opera

ART: The art gallery I built in Wix in February 2014, and used the L.K. Sukany artist name. Although M will create an occasional painting, he doesn’t really work too much in the fine art medium. I wanted something professional, like an online portfolio. It took me applying for a job I really wanted to actually build the online portfolio. After not getting the job, I reworked it, and am still finding pieces I have not photographed to add. I am still not 100% satisfied with the artist site, and am open for suggestions.

Music: For the Damsels in Distress site we went with Bandcamp in May 2014 because it was the easiest to understand and least complicated for others to use – anyone with internet access can use it. Because the free bandcamp doesn’t have video capabilities, we created a Paper Opera Youtube channel in May 2014 for videos.

Stories: With the ebook/self publishing, Lulu was the most recommended and we opened an account in March 2014. We have many projects in the works on this front, so all I can say is “coming soon” for this feature.

Shop: The Paper Opera shop is on Etsy and was started March 2014.

Paper Opera: All of these are linked from the artist website in Wix as well as the Paper Opera site in WordPress. We transferred the domain from Reg123 to WordPress in February 2014 because there was a better free interface.

The Logo

I wanted to design a logo for Paper Opera that had whimsical qualities and that would express the themes of art, music, and writing. I also wanted a design that would look good on the web (website banner) and in print (for business cards).

I knew I wanted to have an instrument in the logo from the beginning. I played with the tambourine or drum using the “O” for “Opera” and working in the name “Paper Opera” somehow. It turned into a cello and paintbrush. But the only thing I could see the cello as was a woman’s body and then she was playing herself, and it just kind of got weird.

So I transitioned from the cello to the accordion. There is something so whimsical and quirky about the accordion. I started playing with the accordion buttons as maybe a paint palette.

I designed this amalgamated object (accordion, paper, and a watercolor tray).

It just didn’t work in portraying the playfulness I really wanted in the logo. It also seemed really stiff – the design did.

I thought about how whimsical my damsels drawings are and thought about using that approach.

I took The “Dancer” and created this type of layered image with a circle to define the space and the accordion as a embellishment.

It just felt too forced, too clean, and I didn’t really want to use “The Dancer” for the paper opera logo. But I really liked the format of a figure in a circle and the logo words in the circle. I thought about the Dreamworks logo of the boy sitting on the moon and fishing. I really liked how the image evokes the idea of using imagination and has an element of being carefree.

I wanted something similar to that idea. I thought about it for a while and made this sketch during a sermon at Grace Church. The boy playing the accordion and sitting in the circle as if it were a swing, and a girl dancing while simultaneously writing or drawing with a feather behind the circle. It just seemed too busy for a logo.

I liked the bones, and decided this was something I could work with. I drew M sitting on a bar stool playing the accordion.

Once I had my drawing, I took a photo of it, and opened in Photoshop. I put a lot of texture effects, changed the figure a bit, and added the circle and key words – art, music, stories – within the logo. I admit, typography is not one of my strengths, but I like the look of cursive quite a bit, so that’s what I used for my text.

M and I have been doing Paper Opera the whole time we have known each other – over 8 years. It has been less defined and more abstract at times – sometimes floating around in our heads and our hearts – other times in a simple melody. Paper Opera is the online version of our art, music, and stories that we can share with you!

Printmaking Workshop Part III

Posted on July 10, 2014 by lksukany

In the Printmaking Workshop Part II, we left everyone’s linoleum block carved, stored, and ready to print.

I covered the tables with paper and handed out (with my lovely assistant Barbara Jones) printing paper, envelopes, palette paper for ink, ink, brayers, wooden spoons, paper towels, stamps, and an ink pad.

Everyone put their aprons back on and I gave an inking and printing demonstration.

The printing process just took some getting used to, but everyone did a great job! They rolled the ink on the palette paper (which next time, I would just use cardboard strips instead of palette paper because the palette paper is pretty thin and shifts a lot when rolling out the ink). They rolled the inked brayer evenly onto their carved linoleum blocks, and transferred their image using a wooden spoon (rubbing the back of the paper on top of the block using the flat of the wooden spoon).