"Live Sea" is the latest in the alcohol ink drip playing series. This series was started as a way to relieve stress dealing the pandemic, which is ongoing. This work includes some digital re-do's on some older visuals in this series. This work is uploaded during the presenter's long-overdue vacation.

1. Live Sea
A beginner’s play in alcohol inks,
alcohol ink markers,
synthetic papers,
and digital image editing… Shalin Hai-Jew
Nov. 2021

2. 2
Food Fall
(manna)

3. 3
Collection

4. 4
Cliffside

5. 5
Electronic Sentience

6. 6
Impending

7. 7
Froth

8. 8
Fresh Water
(digital dry brush)

9. 9
In Moonlight
(16 colors)

10. 10
Midseason Berries

11. Live Sea
• “Live Sea” is the most current slideshow in the alcohol ink drip playing
series (started in January 2021). The series is to provide respite from
the pressures of an ongoing pandemic.
• It looks like the predictions of a fast unwinding of this bio-threat will take
longer than people may have assumed, both nationally and globally.
• I still sense collective shell shock and mass trauma. However, I am also seeing
less mis-construal and more reliance on the science (than politics or other
false narratives). And yet, people hew to various worldviews with tenacity.
Perhaps that is just human nature.
11

12. Live Sea (cont.)
• The learning continues apace about alcohol inks and synthetic papers.
• It is so much easier to go with images that evoke liquids and flow.
• Even though alcohol inks enable lurid colors, I am trying more now for
subtlety and less concentration of colors.
• I am going to try to use a mixing palette instead of applying alcohol inks
directly to the synthetic paper surfaces.
• Several of the works are created atop older ones that I did not want
to keep. The re-use and recycling are important since the synthetic
papers are made of plastic. I see the true state of the visuals as digital
(even as the “slow fires” of digital continue to burn).
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13. Live Sea(cont.)
• Several different projects have brought me into the computer science
literature as regards visuals (manual, computational, and mixed).
• The algorithms are complex. The technological wizardry is boggling.
And yet, many of these inventions have been integrated into foremost
software programs.
• The GUIs of these programs encapsulate and hide the complexity.
• It is breathtaking to see the updates to Adobe Photoshop 2022 and
Adobe Illustrator 2022.
• Of course, the experience of Adobe MAX 2021 was stellar. If only the
conference were free into the next few years as well as during the pandemic.
13

14. Live Sea(cont.)
• Writing (professional, non-fiction, research-based) requires hyper-
precision and accuracy. Writing (professional, fiction) requires a
narrative structure and variations on that.
• By contrast, the alcohol ink artworks tend towards some abstraction,
ambiguity, and even formlessness, even when there may be some
physical referent. These visuals are suggestive and maybe ill-defined.
Perhaps I can use this as strategic ambiguity.
• I keep thinking I will move towards more figurative alcohol ink work, but the
figurative seems to happen accidentally only now and again. Perhaps I will as I
acquire more learning.
• Sometimes, I acquire new learning but no artful way to express it.
14

15. Live Sea(cont.)
• Artists, in the real, have to be thinkers and meaning makers. They
have to move beyond the personal.
• They have to be able to create the visual illusions. They have to be able to
host larger-scale conversations, which means that they have to bring people
along. Their work has to be discussable at various scales (micro, meso, and
macro).
• They have to know when to be silent, to give others the room to speak. The
point is to listen.
• My mother painted in oils and acrylics. She had a flare for color. She
was drawn to florals.
• One of the derived digital works here draws on her love of colors.
15

16. Live Sea(cont.)
• I am still very light on the technique, as a newbie, a dabbler, an
experimenter, an amateur …but I am using more tools and in different
ways. I am learning.
• For years now, I’ve tried to protect some degree of space for thinking. This means
limiting the electronic since my professional work is so much work online and digital.
• Some of the work in this slideshow occurred during a long-deserved
vacation. It is a luxury to have time to think.
• I also took a fast walk down memory lane to look at some of the prior visuals and
used a few of these for additional digital image edits for new looks. I selected visuals
that seem to not have “spent potential” and one that I could not figure out how to
make look aesthetic earlier. This “Redux” section is at the end of the slideshow.
16

17. On white synth paper
17

18. 18
Wishes

19. 19
Hill

20. 20
Streams

21. 21
Dawn Light

22. 22
A Night of Protests

23. 23
Sun

24. 24
Under Wraps

25. On translucent synth paper
25

26. 26
Salt Water

27. 27
Fresh Water

28. On digital variants
28

29. 29
Depths

30. 30
Reflections

31. 31
In Vitro

32. 32
Influence

33. 33
Among the Reeds

34. 34
Churn

35. 35
Geothermal Vents

36. 36
A Night of Protests
(digital sumi-e)

37. 37
Evaporation

38. 38
Midnight In

39. 39
Live Sea

40. 40
Frame

41. 41
Autumn to Winter

42. 42
Ice Floe

43. 43
Dapple

44. 44
Silver or Lead
[after Don Winslow’s The Border (2019)]

45. 45
School

46. 46
Desert

47. 47
Parched

48. 48
Core

49. 49
Aerial Search

50. 50
Salt Water
(b/w)

51. 51
Wear

52. 52
Convergences

53. 53
Flow

54. 54
Raking Leaves

55. 55
Aerial

56. 56
Rising Ice

57. 57
Float

58. 58
Fresh Water
(digital sumi-e)

59. 59
Food Fall 2

60. 60
Pooling

61. 61
Dark Lanes

62. 62
No Inkling

63. Redux
63

64. 64
Human Circuitry

65. 65
Tree

66. 66
Biological Bridges

67. 67
Coinage

68. 68
Under the Sun

69. 69
Sky Light

70. 70
Liquid Blooms

71. 71
Fit

72. 72
Shelter

73. 73
Night Approach

74. 74
Flame