Teardrop
A beginner’s play in alcohol inks, alcohol
markers, pencil,
synthetic papers,
light compositing,
digital photography,
neural filters (AI),
and digital image editing…
Shalin Hai-Jew
May 2022

2
Etched Paper

3
Dawn Light

4
Tall Barn

5
Appetites

Teardrop
• “Teardrop” is the most recent in the alcohol ink drip playing series,
which was started back in January 2021 as an escape from the
pressures of the then almost year-old pandemic.
• This moment reminds me of walking up a switchback…and suddenly looking
down and realizing how far we’ve climbed. I will be out strolling with a light
heart and just suddenly realize how wonderful it is to have a light heart.
• The alcohol ink works are all re-do’s…even though I have plenty of
supplies for fresh works and will use them.
• This may be the last slideshow of this series even though the
pandemic is not quite over. So says my intuition.
6

Teardrop(cont.)
• Sometimes, a lovely image is about luck, some skill, and time to
experiment.
• Conceptualizations tend to come in little snippets, and then there is testing
those ideas to see if they work.
• One recent find was that the 16-colors trace in Illustrator of a
grayscale image enables much more effective neural filtering effects
and color transfer applications to the gray image. The traces add
more information for the neural filters to use. The traces add to the
understructure.
7

Teardrop(cont.)
• Some of this learning has been captured in some slideshows and
articles for work. Everything I learn is applied practically, if I can help
it. Some of my stuff looks fanciful, and is, but I usually am too
practical to just do something for decorative reasons.
• The “Ball of Wire” one is an actual photo of a ball of wire. Below is a
warning sign about trespassing past a grate. I only went far enough
to do a three-point turn. Farmers and ranchers are particularly
protective of land, let’s say.
• There is special training on how to be non-alerting and non-triggering, across
cultures. The U.S. itself has sufficient cultures where we would all benefit
each other if we would go through this training.
8

On white synth paper
9

10
Field

11
Red

12
Seep

13
Melt

14
Assorting

15
Intensification

16
Explore

17
Crumble

18
Surfacing

19
Orange Tumult

On digital variants
20

21
Interwoven

22
Motion

23
Ribbons

24
Sunup

25
Temperatures

On born-digital variants
26

27
Flight

28
Stream

29
Wind in the Trees

30
Digital Bamboo

31
Lakeside Trees

32
Tree Round

33
Protection

34
Peach Sky

35
Subtle Moon

36
Ashore

37
Foliage

38
Rural Lean-To

39
Ball of Wire

40
Roadside

41
Falling Petals

42
Old Truck

43
Tree in Sun

44
Sanctuary

45
Shelter

46
Crawl

47
Chrome Bricks

48
Trunk and Roots

49
Tree Round