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

2
Teardrop Tree

3
Connections

4
Eroding Rocks

5
Life Abacus

6
Butterfly Lift

7
Rock on Fence Post

8
Bird

9
Walk among Trees

Thaw
• “Thaw” is the latest in the alcohol ink drip playing series, a year and
five months in. This series was started in early 2021 as a way to
manage stress from the SARS-CoV-2 / COVID-19 pandemic, which is
currently still ongoing.
• In this sketchbook slideshow, there is the occasional perfect marriage of the
analog material and the AI-based digital.
• I am always engaging with an eye towards method. Also, I am looking for
visuals that are novel because I know I can make something different with a
seed visual that is variant.
10

Thaw(cont.)
• For me, I am just happy if I can abscond with the learning.
• You never know when some snippet of knowledge comes in handy for direct
work.
• In IT, you know the tool if you understand what is going on under the hood (as
much as the research and documentation can tell you), if you can
troubleshoot issues of usage (how to make the thing work elegantly), if you
can anticipate what is coming (such as the effect of various neural filters on a
particular work), and if you can explain what is going on to someone else
(teach it, train it).
• My goal is to add one more little skill every so often…and then to
integrate that skill fully in applied work over time.
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Thaw(cont.)
• I just learned that I can actively select an area and apply a neural filter to it.
This also means I can select a color and just apply a neural filter to that. Or
an object.
• Now, I just have to figure out how to apply a shape as a selection and apply a neural
filter to it…or a series of neural filters. Perhaps it is just an issue of masking and
layering smartly.
• I have also learned that the neural filters do not draw on alpha channels, so
I have to have some background in order to enable the neural filters to
apply to that physical space. They don’t seem to draw much on gradients/
gradient layers either perhaps because these are so diffuse.
• Neural filters handle b/w images by offering fewer colors in many cases. The color
range is narrower.
• There are other neural filters coming! (Check out the “Wait list” tab in
Adobe Photoshop 2022!)
12

Thaw(cont.)
• I have not used background patterns for a while and finally applied
one.
• I will have to make some of my own patterns for this usage.
• Some of the residual 3D capabilities in the software are still working,
and I’ve dipped a little into that.
• This is very much a sequence-sensitive space. At every step, I can
double down (commit) or retreat a prior version (or return all the way
back to the original).
13

Thaw(cont.)
• It is still effortful to introduce more serendipity. I can still feel my internal
resistance when I go against tendency, to try new things.
• It helps that I can find my way around a bit now. I had a line art visual with
a black background that I wanted to apply a color transfer to…to the lines.
If black is not a color (it’s the absence of color), I thought the color transfer
neural filter would leave the black alone. Not so much. I had to do a color
selection for black, invert the selection, then apply the color transfer to get
the effect I wanted.
• It is better that the neural filter engages black as well since that is such a critical
“color” for every work.
• One of the works was seeded with a scanned paper towel used for sopping
alcohol ink. You could never guess it after the various visual transcoding.
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On white synth paper
15

16
Above Storm Clouds

On digital variants
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Warmth

19
Draping

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Landscape Web

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Split Leafing

22
Strange Fruit

23
Downhill Run

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Cold Dawn

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Selective Fading

26
Inflow Outflow

27
Green Impulses

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Drift

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Thaw

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Barbed

31
Staged Mountains

On born-digital variants
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Icicles

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Mountains

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Roadside Farmhouse

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Dropped Zero

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Midas Pursuit

38
Sands of Time

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Friendlies

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Wavelets

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Winter Bloom

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Contortion

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Fenced Yard,
Stone House

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Dandelion Puff

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Black Parachutes

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Scouts

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Patterned Ball

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Wind

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Light Bloom

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Bubbly and Fizz