Alex Ariza Art

Saturday, January 3, 2026

Testing Different Mediums Out on Karst Stone Paper

Trying out Karst Stone Paper with Ink Brush. The paper is water resistant and tricky to work with.

Karst Stone Paper Sample - Pepe the Frog with Color Pencil.

Water-based ink does not work well with Stone Paper. Notice the smudges it leaves behind on the previous page. The pigment doesn't get absorbed. It dries on the surface.

Karst Stone Paper Sample - Bird Character by Alex Ariza

Stone Paper creates interesting effects, but I question the longevity of water-based ink drawings.

Stone Paper Sample - Bird Character Shopping

Riding Shopping Cart Off Ramp by Alex Ariza

Markers work really well on Stone Paper. No bleed. The ink glides against the stone paper nicely.

Color pencils work extremely well on Karst Stone Paper. The texture of the paper is a bit rough. The wax pigment holds well.

Yeah, color pencils are the perfect medium for Karst Stone Paper.

Rochester Main Street Armory by Alex Ariza

My brother Richard purchased a small Karst Stone Paper sketchbook last year for me to try out. I tested different mediums out on the paper.

The "paper" is really a film of plastic with a fine grain of ground up stone particles. It is non-absorbent. It doesn't handle water/wet media well in the sense that it just blobs on top. If you're using ink and it dries, it rubs against the opposing page and leaves residue. Since the paper is non-absorbent, the ink literally sits and dries on the surface.

Longevity is questionable at this point.

Color pencil and other wax-base media works well on it. The stone paper is tough and can handle a lot of layers and blending.

Markers also work really well with the stone paper and glides nicely and blends easily.

Overall, I'm probably going to fill this sketchbook up and won't be getting a new one anytime soon. I'm a traditionalist. I like paper made from pulp. I like the feel of normal paper - its "tooth," thickness, and color options.

It's worth checking out.

Thursday, January 1, 2026

Blogger is Dead After All

Alex Ariza - Fashion Institute of Technology Student Days Circa 2008 or 2009

What the hell happened to this site? How did Google let this happen?

Back in 2005, twenty years ago now (good Lord), all my FIT colleagues were on Blogger. It was fun. It was cool. People shared what they were working on in school or their personal projects.

Blogger was a place where you could truly express yourself freely. You could cultivate a small following. The ability to explore other blogs was also part of the fun. You saw the blogs your friends were following, or simply jumped from link to link until stumbling upon a great niche blog.

My professors at FIT encouraged us all to start a blog. I remember starting this blog in 2007. The professors had a blog. The students had a blog. Other students outside of FIT had a blog. The professionals had a blog. Everyone in my world at the time had a Blogspot through their Google account.

Alex Ariza - Scanning Artwork for School. Almost everything made for school was also posted on Blogger. Circa 2008 - 2009.

Some of my professors even followed my posts, which, looking back, was risky for me. Not all of my posts were safe for work or used appropriate language.

Around 2012-2013, everyone left this platform to either start a tumblr or WordPress site, including me.

Google ruined this site by letting it stagnate and refusing to update or match the features these other platforms had. Why even buy a site if you're just going to let it rot?

That's how the tech business works, though. Buy out your competitor and exploit it, or close it down.

I'm surprised this site is still up.

Do you remember the absolute failure that was Google Plus? What an absolute joke.

Visiting this site is like a digital time capsule. Everyone's posts end around 2012 on this site. It's like a singular catastrophic event wiped out this once thriving civilization.

Ghost mall.

Ghost town.

Empty chairs and empty tables.

All that remains is a goodbye post stating they've moved to Tumblr or WordPress.

Now, even Tumblr is a ghost town. What happened there?

Wordpress? Do people still use that site?

This place is like Detroit. Gary, Indiana. Some remote, deserted areas of the US that once had a rich history and a large population.

Everyone is gone. What the hell happened?

Twitter. Tik Tok. Facebook. YouTube. Medium. Behance. Whatever the hell else is out there. That's what replaced this?

None of those sites will give you the freedom that Blogger gave you. You can post just about anything here. Google indexed these sites. Google doesn't index anything from Facebook, Tik Tok, etc.

People don't want freedom. They want certainty and convenience. They just want to be where everyone else is. This is a perfect case study of this phenomenon.

This is a lost cause. I'm the old man screaming at the clouds now.