humming birds of the sea

I have only just got back into the studio today.  Tuesdays and most of Wednesday, I spend most of my time at the community house, quilting, teaching kids art and organising art groups.  As much as I enjoy these activities, I am always desperate to get back to my own space on Thursdays.
Today and last night, I started out with my journals.

I did a few backgrounds with lots of dripping, which I love.  The ones on the left used soft pastels and water and the ones on the right used watersoluble oil pastels and water.

This page, which is of some stylised sea dragons was done with watercolour pencils and started with a simple green scribble on the page which turned into the sea dragons.  The page had been previously gessoed and I played with some inks in a waterbrush to create the blue background.  My DH said they looked like birds and I thought they looked like hummingbirds - so 'hummingbirds of the sea'.

I did a little work on my collage from a few days ago - well, actually a few hours worth, although it doesn't look like I did much.

I finished the gold centre (I left the centre open for some french knots or beads later on) and roughly outlined the 'petals.

You can see here where I have started to define the petals and also to scribble around the flower in a pale green to tone it down and allow the flower to be the focus.  And why did I stop?  The usual reason, running out of bobbin thread!  Tomorrow I will wind a few with bobbinfil, so I don't have to stop so often.

And that's all she wrote!

Christmas break?

I have not blogged for several weeks, although I have been working on my current projects and a couple of new ones.  I have just been a bit camera shy - or perhaps lazy in taking pictures.  I am suffereing from a rotten dose of hay fever and sinus, due to our normal pre Christmas weather - that is two days hot, two days freezing and so on, but instead of having a whinge, I thought I might just post some of the journal pages I have been doing for The Chrismas Chronicles - a journaling workshop at Rhomany's realm. Which I have been partaking in.

Here is my cover, on which I learned NOT to use hairspray on water soluble oil pastels, lol.

The theme for this unfinished page - which I scanned and used for my christmas cards, was HOLLY.

The theme for this page was IVY and I extended it a bit to be "the holly and the ivy"

The theme for this page was STAR.

The theme for this page was ROBIN, but the page is not quite finished.

Obviously, the theme for this page was ANGEL.

And this page was about FAITH.

I am sort of using a vintage Christmassy sort of theme, and using lots of postcards from The graphics fairy as my inspirations.
Hope you all have a lovely christmas, religious or not, and I will take a break and be back about the 14th January.

Remember spring, and altered books

playing card, molding paste through a stencil, gesso, watercolour paint, (very messy) decorative machine stitching, lazy daisy, felt backing.

Another brief glimpse into my artbooks, today.

This is a niche, cut into my insect theme book, using layered tissue paper and a cast tissue dragonfly.

and another, layered tissue page in my techniques book, with some decorative stitching on the side of the page.

I have arranged some distressed leaf samples I did a while ago on some paste paper in my leaf theme book.

Here are two little niches, front and back in my leaf theme book.

hereis the page complete, with a metal leaf and a cast made from it mounted.

and from the back, with the distressed leaves showing through.

this page is created using newspaper, gesso, acrylic and then a watercolour wash with salt.

And I am playing with this acetate overlay, but I think I might make one out of stitching to go on this page.

I am very busy with things I can't show you yet, which is quite frustrating, but hopefully next week the pressure will be off slightly and I will be able to get some playing done!

And don't you forget to play every day! 

Don't forget Lisa's ATC

another metal ATC and my doodled bird in progress

Today's ATC is another embossed foil one, a leaf, which I have painted with nail polish.  It is sewn onto some more of my collage background with chain stitch and french knots and bound with organza ribbon.

some of you probably remember this bird from one of my artbooks.

I actually have a small quilt in process using this design.

here it is with the outline quilting done

and a close up
I have now started the doodling in the feathers

I am really enjoying doing this ddodling and have been practising lots of doodles in my quilting scrapbook

Here's a close up.  I think I need to go over the stitching more than once as it is such a thin thread and I'm sure there will be some scope for beading when it is done.



Happy stitching, don't forget to check out Lisa's ATC and the TAST page

Art books

 Just a quick mention, that I am going to start posting an ATC a day as a way to play with lots of techniques.  This was an idea put forward by my friend, Lisa  and I have decided to join her in her venture. we shall see!  She also has a great list of techniques which she wants to try.

My art books, as I have said, are recycled/altered books which I use to create little bits of art and experiment in on different themes.
Here are a few pages I have worked on recently.

This is a page from my bird theme book.  The backgrpound is newspaper painted with gesso and then a watercolour wash, which I find easy to paint and draw on and is a cheap and easy way to cover up the page contents underneath.  The bird was inspired by a card.  It is a little hard to see because it is drawn with a metallic pen, but basically each piece of the bird is doodled with a different free motion quilting design.  I have a small quilt based on this page in process, so you see the books are a great design resource..

This is a page in process in my water/oceans book.  Again the background is painted newspaper/gesso.
The seahorses are molding paste applied through a stencil, then painted gold.
This page will be layered again to add some more weeds and depth before it is finished.  I already have ideas about using painted fusible in a small quilt like this.

These ferns in my leaf theme book are stencilled with oil pastel.  Next, I will put a watercolour wash on which will be resisted by the pastel.  This can be mimicked on fabric using shiva sticks and fabric paint, so i do see a batch of fabric comming up.

I have shown this page before.  It is a ripped printout pasted to the page, but here, you can see I have begun to sketch out the missing parts.  I think this page needs a wash for the background, so the leaves will brobably be completed with oil pastel.

Another page from the leaf book, this is a simple layout for a small motif (about 4") I made using couched copper wire on a piece of woven wool fabric.  This page has a piece od non woven paper/fabric (the type florists use on their posies) pasted directly to the page.  It is semi transparent, but I actually like the little views you can see.  The pink/orange paper is paste paper .

I have actually been doing a lot of sewing an textile work, but haven't quite got to the point of something to show yet and a couple of my WIPs are things I can't show until a certain date, but two days untill I start posting ATCs!!!!

Some paperwork

Today I'm going to look at a few pages in my sketchbook and one of my artbooks

This page is one I did recently, when I was designing pages for a fabric book.  The top sketch is obviously just some leaves, but I was interested in contrasts and the shadows of the leaves.  The bottom sketch is of a pomegranate, inspired by a design of Judy Coates Perez'. 

On this page at the bottom is a modification of the pomegranate that I was happier with.  At the top is a doodle of a dragonfly, where I intend to thread paint dimensional wings and bead the body.  There is also a little scribble of my cat's ear, since she was handy, lol.
This page is just drawn in pencil, and generally, that is where I start, then I go back and rework the pages later with color.  going back over the sketches this way allows me to revisit ideas and remember what I was going to do.  It's a great way to find inspiration when you are at a loss.

This is a reverse applique sample in my leaf art book.  I was playing with Gesso and decoded I liked the washed out effect it gave.  The leaves at the bottom are just stickers I found in a bargain store, which i used to balabce the page a bit.

This is a half  finished collage in the same book.  You can see that this is not an artist's sketchbook, but a reclaimed book (you can just see the writing on the page in the background.  I like to use an altered book for my art books.  A page which has been painted over with gesso or medium to wash out the text is much easier to get started on than a pristine white page, which can be daunting for most of us.

This page looks like a mess, doesn't it?  I purposely tore the picture so that I can complete the picture myself, sort of like a drawing exercise (an idea I got from Laura Kemshall).  This is another way to overcome the clean page block.
Another thing I learnt when doing this page was that ink jet prints do work with medium and PVA and will not bleed - BUT  you have to leave them for a few days, maybe a week to allow the ink to set and use neat PVA or heavy medium (the less water, the better) to glue and gloss over them.
I have had bleeds when using ink jet prints in the past and now I think that perhaps I really did not let them set properly in this way and used PVA with too much water.

Any way, that was just a brief look into my always incomplete and sometimes messy paper work.  Perhaps because of my painting and drawing background, I find this work invaluable to my textile work.  Like this blog, keeping a record of what I do and how it all turns out does come in handy down the track.

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Design is knowing which ones to keep.

Scott Adams

Quilting every day

 This blog is supposed to be a record of my work and an incentive to do it.  Two of the things I think are really important in designing and creating my art are free machine practice and sketchbooks.  I am not as diligent in either of these two things as I should be.

I am going to try and do a quilting sample every day.  It is something I need to do, because my quilting is a little haphazard at times.  I will be doing a little four inch sample each day and will bind them with eyelets and rings into a little sample book I can use to refer to and to show.

Here are the first two pages, each bound differently.  I will also try and include lots of different bindings as well.  I could back to back the samples so two make one page, but I feel it is better to be able to see the back - and to include not so perfect samples like these.
My method so far is pretty simple

I draw the quilting lines with an iron off pen  with a little practice bit outside to start with.  In the first two, I only started to draw the pattern, since it repeated and I wanted to get to the stage of doing it without lines, however with this one there is no repeat.

Another thing I think I need to do every day is to take photos to use in my sketchbook, art book and journal.  My sketchbook is where I simply draw and paint.  My art book is where I encorporate mixed media and samples into little pieces of work and my journal is my notebook, where I record ideas, write notes to myself and generally nut things out.

So here are today's photos

This is an anemone or windflower leaf.  I love the edges of these leaves.

This is a dietes, or native iris, of which there are many in the garden.

I love this picture.  It is a grape vine leaf on our very overgrown fence.

Lastly, this is a very naughty blackberry, which has been poisoned, but keeps coming back, but the flowers are pretty.  I also like briar roses, which are similar, but pink.
There is a significant trend in my photos, isn't there, but this is what I see each day.

I will try to post on these two things once a week or sometimes every two weeks when things are really busy.  I will also try to include examples of using these two things, like quilting in pieces of work or sketchbook or artbook pages.