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

Creating silk paper and other fibre films Method 2 - Glue method Part 2

Creating silk paper and other fibre films   
Method 2 - Glue method

This method, with many variations is covered in the following references;
1, 2, 3, 4, to 14.  (Click on the "References I use" page at top right of blog)

Today's sample is going to be made from tussah silk tops in shades of green.

Here  is the bottom cloth laid out.  I used kitchen wipes.

Above shows the first layer of tops.  In this sample, I used shorter tufts.

I added some dried leaves and flowers from a boutique herb tea mix.

Then the top layer of tussah silk went on.

Then I laid the top cloth on top of that.

I added boiling water - just enough to wet all the layers.

Then burnished the layers with the back of a spoon to get an even distribution of the hot water.

I rolled up all the layers carefully.

Here, I addeddiluted medium to my tray and rolled the layers in it, but decided -

It was probably better to immerse the whole thing in a bowl of diluted medium.  (I used about 1 to 5 dilution)

After squeezing out all the excess medium, I straigtened and flattened the layers on my tray.

I peeled back the kitchen wipe to reveal the lovely glossy fibres!

I actually put this between somebaking paer and gave it a quick iron before drying further.

It did bot take too long to dry and the finished silk paper was beautiful.  The dried tea added just the right amount of texture and the paperfabric was very flexible and fabric like. This piece offers me lots of possibilities, I just have to decide which use it will be put to.  But I suppose I could just make some more!
In the next blog, I am going to look at some more experimental stuff with this method.

Through a Glass Darkly

Since I am away from home, I want to cover a few topics which mean a lot to me.
My original topic was to talk about samples.  My sample folio is a large art folio, where I keep my samples from experiments and preliminary work.

My DH asked me the other day when I was going to do some work, and when I showed the days samples, he said, "I mean art - real work".  I started thinking about this and tried to explain to him why this work was important and in doing so, realised that this was something I needed to talk about.

I spend a lot of time experimenting and working on new techniques, and it is very important because it is what creates depth and meaning.  It is like a decorator's sample book or a painter's colour card, it is where I go to find colours and textures that I want to create in my work, or to find something I might tweak to make the right addition to a work.  If I had not personally done these samples, and had them under my belt, then my repertoire would be very limited.  Indeed, the reason I moved on from quilting is that my repertoire was becoming so wide that I needed a new canvas to work on - Fibre Art.  So, more than just a book to show off or as proof of qualifications, a folio is a working journal of sorts that provides a huge amount of resources in creative work.

On my Drive today, I was listening to Artistically speaking Radio, which FAMM radio have merged with.  The episode I have been listening to was the 13th Jan episode where Rebecca Parsons herself is interviewed.  This was really interesting and inspirational. After that interview, they interviewed another artist, called Deborah Dissman  who talked about something called Synesthesia, which she defined as the feelings and senses we associate with colours.  See articles here and here.  For example Blue feels light and cool, whilst red may feel dark and heavy.  It struck me that we need this information in creating, rather than simply the colour wheel.  We need to understand how colours and textures evoke senses in order to create meaningful pieces of art. 
Smell, taste, weight, touch, sound, volume, temp, all are associated with colours in our brain.  We actually use sayings such as  "loud" colours or hot, cool, heavy, yummy, sweet as adjectives to describe colour.

I want to mention an addition I am going to make to my sample folio.  In addition, to the notes I write on materials, and techniques and tools, I think a really useful addition would be some adjectives in the sense of synesthesia.
I will use one of my recent samples to illustrate this,

In this sample, for instance, I might come up with things like:

• Smell - fresh, light
• taste - crisp, crunchy, watery
• weight - light
• touch - rough
• sound - windy, rustling
• volume -airy, Density - light
• temperature - cool
• emotion - calm, creative

 It provides a lot of information about what we are putting into our piece of work.

Much of this information is already in our brains and as artists use it without knowing, when we critique our work and others'.  But I believe that making it more concrete instead of one of the mysteries of creativity  can only assist us in our work.  I have spent a lot of time thinking about aspects of art and creativity that we internalise and at times do not understand.  By bringing them out and making them concrete, we can understand our work and how it relates to others much more clearly.
This is just one more tool, to use and to learn to use.

I hope I haven't bored you too much and I hope I have inspired you to look at practice and sample work in a new light - as building blocks to a deeper creativity.