Lee Thomson

May 21
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I was trying to get a particular thing done (I’m all about process) by mixing the Pebeo transparent and opaque paints together, in the vain hope that the transparent ones would sunprint and the opaque ones would make a nice background color… what I got was this lovely golden green (the opaque paints) thing with the purple layered on over the top and the whole piece of fabric stiff with paint and feeling more like gold lamee than anything else. Then bits peeled up when I pulled the leaves off. I love it, and yet like the best of my soups, I couldn’t recreate it if I had to. I am liking the embroidery part too – I managed to keep the internal detail of the leaves and the delicate edges and highlight the complexity of the leaves themselves. I used a ton of thread to unify the background because I was too tired to go downstairs and get the paints out. It works to pull the background back a little, maybe darker thread would work better.

jude – thanks for your comments both on Flickr and here – I am liking the looser backgrounds too, and the smudgy, uncontrolled look of it. I feel a bit foolish choosing these gorgeous batik fabrics for the background only to paint over them to pull back the colors. Yikes! Textures next – then color won’t matter, and I can pull all these gnarly fabrics out of the box and not care about the color at all….

Alice came out to the barn for a lesson this afternoon. She is getting braver about pulling and pushing on this (relatively) patient Fijord pony that just towers over her. The pony has size and inertia on her side, Alice has brains, and is developing courage. Alice’s legs still only just barely reach the bottom of the saddle, and don’t go even halfway down Elda’s sides.