Feb 4
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Apparently I can start making things on Tuesdays, but I can't finish them, and photograph them and post them. I was working on the previous piece last night, and I was so tired I could hardly sit up and then I broke a needle. I decided that was a message from the universe, so I left it alone til today.

I am encountering all kinds of internal objections. I am worried the colors of the larger areas won't fit together, and that the details won't match across edges. I wish I was more sure of what I wanted from the finished object, and I could relax a little. I know exactly how I'd go about making this image as a single large piece, and I am thinking I should maybe do that too. So I have one piece I am pleased with from the exercise. Then I think I should go back to using an existing image, and then I go around again… it is getting dizzying in here!

B4

Feb 3
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Well – you can tell what some of it is from this piece!

One commenter (Hi Cathie!) asked if you could see the whole picture, and the answer is not yet. Partly because I was planning on showing it at the end of the month, and partly because at the moment it is cut up into little squares and carefully segregated by whether I have accomplished them or not.

How about if I make Flickr mosaics every week or so, with the finished pieces in their proper place? Then you can see it grow as fast as I can. I can't be fairer than that.

D3

Feb 2
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

This may be one of 4 or 5 squares where nothing much is happening in the foreground. It seems like a hard way to start, but it made me think a little about what I want as a result of the month, so it must have had a purpose!

I realized I wanted more uniformity of effort across the page than I first thought. Probably because I am not interpreting someone else’s art, I still want the end result to be a coherent object. Had I chosen to interpret an existing work piecemeal like this, then letting the techniques rule the day would make a great deal of sense. You could treat it as an exploration of media and techniques so long as the colors were correct for each square, the end result would be a sampler, in a classic sense, and still show the sense of the original work. Since no one but me has seen the original work for this piece, I realized I needed to use more constraints to keep the end result cohesive rather than not.

A-4

Feb 1
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I spent a chunk of yesterday getting this picture ready to work on for this month. That is, I drew it and colored it (because I realized there was much confusion once the pieces were apart) and labeled the back, and cut it up. For the next couple weeks, I pull a piece from the stack, and make it on my 4″ square pieces. At the end of the month, it all fits together in a mosaic, and looks fabulous.

That is the plan, at any rate.

I had forgotten that I like using paper sometimes. I pulled out my water soluble oil pastels for coloring, and they were verry creamy and lovely on the page.

Maybe I need to keep a sketchbook after all, except that I still feel it bleeds off creative pressure in ways I don’t want like. Rather than recording and feeding the ideas for where I want to go next, spending too much time with paper keeps me from getting to the fabric, and frequently makes me unhappy with the fabric results because I spent too much time envisioning what it was going to look like, instead of pushing the actual object along to see what it could turn into.

Jan 31
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

jude – this one's for you!

I am very pleased with myself over this one. I dreamed it up Friday night, and it looks exactly the way I thought of it.

It is tricky to see in the picture, but it really is nothing but circles held in a grid of stitching. I used two layers of water soluble stabilizer, one that has sticky material to hold things in place and a plain layer over the top to keep the presser foot of the machine from sticking to it. With extra thread in the top and shiny in the bottom, it looks lovely either way up.

I offer also this vision of it against the window…

Jan 30
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

If I use something that is translucent, it is still possible to see the weavings as they run/flow in and out of the holes in lower layers. This is a better direction, and closer to what I was thinking about with some of the earlier ones. I used 3 layers of silk organza painted with Dynaflow – a very loose fabric paint that leaves the weave open and flexible. I used the twill to sop up the extra paint, and it looked so integrated that I added it as a bottom layer, to give the eye a stopping point.

I could use layers with more visual heft, and only have two. The organza is very wifty.