simple progression

January 5, 2008

I started out to deliberately get transfer paint onto leaves with this one (I started it as a series of color mixing tests but it got out of hand):


Jan 5a
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Then I flipped the leaves color side down and used them as a resist for a dark blue plate:


Jan 5b
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

and then I realized the leaves had blue on them and I should try this.


Jan 5c
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I am stunned. There is a very easy progression to making this stuff and using it, but the results are so fluid and unexpected. I will have yards of samples by the end of the transfer paints as the Media of the Moment.

Unexpected bummer: transfer paints work best on man made fibers – these gorgeous things are 100% polyester which makes the fiber snob in me quiver

transfer paint and leaves

January 3, 2008


Jan 3b
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Painted leaves with a painted piece of paper behind them – I am verry pleased with the detail from the leaves.



Jan 3c
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

After the above experiment, the backs of the leaves had color on them, so I flipped them over and ironed again. They look very dreamy to me.

I experimented with other polyester fabrics, but the shiny stuff carries the most detail. I should go troll through Joann’s for other polyester fabrics that are smooth but less shiny.

Unexpected bonus: ironing oak leaves makes a nice smell.

Unexpected negative: it is the middle of freaking winter in New England – the only leaves I can find are dead oak leaves. I wonder if people would mail me leaves… you know, from warmer climes?

commitments for 2008

January 3, 2008

It helps me think about what I am doing if I can make it into a list. So I worked on formalizing yesterday’s nebulous concepts into a list, and it looks liket his:

Art commitments:

  • media of the moment – an extended set of experiments with a particular media going for at least a month, possibly six weeks, and consisting of the daily thing and the weekly thing
  • daily thing – daily sample of the media of the moment
  • weekly thing – using the samples or new knowledge of the media of the moment, make a 5×7” work
  • monthly thing – SharonB’s Take it Further Challenge  (TIF) – work off the colors every time, try to get to the theme as well
  • trees/leaves – finish 5 of 10 leaves each series (a project I have been idly thinking about for a year) for gingko, birch, dogwood, maple, oak
  • start the first of the weeds series on 12×12" backgrounds

Personal stuff:

  • call your mother
  • ride a horse
  • laugh with a friend
  • go to a gallery/museum
  • ride your bike with your family

These are things I intend to do this year. In June I will revisit the media of the moment concept and see what I have left in my stash to explore. It could be a semester course, or it may go all year. I am not sure how many different kinds of stuff I have in there. The weekly thing will keep me making stuff with my experiments, and I will try to tie the monthly thing to the media of the moment experiments as well.

so Mom – you’ve moved up the list in importance, and you should hear from me soon.

weaving in the ends

January 2, 2008

At the end of every knitting pattern I have ignored to date, there is the instruction at the end. It says "Weave in loose ends."  There is generally some nonsense about blocking as well, but for socks, well, I have block shaped feet so I figure that works fine for me. I wear all my handmade socks with the strings sticking out like this:
Green_jitterbug_socks_2

It is a personal failing that I have acknowledged, and care about insufficiently to modify. But now the ends of my art are sticking out and it feels untidy and unfinished.

I am not sure how to describe what I want to do next.

It occurred to me in the middle of last year that I am creating for myself a giant, self directed art curriculum. I spent the first year making simple things over and over again, varying the constraints and trying to find a style and voice that is authentically mine.

I think this year I want to explore different media. My shelves and drawers are full of paints and inks and markers and more of all of these that I purchased thinking they would be good to use. Now is the time to use them. What I want to do is spend time every day noodling with a particular medium. The aim is to explore what I can do with it when I come at it again and again and again. How far can I push one particular idea? How flexible is it? How much control do I get, and how much serendipity do I have to accept? It should take at least a month of daily effort to begin to get a grip on these things, and I am actually thinking about six weeks each. Or until I run out of stuff. At the end of each media  exploration, I need to be able to do a final project using that stuff. It may be some kind of piece using the samples I have made, or it may be a final report kind of thing. I will probably write a brief review of what I liked and hated, and what I might use it for in the future, if I ever want to touch it again….

I am starting with transfer paints, but also allowed to use the transfer crayons and transfer pencil that I have squirreled away.

This is going to be a more boring blog for a while. I will document the process as much as I can, but I am not sure how useful it will be once posted.

year in review, grades

January 1, 2008

I offer here a self assessment of the last year.

Postcards:

straight up numbers: 330/365 = 90%

weakest month: October and July – October I couldn’t get a rhythm, and I wasn’t pushing the ideas hard enough. It wasn’t til I relaxed and let each one come that I calmed down, but the results still were not fabulous, with one or two exceptions. July I had two good ideas and then it was a looong time until the month ended. Two were beautiful, one heartfelt, the rest were filler. I expected to have more fun, and more ideas, for faces in September, but that felt like it dragged as well. I did well with the theme I finally settled on for August (sunflowers) but I could have chosen a better theme.

strongest months: November and December – I never expected to get so much out of chasing a color I wasn’t fond of, and I think the work in November is the strongest of the year. December has some strong stuff in it as well – I am doing well with abstracts, and with simple interpretations of real things. I had a lot of fun with the holes in June, but I don’t think the resulting work is strong, it mostly looks like I was having fun. Not there is anything wrong with that, sometimes. March was educational in part because I finally had to address myself to learning Photoshop and getting gmore from my camera. January was a fine start, but I definitely got better as the year wore on (which I was hoping for but didn’t really expect). April had a couple of inspired (if I do say so) money images, but overall was slow.

Overall:        A-  for fulfilling the letter of the law, a daily postcard. Selected postcards were completely awesome and deserve A+ for design and execution.

best part: having done it, I think. Going into my room on a daily basis and making something is very very good for me, mentally and creatively. I had more ideas than time, and I didn’t run out (which is reassuring, as those who make stuff up will tell you). I am going to do something every day again in 2008, but I think I need to make fewer, bigger things as well. Philip Pullman says that he doesn’t wait for his muse – he goes and sits down at his table and starts writing. Things show up. I certainly found that to be true. In fact, I had a harder time restarting the process after a vacation than I  did maintaining momentum in the middle of the year.

Do it again? yup. Watch me go!

Journal Quilts:

straight-up numbers: so far 10 of 12, = 83%, if I finish December it’ll be 91%

overall grade: solid B – some extra credit for trying to cram so much into such small spaces, still a solid B. Hand in the last month and we can revist your grade. 

worst parts: I am certainly my own worst critic: let the images breathe! how about some colors beyond blue? I think I stressed too much over these because they were bigger (yikes!) and less frequent, and seemed to require more meaning. Once I stopped trying to make them quite so meaningful, I had more fun making them and I think the results were easier to “read”.

best parts: It is fun working at small sizes. After the postcards at 4×6”, a full page seemed enormous, but still extremely manageable to accomplish in a month. When I didn’t freak out.

other thoughts: I spent a year thinking hard about some part of my life on a monthly basis, and then making a quilt about it. I prefer the pages that are more opaque to the viewer, and have less me all over them. I think it might also be easier to look at pages that don’t need to be explained quite so thoroughly. While I  will be making things monthly next year (SharonB’s Take it Further Challenge), I think I’d prefer not to focus so much on what is internal, but turn my gaze outward more to see what I can show others.

Do it again? eh – not the journaling so much, but the monthly object? definitely.

For today, New Years Day, I took the day off. The whole house slept late, we got more snow, the girls and I shovelled while Al snored, I walked around the block and we finished by going out for Chinese food. It is funny – I think we were all thinking Chinese New Year, even though it isn’t for another couple weeks. Just the conflation of our New Year and Chinese Food. It felt like good luck though. But then, dumplings always feel like good luck.

New Projects starting tomorrow.

the (not so bitter) end: 2007

December 31, 2007


Dec 31
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I was so smitten with jude’s pieced window that I adapted it for use with fireworks, and stuck it to a postcard. The fireworks are anticipatory – we don’t get them til 6:15 tonight – but I remember what they were like from before.

I love fireworks. I, who startle easily and hate loud noises, revel in the bang and boom. I, who flinch at blinking lights of the season, adore the sparkle and pop. It think it may be my favorite part of the night.

Happy New Year, everyone: old friends (you know who you are), new friends, new readers, mom.

2007 intentions; the scorecard

December 31, 2007

At the beginning of last year I wrote a short list of things I intended to do over the year. It wasn’t the usual list of lose weight, stop spending money, eat right, but instead a list of things I thought would make me a happier and better person if I managed to keep them in mind. I gave up on resolutions a while ago, and tend to examine my life in Feb to see if anything’s changed.

It came out to a list of six things:

  1. make a fabric postcard every day
  2. talk to friends more, every couple of days
  3. knit all the socks from the Blue Moon Sock Club, when they come in
  4. call my mother more, at least every other day
  5. ride the new bike when the weather is above 45 degrees
  6. ride horses whenever the opportunity presents itself, no sloping
    off after cleaning stalls just because you can’t face a particular
    horse or don’t quite feel like it


So:

postcards? check. I learned a lot about exercising my creativity, and why exactly I’ve been buying all that
cool stuff that is cluttering up my workroom and all kinds of things. I am thinking of a more detailed report on the postcards later.

Talk to friends? mixed. I can always visit with people I like more, I think I improved it some but there’s room for more talking,

knit Blue Moon Sock of the Month? failed, almost utterly. I started the first pair and they made me grumpy and unhappy and I’ve turned the heel and failed the cabling exercise on the cuff and now I have to frog them and do it better and at the moment I hate them. Then I kept from starting any of the subsequent ones because I was holding the first over my own head in a "finish your vegetables first" kind of way. (yeesh – mixed metaphors and all, that is an UGLY sentence!) So even though I kind of want to knit the last two, I haven’t started them yet. And I stopped knitting until I stepped away from the Blue Moon fibers entirely and got something that spoke to me and knit my own pattern the way I like. I finished them just before Christmas but haven’t managed to post them yet. My conclusion? I am not a knit along kind of soul.  I am OK with patterns in books but better with a recipe I can pull out of my head and follow.

call your mother? needs improvement. say no more.

ride your bike? I could do a lot more of this. Whenever I do ride, it makes me happy. I don’t ride around town for errands because I hate dealing with the traffic at three intersections that I have to go through. I keep thinking there have to be better ways, but I’ve ridden all over town and it is just easier to walk for most of the errands in the middle. I could try to use the bike for grocery shopping. Maybe that could make an intention for next year.

Ride horses?  did great while I had a barn with an indoor ring and horses I liked. When I got busted back to a horse that made me ache, I stopped. Stopped over the summer. Restarted at two barns in the fall but chose the one with no sheltered riding for the winter, which makes the whole ride all year thing kind of difficult. I may need to think about how intent I am on riding, and what exactly I want to get out of it.

On the whole? one rousing success, one abject failure (with introspection) and 4 mixed, with some excuses.  I can either add them onto the list for next year, or go for a new list from scratch. I think my hope for the intentions is that new habits would become an integral part of what I do, so I could think about adding other things to the list in the future. Although some were just tests, to see if the thing itself was fun (a sock of the month club – apparently not fun for me) or uplifting or energizing. Or spreading joy. Whatever.   

I’ll work on the set of intentions for 2008, and post them when the year has changed.

weaving, triangles

December 30, 2007


Dec 30
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Woven torn strips for the background, the black bar was an attempt to bring a third direction into the weaving but it failed utterly. However, it looked cool storming off the edge of the page. So the big triangle sat on it, and the white silk pages hung from it and here we are.

Very, very quiet day. Everyone is sleeping a lot, and it makes for long quiet mornings. Tomorrow we go about town for the afternoon, celebrating the early part of First Night (which we call Last Afternoon instead) watching local performers do fun things. Then supper and fireworks, and blessings on the people who organize the fireworks for midnight Greenwich Mean Time which is 7:00 pm for us, so we can see them, cheer madly, and go home and be warm.

triangle test

December 29, 2007


Dec 29
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Finally I remembered – I can test things on the postcards. I am thinking about how to get visible triangles across a rectangular surface. Probably easiest if I just paste them down, but I was hoping for some kind of weaving. This came up for a first try. I don’t like the wedge shaped pieces of single color stripes, but they may be weavable as well.