Category: materials

fifteen

January 15, 2012

fifteen

And a happy natal day to my brother who turns 50 today. I don't entirely understand how that can be possible because I'm a year and a half older than he is and I'm still 36, but maybe that is relative time for you. 

Today I suffered a complete foil failure. I've been using foil that requires ironing onto something sticky. I had a special glue for it, but the glue is really difficult to control. For these stars I'd been using fusible web. Paper punches make lovely shapes from the paper-backed fusible. I'd iron the shapes down, peel off the paper, and fuse the foil to the fusible. With more or less success.  Today only one star of fifteen foiled and peeled properly. The rest were mangled, fragmented or vanished. 

So I begged a piece of gold origami paper from Alice, and used fusible to make punched out stars iron-on, and ironed them on. 

I think I have a short list of experiments left to try with the foil. I need to see if higher or lower iron temps matter and I need to try two other kinds of fusible. If I don't find some combination of factors that works, I'm done with the stuff. It is shiny, but too frustrating if I can't make it do what I want.

fourteen

January 14, 2012

fourteen

Fourteen, and a very busy day. 

I had a horse, and a concert, and dinner with friends, and then I remembered I had a circle to make. 

I am remembering why I got so frustrated with foil. It does it not do what I want it to, and it doesn't do it in ways I cannot fix or work around. I don't mind unpreditability, in fact I like working with variegated threads and handpainted fabric. But this looks ugly to me, the edges aren't good, the fusible doesn't hold all the shape of the transfer, it isn't clean…  Two weeks into January, I am remembering why I didn't do much with it before.

And I need to decide how hard I want to push the foil issue – do I stick with it to the end of January, or do I declare this experiment over and go on to other gold stars? Because I still like the idea of counting up to the end of the month. 

willow leaves

November 17, 2011

pages of willow

Working again on the sketchbook. These are some of the willow pages. I was particularly pleased with the idea of enclosing real leaves, as well as prints from real leaves. The stitched portrait was especially fun to make, with all those sweeping lines of weeping branches. I need one more willow thing – the seeds are hard to come by right now, but I may be able to do womething with the bark, or a willow withy. 

tree portraits

November 9, 2011

portraits; elm, oak, sycamore

Using the (extremely smart) cell phone, I can take pictures of things even when I forget my camera. These were taken using a cool app that emulates old film cameras: a Brownie ( got one of these for Christmas one year, I remember it with great fondness), a Russian orange box, a Polaroid (of a vintage I recognize from my childhood) and a pin hole camera. I particluarly like this format, from the strange Russian orange box. 

I'm working on several folios at once, experimenting with things that work, and things that don't.

The leaf prints from yesterday were made by coloring on the back of a leaf with oil paint sticks, and then ironing it, paint side down, on the page. It hightlights the veining in the leaves, and some of the edges, it keeps paint form going everywhere on the workbench, and ironing leaves makes the most evocative smell.  

 

the organizational scrimmage

October 26, 2011

preparations

I've gotten photographic reproductions from my local print shop.

Paradise Copies is right around the corner from me. They are kind of amazing. Every time I ask them if they can do something, they say yes, and it is cheaper and easier than I expected. This time I had to make reproductions, mount them on foam core and shrink wrap them. With a  short break in the middle of the process for me to make labels, sign them and attach them to the back of the mounted pieces. 

That process is well underway. The last piece is framing the big guys. Al says fall and winter should go, but that I should make more too, because he wants to see spring. 

more shrubberies, more thread

October 20, 2011

shrubberies redux

I have some reeds still on land, at the edge of the pond (you can see where I sketched in their shadows already) and then I get to work on the pond itself.

I was thinking about how snow sits on top of ice, and then melts into it a little, so that the top is quite white, but some places are black with ice. Places where people tossed rocks to see if it was thick enough to skate on, or sticks fell on it, or small creatures left small footprints, all those show up as divots with black at the bottom. What I have to begin with is four layers of silk organza dyed black, gray and white. The rock sits in the pond a little, so the ice has melted around it and refrozen. 

I'm still thinking about how to do this part. I may try something that is removable, if I feel very dubious. 

a little closer

October 14, 2011

larger bare trees

I thought I was too tired to work on this today, because I rode two horses. The big gray horse is back from his summer on the island, and needing riding on Fridays and random other days. So I had my lesson on Nuada, which was fun and different. 

But I am worried about finishing things in time, so I came up and started working on the tiny twiggy trees in the mid-background, and then worked on cutting out the larger bare trees, getting closer to the foreground. And when I checked my watch because I was really tired – it had been a couple hours, and it was completely reasonable to be tired. 

winter is icumen in

October 13, 2011

tiny pointy trees

Tiny pointy trees in the background. They are making me happy. Also, they feel cold… brrr. 

There are three layers of medium, muddy greens making up the trees, one hand dyed, one hand painted, and one commercial. The interesting thing is how the thread works to consolidate them – even though I used four different threads, singly and in pairs.  

water and reflections

October 10, 2011

water and reflections

Two layers of silk organza make the pond. The top layer is dyed all black, the underneath layer has a strip of blue across the bottom, to add some depth and imply sky reflections. 

I helped offload a wagon of hay into the barn, and I am coated with a fine layer of hay and horse dust, glued on with sweat. 

a layer of small trees

October 7, 2011

tiny naked trees

The next layer is more stitching. The saplings are stitched from the back using heavy thread in the bobbin. I can see what I'm stitching on the back of the piece, but it is still kind of magical to flip the piece over and find trees. You can see the edges of some more shrubbery (which always makes think of Monty Python) and the bottoms of some pine tree branches. This section is about 3×4" – the whole piece is 12×16" 

I broke two needles in three minutes so I stopped. I wear glasses, so I'm less worried about getting stabbed, but it makes me jump every time. My nerves can only take so much!