Paper and Paint

My daughter Nina gave me a lovely sketch/scrap book made with banana fiber pages. I love the speckled natural color of the paper. I really want to spend more time drawing, I used to be really good about keeping sketchbooks. Funny how once kids came into the picture, that sort of slipped away. I want to get back in the habit of drawing for the sake of drawing and not just when I want to design a quilt.  

I like the way the drawings look on this paper, but I found that it is not the best for paint. I think it's too absorbent and soft, so it is not as easy to move the paint around on the surface of the paper. I persevered though, using opaque watercolors to paint the images.

I will end this post with todays Oprah siting. Mayor Daley held a press conference outside to announce that he renamed the section of Carpenter street between our loft building and Harpo studios "Oprah Winfrey Way".

photos taken from my 5th floor balcony

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Canvas book

Last month I made a canvas book after seeing Jane LaFazio's segment on Quiting Arts TV. Jane used artist canvas as a base for a mixed media collage. I have not worked much on canvas and thought it would be a lot of fun to try using it as a base for a book.

I bought a yard of canvas at the art store and tore it into two 12" x 24" strips and two 6" x 16" strips and painted a coat of Gesso on each side of the canvas. Gesso creates a surface to paint on, so all your paint doesn't soak into the canvas.

Next I put color on each side of the canvas, so I would not be working on blank pages. A blank white page can be so intimidating. I also collaged some paper images onto the pages with gel medium and stitched a couple pieces of painted canvas to the pages.

Then I stacked the pages together and sewed them together on the sewing machine. I found that my Janome was not happy sewing through the layers of canvas, but the Bernina plowed right through four layers of painted canvas with no problem.

This book was not meant to have a theme, just be a place to try new things, new techniques and randomly add things, a continuous work in progress.
This page has a paper bird from wrapping paper in the upper corner and a painted bird in the bottom corner, painted with textile paints. The patterns and text were printed with thermofax. I had never printed with thermofax screens before. The images printed a little more distressed on the bumpy surface of the canvas. But I love the layer of texture. I can see why so many people love working with thermofax screens.
The photos of the women, here, on the cover and the back of the book are from acetate transfers using matte medium that Lesley Riley gave me. The one on this page was transferred onto a piece of buckram.

The cicada drawn on the red fabric and the patterns drawn on the leaf were made using a ruling pen. This was a great tip from Melanie Testa, I had forgotten all about ruling pens. I used to use them all the time years ago for inking things. I have several of them that have sat unused in a box for the last 20 years. I even have my dad's ruling pen and drafting tools that he used in his days as an engineer for the Navy. I am thrilled to rediscover the ruling pen, it is a great tool for drawing fine lines with paint or thickened dye.
In Jane's QATV segment she also used stencils to add more visual texture to her collages. When I was at Blick I saw a set for $2.99 how could I resist? I numbered my pages with them using the number as a design element on each page.
I drew the bee on the page with a permanent brown pen and painted it using transparent glazes of textile paint.
This center page has a thermofax print on a piece of wool felt and a scrap from the fabric I made to create the apron I posted about a couple weeks ago.
On page 12 I sewed a machine felted fabric collage.
On my last page I sewed a pocket so that I could keep things I want to add to the book in the future.

This book is still far from finished, I am planning to keep adding to it indefinitely.

It has been a fun experiment, canvas takes paint so differently from fabric. You can push paint around on its surface and pick it up again with a cloth making interesting textures in ways that you can't on cotton fabric. I also like the body the canvas has for book pages, flexible, yet sturdy. I can see a lot of ways one could explore using canvas for books.

Happy New Year!

Painted panel

My daughter Nina came across some discarded ceiling fan blades by the recycling bin on our building and brought them home, thinking they might be fun to paint. Before painting, the blades had to be sanded since they were painted most likely with oil based paint.

Not having any transfer paper on hand, I made a sheet of graphite paper to transfer the drawing to the wood blade. Using a soft leaded pencil (a 6B) I covered a blank sheet of paper with graphite holding the pencil on its side to get more coverage. I taped my drawing to the panel on one side and slipped the graphite paper face down on the board under the drawing. Then I traced over the lines of my drawing with a hard lead pencil transferring the drawing to the board.

The gold background was painted first with the color Quinacridone Gold fluid acrylic watered down to a thin wash and applied with a soft bamboo brush in multiple glazing coats building up the color on the outside edges of the panel. I used textile paints and Golden fluid acrylics for the rest of the painting.



I used two different painting techniques to paint this panel. You can see the robins breast is painted using red with white, mixing shades of pink for the gradation. The wings on each bird were painted by using one color (brown for the robin) and painting thin washes to create the gradation form light to dark. It is important for each wash to dry before applying the next. Usually the paint dries rather quickly unless it is humid and then the process can be sped up with a quick hit with a blow dryer. The robins head, wings and tail were painted with brown washes and then a thin blue wash was painted over the whole thing.

The yellow birds wings were painted mainly with washes in brown paint and Sap Green fluid acrylic then painted over with a wash of lemon yellow.

New Houses

I just finished two more houses with a sea life theme.

I always like to put something inside for the person who looks in the door. This one has open doors like I made on a few of the fiesta ornaments.
This one has a flat decorative door.
With a goldfish inside.
Each one is different.

If you are interested in knowing how these are made, I am writing two articles for Cloth Paper Scissors about it. The project will be broken up into two separate articles in consecutive issues coming out this spring. If the whole project was in one issue, it would probably fill half the magazine. So this will be like when one of the quilting magazines has a how-to for a quilt and it runs in a few consecutive issues.

The first issue will have the step by step process that I used to collage and paint the fabric. The next issue will detail the house construction. I will keep you posted for when the articles come out.

Seaweed

This painting is 5" x 10" and will be used for a different project than the other little paintings. I will reveal more about them in a couple days. I was asked to contribute a postcard size quilt representative of my work for someones project.

I spent most of my life living near the ocean in Maine and California. I have a particular fondness for seaweed. I love its various shapes and colors. Unfortunately I am horribly allergic to it.

Little Paintings

6" x 6"

Little Paintings

6" x 6"

Little Paintings

3" x 6"

Little Paintings

6" x 8"

Little Paintings

3" x 3", 3" x 3"

Little Paintings

6" x 6"

Little Paintings

3" x 6"

Little Paintings

3" x 3", 3" x 3"

Little Paintings

This painting is 6" x 8", pretty close to the size shown here.

Happy Thanksgiving

I woke up this morning to see snow flurries out my window. That really makes it feel like the holidays are here.

Yesterday I finished painting the birds that I started for Open Studios in Houston. It was so nice sitting down and painting. I began listening to a book called The Pillars of the Earth a historical fiction about cathedral building in the middle ages. (I have the audio version from Audible.com)

(from Publishers Weekly) Set in 12th-century England, the narrative concerns the building of a cathedral in the fictional town of Kingsbridge. The ambitions of three men merge, conflict and collide through four decades during which social and political upheaval and the internal politics of the church affect the progress of the cathedral and the fortunes of the protagonists.

The story is so interesting to listen to I decided to keep painting and painted this little piece. I don't know why I always seem to be painting images that do not relate to my present time and location.

Back from Houston

What a blast, I look forward to going to festival in Houston every year. Not only to see the quilts in the show, get some good stash from vendors, but most importantly connect with friends, old and new.from the left Paula Chung, Rachel Perris, Frances Holliday Alford, Leslie Jenison, Jamie Fingal and Me.

Kathy York and Frances' group quilt Kiwi and Fuscia meet for Mojitos won second place in group quilts, and Kathy's quilt Vertigo won second place in Art Whimsical.

One of the best parts about doing Open studios for me is getting to meet people and answer any questions they may have about my work and painting fabric. People who drop by also get the opportunity to pick up and fondle the artwork laying on the table.
Doesn't that look fun?
Here's Frances, Jamie and I working away at the tables in Open Studios. It was all such a great time and went too fast. Especially since I left Houston at the crack of dawn Saturday to get home to Chicago and go to SOFA with my other good friends Vickie and Julie.

SOFA was great, but I have to say after only 4 hours of sleep the night before and two previous nights of hardly any sleep, I probably was not in the best condition to really enjoy the show.

There was a lot more glass this year. It pretty much dominated the show. Unfortunately I did not see as much fiber/textile/mixed media this year as last.

I loved seeing the work of Susan Taylor Glasgow up close and get a chance to talk with her. I admire the way she incorporates her background in dressmaking into sewing with glass, creating iconic images of womens work and homemaking. There were a few art quilts by some big names but surprisingly they were older pieces of work.

Jane Sauer Gallery is always fabulous if you click on this link you will see all the incredible work they were exhibiting in Chicago. It looks like they did pretty well at the show cause quite a few pieces are marked sold on the website. All 3 pieces by Jan Hopkins sold, I adore her work.

After walking the show floor we sat down and watched a glass blowing demonstration at the Corning Museum of Glass traveling road show with Richard Jolley.