Tuesday, July 29, 2008

The Middle of Our Stories

I will probably have to change the name for this piece, but so far it works. The problem is, Josh used a similar title for his NaNo, and I can't just 'borrow' it like that. The word middle describes half way so succinctly, though. I'll have to dig around for my thesaurus... ouch, okay it is just there under my desk.

Hum, navel... just too much gazing there for my taste. Median? Same as middle really. Ooh, here's one: mezzo termine. It means mid course. Hum, guess that might wind up the name of this piece. Like that one.

I started this one in June but couldn't figure out what else to do with it, so I left it alone. This month I've been busy with the Studio Journal course, so the TIF was on the back burner for the last few weeks. Not to mention I spent most of the month working on Mary Anne's lucious exquisite corpse.

In the quilt itself, there are three fabrics. One was once part of a dress my grandmother wore. It was hot pink and I over dyed it a bluish purple. One fabric came from an online connection, and one came from... somewhere. I didn't purchase it, beyond that I don't know. Originally I added two pattern pieces and a portion of my NaNo with gel medium. Those fit in with last months story theme. But of course, the piece didn't work. So I left it to sit.

Then this month, with the time crunch, I pulled it out again. I discovered that the page I'd used was exactly half way through my novel. Ooh, how weird is that? And, because this was half way done (do you see a theme here?), I could put less work into completing it. That was the thought anyway. I quilted interlocking squares, but it was still missing something.

Enter paint laden gel medium, a firm paint brush and a roll of chicken wire. I laid the chicken wire on the quilt top (already quilted) and adhered it with gel medium. I pulled the wire off before the medium completely hardened. It left behind the grid. Kind of interesting.




Unfortunately, it still seems to be missing something. Any suggestions or is it fine as is?

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

A Day in the Life of My Journal

It started with this photo:


And this photo:


From there, I played around with a layout in my journal and came up with this idea:
From there, I used the smaller photo, traced the major lines, cut it into squares, rearranged and did a colourwash using Derwent Graphitint pencils. The pencils go on muted and dull, but with a water wash, the colours turn vibrant. The vibrancy of the colour depends on the amount of water used. These are a couple of results:


Do you see the face too?

Monday, July 21, 2008

Circles in the House

Yesterday I went with friends to French Beach. On the way, we stopped at Sooke Harbour House. While my friends gawked at the wonderful artwork, I took pictures. It is interesting how many circles you can find when you really look.

Sooke Harbour House
Originally uploaded by victanguera

French Beach was horribly windy and cold, but we had an enjoyable picnic lunch. We drove to Point No Point and walked the path to the beach. It is almost like heading through the forests of Middle Earth. I truely expected Bilbo to pop out at me (although meeting Strider would have made me happier.) I love this tree:

I'm going to play with this image for one of the exercises for the Studio Journal course.

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Beyond Notan--Even Further

A while ago, I created this piece of Notan in fabric. This was even before the Studio Journal class where creating cutouts is part of lesson three.



Then I quilted it taking it beyond notan.


Then I made a kaleidoscope out of it, taking it even further:


Now to create notan shapes out of the kaleidoscope. Hum, wonder what you would call those. Maybe back to notan?

Monday, July 14, 2008

Kaleidoscopes and Stuff

I've been playing around with an online kaleidoscope creator. A word of warning, if you have an addictive personality, watch out. Much time will be wasted. But look at what you can create:


I'm trying the colour wash with plastic wrap on fabric, but no luck yet. Will keep playing with it and see what I can come up with. Results to follow.

My daughter (the one in art school) looked at my messy journal yesterday and commented: "Looks like an artist's workbook". Cool.

Wednesday, July 09, 2008

Odds and Sods

The Studio Journal course is extremely interesting. This week we are working on colour. My two colour washes are interesting, but not exactly what I expected. The idea was to do a watercolour wash, place saran wrap over top and let the wrinkles in the plastic affect the paint.

Attempt number one was done on Japanese rice paper (purchased on my trip to Japan last year). I did a frottage rubbing first, added the wash and the plastic. The wrinkles don't show up at all:


So I tried again. This time, I did the wash on a page in my journal. It has a heavier weight, and I thought it might work better. The wrinkles actually show up better in the scan than in actuality, but they are still very faint.

So the variables are paper, water amount, paint quality and plastic wrap quality. I've tried it on two different types of paper without much satisfaction. I think it may be the plastic wrap, so that is the next variable to play with.

On other fronts, my black and white quilt for the "My World in Black and White" challenge is taking shape. Sorry, no photos until after the end of September as it is a juried challenge.

I finally came up with an idea for the next person's Exquisite Corpse, and I'm working away industriously at it. Looks very nice, but sorry no photos for that one either. Gee, I'm such a tease.

I still haven't had any brainstorm for the July TIF challenge. Aargh. It is already a week into the month and I'm clueless. Ah well, somewhere during the journal course, maybe inspiration will hit. One can only hope.

Wednesday, July 02, 2008

July TIF

This month Sharon asks: “What is it to be at the half way mark... “Half”, “Way” and “Mark” all lead off into interesting directions that can be represented in all sorts of ways. So that is the challenge for this month.”

An interesting question. Nothing comes to mind. I've just started Sharon's Studio Journal course, I've got the Exquisite Corpse challenge in progress (finally came up with an idea for the next one last night) and I'm hoping to do something for a black and white challenge. I'm almost 1/2 way through the editing in my novel. There is a half. And a way. No mark though.

Another thing that comes to mind is to leave certain projects half finished. I can then return to them when I have more time and quilt or whatever needs doing. Or maybe I can add marks to things that are presently half finished? I have the second shoe quilt I started, but have yet to quilt. That would be adding a mark to something that is presently half way done. Then I could half start another project and I've done it all!

If I work through exercises in the studio journal course and in the Art Quilt Workbook, but only get them to a certain stage, they would qualify. In lesson one, we were to translate an image into marks like we would stitch. This could also be an idea--to take a painting and make marks in my journal, but translate it into fibre when I'm less busy.

So many ideas. So little time!