Saturday, March 16, 2024

why fight it...

yes, why fight it... I like the sound of that much better than "surrender to it"

I suppose because I really am a "fighter" in many ways, mostly internal and the idea of surrendering just doesn't sit right - more control in the former I think, more of a choice

anyway...

I fight with myself in order to do the things I want to do but I have learned, to quote Michael J. Fox in the movie "The American President" that you don't fight the fights you can win, you fight the fights that are worth fighting

and in a very strange, twisted way that suits me a to a tee...  I've stopped fighting the disappointment in not getting my drawings right the first time but am sticking to the fight to get them right in the end

it's most definitely a fight worth fighting

today I took that to a new level and drew #2 right beneath #1... no need for a new page - easier to have what I don't want right in front of my face


above - inktense pencil
below -a  tinted charcoal pencil

the tinted charcoal pencils by Derwent are my new firm favourite

the colours are perfect and the way they take water is so delightful

I like the inktense but I just don't have the energy for them right now

sporting a cold, I'm too tired to really dig in to figure them out

just not a fight worth fighting right now

Saturday, March 9, 2024

it never fails...

this week has been a trial and error sort of week

it never fails that the first thing I try is far from the mark but I find I can usually end up with what I'm after if I jut stick with it long enough - the work shown here is most definitely a product of that kind of determination

first it was getting the colours in the photograph the way I wanted them

the day I took this image was a fairly dark day, the sun low on the horizon as it is in the Yukon in winter; unfortunately that made the colours come out much bluer than they actually were - pretty, but not what I had seen, nor wanted to work with

careful editing brought back the soft and silvery greys, the sooty blacks and the yellow gleam of sunlight on water


my first drawing was over-worked, most especially the water


to break free of trying to capture every single detail I did two timed drawings - the upper one was done in 4 minutes, the lower, 2

they may not look much different but in the lower one,  the crack in the ice at the base of the pilings is quieter in line and the colours were literally dashed on the pilings in the final seconds


painting trials were next, with watercolour and ink

three very large sheets of cartridge paper later I had a few crops to work with

it's so interesting to me that when I have a pencil in my hand I labour over every single line yet the minute I pick up a brush I am slapping paint on any which way I can, usually making a big mess of everything - with drawings I have to set aside the first effort aside and try to speed things up whereas with paintings I have to do the exact opposite

what the heck?


below is the third try for the pilings and I really can't quite believe I did it

it astonishes me how quick random marks and rubbings can translate so easily into 100 years of weathering


another section of the large sheet was cropped down and folded into a little book

the front cover below is perfect for that land of ice and snow, mountains and rivers, and again, though I didn't purposefully try to draw Grey Mountain, the image below could probably not be more accurate


one of the pages inside


so pleased with these, both the results and the effort

I just need to remember "draw fast, paint slow"

Saturday, March 2, 2024

wooden sidewalks

one of my earliest memories is of playing on the wooden sidewalk in front our house

it was early summer, and the tree that grew right beside it was fully in leaf but only just

I think why I remember this so well even though I was only three years old is because the scent of the leaves was very strong,  a sap-green smell that filled the air and only seemed to stronger as the sun shone on

sitting underneath it, the branches concealing me, it was a lovely home for me and my dolls, the leaves casting shadows on the soft, smooth boards which had become "beds"... it was a charming little hideaway. and I played there for a long time before my mom came looking for me

several years ago I came upon a number of photos of my dad taken at about the same age, many of them of him on various different wooden sidewalks all around Whitehorse - sometime around 1941-1942 I think

and so an idea started brewing...


this week I made an attempt at achieving something that would look like an old and ragged wooden sidewalk using cloth and earth pigment paint

two versions, one with small boards, the other, a shorter version but on larger scale (width, not length)

below is the top of the smaller version


and then the underneath


the topside of the larger scale


and again the underneath


in both cases I prefer the underneath sides; the boards are well defined and the cloth, though still looking a little gritty is much smoother and more even than the topside

it's usually the other way around but one of the pigments I used doesn't like to mix well with others nor does it like to sink

the fact that you often get to choose between which side you prefer is one of the side benefits of this technique 

the drawback...?

I have to wait four weeks before I can start to take these further

on the other hand, that gives me a lot of time to ponder what "next" might be - as yet, there is no plan whatsoever

this was just a kind of fact-finding mission to see if it would work and now that I know I can do it I need to think about what comes next

in the meanwhile I want to have another go at it but this time on a larger piece of cloth

and so the journey continues, one board at a time

Monday, February 26, 2024

mixing it up


recently I booked my plane tickets for another trip to the Yukon, this time in summer

I'm looking forward to a visit during the warmer months for a change and have been planning a few side trips to places there I haven't visited for a long time and one I've never been to at all

I'm very taken with recording things I see whilst out and about but as I'm often with other people, none of whom are into that kind of thing I need to be able to record what I'm seeing quickly

to aid in that I'm streamlining my outdoor sketching kit and just got a few good pointers through a course I'm taking from Debbie Lyddon through Fibre Arts Take Two

"Sensing Place"

today I worked on mixing the colours I knew I'd be needing using various different coloured pencils


interestingly, the colours for water and sky are completely interchangeable there... when the sky darkens the water turn slate grey but in sunlight it ranges from emerald to sea green and every blue imaginable


today, from memory, I did a rough sketch of Marsh Lake, looking through the poplars, across the sand to a strip of silvery-grey water and the shadowed hills in the distance


all I could think of today was the poplars and the wind - high, rustling their leaves

Saturday, February 17, 2024

colour

colour preferences seem to follow me across the spectrum of whatever I have my fingers in at any given time...

what can I say?

I like what I like

right now it appears what I like is grey and some form of khaki... maybe a hint of black-brown or a light smear of grey-tinged blue 


it's followed me from watercolour to pigment-painting cloth

yesterday I used Roman Black and layered the cloth over dried and pressed leaves and carrot flowers

the resulting prints aren't all clearly defined but it's still an interesting surface





a second cloth was painted with Light Sienna and Indigo

pinch-pleated tall grasses/leaves
(yep, still on that theme!)

it was interesting how the pigments settled on the edges of some of the pleats, especially the left side

I have to wait four weeks before taking an iron to the cloth to allow the colour to cure but you can see the effect peeking out from under a few of the pleats


the reverse, or underside is shown below

the pigments settle through the cloth and the extent to which they do that depends on their individual weight

I find it an interesting consideration though I  haven't taken it too seriously yet


once the wait is over and I can press this I'll decide if I'm keeping it as is, ready to work into with stitch perhaps, or if I should add more paint

it's a slow process with a lot of time for considering and reflection and I quite like that

no rush, no attachment to any outcomes (at least not yet), just a finding a way forward and learning as I go


Sunday, February 11, 2024

playing in the dirt


well, "pigments" I suppose, would be the correct term but nevertheless, I've been getting my hands dirty and having a good time 

results have been mixed but right now it's about learning how, not making great

last week I prepped and then coloured a variety of cloth-types with Cyprus Umber Dark and Cyprus Green with mixed results

mixing the pigments with the soy milk needs to be done well and with care

I missed on the "well" part and so my paint was rather grainy and the resulting cloth was uneven in colour with a fair few splotchy areas so the other day I painted other colours on in different ways

I got some interesting results and learned a lot about the opacity of some of the pigments as well as how they sit on and work their way down into and often through the cloth

here's a selection of some of the more interesting results

(I've had trouble photographing this first one - it looks a bit less grainy in real life as opposed to the photo and the white areas pop a little more but these images are pretty close)


I like it well enough that I'll post-size this one with soy milk to seal it, let it cure for the prescribed 28 days and then add stitch

I don't mind at all that they have to cure for this long as it will give me a lot of time to let the ideas settle


I'm quite intrigued with this one... I had in mind some of the atmospheric paintings by Turner and so I lightly washed the Cyprus Green areas with a light yellow ochre before softening in a pale grey followed by titanium white

the Cyprus Umber Dark on the right hand side got dabbed with the greys but the blotchy areas have come through so I'm going to add a little more to this one in the hopes of sorting some of that out

whether that will fix things or not I think I'm getting somewhere with the soft glowing area



this next one was also both Cyprus Green and  Cyprus Umber Dark and also uneven so I added the yellow ochre along with dark grey, light grey and a bit of white


and finally Dark Red Ochre layered on top of Cyprus Green and then folded a couple of times with the creases well pressed


the strong diagonal lines are intriguing with one area looking quite like a leaf

I'm using random pieces of cotton and linen from my scrap box and most of them are ones I didn't care too much...  makes it easier to be experimental and not get too worked up over making beautiful pieces of painted cloth 

when (and if) I do get the process figured out I'll invest in several metres of a good quality linen and paint with purpose but for now I'm just having fun, getting my hands dirty and trying out some different ideas

it's as good as being three, playing in the mud

Saturday, February 3, 2024

participAction

having some fun in the studio today

several years ago I joined the local spinners & weavers guild

weaving is something I've been keen to do since I was young and I finally got tired of "wanting" to do it so I paid my dues and wove my first towel within a few a months

since then I've woven a couple more towels, two lap-sized blankets, and a small square tablecloth

my mom and I bought a second-hand counterbalance floor loom a few years later but because of Covid and my step-father's dementia along with a few other life events we have only just got around to getting it set up and for the past week we've been working on winding a warp and sleying it through the reed and heddles

although I've done said weaving the only warp I've wound and loaded was for coasters and that was on a small table loom; this latest weaving adventure has been more than a bit of a challenge but thanks to YouTube and a very good book we're getting there

to give my brain a break from that but still keep in the game I started working on a small woven piece to take to the guild meeting this Monday evening for show & tell

many members bring beautiful, inspiring work to share but as it is with most guilds of any kind it's usually the same people that are doing all the inspiring so I decided it was time for a little "participAction" from me

("participAction" was the name given to a Government of Canada initiative during the 1970s to get Canada active and hopefully more fit - I use to get myself involved in things like this)

since I have a hand in a lot of things these days I thought I would weave something small and nature-inspired on a piece of heavy watercolour paper (I think 600gsm?) that I dribbled plant dye on a few years back

a piece of graph paper glued to the back so I could poke the warp holes through neatly got me started


my inspiration comes from an iris leaf I picked a couple of years ago in the fall when it developed a beautiful variegated colour - gold, brown and dark purple

today I gathered yarns in colours drawn from the leaf as well some daylily leaf twine I had made


I'm hoping to incorporate a leaf from a Yukon flower as well as strips of the iris leaf
(it's rather fragile so it may not work)

I'm also thinking of a band of "drawn-thread" work, perhaps herringbone, or a knot stitch through an open area instead

I've only woven on paper twice before but never on heavy watercolour and already I'm smitten

I'm seeing so many design possibilities with using watercolour paper as a base - I can splash colour here and there to enhance the colours of the weaving adding another layer of colour and interest... feels like I'm teetering on the edge of another rabbit hole full of sparkling and shiny bright ideas

might be time to get out the dark glasses again, and just get through this first piece