in and out of comfort

it's been a quiet week creatively

I'm working on a gift for our Grandson, who is going to be three in a couple of weeks... the years fly and as my daughter likes to say "time is a thief"...

I haven't done anything new in the sketchbook challenge other than a little preparing and thinking for the next prompt which is:

"Sketchbook as Sidekick"

meaning using your book to develop ideas etc. and in order to do that page/prompt, I have to actually develop an idea and that takes time

I may move on to the next prompt though and work on the "Sidekick" one over time

whilst I mull that over,  here's what I missed posting last weekend

Day 4 - a prompt for repetition

I rarely use squares in my work and that's the first thing that popped into my head when I read the prompt

tissue paper wrapped around some Christmas presents was my inspiration so I used some of it along with woad-painted paper cut into a square, watercolour squares painted directly on the page, inked squares, stamped ones and a gold foil one for sparkle

I liked doing this, like the end result, but am not at all inspired by it - still glad I did it though

the prompt previous to that (Day 3)  was to be a rebel and break a design rule

I had no idea at all what to do so while I waited for some inspiration to strike I used a palette knife to smear white gesso thickly on the page creating ridges here and there

I had a stack of random pretty-coloured papers to the side and the recent purchase of gold leaf adhesive (I bought the gold leaf long ago but had never done anything with it)

I was thinking the ridges were kind of like plant stems and from there it was a hop, skip and a jump to torn paper flowers with gold leaf stems, the ridges deciding where everything would be

(hopefully the ridges would create a not-following-the-rules design)

when I finished with the leafing and flowering I felt like it was pretty ho-hum but had no idea what else I could do... a few dots with a permanent pen on the upper left gave the sense of a leaf without doing the whole thing - I liked the result so added more dots in a couple of other places

I had a very strong urge to add them on the lower left, where you see the short almost dark-like strokes of gold leaf

I thought dots in between those would help balance the whole thing but then thought I shouldn't add them as that might help me be a rule-breaker

  I may eventually add them anyway, prompt be damned... still the rebel, but in ways of my own choosing!

then came Day 9

"Changes and Limitations"

I had some scraps of paper and one bit of linen, all creamy off-white lurking on my work-table so I thought I would limit myself to them 

I stuck them down with matte medium, thought the linen too plain so put some fragile lace-like paper on top and when I went to reposition it it started disintegrating and rolling, creating a fabulous texture you can see in the far left of the image below

it was too easy though, too "me", so I continued on... found a scrap of heavily textured brown paper and stuck it to the lower area of the page, again with matte medium

my intention was to put white acrylic ink on it and blotch it around, creating an interesting lower half but the ink reacted with the paper and started turning an odd greyish colour (I actually found a version of grey I do not like!)

anyway, it was awful so I decided to pull the paper off, hoping it hadn't stuck yet

it had, and when I tried to take it off it made a big mess but after a minute I decided I like the mess very much so that's where it sits today

I wanted to add some stitching to it, long straight stitches using sewing thread but I needed to give that a think for a day or two

and then I discovered the "Sketchbook as Sidekick" prompt  and decided I would develop ideas from here for that page

I made these three small versions of the upper half but on linen rather than paper

today I made five much bigger ones so starting tomorrow I'll begin my stitch experiments and see where this takes me

it made remember this piece I did a couple of years ago... handmade papers joined together with tiny straight stitches, all done by hand

this is NOT what I want to do

I love it, but I want to go somewhere else 

not sure where but I've lots of samples and a sketchbook page to help me figure it out