what to do?

what to do indeed...

January is "my" month, the one month of the year where, at least at the beginning, I let myself do whatever I feel like

after the busyness of the fall and especially December, it feels like a just reward

this year I decided I needed to get busy using some of the inks, paints and hand-dyed thread and fabric I have made so I signed up for a 30 Sketchbook Challenge and got myself ready...

my worktable has been set up as a paint table with everything I need to hand - keeping it simple and having what I need handy is one way to help me stay on track

I began yesterday and the prompt was 

"Back to Black"

Back to black?

I never use black... dark, dark brown is my choice in that arena but black it was...

I began with a layer of Golden's Fibre Paste and then used a fan brush to paint using the woad watercolour paints I made last summer

after that I "smooshed" on some of the permanent carbon black I had also made - wasn't sure about that so added bright white gesso on top

whilst I worked in my sketchbook, I also did the same things on a small piece of khadi paper - the plan is to work into that with stitch, taking the idea further

below you can see the sketchbook page, small piece for stitching, accompanying threads I dyed last summer and, at the upper right, the scrap paper where I tested out the smooshed black ink technique

I was very happy with this start - even though I had to use black, it all felt quite comfortable 

these are my colours after all

smugly pleased I peeked at today's prompt before going to bed last night...

"Permission to Be Free"

ick

"free" for me would be to hardly do anything at all to the page... minimally minimal is my mantra almost all of the time, to the point of being afraid of being too plain

somehow I didn't think that was what "Permission to Be Free" was really all about - to me it read more of a "Be Bold Not Afraid" kind of thing

ick and yuck

anyway, the whole idea of this is just to get at it, do something, start, see where it takes you

I ended up here

the page was primed with bright white gesso as was a piece of linen (for the stitching later) and then I got out more of my inks:

indigo

green, made with weld and indigo

bourbon-brown walnut

I started with the green, then added the brown

I wish I could say it all went swimmingly well but it really didn't, at least not at first.

Initially I was thinking about trees so my tool was a small piece of driftwood from Marsh Lake in the Yukon, but then cattails crept into my head so I went with that. After filling the page with marks made using the two inks I thought it was flat and boring so I reasoned if cattails were what was inspiring me then there should be blue

using a tiny paintbrush I carefully painted indigo ink here, there and everywhere, sometimes over green, mostly just in the white space, the brush skipping over the page like a fly on water

it kind of looks like a mess but it kind of doesn't

there are most certainly parts I like very much

as on Day 1, I made another piece to stitch into, on linen this time, still with the driftwood as my painting tool, and then to use up the remaining ink I had poured onto the palette, I laid a piece of rough watercolour paper on it to soak it all up and then worked into both of these with the indigo ink 

the threads and ribbon in the photo below are ones I dyed quite a few years ago, the ribbon in 2015

a perfect match

only two days in and I am already feeling a slight shift in my thinking - still fearful of failing, but beginning to feel ok with it