simple things

it's been a week of simple things

sometimes i get caught up in making work full of detail and intricacies, as if that somehow will make things even better, yet more interesting

i am coming to understand that is not always true, in fact - it is almost always exactly the other way around

lately i've been trying to find a way to paint ice but the results usually look more than a little contrived - the other day i got out my gelli plate, rolled a frosty looking array of white, black and blue acrylic paint and ink and dabbed at it with crumpled tin foil

a sheet of whitish vellum placed on top and a quick rub with a bamboo baren and there it was

ice, in all it's cracked and frosty glory

in the same vein, i've been hankering to stitch some wild queen anne's lace flowers

when i was in the yukon this summer i pressed and photographed them to my heart's content... on close examination they are comprised of dozens of tiny florets with small ruffled-looking centres surrounded by heart-shaped petals

impossible to stitch really

instead i made mine with french knots, first stitching tiny random straight stitches in a green-gold colour  over the area where the flower head would be

for some of the knots i mixed a gold thread with the off-white

the combination of the three led to a flower that may not look exactly like the real one but it's a step closer than if i had stitched white french knots only and a whole lot easier than trying to do a realistic rendition

and still on the mountain front... another of my rapid, scraping the paint around the page in a seemingly random way i came up with this

best yet i think

someday, just for fun, i'll try copying this with a brush and see how well i do

working quickly, finding a simpler and direct way of telling the story is finding me in a place of joy and discovery

i think i need to start a "favourites" book and place some of these things in it, mounted on a page nicely... something i can look through when making gets hard again 

and i can remember what can be done in the simplest ways