limitations

working away at things every day is beginning to yield results

doing something always starts with shuffling pieces of fabric or paper around, layering, looking, thinking and then shuffling it all around again but eventually something captures my attention and things start to happen

last week there was a hankering to make a painted background reminiscent of the snowy mountains you see in every direction

torn tissue paper on watercolour paper - no brush for gluing so i used my fingers which resulted in a rougher texture as the edges of the delicate tissue paper rolled and bunched under the pressure

no parchment paper to protect it whilst being weighed down for drying so cling wrap was used instead which, when pulled away a day later, left behind areas with sheen - some kind of transfer occurred but the cling wrap itself is intact so not sure exactly what happened but the effect was beautiful

french ultramarine and burnt sienna watercolour made a nice grey though it did separate a bit as it dried - at first i was disappointed but eventually decided it was actually a nice effect

this has since been cut for a variety of things, one of which has been to use as mounting backgrounds for some of my pressed flowers

the first trial on khadi paper with an image from the book on the yukon river and then a piece of the painted paper with pressed wild flax

and the same idea but on a larger scale

this next one is hard to see and is still in progress... rectangles of text cut from the same book glued to watercolour paper (again with matte medium), a splotchy layer of titan buff watercolour, black pigment-marker lines between the rectangles and then a coat of zinc white acrylic

if you click on it you should see a larger image where the details will show better - this is a slow, make-it-up-as-you-go process so it will be mid-week before it's done (guessing!)

as soon as I started on this the thought of making one using long strips taken from the river maps in the book would be a nod to the riverboats that were the mainstay of travel in the yukon and would be an interesting background to work with so a sample size trial of that has already begun

then came a quick mark-making session spurred by the sight of little birds flitting about the other day

not a great image for it was very cold and blowing snow - this small tree (4 feet high) was filled with about 20 of these little birds that would all fly out and then back, over and over again

and finally, continuing with the quick sketches - this one using the same wild flax from last summer

when the drawing was finished I had a hankering to glue the flower itself on the page so I did although the thought didn't occur to me until I had already removed the small clump of buds on the left side of the drawing (they were used in one the pieces shown above)

so a busy week

it's been interesting working with limited supplies, the having to make do, but i'm beginning to think the real benefit is coming from the limitation of time... there's no settling down to try an idea as it occurs, nor to work on things to any extent in one sitting which leaves a lot of time to consider what it is i'm thinking and doing, what might come next, how it might all fit together

time to let the ideas really settle and develop rather than just rushing along because i can