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

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

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

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