On the Edge

It feels like I've been skirting around on the edge of a few things lately

new things, hesitating to jump in

thinking I need to get it all figured out before I begin

this week I gave up and dove in

I'd been painting paper and stitching on cloth but what I really wanted was to paint the cloth

I've painted cloth before though I've found it difficult to control the seepage

lately I learned that capillary action works well on dry cloth, and poorly on wet

any time I had tried it I had wet the cloth to varying degrees first

big mistake

I mixed black and Payne's grey ink, rolled up a piece of dry linen I had started ice stitching trials and set it in the ink, cut edge down

watching the ink seep up the cloth, I could see right away it was going to give me the organic edge to the ice I was hoping for

and the partial line of stitching shows me how effective that will be for the overall piece

the image below is a more accurate representation of the colour - the light these days is wreaking havoc on the colours for the camera

the success of this trial led me to want more

thinking that I'd like to make a Gather Bag of sorts, I cut a long rectangle of white linen

I marked off about 4" from each end and in those spaces I did a shibori-style series of gathers and tucks

next I lightly brushed white gesso across the centre 5" or so of the rectangle and when that dried I painted soft swooshing lines in an very pale grey watercolour

the cloth was then folded across the width, lightly rolled, and the cut ends dipped into the same ink solution as before

this time it took the better part of an hour for the ink to make it's way up the cloth

when the cloth was dried I removed the shibori stitches and gave it a good press with a hot iron

some lovely marks on each end, and again, that beautiful organic edge of the ice

next is to mark off the ice wind-rows and stitch them, adding texture to the in-between here and there

and think about how to add some stitch detail to the water area

the other thing I was on the edge of was moving my blog to a new platform

Blogger is giving me a bit of trouble now; my laptop is an older one and the formatting sometimes has a mind of it's own

as I've had a few people ask about an email delivery option I did some research and finally settled on Substack

I've spent the last two weeks familiarizing myself with the platform, getting myself set up, and doing a few introductory posts about what inspires me and my process

it is not, nor ever will be, a paid subscription

nor a "Buy me a coffee" option

subscribing only means that my weekly posts would be delivered to your email Inbox

if you don't wish to subscribe you can bookmark the URL and visit as you would any web page

I've called it "Thinking With My Hands" because so often that's what making art feels like for me

and for those who want nothing to do with Substack I'll still post here, for as long as I can, every Saturday

which will be the same for the Substack posts, Saturday night around 10:00pm 

if you are interested in checking it out the link is below

https://jillaynewickware.substack.com/

Enjoy!