one thing leads to another

three weeks on I have finally finished my sideways branch sample

never part of my plan but the suggestion was a good one and the idea took hold

I'm so glad it did 

the ragged jagged nature of these branches pleases me greatly; stitched in a different colour they could be seen as cracks in ice

I'm drawn to anything with that kind of ambiguity... a thing that could be this or that or with a nudge go off in a completely different direction

another suggestion was to stitch curving lines in silver behind the branches to represent ripples on the surface of the river

I took a piece of silver thread and dropped it on top of the branches, intending to play around with it to see what I might do - instead, I immediately say a way of stitching the swirling current on the river's surface

and as I turned the paper to get a better look at that I noticed how effective the stitched branches were in a vertical orientation

this and that, around and about

the stuff of creativity that spins me round and round

one thing leading to another 

all of it tying together

the current of creativity flowing merrily along

where is it taking you?

on a whim

some might think my fascination with the pilings along the Yukon River borders slightly on obsession

I suppose some might be right but...

 i won't be done with them until I am

and I'm not done yet

the image below, from December of '24 is my most favourite

spaced out, room to breathe

varying heights

beautiful texture and contrast... rough wood

light and dark grey

I could go on and on

late one night, reading a book about art and how inspiration can come at us, I saw a painting of the pilings...

floating in the distance of my thoughts I could see it clearly, as if it was hanging on the wall in the room

low drifts of yellow-tinged white, pale smudgy shadows here and there

the pilings, lightly textured, blocky... varying degrees of transparency, overlapping here and there

straight edges

the river, a slash of shining steel

the next morning on my worktable...

 a jar of mixed ink left over from the dip-dyeing escapade and a scrap of acrylic paper

some charcoal blocks nearby... on a whim, I picked up a brush

a bit of white on the bottom, a swish of pale blue near the top

holding my breath the whole time, not wanting to over-do 

the pilings were a different matter - with each flat spare stroke of the brush the urge to make them more realistic kept pushing through

I switched to charcoal, a tougher medium for me and did some with that - too dark, smudged them back, now too blurry - dratted soft edges!

back to the ink, then a dry brush

wipe it all off, try again

darker than I wanted and too many rough tops but the lack of detail made me smile

I left it for a few days 

the other day I decided to try practicing that slash of colour I was wanting for the river

I found a small stack of discarded paintings and drawings, flipped them over, grabbed a few different brushes and started 

bad, terrible, worse, wrong! yuck, sigh

on it went - different brushes made no difference... all I got were sold rectangles of grey-blue

found rougher paper, thickened the ink, dried my brush

tried again

better

yet thicker ink, an even drier brush and this time I used a low-quality rough, round brush, laid it flat on it's side and drew it quickly across the paper

got it!

a rough-textured uneven mark

before I could forget how I did it I grabbed the painting I had begun and did it again

straight across the whole of it, pilings and all

boom!

just as I had envisioned

well, not quite exactly... as I said, the pilings aren't quite as I had wanted - but now I've done this I can get them less representational, I just have to resist the urge to add detail

I need to keep Anita Lehmann's admonishment in mind - "only three more moves", when the main part of the work is done 

just three

as if the scruffy tops of the pilings wasn't enough I had to go and add the dark cracking snow shelf from the photo below

thinking somehow they needed it to anchor them 

I never thought to take a before and I can't say it looked better then than now but I wish I hadn't rushed to make it a picture

it wasn't meant to be a resolved work - just an example, another way of rendering them, one for the sketchbook

which it is, but one with a caveat

"stop before you think you're done"!

take care,

Jillayne

resisting resistance

twice in my artistic journey I've been overwhelmingly captivated by something I've seen whilst out in nature

something that inspires me so greatly it grabs hold of my creative thinking and refuses to let go

the first, a frigid early spring morning, a few days after a wind storm blew through our town

branches yanked from nearby trees lay strewn over the lakeshore, many frozen in place, caught in the shore ice that melted and re-formed daily as part spring's fickle rhythm

the second time was a phenomenon also caused by wind - the icy windrows that formed on the surface of the shore ice of the Yukon River during an extremely windy snowstorm 

over the years I have worked with both of these events though the windrows along the Yukon River continue to hold my attention two years later

in part because there is so much I want to explore and so many mediums I'd like to do that in

and then there's the growing pile of already begun explorations that need finishing

this week I finally faced the one I began with... it has sat for almost two years now, an overwhelming fear of messing it up holding me back

I was so pleased with the effect of the addition of tiny textural stitches scattered here and there near the main lines that ran from one side of the cloth to the other and though it was going well and with each area completed my delight grew and grew I was still sure eventually I would do something irrevocable that ruin the work entirely

and so it sat

this week I finally got fed up with the silliness of it all, picked it up and finished the rest of the textured stitching over the course of the next two evenings

I want to finish it as a pouch, but as this was meant to be a sample for my sketchbook the fabric is rather small

a strip of ink dipped linen, also from two years ago has been attached to the lower edge and solved the size issue nicely... I have just a few last stitches to add along the edge and I'll be able to bring this to completion

finally

interestingly, the more I turned over the work to secure the thread the more I came to like the stitching on the reverse... it was a constant effort whilst doing the stitching of the ice lines to keep a random, irregular look to them which I never really did achieve

but on the wrong side it looks exactly like what I had wanted

there are one or two more iterations of this in my future, and with at least the first one I'll be working the stitching from back to front 

and both will be made a good deal bigger

now that I'm pushing myself through my ever-present fear of messing things up perhaps I can make some headway in breaking my habit of always working too small

Take care,

Jillayne

serenDIPity

working in the studio for the sheer enjoyment of it often produces intriguing things

after months of purpose-driven work there has been an urge to mix it up a bit - this week a journey back to dipping dampened cloth into ink and watching the magic happen

hand-spun hand-woven linen in the neighbourhood of 115 years old

a mixture of Payne's grey and carbon black ink, diluted 

and a wide mouth canning jar

unrolling the linen later that day was a bit shocking... it had taken the ink in such an amazing way, the coarseness of the thread and the weave directing it to create spiky dark trees along the length of it

Yukon trees

immediately an old family photo came to mind, of my great-uncle's cabin on a lake not far from Whitehorse

water, a banked shoreline and again those spiky northern trees

 this one, taken by a friend a few years ago... the Yukon River on a misty August morning, just at the moment she heard my plane bringing me back to Salmon Arm taking off

art and life... 

wandering in and out of the studio throughout the day, looking, thinking -  pondering this stitch or that thread, a strong desire to add some small places of definition

just enough to enhance, to nudge the imagery here and there

nothing concrete yet but... 

it was a good day

a loose end

a tidy up of my studio bookshelves the other day reminded me I hadn't posted the completed book for the course I was working on last fall

"Speak to Me From Everywhere"

it was a slow, thoughtful approach to creative expression through letterforms accompanied by thought-provoking poetry readings, all having some connection to creativity

we worked on a large sheet of suitable paper

(mine was BFK Rives, 22" x 30" or thereabouts)

at the end the sheet was torn to create pages which were then ordered as you chose and bound into a book

I chose to keep my pages larger as I was quite taken with how the various sections got broken down and created interesting looking combinations so I skipped the last tear resulting in a larger page size and thinner format

the pages were combined into three signatures and those were bound together at the spine with a woven stitch

this technique was new to me but I am quite taken with it

the binding is neat and sturdy and can be worked in any size section and colour you want so lots of scope for variations

I didn't fuss too much with the page layouts, simply trying for a balance between busy and plainer pages 

for reasons I don't really know, the page below is my favourite of all... perhaps the balance to it, the quietness of the combined sections - interesting yet not chaotic

the nicest thing about it is that it isn't a "display" book

as the large sheet was only worked on one side half the pages are plain and those are scattered throughout making it a book still in the making

I haven't yet decided if I want to do other calligraphy/text samples in it or, to use the blank pages for something else allowing this work to stand together and maintain it's "oneness"

I'm leaning toward the latter and it just occurred to me that as the course featured poetry this might be a place to write down poems of my own

 or possibly my thoughts on creativity 

or, or...

seems there is no end to the decisions that need to be made around here!

take care,

Jillayne

upending the plan

creative time has been pretty limited of late and I can go along with that for only so long before I stage a revolt

mid-week I hit the tipping point 

I can remember the exact moment it happened - an artist I follow on Instagram posted a beautiful concertina book of various monotypes and drawings, all in black and white

I do love that kind of work and though I did spend some time early in the New Year working with charcoal I haven't done near enough of the black and white drawings I've been wanting to do

so, a bit of foot stamping led to a change of plans for Friday afternoon and I spent a couple of hours getting into my jar of black ink with a roller and a q-tip or two

and did a mono print of my own

a non-existent view of clay cliffs along the Yukon River 

I didn't refer to any photos at all, just mucked along reacquainting myself with the ink and all the various ways I could think of removing it from the printing plate

pulling it off, trying to add it back when I got a bit carried away...  the trees along the top were tricky but I enjoyed the challenge  

the image below (courtesy of the Yukon News) shows the cliffs south of the city centre a few years ago when there a slide in the spring

and here they are cloaked in snow two years later

I noticed after the fact I had wiped a bit too much ink away from the face of the cliffs, taking away all the texture

I'm thinking of drawing into this, adding back some of the marks I wiped away - lots of time to consider that as the ink gets absorbed into the paper

this end of the print still retains some and is more like what I'll be striving for next time around

a good start then, and as my dander is still up, today I cut a small selection of print-making papers in between working in the yard and getting groceries 

the printing press is still out, the ink and tools are ready and I'll be back in there soon enough

have a good week,

Jillayne

decisions...

where I get bogged down is almost always in the details...

it happens every time - the work goes speedily along, ideas come thick and fast, and everything seems effortless

eventually I get to the end zone, the place where the last bits need to fall into place and I can call a thing "done"

and then the inertia of not being able to make a decision washes over me and the paper shuffling begins

this week I have been working on a small collection of things for a friend's April birthday

I'm working with a theme of the Yukon River (she's also from the Yukon)

everything is nicely finished and ready to be packed up and sent off... except for the card

the collage for the card front is finished, except for the writing

(you can see it below)

 the writing, a loose, calligraphic, yet-to-be-determined style, is of course, yet to be done

the plan is for it to extend from the upper centre to the far right, across the pale blue trees and through the boards of the Klondike riverboat

I've drawn out a grid on a tracing paper for trying all manner of styles - trouble is, I haven't yet settled on what I want to write

I'm thinking I want  a short, simple phrase, perhaps just a couple of words...

and I want it to be bold, dark and expressive

splatters would be good

I like the spikiness of the writing below though for the card it would need to have a heavier appearance

 the curvy tangle of this next one has it's own charm - perhaps it's a bit too tangled but that can be played with

stretched out

so, a page full of practice lays ahead of me, perhaps two or three

first though I need to choose the words

and that's the first sticking point

I could write out a few ideas on separate slips of paper, put them in a bowl and just draw one out and go with it

or I could write out different words relating to the river, divide them into a couple of bowls, pull one from each, put them together and do that

or...

decisions, decisions

take care,

jillayne

getting messy

during the great photograph purge I wrote of in my last blog post I realized there were a few that I'd been meaning to print s0 I could work with them in collage etc. 

 this week I decided to get that done

most of the prints I wanted were of the river, along with a few of the boards and windows of the Klondike paddlewheeler

as I printed them I realized they all worked rather well together... similar in colour but a good variety of textures and styles so I gathered a few others I had printed a while back: driftwood, more of the water and of the boat

I had collage on my mind but not only with photographs - I had a quick look at my handmade papers but none worked and so I decided it was time to do some gelli-printing

after a day of choosing and prepping a variety of papers and getting things all set up I began yesterday morning

it's been many years since I've worked with gelli-printing and the first day's work was pretty ho-hum but today I tried again with better results

(I have come to accept that in almost everything I do the first is the worst and once that's out of the way things generally improve fairly quickly)

for inspiration I looked at a piece I had painted with ink a while back... it has the right blue-grey with lots of highlights

sparkling water

better... yesterday's renditions were quite black, today I worked hard at getting the blue-black of the winter river; the discard pile was still rather high but each print got a little better than the last, a little closer to what I've been after

and so, a nice collection of prints and photos to work with 

tomorrow is the fun part

cutting and tearing

and glue!

it's one mess after another here these days but each is better than the last

happy days...

take care,

Jillayne

continuing...

about ten days or so ago, as part of a somewhat misguided desire to simplify both my creative inspiration and to a degree, the space that took up, I sorted through a good-sized pile of photographs, both on my laptop and in print

(I say misguided because when I was sick I felt a bit overwhelmed by all I the things I was interested in as well as the work I wanted to do but once I started feeling better I decided it really wasn't all that much after all... not really... well, maybe just a bit)

and so it was delete, delete, delete and pitch, pitch pitch - into the wastebasket things went

mistake, mistake, mistake

 a couple of days I was having misgivings and thought I really did want to work with some of the photos and that at even if I didn't, there was at least potential for marks and thus mark-making ideas 

the deleted ones on the laptop were gone but the ones in the wastebasket were still there so I fished them out, had another sort through and found a few gems

some taken of the river the winter before last had me thinking... I had been drawn to that dark oily sheen of the water's surface and the reflections of the trees, pretty much overlooking the whirls and swirls of the current on the surface

I had edited some to isolate the reflections, completely ignoring how interesting the current lines were, especially the circles

as I looked closer at the image I remembered how much I love to watch the river flow by, the way water swirls and the circles that form and un-form, over and over again

lots of potential there...

exploring that with a empty tube from a roll of cling-wrap and black ink

I have also continued with some bare trees design explorations

- drawing the trees in the conventional way, the trees upright in the top sample but this time overstitched with delicate silver trees

the lower version was done by alternating their direction top to bottom - that definitely yields a more chaotic appearance

the silver trees are hard to see here but more noticeable in reality

I still have two more tree explorations prepped and ready to stitch and then I'm thinking of dipping back in to current marks before moving on to the guardrails... the ideas are flowing and the samples are stacking up but...

embossing the trees on paper with added drawings just occurred to me

and an idea for water marks behind the trees 

another one using couching

and then there's still the horizontal trees version to do

and, and, and...

take care,

Jillayne

building complexity layer by layer

unpacked, tidied up, organized, full of inspiration and sick as can be

nine days on, one of the symptoms of this cold/flu is a pretty good bout of brain fog which hasn't actually been a bad thing... think of it as forced slowing down of my creative impulses that has allowed for a bit of a breakthrough in a subject that has long stymied me

mark-making

though true to the definition of what brain fog is it came about in a rather meandering way

follow me if you will...

it began with a desire to explore text written to replicate the weathered marks on driftwood

which led me to looking at a series of small collages on driftwood I made several years ago

and though I was initially looking at these with a thought to the marks on the wood I became enamoured all over again with the layers

which immediately led to a desire to make larger collages inspired by driftwood

which reminded me of collage-type work I had in mind for the pilings along the river

which led to thinking yet again about how water weathers wood

wind and water

which led to  a desire to explore water, wind and wood

but when I got the bag of driftwood out to select a few pieces to work with I realized my thoughts had strayed from interpreting the marks on it with text

you might be wondering how all this could be attributed to brain fog... well, that bit of thinking took about four days, and was about as in-depth as what I've written - nothing specific, just a vague desire to explore water, wind and wood in one book, studies that look at them separately as well as where they intersect

whilst excited about the prospects of those explorations I searched for a blank sketchbook and came upon one where I had intended to explore mark-making

 mark-making has always felt like somewhat of a vague and mysterious subject to me - almost every artist I knew of did it but I could never really quite figure out how they approached it, how to get started, what kind of explorations to try and what to do with whatever it was I came up with but I knew it was a way to add complexity to my work and this was the book where I had intended to try and figure it out 

 I had glued down a photo of the river in winter and drawn some bare trees beneath it based on what I saw in the photo which I intended on also working in stitch but I realized pretty quickly I was completely missing the point and so it got set aside

through the fog it dawned on me to take the idea of the trees, the bare limbs, and work with them in a more abstract way that didn't immediately read trees and branches so I turned the page and tried something a bit different

better, barely

since the image below was taken I have done two more drawings, each trying to push the marks further 

 

in my usual fashion it will take a few iterations to get there but turning the page upside down for part of the drawing process is helping with that

and since they're pretty basic I'm stitching each one though I am considering adding other elements, one inspired by the dead leaves still attached to some branches

so a few things to explore with the branches and then I'll be ready to tackle the guardrail  shown in the other photo on that page

so I was pretty excited to finally feel like I had found a way forward with the mark-making thing but then 

what of the water, wood, and wind explorations?

that idea had also taken a firm hold and the studio floor was littered with wood, scraps of cloth, and paper

which is all very exciting and wonderfully inspiring

but does not yet address interpreting the marks on driftwood in text

which is where this saga began

sigh...

like I said, brain fog

take care,

Jillayne

the days of cold

 

home again, where the grass is greening and the days are rather mild 

I look at the weather for the north and the bitter cold has only now begun to ease... if you can call -23 an easing

the shock of the change never ceases 

when unpacking my art supplies today I spent some time looking at the last few works I did there...

on the Friday before my departure I met up with a friend to make paper - we used cotton linters and I had gathered some more pine needles as I wanted to do a free-pour with the pulp and emboss it with fresh pine needles

before I went to her house I made cranberry scones to have with our tea and as I was packing up my supplies to head to her house I noticed I hadn't washed up the plate I put the frozen cranberries on to thaw... a nice-sized puddle of juice had pooled near the rim so I grabbed a nearby tiny pinecone and a piece of cotton paper made in our previous session and quickly did a text block using the acorn and cranberry juice

one of the final prompts for my sketchbook work was "something to let go of"

on that particular day it was -36 with a fierce wind and I was feeling disappointed at how few walks I had been able to take... I didn't want to leave feeling that way so "letting go" of that seemed a good idea

worked in layers, first with a graphite pencil and small text, rubbing that back, then again, and again... that was followed by somewhat larger text, this time with a charcoal pencil layered over top and more rubbing back

the final few layers were with an ever-increasing size using a 1.0 felt-tipped Calligraphie pen with a chisel nib

I love the tangle of it, perfectly expressing the mixed emotions of the moment

on my last full day, a final walk by the river and noticed this jumble of ice the wind and current had formed

fractured and layered, the bright blue-green deeply colouring the ice shards

zooming in over and over, this was my favourite 

my finishing prompt was "inspired by a walk in nature"

a different calligraphy pen this time, one that runs beautifully with a light brush of water

at first I found the purple a bit alarming but after a minute it began to grow on me

it was a good four weeks, plenty of time for reflection and thinking about what's next, learning more about what matters and what doesn't

feeling ready to dive in

take care,

Jillayne

river inspiration

the bitter cold and wind have eased, the warmth of the sun returning

not for long, but a nice reprieve all the same

this image of river ice was taken on a particularly cold day in February - I love to look at the flowing river and the way the ice forms and changes over time... I had to zoom in quite a bit for this one but was delighted to discover the markings of the layered ice when I saw the image on my laptop

my first urge was to try and interpret those marks with some of the work I've been doing lately with text

before getting in to that though I sought to familiarize myself the look of the ice and water overall

I realized fairly quickly that I was way off the mark with my first attempt... it never fails to amaze me, the difference between what there is and what I think I'm seeing when I first start a drawing of any kind

rather than try and fix it which for me, always results in over-working things, I switched to a clean page and began again

much, much better

today I walked the river again, a different section this time, and was surprised to see it was almost completely frozen over, just a small patch of icy water in view

zooming again, along with some cropping and I have a couple of images that look promising

I especially like the first one, with those dark trees at the top - they look pretty perfect for some experimental work with text, the ice and water could be worked in textiles or charcoal

I’m heading home the day after tomorrow and now have three good images to inspire my work until the next visit north… 

since this trip has been one of limited time outside because of the cold and limited materials due to space it seems perfect to take home with me some inspiration with limits of it’s own

figuring out how to do what I want with only a few things to hand is a new way of working for me though one I have come to enjoy 

but the thought of having the full range of my art supplies available does make me pretty happy!

take care,

Jillayne