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