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