expanding

I've held a rather narrow view of the river in my work these past few years

 the current and pilings have been both the fascination and the focus and whilst I've loved every minute of it this week I took a side-step

the Klondike riverboat is an iconic fixture of the Whitehorse waterfront but my earliest memory of it is of the day they hooked it up to 4 Caterpillar tractors, spread 8 tonnes of "Palmolive Princess Snow Flake Soap"  on the street and proceeded to drag the boat through Whitehorse to a new location

half the town hoped it would rain and half the town hoped it wouldn't

(it didn't!)

this week I decided I needed to do something different

so to the Klondike I looked

a few quick drawings, just to find out what interested me

I find drawing the best way to figure that out, better than thinking or looking at photographs

I like drawing well enough but would not call myself an enthusiast so if I'm willing to draw something then there's a high degree of probability I'm interested in it

isolating the stacks, wires, cargo doors and chain-link style railings gave me a few ideas but for the "dipping my toe in" beginning, I chose to work with the stacks and wires in the making of two collages

in the one above I added a few shipboards

below is just the stacks and wires

the paper I used for the stacks is one I folded in a diamond grid after painting - the soft paper breaking along the creases, enhancing the look of them

a nod to the fence-rails encircling the upper decks

the ship boards were cut from a print of a photo I took of piece of linen I gathered and stitched shibori-style, painted with watercolour paint and let dry

i edited the photo massively, bleaching out a lot of the colour and then printed it on fine art paper to use in collage

actually, all of the papers I used were ones I painted or cut from printed photographs of papers or cloth I had painted

I like doing that, painting papers, photographing them, playing with the various editing functions on my laptop and then printing them to use as collage papers

doing that preserves the original painted paper and allows me to make multiple variations of it by varying the edits and then use them over and over again in my work

I suppose in a way these collages are as much a reference and exploration of those papers as they are the imagery of the boat itself

which is all very well and good except... now that I've started to really look at it... there's much to see

and more to inspire

barrels

stairs

frosted windows

wonderfully peeling paint

hmm...

two years ago I had a play with superimposing an image of the paddlewheel on a photo of the river on a foggy morning in August

kind of fitting to share this one again, since my own wheels are turning

take care,

Jillayne

wonderment

swift water flowing, day after day, year after year

never-ending

surface patterns continuously forming and re-forming

design in motion

the fascination continues, and now, finally,  the work begins

the first stitched sample, complete

a scrap of dark blue linen from a charity shop find

the base stitches were laid in by hand but with sewing-machine thread

the fineness of it meant many stitches melted in to the weave of the cloth so there was a lot of over-stitching

still, it was effective, albeit slow

metallic blending filament in steel blue laid over top

the small light stitches above are the glint of the metallic thread shining... if you zoom in you may see it better

a long-standing itch is finally being scratched...

over the past few years I've photographed the Yukon River in every season and every light

the current patterns never ceased, nor did my sense of wonder at the ever-changing beauty of it

it's only in the last few years I began to draw them

and now, finally, to work them in stitch

this small sample was a test piece

wanting to know how long laying in the base design with the sewing thread would take

(it takes a very long time)

and how frustrating the fine metallic thread would be 

(it was beyond annoying)

and ultimately, how pleased I would be with the results

(over the moon!)

when I first started this piece I realized my dream of a large piece of cloth a-swirl with these marks would take years to do... mulling it over as I worked on it I thought of using free-machine embroidery to make the base design of current marks

I did that this summer, three versions, now ready to add detail stitching to enhance the current lines

before tackling one of them, I first wanted to test the metallic thread - last week I finally did it

there's more I'd like to do though, than just adding the metallic but I'm keen to begin so am jumping in - no more sampling, just going for it

a selection of threads is laid out

and I'm feeling good, ready to begin

stay tuned...

this is not always like that

or...

"all inks are not created equal"

with a footnote:

*and that matters, especially when you're taking the time to test things before taking them to the actual work

thankfully the "work" in this case is in my sketchbook 

the long and short of it is I did a collage in my sketchbook that was to have a wide band of calligraphy running vertically across the page

curly cursive text in black with white on top

a wide band, growing denser in the centre, then visually lifted with very loose white calligraphy in the centre area

I found a failed print made the same day as the one that was used in the collage 

first I tested scribbled writing with the white posca pen

good

then a scribble of black using a Calligraphie black marker

also good

then in succession I tried a number of other different black writing tools

good, good and good

as a final test, white posca pen on top of all the different blacks

good again!

testing over I moved on to the collage

and began with my Lamy fountain pen

writing with it is smooth and effortless and I easily did the five initials rows, then began laying in the next ones in the centre area, moving closer and closer to the centre with each subsequent layer

the outer edges were nice and loose with some gentle curves and swirls

I waited for 7 - 8 minutes,  picked up the Posca pen and began

 expecting a line of flowing letters running through the centre space I was surprised to see nothing on the page other than the odd blue smudge here and there

hmmm...

I hadn't waited for anything to dry on the text piece but maybe a few more minutes would do the trick

and so I waited for almost two hours and tried again

garbled blueish writing

it hit me then it was not the fault of the white pen...

I realized in all the pen trials I had done, not once did I pick up the Lamy

and that pen does not have permanent ink in it

all the others I tested did

sigh

normally I would keep fiddling with this, looking at ways of redeeming it, gluing something else over top, trying this, that and the next thing to make something successful

this time, I'm leaving it as it is, knowing that's the best hope of me remembering to make notes when doing tests, keeping track of what I use and what I don't

it appears testing and sampling are two different things!

lesson learned

take care,

Jillayne