Notes To Self.

1. Don't try to work when you're overtired; it's going to end in tears.

2. You can never have enough clear workspace when you're printing.

3. Sometimes good things come out of bad stuff.


So... printing....  Seemed like a good idea.  Was narked about an online conversation I'd been having (should know better, really), and thought, I'll go play a bit.  I ignored the fact that I'd already brushed and washed the kitchen floor, which had taken most of my energy.  Yes, I'm an idiot.  Yes, I should have asked Robin to do it.  Yes, it looks better.  Just every so often I like to prove I can still do this stuff.

Had already looked out the stuff I wanted to use, so... and that was my first mistake.  Really, there wasn't enough room on that table top... but being me, I Just Got On With It. 

Mixed up the ink, new to me, printing ink for fabric... got sort of the colour I wanted, eventually, but mixed far too much... sigh. 

The palette knife came from a pound shop; the glass I'm working on is an old fridge shelf....it's an ideal size for the kind and scale of  work I do.  Did a test print on paper... which gave me a clear indication that this particular block is fine for printing.  I grabbed the first bit of paper I could find, some watercolour paper.  It was bone dry, so the print quality isn't great, but since I don't suppose I'll use it for anything, so who cares.

Reader, I rather liked it.  So I decided to use it to print on one of the hand made books I've made recently, which I'd been mulling over.  The block is slightly narrower and somewhat longer than each page, but hey, I thought, it'll be fine.  And it would have been, had I followed points one and two, above.  First page printed, no problem.  In order to print the second, I had to move some stuff...and realised that I'd dipped the first page into the ink, inadvertently.  What an idiot.  Fortunately, it didn't look too bad, and I simply extended it along the rest of the pages...but it could have been a perfectly decent book, written off.  I really am an idiot. 

So... printed, it looks like this.  Because Lutradur XL, like all the lighter weights, is semi transparent, you can actually see elements of the other side. 

Stand it up against the light, and it's even more obvious

I'm really pleased with this.  Not bad for a handful of scraps and a printing block...

I did a bit more printing, which I'll show you tomorrow, swathed the remaining ink with cling film and hoped for the best.  Should be okay til tomorrow.  What did strike me is that I need to start using my press if I want even printing results.  I like the way this has turned out, but it won't be appropriate for every project, and I'm not getting enough pressure, sitting down.  You live and learn.  And now I need a sleep.

Moving Along.

Well, I don't know about you, but when I start fiddling around with bits of fabric, I'm not happy until I have something that works... and I think this might be it. 

The fundamental structure is pretty much as it was, but with additions on one side.  I did cut that piece of evolon smaller, but it still didn't feel right, so it has been replaced with lutradur 120; much heavier than the rest of the lutradur, but with a similar texture.  And it has been tilted to one side, while the orange lutradur at the top has been trimmed down to remove the white edge.  That gave a bit more room on the surface, making it possible to add a few more pieces of that heavier lutradur.  Is it finished?  I don't know; those additions are perhaps a bit much... I like simple.  It has the feel of a sketch, as it is, and not a finished piece.  Were it larger, it would work, and I might well think of doing a larger piece based on this design.  As it is, though, I don't think it's ideal... it needs more space between the elements.  So, I can either trim them down, or remove them.  Come to think of it, I could replace them with beads, perhaps, significantly smaller, and a different texture...but I don't think I will...the whole point of the addition was to repeat the heavier lutradur...so, smaller, or nothing.  We'll see.

And there's movement in the studio, too.  More shelves, to take the boxes with fabric and other bits and pieces.  I didn't appreciate just how many bits and pieces I still have... most of them to do with hats.  Come to think of it, I haven't found all the hat blocks, yet, which means they must be somewhere in the garage, along with who knows what... I'm arguing with myself currently, contemplating giving up painting altogether, mostly because I don't really have the space for it.  I haven't painted for several years, the whole ME thing meant that I couldn't get down to the Little Green Shed with any frequency.  I've certainly given up oils...too long a drying time, despite loving the effects they produce.  I guess I'll put away the fabric 'stuff', and see where we are after that.  I've given up a lot; painting on a large scale would just be yet another on a pretty long list.  

Less is More...

...or how this...

became this...

It's a long story.

Several years ago, I mooched a cleaning rag from a friend of mine who is a painter in oils.  I liked the look of it, and thought that it wanted stitch; she thought I was barking, but humoured me after a bit of persuasion.  And it has lain about ever since, which, given it is oil paint, was probably Not A Bad Thing.  Raking through the box it was in (the one with the interesting hand dyed/printed/painted fabrics), I thought that its time had come... and promptly cut it in half.  I liked the balance of colours and shapes, the randomness of it, the way that it suggested sea to me, somehow, perhaps because my friend had been painting goldfish in ponds... and because Turner has painted seas in this kind of palette...  who knows?

I wanted to make this the first piece in the 'Linescapes' series I have been slowly working up to; so far, I have a lot of sketches and postcards, but no textile pieces.  I thought I would approach it the same way I have the drawings, by beginning with three curving lines.  I wanted them to be quite small, because the real interest in the piece, I thought, was the painted cloth, and I wanted them to be textured.  So, I thought I'd try taking some dark green velvet, and add some other colours to it, particularly orange, through stitching, which I knew would  add texture and interest.  When I looked at it, having added a bit of stitch, though, I knew it wasn't right.  See for yourself;

Too dark.

This looked better, though...had I had enough of it, I would have used it, and the piece would be completely different.  As it was, I hadn't, so started looking through my scrap stash.

And I found this... 

...at which, a small person in my head jumped up and down with excitement.  That person is rarely wrong, so I put some fusible on a section, cut the lines out, and added them to the piece.  And stitched it.  And added some painted polyester cloth (for once, not lutradur...), and burned it back.

Reader, I hated it.  I rotated it.  I hated it less.

So I figured that I needed to work out what was wrong with it.  I decided that there was Too Much Stitch.  And if I got rid of the stitch, or at least, some of it, I'd feel better about it, because what was important in the piece was the exploration of space...and I had filled up that space with stitch, which was a distraction from what was going on in the cloth.

Okay.  So I thought I would take out a significant amount of the stitching in the larger section to the right of the turquoise/orange strips.  And I did.  And it was interesting... I didn't remove all the stitch, leaving bits and pieces of stitched mark here and there.  Look closely at the piece and you can see the holes in the canvas where the stitches were.

Here's a close up.

And that, I thought, might well be that... but of course, we both know better, because we've seen the after picture... more tomorrow.

Being Away From Home...

can be wonderful, but also a pain... the latter, when you forget your sketch book.  I had gone to the bus station to meet my friends Alison and Michael off the Inverness bus, had some time on my hands and...aaargh... no sketchbook.  Usually I have two or three in my bag.  Fortunately, I did find a card blank in there (no, I have no idea what it was doing there either).  That, a pen, courtesy of WH Smith, and fifteen spare minutes on a bench, produced this;

I've been mulling about shapes like these ever since I got back to painting.  Working in this format, though, made me wonder about making a book.  And some quilts.  So, an idea was born.  Notice that I write all over my sketches, just to remind myself of what the thinking was at the time...it has moved on a bit from there, now.

I love the simplicity of sketches, and would like to make some stitched sketches in a similar vein... watch this space.  The series seems to have a title; 'Linescapes'.  These ones clearly tie up to landscape, but I think that overt marks like these will not last long; they come from one of my quilts, Norfolk Fields.

Although there is definitely a connection between the two, I think Linescapes is really about space, not about landscape per se.  It might be argued that there is no difference...but it feels like there is.Now to clear the decks so I can Get On With It.

Making Space.

I'm finally recovered from the flu, and starting to make space around myself for creative things to happen.  My upstairs studios have had stuff dumped in them, as I work my way through the house, decluttering and muttering...  Now, it's time to get that sorted out.  I spent half a day this weekend, just sifting through one of the rooms, and found a remarkable amount of unfinished work.  I've been beating myself up for not making much in the past two years, only to find that I've got plenty to be working with for the meantime, thanks. 

I've gone back into therapy, the demon depression has been biting again.  The major focus of that is to help me to get out of my own way; there is a whole tangle of 'stuff', a bit like the thorny forest surrounding Sleeping Beauty's castle, that needs to be pruned back and sorted.  It's hard, painful work; those thorns scratch!  Part of what I'm learning is that I seem to have moved away from the work I do best, the work 'about' depression and mental health issues, the work about feelings.  Instead, I've been chasing the elusive 'sellable' work, that seems to be indefinable, at least for me.  Nobody seems to want to buy my work; that's not a complaint, it's a fact.  So I may as well please myself, and make the strong depression work, the work about feelings, and starve happy!