Bronze and Cerulean Blue Who Knew??

Well This picture just does not do the fabric justice! Oh it feels so rich and has so much depth in the fabric. Just loving this!

Oxblood Red and Teal

Very Interesting combination. I initially thought I would get more purples or plums. But I'm liking these colors together.. why I have no idea.

Next up will be Bronze and Cerulean Blue... Now who doesn't like bronze?

Results of Chartreusse & Eggplant

I would say success!! Now off to work on Oxblood Red and Teal... All my years of dyeing I have never tried gradation.... go figure! LOL

Terri made me do it!

Terri Stegmiller...Shame on you!!! I know you don't mind enabling me

I was drooling over her blog today and while I have not done any dyeing lately, her graduation dyeing has given me the bug again. What I realized is I have a lot of fabric, but not necessarily fabric that compliments each other. So off I started. This batch is using both Eggplant and Chartreusse... Yes I know some of you are going to ask... "Von, won't that make brown?" Well lets look and see and lets hope so :) I'm so into the browns, blacks, deep dark colors right now.


I only had enough space to set up to dye 1 graduation at a time.. You ask why? well if I cleaned my studio I might have anough room and NO i'm not taking a picture of it LOL

Here they are batching.

No Picture Today

No picture being posted today. I had a fantastic meeting last night with a local group of artists. We have formed the group initially to go through Jane Dunnewolds Finding Your Own Visual Language. We are now ending that book. It will certainly be an mainstay in my library of books to refer too. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Its Interesting though, all of us feel like we are needing to go into the next step. We all work in our mediums and develop works, but we feel like there is more to learn, we have decided to continue the group and work through a book on Design Concepts. After reading the recent SAQA journal and some of us expressing our own desires of where we think we are "stuck" in creating our work. The one book that comes to mind is Lyric Kinards new book "Art + Quilt" This is one of the possibilities and I'm so excited that it is coming out! I know that even if we do not go through this book as a group, I will be sponging up as much information from it as possible.

On a side note. While I know we all LOVE Amazon and other bookstores. I feel we must support our fellow artists. If you want this book, buy it from the author! When you buy from a "Box Store" chain the authors get very little in return. After all where would we be in our art if it wasn't for these great teachers we have! We should reward them! After all, they are rewarding us with a snipit of their "mind" and their "wisdom"

Enjoy and Happy Creating!!

Back to Gel Medium

I'm starting to work the pieces that I had painted a few weeks ago and now going back in with gel medium to layer paper and image transfers. Here is one of the pieces I worked on last night. Its only 9 x 13 in size.

I'm finding I'm liking the color combinations alot, but I want to darken it some more.. Its the mood I'm in I guess. This may need some cheesecloth over it painted in a smokey grey color to tone it down just a tad. The top piece is how it started orginally.

Accountability & Commitment Issues

I'm putting out the feelers for the possiblity of working with another artist for some help! I'm really wanting to stay on task more and work more towards goals. I'm wondering if there any of my peers that might be willing to help in holding more accountable to goals and achievements. To help keep me going and focused? Someone that could help to touch based weekly or bi weekly...

Any ideas would be great!

Thanks

Painted Fabric...ta da!

Here is my sampling of Painted Fabric. I used Versatex Paints from dharma. I really think I'm liking this compared to the Gelatin plate printing only because of the dyed affect I feel I can get with by painting. I started by wetting the fabric.. ringing it out slightly and then painting with full strength paint with a sponge brush that was wet with water. I did find that the more I brushed or used more water the lighter the color was... I think I like some of the heavier (More pigmented) pieces.

I keep trying to work with the bright colors but its just not flowing for me.. so I'm sticking with the reds blacks... moving to Browns Blacks and greys today. More to be posted again later.

Vacation at the lake

Well I'm Back... I had a very restful vacation at the lake this last week. My mom came up and we had a great mother - son week. The weather was beautiful and seeing the bald eagles alone was well worth it. Its just amazing that our body's just run so much and take in so much during our working lives that when you truely get out into the wilderness where there are no cell phones, no TV's and no internet that you body just say's... Be Still and relax! I did some Gelatin plate printing. My first time of making this crazy thing. Of course it cracked and broke on me but I thought... hmmm go with the flow and work with it. so I did and here are my works so far.

This was my favorite so far. I was able to get 7 prints from this plate. I used a lot of Versatex Printing Inks and a lot of black in this one. You can see the progression below. I used a lot of stamps and did a lot of "ghost prints" So far I'm happy.

I have some from Acrylic sheets I will post later and some painted fabric. All fabrics I cut down to just 10x13 in size to work in a smaller format. Feel free to ask any questions of any of the techniques used.