Sketching and Stitching

I’ve been doing both.  I sketch with a group every Tuesday morning.  It helps keep my fingers working even when I’m not painting.

And I’m not painting, I’m still stitching.  I recently took a short class from Jane LaFazio.  It’s a circle but it reminded me of my wonky log cabin square so I had to try it.  Here is the first one.  I may have to buy another jean jacket to put this on the back of.

All that is left to do on that one is put in on something or finish it as wall art,  The next one I did is small because I was thinking jewelry.  The photo isn’t good but I think you can get the idea … I think it’s going to be a necklace

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The last one I did just because I like the colorful fabric that came in a kit for paper piecing…. I didn’t care about the paper piecing pattern, just the wonderful colors in the fabric scraps it included. This one isn’t done.  I’ll be adding some handwork and then need to decide what I’m going to do with it.  I had vowed this  year I was going to get more color in my life and I do believe this is a start.

In addition to stitching and sketching, I’ve done some rearranging in my studio.  And last night I dreamt about painting…. must be a sign, it’s time.

More Stitching… nothing finished

Lots of playing with fabric, sewing pieces together and cutting them apart to see what happens.  I have no idea what I’m going to do with these but I’m having fun.

I’ve also been thinking about an architectural series.  My first thought was paintings but maybe there will be some wall hangings too.  I’ve got a few photos in mind. Ideas are running around in my head, we’ll see where they land….  This one is on our corner, from the back, on an early morning walk it spoke to me….

The rest of these were taken one day when I was painting with friends at a local church.  Looking out the window I saw all sorts of potential, some things may have to be edited out in the finished piece, like the telephone tower behind the third one.

 

Skiing New Year’s Day I liked this scene – without the cars

And then there were some images as a challenge on wetcanvas, totally different type of image but architectural.

Wishing Everyone A Joy Filled Holiday

 

Wishing blessings to everyone this Season and looking forward to a very bright and creative 2013!

My Focus for December

Finish a book.  Not the novels I read or my daily devotional reading, I finish those with no trouble.  It’s the many books I buy with techniques to try and exercises to do that go unfinished. 

I start, get sidetracked with something else like another new technique or medium or whatever and the book goes in a pile, or back on the shelf and there it sits until I happen upon it again while looking for something else.

One that I happened on that way recently is “Nine Modern Day Muses and a Body Guard” by Jill Badonsky.  I know I read parts of it, there are highlights.  I didn’t do the exercises.  Rereading I can see that doing them would be valuable, especially since my muse seems to be hiding somewhere. 

The first exercise had me go back and think about what it was that I liked doing as a child.  Make things, draw and color.  I so wanted that big box of crayons, the one with sooooo many wonderful colors!  Now I wonder, why there isn’t more color in my art.  My paintings are peaceful rather than vibrant.  sometimes they are very bright and colorful like this small one title Mardi Gras. (it’s brighter in real life)

More often they’re quiet muted color like this Street In Greece. I like the quiet but what happened to the girl who longed for color?  She is either still there, buried inside me or she left.  I don’t know that I’ll find out doing the exercise in the Nine Muses book but I might.  Who knows, what I may learn about me if I stay focused long enough.

I need containers

I was fortunate to win a give-away on the Cloth, Paper, Scissors blog. It was like Christmas when they arrived ….  encaustic materials including two instructional DVDs, ExtravOrganza (printable silk sheets,) 12 colors of Jacquard’s PearlEx powdered pigments, some encaustic medium and a book, The Encaustic Studio by Daniella Woolf.

The package arrived late afternoon so that evening I sat down and watched the first one instead of the news. Not much good news anyway. 

I’d done a couple encaustics previously at my friend Annie Morgan’s  studio. This is one I did there with a lot of direction from Annie.

The DVD and the rest of the treasures inspired me. The next day I spent the day playing with encaustics and here are the results…

That night I watched the second DVD and now there are even more ideas floating around in my head which brings me to needing containers. This morning I started reading Daniella's book and it struck a chord. She responds to so many things and ideas come at her at such a pace that she is sometimes paralyzed so she has to set parameters, containers she calls them. She was talking about me but I haven’t learned to set those parameters and find myself going in circles way too often.

Am I too old? I taught myself to become a morning person after we won’t say how many years of being a night person. An aside, when I was first forcing myself to get up early my neighbor was over for dessert and we were talking about it. She said she noticed I was up very early one night when she got up about 4 in the morning and I was in my studio already. She didn’t realize it but she was talking about a time when I was still a night person. I’m not in my studio at 4 in the morning anymore but I might be there by 5:30.

So my task… determine some parameters and stick with them for a month. I’m going to give myself some time to think about it. Ideas are already floating around in my head… color and subject keep popping up. One thought is green. I’m a blue person, if it’s blue I’m gonna love it and if there is one color I don’t like, it’s green. Maybe I need to spend a month getting to know green a bit better. Who knows, I may learn to like it.

Another Wall Hanging

This one is a quilted wall hanging and it’s done from instructions in a book. 

Well, that’s not totally accurate, there were instructions in a book that I looked at and I really liked the quilted wall hanging that was pictured, but the book had to go back to the library before I was able to write down instructions. 

The result, it sort of resembles the one I saw and it was done by guess and by gosh because I’ve never done a quilted wall hanging like this.  My “Walks of Life” piece doesn’t count because it was small quilts put together.

The project has some flaws but that doesn’t bother me.  It’s a first, I had fun, it’s hanging on a wall in my house and I plan on doing more – of my own design.

It’s been awhile since I’ve been an active blogger; however, I still have managed to read other blogs and I learn a lot from them.  You may be interested in some of them.

One is Desiree, her blog is The Clothesline.  I started following her because I love her wonderful watercolors but she also does pastels, multi-media and fiber art.  She’s got a couple of fun collage tutorials on her site too.  Pop over and have a look.

A Beautiful Plein Air Day

I sketch when I’m painting en plein air and this is what I did this week.  A group of us get together every Tuesday morning and head out somewhere to paint.  This week we went to Hemlock Crossing. 

They have a wonderful warm room with huge windows overlooking the area and since it was a cold morning we made use of the space.  We’re thinking this will be a good place to paint in the winter.

Before settling in to paint we took a short walk to see the color and my photos don’t really show it…

the start of our walk   a view standing on a bridge

a view of the river

and again from another spot

Next week we’re hoping to go south to Saugatuck and paint on the Felt Mansion Grounds.