more birds on linen

I may be obsessing about these birds. I've been sketching them in my journal for month, and now I can't stop sketching them on fabric. The color of the hand dyed napkins, when I put them through more than one dye bath, is mesmerizing.

I decided to just put some minimal quilting on the Gossip Time 7 piece to give it some structure:



I just listed this piece on my etsy store: click here to see.

So I went back to the original napkins I used in the Klee pieces. One of them I tried to do some bleach pen on, but I made the bird way too big. So I cut pieces off of it and made some more little birds:

Lonesome Bird 3



Singing Bird



Tete-a-Tete


Tete-a-tete 2

All of the above can be seen on my etsy site by clicking on the title.

With the rest of the napkin, I played with some rosy gold Luminere paint:



You can see part of the bleached bird in the background. It's starting to remind me of graffiti, paleolithic style. So it will probably get another layer of birds, maybe done with thread?

I'm not sure where this is leading me, but I'm letting it (my artistic vision? my muse? my subconscious?) take me where it will.

more birds and napkins

I dyed some more napkins, this time with yellow and two blues. I wanted to continue the bird drawing, and decided to try the same method I had used in September buckeye--a piece that recreates the idea of pen and ink with thread.

The first one I did on a whole napkin--three birds on the forest floor, pecking around.


This piece isn't finished yet; it needs some quilting. But I want to keep it subtle, so I'm thinking of using invisible thread. Haven't decided, so there it hangs on my design wall. But I did add a touch of shiva paintstick in red and rust.

I wanted to do some smaller pieces, so I cut the next napkin--not an easy thing to do, but they'll make more. Or sell more at garage sales.



It has more birds, less negative space so they feel closer in. It needs some finishing touches, too.

So I moved even smaller, to something I could decide how to finish.



This piece, Lonesome Bird, is available for sale on my etsy store as a matted, ready to frame piece of art. Note: this piece has now sold.

I'm ready to continue exploring this image. I'm not sure why it interests me so much these days, but it keeps showing up in my work. I have more napkins to dye.....

On a completely different note, I also have a new buckeye interest--this one is a bottlebrush buckeye, almost a shrub, blooming in my back yard. As the blooms were opening, they had this lovely ochre and white and cream combo that intrigues me...now it's in full bloom:




Don't know what will come of this, but stay tuned.....

more klee

I dyed a set of three napkins--at least they looked the same. They all measure slightly different for some reason.

So I continued with the theme. This is the second one:


Better. I like the variation in width of the quilting lines, and I kind of like the effect of the strips of fusing. But once again the fusing was shiny. I tried fixing it, and managed to tone it down some by applying some shiva paintstick lightly...as a series, they're working. But I thought I could do better, so this is the third one:



Finally, one I'm happy with. The quilting is minimal, the bird still shows, the mystery still remains.

I had another napkin dyed at the same time, but a different size. I tried drawing a bird with a bleach pen on it. It ended up with a halo effect on some of the lines, and the bird is out of proportion with the size of the piece. I tried overdyeing it with some yellow; it brightened up, but the halos are still show up. So for now I'm setting it aside for some thought.

And I'm dyeing a new set of napkins; ready to continue the series in another color...

linens and Klee

For some time I have been buying old napkins and tablecloths at yard sales. I think it started because I had some I had inherited, but I couldn't bring myself to do anything with them...my philosophy usually is 'use it, they'll make more', but something stopped me from using those exact ones. So I bought other people's discards.

I love the feel of them, the texture, the way the patterns are subtle but still distinctive. I've even done some compost dyeing with some of the tablecloths.

But recently I started playing with dyeing them. I'm not sure of their fiber content, but I think they're linen. If they're not, they're cotton. Either way, they take Procion Mx dyes wonderfully. I do multiple dye baths to get a range of color in them (which I plan to exploit with a bleach pen soon).

At the same time, I was drawn back to a bird I keep drawing. I had started him from a petroglyph I saw online somewhere, but thanks to an article about Morris Graves on the Ragged Cloth blog, I was reminded of the ones that the abstract expressionists made. Including one of my favorites, Paul Klee.

So when I saw the color and depth of one batch of the napkins, I wanted to recreate that feeling, the low key value system, the texture, the mystery. Here is the result of the first one:


The bird was sketched with Shiva paint sticks. He looks off the edge of the piece, almost sadly. I then machine quilted it heavily, but the piece seemed a little too bright. So I fused on some black Misty Fuse, torn into abstract shapes. Better. But they are a little too shiny.

So I've started yet another series...this piece is named 'After Klee'.

etsy and me

I've decided to set up an etsy shop to sell some of my smaller pieces. I'm hearing good things about it, so I'm giving it a try. As of today, you can find it here.
It includes some watercolor pieces, too. And soon I will add other things, including pieces I've shown on this blog. Many of those pieces are for sale, if you're interested, come to my website and hit the 'contact the artist' button.

Here's a sample of something I just listed: (click here to see)

The marketplace for art, at least here in the Midwest, seems to be in flux, so I'm trying what I can. I'm not doing any art fairs this year, I'm trying to get into more galleries, keeping my website current, and now this. All I know for sure is that the work won't sell sitting in my closet.

website update

I've been busy updating my website, adding more work to it. Some of it is new, like this:

But most of it is older stuff that I just hadn't gotten around to adding--the slow part is getting them photographed.

But now that most of the pieces I want to have are on there, I can start doing the detail stuff, like adding 'next' and 'previous' so you can page through the gallery...check it out by clicking here.

lazertran continued

Well, I got up my nerve and started working with the 'good' image transfers. I put them on a nice, heavy silk. They came out a little less bright, but that was okay. I picked out three that seemed to go together--closeups of hedge apples that I had played with in Photoshop Elements. I put fusing on the back, decided they would make a nice set of pieces, and started to think about backgrounds. Microwave silk dyeing came to the rescue, I used dark brown and then an acid green to produce a mottled background.

Recently I found some square gallery wrapped artist canvases at WalMart on clearance. At this point, I had pretty much decided to go for a triptych, with each third mounted on a canvas whose edges I had painted to coordinate.

So I cut a piece of the background to size, and started playing. I quickly realized that I wanted to cut into the transfers, a scary moment. But I can always make more. I cut out the hedge apple, then cut some freehand shapes from the remaining part of the picture. Here is the result of the first one:


In some ways I liked it better without the quilting, but it needed the structure to hang correctly. The edges are heat singed to prevent raveling.

The next one continues the theme, but changes it some:




I'm working with the notion of earth being the only planet we've got, that all life that we know about springs from it, and that the hedge apple is a metaphor for that whole idea. So here, the stringy things are either going into the sphere or coming out, depending on my frame of mind.

The third part of the triptych continues the theme, with another variation:



The sphere is farther away, and there is more negative space.

Now the payoff, the three of them together:



I like the way this piece is coming together. The strings become more organized as you look up, the apple is bigger. Now all I have to do is paint the canvases and mount the pieces to them. And post them to my website. And maybe enter them in some shows...

So lazertran does have its uses. I still probably won't buy more right now, because of the difficulty of borrowing a laser printer...but they do have an inkjet version now...