Friday, September 20, 2013

Fly away assemblage


Here is an assemblage that will be in the Art Students League of Denver's show, What Once Was Lost, The Art of Assemblage. I plan to go to the reception on October 4th.

I actually found the metal panel, already rusted and attached to a wood frame, at a local thrift store. I don't remember where I got the pulley with chain.  The pulley is bumpy on the back side, so I used some washers and rusty bits as shims to allow the pulley arms to attach correctly to the panel. The arm is a baby doll arm that I painted off-white. I love the way it turned out. I plan to do another one in this series next week, I have a rusted baby doll arm, another bird, and a more simple pulley and chain waiting for me in the studio!


What Once Was Lost: The Art of Assemblage 
Art Students League
200 Grant Street Denver, Colorado 80203
 Sept 30–Nov 13, 2013
First Friday Reception:
Oct 4 | 5:30–8 pm

Collage with monoprint papers

Using the monoprints from our art group session last weekend, I collaged two of them and added a rice paper border behind the Italy image. The text was from the the same book as the photo.


Sunday, September 15, 2013

Monoprints with CO Mixed Media Club

This month we met at Simone's as she has a large press at home. Sabyl and Simone set up a lot of tables for our work space. We had a great time and really started to get in a groove about the time we needed to clean up. The time flew by.

We used the press (named "Pressley") to make monoprints. We mainly used Createx monotype base on plexiglass, which has to dry prior to painting over it.   The paints we used were Createx monotype paints.  After painting the plate, the paint needs to dry before printing.  Sabyl also tried ivory dish soap as a base and it worked well. We also tried gum arabic as a base, which worked really well, but the plexiglass needs to be sanded for the gum arabic to spread well, else it beads up. The nice thing about the gum arabic is it dries a lot faster than the Createx base.

We used heavy print paper, which needs to soak in water at least five minutes before printing. The paper is put between some towels to remove the excess moisture prior to printing. The paper needs to be damp so the dry paint will transfer off the plate.

Here is the sample plate that Sabyl used as an example. The stencils are painted papers she had from a workshop she had taken.

The first print of the day by Janet.

 Janet's print.

Janet's print too.

A plate of Janet's.

 And the print.

 Simone's plate (I don't have a picture of the print).

Simone's plate.

 Simone's print

 Enid's plate.

Enid's print

 Dariya's plate (I don't have a picture of the print, but it was really strong and graphic).

The weather was really great. It had just rained for four days straight and caused a lot of flooding issues in the state, so it was nice to have a sunny day to help dry the plates.

 Sabyl at work.

Sabyl's plate (sorry it's blurry. I forgot my good camera, I also had taken my little point and shoot out of my purse earlier in the week to download some photos, so I was stuck using the camera on my phone, which is not a new model).

A different print of Sabyl's.

 The only shot I had with Liz and Trish, which is funny since I was sitting right next to them.

 Gayla working on her plate (ha! Liz and Trish are kind of in this picture!)

 Gayla's plate.

 A different print of Gayla's.

 Sue Clarke's plate

 Sue Clarke's print.

 Sue Clarke's.

 Ghost print from Sue Clarke's plate.

 Liz's plate

 Liz's print.

 Liz's cute birdie! She really liked using Generals Scribe-All pencil on hers.

 Liz's print. I didn't even see her make this plate but this beautiful print magically appeared.

 Trish's plate

I believe she layered stencils on the plate before printing to act like a resist.

 My landscape

 Printed on a page from a book. The paper really wanted to stick to the plexiglass plate.

My spirals were created with an old fashioned spring whisk.

On this plate I used gum arabic as the base, but the plate wasn't sanded so the gum arabic beaded up. I think I used watercolor paints on this one.

Close up picture. The darker shiny spots are where the gum arabic was. As the paint was drying on the plate, it started flaking and blowing away. Some of the paint cracked and the cracks show on my print.

I did a ghost print of this plate over a monoprint I made a while ago that was mainly blues and greens.

On this plate, instead of using the Createx paint, I used watercolor paints, on a gum arabic base. I like that it has a more liquid look to it. I printed this over an old monotype print I had that had a faint gray pattern to it. Since the new plate was bigger it doesn't look too great, and I should have just used a new piece of printing paper. This technique with gum arabic and watercolors is in the new issue of Cloth, Paper, Scissors, but they use a die cut machine as a press.
 A great day and everybody loved the results!





Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Aspens felted landscape

I am working on a felted piece of Aspen trees. I did three layers of white wool as my base, then did one layer of blue for the sky, skipping places I knew would be completely covered by yellow. I roughly laid in my yellow leaves with two colors of yellow wool. I then added some orange accents, as well as some nylon fibers, some sequins on gold thread, and some other shiny bits.


I then cut leaves out of my yellow wools, as well as some bamboo and tencel fibers. The tencel takes a while to felt into the wool, but it will eventually.

I then added some brown as shadows on the tree trunks and started adding branches in black.

At this stage I like to take a picture and print it in black and white. This lets me see if the image feels balanced without the color distracting me. 

I then will take a black pencil and draw in additional branches and any changes I want to make and go back to my felt and finalize the design.

Here is it is prior to felting.

After felting:  (It was overcast today and the color looks washed out). It is about 24" x 36".
 Detail:
 Detail. I did machine stitching around the branches and on the shaded side of the trees.
Detail. You can see some of the glittery ribbon and tulle I used as well as the wool.

I am undecided about adding any additional yellow highlights to the leaves or whether I will free-motion stitch some leaf shapes in the yellow part.  Right now I like it as it is.