24 May 2011

First sound of my new voice

At the Jane Dunnewold workshop, I found my voice. It wasn't just what we did in the workshop but the realization of what I truly loved. I actually have three loves: portraits, ravens and crows, and color and texture.
This is the first piece in my new voice, color and texture. First let me say that it has been raining or overcast for weeks and the colors in my photo are not true. The photo does give a pretty good idea of the design elements but not of the way the colors work off each other.

I dyed a LOT of burlap, scrim, wool yarn, thread and woolen batts. The colors are horrible in the photos so I'll wait until the sun comes out and retake them as well as my first piece. I will show this first photo taken with a flash and poor color correction.

This piece of woolen batt was dyed at Vicki Jenson's dyeing workshop at ProChemical and Dye last year. I was just "getting rid" of left over dye before cleaning up for the night. When I saw how it came out I wanted to frame the piece of wool like a piece of art. I loved the colors.
In this first piece, I used all hand dyed wool, burlap and threads as well as a shell (emerging from the burlap), beads, sari yarn, and metallic threads. I love it because it's my first piece. I learned a lot making it and the colors are so scrumptious that I want to eat it. Stay tuned for more along this theme. I am going to also incorporate dyed and batiked silks in my work.
Newer pictures with slightly better light:

17 May 2011

Jane Dunnewold Workshop

I had the time of my (recent) life at Jane's 5 day workshop at ProChemical and Dye in Fall River, Massachusetts. What a wonderful woman. We learned about making and using soy wax (mix) crayons, soy wax (mix) paste and hot wax. The crayons and paste each had it's own recipe with the crayon wax being a proprietary mix developed by Jane and Lisa Kerpoe. After experimenting with the three products, I had to see where I could fit these processes into my work.
I felt most at home using the hot wax in my batik work. I will show the processes of experimentation I used during the 5 days.
                                                               Click for larger images
These were sample colors of the wax crayons and some rubbings I did of textured surfaces
                                         This was more of the same - crayon rubbings


All three of these were done in the first or second day when we were getting different results from the 2 skillets of wax. One was running hotter than the other and was exhausting the color/wax.
This is a piece of Charmeuse and I was just beginning to "get it". I like it

 One day I started with a piece of linen and the hot wax had been heated too long the previous day and when I went to paint of thickened dye, all the dye that was supposed to be in suspension ran right out and mixed with the thickened dye. I got frustrated trying to wash out the dye from the wax with water because the dyes were coloring the pretreated fabric in smears so I just tossed it in the trash can. Jane said, "Boy, you sure give up easily". I took the challenge and snatched a bit of victory from the jaws of defeat. Here is the finished piece below.

After getting out as much dye from the wax by scrubbing in water, I drizzled black wax then over dyed with turquoise thickened dye. Not bad considering I dug it out of the trash can.

Now I was starting to "get it" and found what iI wanted to do with my new knowledge and experience/experiments.
These are two scarves that look WAY better in person. All these photos were taken today with heavy overcast.
                                                         Here are some samples that I like. The first is folded, dipped in two colors of wax and dyed in the void.


                                      Starting to like what I see (Charmeuse)
                                                       And these are my favs.



The final word on what I did in class was trying to develop what I was learning into a design technique I wanted to keep and use.
I forgot to get permission to post pictures of my classmates but here is a photo of Jane and I and also a special picture of Jane and I for my cyber quilt friend in the Netherlands, Sandra.


06 May 2011

Thread sketching

I have been sketching again since I started watching DMTV.  Just the other day I was think of turning one of my sketches into a thread sketch. Wasn't I surprised to find one of the talented women whose blogs I follow did just that. Sandra from the Netherlands did some interesting sketches of a boat using three different techniques. I did a thread sketch of a raven (so what's new) and then attempted to paint the sections like Linda Kemshall does. I don't think mine came out very well. I decided to try it again but this time leave just he thread. So here are my two attempts at thread sketching.

The first I traced off my pencil sketch with water soluble pen and washed. The second I traced in pencil but haven't yet removed the pencil. I think I will continue to explore this technique more.