Gwen Hedley and substrates

In Gwen Hedley's book, Drawn to Stitch: Line, Drawing and Mark-Making in Textile Art,

she discusses experimenting with substrates. In short, a substrate is anything you use to make an image on like paper, fabric, canvas or even transparencies.

I decided to make a book of substrates as well. This was almost as fun as making marks. Later I will use a combination of marks on various substrates. You might want to play along...

I made this book with watercolor paper because I knew I would be adding liquids to the pages and didn't want bleed through. Some substrates I made were so thick that I had to make them outside of the book and simply pop them in as loose pages on glued onto the watercolor paper.

finished (stitched) book

Brown construction paper pages (8)

Watercolor pages (40)

Brown paper bag pages (8)

Inside view

"Sueded"* magazine bit glued with spaces to see paper beneath

Great textured envelope that an holiday card came in - very nice

Tea bags

Heavy white envelope bits - some address showing!

"Sueded"* paper bag

Hand dyed scrim with holes made in the surface with an awl. I really want to explore this type of substrate with stitch in the future.

Dryer sheet. I have used dryer sheets MANY times in the past including ironing them to freezer paper and sending them through my printer. lovely stuff.

Inside lining of a holiday card envelope (thanks Kit!)

It these were boards this would be called "live edge". Can't wait ti make some marks on this surface!

Shiny silver envelope (thanks again Kit)

Water coloring on copier paper glued in.

Water colored news print.

Newsprint bits

Netting glued in (thanks Judith). I love this netting. Tea bag sponging on the right

And then I set it on fire - quite unintentionally. Wish I had a video of me RUNNING to the bathroom with this sueded brown bag aflame. Not so funny at the time (smile)

Inside of a security envelopes in bits

Used paper towel. This should look good with charcoal perhaps??

A heavy plastic the deli uses to place sliced cheese in. I am obsessed with this substance...I stitched it to tissue paper and stuffed the sections with string and trim waste.

Must do MORE of this

Just love this

Corn husks stitched onto heavy 140 lb watercolor paper

Painted with watercolors allowing the paint to color the watercolor paper where there were breaks in the corn husks. This is really wonderful.

Pages drying.  Looks like fun doesn't it. Want to play along?????

* Sueded paper:

Take a piece of paper. I use heavy brown paper bags or shiny magazine pages from National Geographic. Crmble them up over and over then fold in half and twist tightly. Open and fold in the other direction and twist tightly. Open the paper and "scrub" it like you are trying to get a stain out, section by section. Tears are OK. Make use of tears by coloring the torn edges or allowing colors to saturate the material you have apply the sueded paper to.

The other half of the "Marks"

These are the remainder of the marks from the book plus a few I added lose inside the book.

This is the other side of the pieced paper (exit wounds) with a graphite stick rubbed on the upper left corner.

Graphite stick rubbed on the textured surface of the gessoed and watercolor tinted papers which are quite stiff

This was an experiment scratching a mark in both heavy crayon and oil pastel.

A cardboard stamp

"Chalk Lifting" and not a very successful one at that. I will do more experiments with this and explain the technique then

Rolling a hard rubber brayer with black acrylic paint on a page of plain sketch paper.

This was without a doubt the most fun I had: stitching pieces of brown paper bag together. When I was done (that was all I was supposed to do - just stitch) I was overwhelmed with a need to work back into the surface with markers, ink and correction fluid. I will be doing a LOT more of this soon.

This was an unsuccessful attempt to saw rapidly from left to right through a line of paint. It just dragged. I have used this technique VERY successfully with other media - more experiments to document in the future.

Wetted finger tip in acrylic paint.

What I refer to as "smacks". It doesn't look very impressive here but I will do a post of this technique which has been amazingly successful - one of my favorites - with other media including thickened dye on cloth.

When I was done I wiped my acrylic paint covered Bondo blade on the paper making a smear. More about Bondo blades later.

India ink with Japanese calligraphy brush which is also a favorite for quick sketches

Variations of a triangle from the Visual Mark book exercises

Variations on a circle

Hand dyed scrim with oil pastels rubbed in

Oil pastels

White (l) and Green (r) China markers

Roller pen on paper with a metallic gold wash

The Book of Marks

** I am popping this in here so that you won't miss anything. Beata Keller-Kerchner is doing an indepth series of posts about Human Marks. That is the title of the workshop I am taking from Dorothy Caldwell So please bookmark her blog and travel along with her wonderful treatise on Human Marks.


I made this "altered book" a few years ago and it was innocently sitting on a shelf when I drafted it into service as my new book of marks. The pages (4 each) were stitched together, primed with gesso and tinted with pastels and watercolors in anticipation of what I would put on them.

Here is half of the book:

There is an explanation of most of these marks here. There are new marks at the bottom of the post.

This was black latex house paint (note to self: Don't use house paint again). It was too fluid and didn't drag well.

Cardboard stamp and painted finger prints

Smacks on rough wavy paper

Pierces (going in) I felt a bit "psycho" stabbing my awl through this page and into a padding of foam.

Check back in two days for the other half - all new marks...

Looking down the road

Every journey begins with the first step. The older I have become the less I know...which is a good thing. I am starting this year by stepping off onto the road of mark making. I "think" I am being guided down this road..but I shall see. All I know for sure right now is that I am really enjoying where mark making has been taking me.

I started a few years ago with the Jane Dunnewold, Leslie Morgan and Claire Benn book about finding your own visual voice. I blogged about this. I was so captivated by the mark making exercises that I created a book of marks.

Not long after starting this journey, I became aware of the Canadian artist Dorothy Caldwell. I began to connect in new ways with others artists like Sandra Meech and Gwen Hedley, finding ideas in their books, which I had owned for years, a real connection to their experiences with mark making.

Although much of the mark making is on paper and other substrates, the ideas, textures and images can be applied as well to textiles. All these substrates fall under the heading of FIBER. For the foreseeable future I will be blogging about Artists, books and my experiences along this road.

I do want to start with Dorothy Caldwell. Of all the people teaching in the art world, she is the one person who I would like to study with. I emailed her and found that her 2 workshops (one filled already) at Nancy Crows Barn were the only workshops she will be teaching in North America this year. I have signed up for her workshop and hope that this experience is all I am hoping it will be.

I have information about her not that easy to come by but I will share with you all I have found. Knowing she was Canadian, I was very surprised to learn she was born in Bethesda, Maryland in 1948. I was born down the road in Washington, DC in 1948. We might have things to talk about besides art.

Let me give you a bit of information about this amazing woman:
This is a YouTube video of her latest work, a workshop which she conducted, and this is a biography about her from her website. This is from her exhibit "In Good Repair" This is a post Dorothy contributed to in 2012.
In another blog post from February of this year, the subject of boro stitching arises and the questions of "Is it Art?" if it's not intentional arises. Very good piece and it also alludes to the questions Dorothy asked herself about quilts as abstract art by "untrained" woman like the Gees Bend Quilt pieces.
Boro stitching is also refereed to as Kantha in India and Sashiko in Japan.

Well, if you are still with me AND still awake, you might want to peek at my posts which will document my journey for the foreseeable future.
Thanks for reading!

Holiday Surprises

Happy New Year every one. The winner of the Fiber Art Magazine is Kathy.

Just had to share these amazing gifts I received from my blog friends. I was totally shocked (like really stunned) when I opened this gift from Kit Lang. She included this amazing three dimensional card

and then I opened the package beautifully wrapped for Christmas. Being Christmas eve and my not having an resistance (I was so puzzled at what she might have sent), I went ahead and carefully opened it and this is what I found:

I started to yell, Oh my god" over and over while I ran around my studio. What an amazing gift. Below is a close-up of the body with each feather applied one at a time. I just love it and have hung it in my skylight over my desk so I can see it every day while I am working. 

Breast feathers (small and amazing)

Amazing tail feathers

Marcella saw these very unique watercolors in a book. She bought a "book" for her and one for me too.

They are heavily pigmented pages of color which are lightweight and can be taken easily in purse or backpack for plein air sketching. What a clever product.

All you need is a waterbrush.

This has been a year to remember...