spa day

Late in the week we did waxing and bleaching -- not on ourselves but on fabric.

I had the idea that working with wax would be complicated and hard. But this was fun and easy because it used soy wax. I like fun and easy. We each glued string to a wood block in some kind of pattern to make a stamp, dipped the stamp in gently melted soy wax, pressed the waxed stamp on black fabric, then bleached and rinsed. One of the joys of soy wax is that it is water soluble so you can rinse it out in the sink with HOT running water and not clog the pipes.

I added some drips (the round spots) with a tjanting. The blotchy bits are either residual sizing or not enough patience with the bleach. I was late to the table so there was very little wax in the pan which, I'm told, is why I got so much detail in the string.

I think I will do this again. I was at Home Depot cruising for stamp supplies for a project I have in mind. The first homemade stamp, tile spacers adhered to a sheet of Lexan, is drying upstairs.

best laid plans

This year, I had decided that I wasn't going to take classes, but instead "just do the work." But then some things came around that proved irresistible. The first of which was a class called Human Marks taught by Dorothy Caldwell at the Crow barn. We went at a fairly gentle pace all week and so I was little surprised at the end to see that we had done a Great Many Things.

We began with ink and other stuff on paper. I am falling hard for ink.

^Day one, Exercise one: Make a single mark

^ This is the only time I'll show work from the other people in the class. My colleagues  were wonderful and talented and thoroughly embraced the adventure of the exercises. But several folks expressed concerns about "being published" and that is to be respected. The assignment was to make a single mark with ink and a brush. Then we posted the single marks and, as so often happens with the posting part, a graceful arrangement emerged.

^ Exercise two, Fingerpaint with ink

The above and the next two pics are marks made by fingerpainting.

^ Exercise two, Fingerpaint with ink



^ Exercise two, Fingerpaint with ink

The last exercise (Thursday into Friday) was to assemble the exercises into a sample book. I liked this streaky fingerpainting so much that I used it to wrap/cover the book.

^ Make a mark using a Micron pen

Detail

^We got two pens in our supplies package. This was just "fool about and make a mark with the .03 pen. Fill the whole page with the mark." I held the pen very loosely and let it bounce on the page, then quickly pulled it toward me -- bounce, pull; bounce, pull. Two marks, dot and line, for the effort of one.


^BIG painting on some lovely Arches watercolor paper

^ Then we each strapped a biggish brush -- 2" or so -- to a dowel or yardstick and went outside to paint. (It was cold and damp, but who cares?) Assignment: Splash around making BIG marks, fill the page. I liked this so much I took it to the framer. It will finish about 48 inches (122 centimeters) square. This flashed me back to college. I was a theater major and did a fair amount of scenic painting -- b-i-g brushes on l-o-n-g handles and the canvas on the floor.

Dorothy has the gift of materializing beside you, saying just the right thing -- usually something like "Do more of this" -- and then vanishing. It was wonderful.

We did some more paper stuff and then started working with fabric. I'll post it in chunks so as not to take up too much time at one time. But it was wonderful. And, I think, transformative.

Master class

After the guild show this weekend, Rosalie Dace taught a class called Line Dance in which she demonstrated practical ways to create lines with specific qualities (e.g., v-e-r-y skinny lines, random curved lines) and also showed a lot of examples of lines in photographs and art. One of my favorite things from the class was her characterizations of line as:

Straight   Horizontal   Vertical   Diagonal   Continuous   Broken   Random   Crunchy   Thin   Thick    Soft   Gentle   Repeated   Make a shape   Suggest a shape   Define an edge   Overlapping   Rhythmic   Wavy   Suggest tracery   Lacy   Fuzzy   Parallel   Dark   Light   Different scales   Wide   Narrow   (NB: I'm not sure how -- or whether -- "thick/thin" differs from "wide/narrow" but there is the whisper of a distinction in my former wordmongering mind.)   Organic   Curved   Shadows make lines   Spaces between shapes make lines (like mortar lines between bricks)    Grids   Weaving    Zigzag   Over an image   Radiating

So many intriguing possibilities beyond "stipple" in the machine's programmed stitches guide, isn't it?