August Stitching

Putting together all the pieces for my August 2016 stitching project.  I like the big range this group has.  Cool days that lean towards autumn and blistering hot ones.  Quiet days kayaking or reading in the shade.  Lively ones at the Farmer's markets, choosing peaches and dahlias.  August seems to have a little of everything.

Shiny Things

So my intention was to focus on black and white painting for a while.  Then something new and sparkly came along.  I saw that Lynn Whipple's Big, Bold Blooms class was on sale on Carla Sonheim's site, and I couldn't resist.  I really enjoyed Lynn's Making Faces class, which I wrote about here, and thought I'd like to play with this one too.

Lynn is so free and playful in her painting that it is highly contagious.  She also has lots of interesting ideas that I hope to incorporate into abstract painting.  She, for example, might start with a toned canvas of bright orange, then paint a layer of very dull colors on top with bits of the orange popping through, and then move to a layer of bright colors, with some of the dulls showing through that.  It all makes for a rich canvas full of depth.

I am just getting started with the class and only have paintings of very ugly looking flowers.  I like to watch Lynn's videos, go and paint, and then re-watch them to see what I did wrong.  She makes it all look so easy.  I'm trying hard not to look ahead to the next lesson before I finish the one I'm on, so it's kind of a blind process of working in stages without knowing where you are heading.  I'm already wanting to go back and re-do now that I understand the process a little better.   I don't know if flower painting will ever be my thing, but I do love the bits of abstract close-ups I find in them.

And some new, odd color combos. that I wouldn't have come up with on my own.

I like when a little flower appears without looking like I tried too hard.

 Right after I started the class, Lynn's new book arrived at the library.  I've just taken a peak, and it looks really good.

Time for Plan B

This was not a week when painting was going to happen.  Between listening to yet another week of horrifying news and going through some struggles with my son, I was left without much creative energy.  I need to have full presence before I can tackle painting.  And a good dose of self-confidence to get me through all the painting days when nothing seems to come together and I start wondering if it ever will. I had neither this week.  Thankfully I had my plan B.  Fabric scraps!  They seem to always do the job.

A few years ago I made a ton of fabric prayer flags in all sorts of colors. I made a bright, cheery one for my niece, and she now asked me to make her a new one in all black and white for her dorm.  She's a senior this year, but already decorating her dorm room.  The chances of her still wanting black and white a year from now are slim, but I was happy for the project.

I was a little concerned that 1. black and white would be boring and 2. I wouldn't have enough interesting black and white scraps to make it work.  HA!  How could I have doubted my scrap pile or my love of black and white.  It's a very different look from the colorful ones I made before, but I love the emphasis on texture and pattern in this one.

You can see some of the colorful ones here and here.

Shapes and Marks

Seldom do I focus on shape.  I tend to build compositions around line and mark, but I do keep returning to a loose vessel shape.  Right now I'm working on a black and white series focused on vessels. Here is a vessel piece from a while ago, still untitled.

Untitled, 11x14", acrylic on paper

 And some close ups.  It was fun to still use plenty of marks, but to make them more subtle so they didn't dominate over shape.

Recently I went to Ritsuko Ozeki's artist talk at Froelick Gallery in Portland.  She is a printmaker who uses lots of line and mark but also incorporates shape.  She is from Tokyo and has been doing series based on the aftermath of the tsunami.  She talked about being interested in all the change that has occurred, and that now, along with the destruction, there is starting to be some rebuilding of communities.  The house shapes she uses point to both the chaos and the restructuring taking place.  She prints using 4 different plates and assembles the prints in various orientations into large pieces.  The overall affect is disorienting, with the occasional house surfacing here and there.  I found them powerful and haunting.

This is one of the blocks that she then combines with others.

I forgot how much I enjoy an artist talk.  It's so illuminating to find out the inspiration behind the pieces.  I was really happy to learn that Froelick posts videos of the talks on You Tube, so now I can catch up on some I've missed.  The filming isn't great, and sometimes I'm dying for a shot of the painting while the artist is talking about it, but they are still interesting to watch.

August Hodge Podge

August was a hodge podge month of weather ranging from sweltering temperatures over 100 to a nice chilly rain.  I noticed a hint of golden light in the air the last few mornings. I like transition times, and it feels like it's just starting to hint that fall is coming soon.

My August 2016 daily stitch project was a crazy hodge podge of colors and textures, but I think they will join together into a playful whole with lots of surprises.

Begin Again

After not being in the studio for over a month, it's hard to jump back in.  I wasn't in the middle of a series or any particular project, and to say to myself, "go paint" without any sort of direction makes me freeze even more.  I keep notebooks of ideas, pages and pages of them, and have Pinterest boards overflowing with inspiration.  I thought I would start by browsing those to see what ideas jumped out.  After going through my notebooks, I was so overwhelmed by ideas, that I decided to skip Pinterest altogether, and pick a few ideas that called me the loudest.

My reluctance to get to the studio usually stems from a lack of focus.  Either I have too many ideas and don't know what to work on, or I'm in the middle of a project but don't know what to do next.  It's so much easier for me to start painting if I know I'm heading to the studio to work with bold lines today, or use the color pink, rather than just show up and face the unknown.

Simple tasks also help me to get to the studio.  If my energy and confidence are low, I can at least sharpen pencils,  then usually once I'm in the studio one thing leads to another and I'm working.  I have a sort of 3 step hierarchy of projects, from easiest to hardest.  Here's what my list looks like right now:

Easy:

Sharpen pencils

Sharpen crayons with knife

Gesso paper

Pull fabrics for projects

Pull papers for collage

Do black and white mark making papers for collage

Improv stitching of scraps

Medium:

Work on black and white collage with stitching

Make black and white prayer flags

Do small painting exercises

Piece together improv bits into a whole

Challenging:

Paint large

Fit a shirt pattern

I do like a plan! Even though I seldom stick to it all the way. 

Right now I'm focusing on black and white.  I started a small 12" square series based on Vessels.  Here's the starting point as I roughly scribbled lots of different vessel shapes onto gessoed paper.  Whether any of these end up with a final vessel shape is yet to be seen, but there's the starting point.

And I started with lots of mark making on 3--22x30" sheets of heavy watercolor paper.  This stage is always so much fun.  I'm hoping to keep recording them daily to see how they develop.

 Shoot!  I just realized this is the same painting upside down after I added a tiny bit more!  Oh brother, well I'll post the third one next time.

More Stitching Catch-Up

Still catching up on my stitching.  I just got out my July 2016 stitch project to join together and usually I'd have it all done by this point.  So here are some of the components before the layout begins.

 I love how the extra "O" formed from the raggedy threads on the top.  Soon to be lost when it's joined with another piece.

I enjoy doing these daily stitch projects so much that I have begun to ponder my 2018 project.  One reason it's on my mind is that as soon as I pull out the 2016 pieces, I realize how much more enjoyable that one was than my 2017 project.

A bit of my 2017 project

I think it's that I feel more constrained in the 2017 project.  I originally planned on it consisting only of marks and stitches, but I missed chunks of fabric too much, and it needed a little more solidity.  The 2016 let me mix up lots of bits of fabric and had a lot more room for compositional play.  No idea how all this will translate in 2018, but I'm hoping something pops up that incorporates my main loves of raggedy scraps, marks and stitches, simplicity of materials, and lots of room to play.  Any ideas are welcomed!