Productive Day

Just checked on my ToDo/Done list and it has been a very productive day!!

Block printed 3 wolves, 3 apples, 3 rice 

Cleaned off Island 

Prepped Brown Snow-dyes 

Cut muslin for an upcoming art piece

Decided on images for that piece

Cut muslin for Pecans – Sapling and marked off boundaries 

Chose concept for SAQA Text Speak 

Set Snow-dyes for batching 

Evaluated Show/Exhibit CFE schedule 

Stitched first piece to Up Close and Personal 

Overdyed green experimental piece 

Blogged and blogged and blogged

Here is my latest on the Minneapolis Manhole Cover Project which is one of my three series I'm working on this year.

Block cutting completed on Wolf

Background fabric (a snow-dyed piece made especially for this project. Seemed appropriate for a Minnesota project!)

Wolf printed onto fabric with Speedball Block Printing Ink.

I use an oil base printing ink so Woflie has to dry overnight

While I had the ink all out and ready...I also printed the Apple and Rice manhole covers for this project and two other prints of all three of them for two other projects.  Now I'll be ahead on those!!

The Manhole Cover Project Rebirth

It's been a while now since this story began.

I had just completed a workshop on lino cutting and printing when I was downtown Minneapolis with a friend and we found the Nicollet Mall manhole covers designed by Kate Burke.  Possibly because I had just taken that workshop but I sooooooo saw them as beautiful potential lino prints!  With the help of the Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce, I was able to get in touch with Kate and she graciously gave me permission to use her art and to interpret it into mixed media textile art.  Then life went slightly (ok...a lot) off the rails and the project sat dormant for a bit. But starting in an online group with no rules and the artists get to chose their theme and size, etc., I knew it was time to dust it off and get it done!!

Here are the manhole covers on the Nicollet Mall as shown on Kate Burke's website.  You can see why I fell in love with them!!  http://katekburke.com/section/143737_Manhole_Covers.html

So although I do have a couple of them cut already, I'm using the one I'm currently working on so you can see the whole process.  So far I have a printout of the photo, made a line drawing from that photo, transferred the image to the print block and have just begun to carve out the bits I don't want printed.

It is a long process...the cutting part.  And actually I think the wolf is the most difficult image of the 11 of them. And so it begins......

Journal January 2011 - Day 18

Got inspired this morning and completed TWO journal pages! Well....this second one was rather a fun lark and just playful.  I didn't plan really - just took it as it came.  I had a bunch of tools on my work area so I just grabbed what was at hand and started making funky letters.  It reminded me of how we "decorated" our bookcovers with those big fat letters when I was in school.  Who knew it was art back then???  But the practice came in handy it seems!

And my zebra still likes to peek in and play on some pages now and then.......

Journal January 2011 - Day 18 - Lettering



Now, only day 15 to get to....then 19 thru 24.  Whew! I hope I make it by the deadline! (Obviously the deadline is NOT the end of January...thankfully!)

Journal January 2011 - Day 13

And another interesting day! This one is really playful.  The idea is to just draw lines on the page and see what happens.  What do you see?  What forms take shape? Which lines go together?  I'm enjoying the "not having to be perfect" aspect of these recent pages.  I'm LOVING the play time! Now what will be interesting is how continuing this will impact my other art.  Being foot-loose and fancy-free in one's journal is totally different than being that way in the art one presents to the world....and perhaps hopes to sell. But will the playfulness and freedom carry over anyway?  Will it be something acceptable?  Only time will tell I suppose.  Or perhaps the whole thing is to have a very playful area to bring the relief of the precise in other areas??? hmmmmm interesting thought....well....interesting to me anyway!  So, here is my journal page for Day 13 - Taking a Line for a Walk

Journal January 2011 - Day 12 - Taking a Line for a Walk

Journal January 2011 - Day 10

I know I'm four days behind! But I had some projects that HAD to get out the door to meet deadlines! But today I'm back!

Day 10 is a Dragonfly.  There really is a Twelve Spotted (or Striped) Dragonfly!  Who knew??  With the black and white stripes it goes so well with the Zebra as a Design Element theme.  Also, I planned to have the dragonfly to be seen in the reverse view of the Stripey Window. (one of the advantages to being behind!!) 

Working on some other projects tonight and hoping to get to day 11 tomorrow! I desperately need to get two done on a couple of days to at least get CLOSE to getting caught up!

Journal January 2011- Day 10 - Dragonflly

Dragonfly seen through the reverse view of Stripey Windows

Journal January 2011 - Day 9

Ok, so I'm not a really "stripey" person as a rule and frankly, was not looking forward to this page very much at all.  But then I decided to tear some of my TONS of paper towels I've collected. These are paper towels used to clean up messes mostly after dyeing fabric.  I found early on that they are often quite gorgeous!  Knew they would come in handy more than once!  And here they are the stars of the page!

I also used white acrylic paints with the lino cut zebra elements from a previous page to add some depth to this page.  Don't know if you can see it or not, but I journaled in the white parts of the zebra striped tissue paper.

Zebra Stripes and So Much More!

Some new ATCs and Lino print

I'm playing swap on an ATC group and the theme for this one is "On The Map" Believe it or not, I had TWO fabrics with maps on them! So, of course, two of them had to be with fabric. The first one was made for the swap but I just couldn't part with it. I actually RODE my bike from Minneapolis to Sturgis one summer (didn't trailor it). So, it will stay with me and I made the other four to swap.

Open Road

(The background is map fabric - with Sturgis, of course!!! The bottom left corner is melted Tyvek painted black with tiny silver brads - to represent my leather bike jacket)

(I SOOOOOO miss my bike!)

Country Road

(this map is really old. Got it in an ephemera lot on e-bay a while ago)

April in Paris

(the second one with map fabric - this one is a map of Paris)

A New Way Of Seeing

(another old map from the ephemera lot. The title is from a quote by Henry Miller - “One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.” )

A Little Traveling Music

(new map with a music stamp and cut out car)

Another place I love to play online has a printing sub-group. The current challenge is to cut a tulip. Here's what I did for that one.

The lino cut (apx. 4"x 6")

Multiple prints on printer paper just as a test to see what it would look like

Single print on watercolor paper in case I want to paint it sometime!

That's it for now. I'll be posting a couple of times today. I've just had so much fun playing that I haven't taken the time to post until today!

New Class - Lino Cutting and Printing

Wow! Another class. It's been WAY too long! I am taking a class in cutting and printing lino taught by Dijanne Cevaal. So far I've finished lesson one and will download lesson two today.

First, here is the sampler I guess you could call it. It was great to see how each blade worked and what could be done with it. As you can see.....I perhaps took the term "gouge" a bit too literally in a couple of places!!! Oh and the red on this is NOT my blood, just some red paint that got on it.

Then I found a piece of "not exactly my favorite" hand dyed fabric....green in this case. Took yellow cream acrylic paint and applied it to the lino and then pressed it on the fabric.

Part two was to do a leaf in positive and negative. I found a great line drawing of a sycamore leaf that I liked so I used that design. The negative is on the left and the positive (which is a bit more difficult to see) is on the right.

Then printed it on the same green fabric but this time with red paint. Obviously, the positive print is on the right and the negative print on the left.

OK, so now onto lesson TWO!!!