Crafty Wonderland!

I applied for Portland's fabulous Crafty Wonderland a while back and I was very excited to learn I was accepted!  I've been waiting to mention this news until my name was actually there on the website - I guess it didn't feel official yet.  

I've been strategizing a few new display ideas and coming up with some new things to sell over the last few weeks.  So I've been in the studio quite a bit but I don't have anything that looks like completed artwork to show you yet.  I'm having a ton of fun testing out some block printing on fabric and I found some lovely scarves to print on.

More soon!

green encaustic collage and a tattoo! (but not on me)

Here's another little encaustic collage...having so much fun making these.  I still feel like I'm getting the hang of the medium somewhat but I love the possibilities with depth and layering.  I do kind of like it not to be too smooth - I think you're supposed to be striving towards smoothness but I like some variation.

I got an email last month from Jesika who wanted to incorporate some of my hellebore drawings into a tattoo.  She designed this herself and very kindly sent me photos because I was very keen to see what she came up with!  And then I promptly forgot they were in my inbox, ha ha.  Jesika does some pretty amazing work of her own and I'm very pleased to have been involved in this amazing tattoo!  Thanks Jesika!

lilac encaustic

These shiny encaustic pieces are turning out to be difficult to scan - the glossy surface seems to confuse the scanner and parts of it get blown out.  But I can't get the level of detail I want with photos.  So here's a combination of both...hopefully that gives an idea of what this actually looks like between the two.

I'm trying to get the layers of papers and lines and image transfers to be a little more transparent so you can see through and under them.  Making the lines onto the gesso a bit darker seems to be helping, and I printed out some image transfer bits that are essentially clear with a floating image (in this case the handwriting) on them.  I think that's giving it a feel that's closer to my digital collages where all the layers are working together.

I also decided to start blogging some of my sewing projects but I wanted to keep this space just for art.  I mean, why neglect one blog when you could neglect two??!?  So here's the sewing blog, if you're curious.

not-quite-spring cleaning!

I decided it was time for a change and freshened up my portfolio site a bit.  It's not drastically different but I like it.  It's the same company as before but an updated version of the software that gives me a little more flexibility in the formatting and such.

I've also been working on getting some shows set up for this year which involves lots of writing emails and reading calls to artists and not so much actual studio time.  I'm back in there now and I'll have a couple new pieces to put up here shortly.

I did a lot of sewing and crafty things over the course of November and December.  I've got to stop making handmade Christmas gifts!  It sucks up all my studio time and makes me a little crazy every year.  I need to pick maybe one thing that's small and goes to somebody who appreciates it properly.  Or skip it altogether...  

And then my January has been kind of a wash too!  We flew to CA to visit family and I always catch something when I travel.  This cold just won't go away.  I had a great time in the studio yesterday and then today I feel like death again.  Can't wait for spring...

Ok, that's enough grumbling.  My fingers are crossed that things will be getting back to normal soon.  

more waxing

Two more encaustic pieces, 8x8".

These turned out oddly much warmer in tone than the last two.  The only thing I did different (I think anyway) was melting the encaustic medium in a different container.  And the medium is a bit thicker although I put on fewer layers.  I guess I wanted to try encaustics to introduce a bit more unpredictability into my work so...success :)

I like that using the TAP transfer paper in and on the wax instead of on paper is that the transfers tend not to dominate the piece so much.  The photos I included in these pieces would have ironed on about 5 times darker than they look here.

feeling fall

In between the encaustic experimenting I was working on a couple of pieces on paper.  This piece had an unexpectedly autumnal sort of pink when I came back and looked at it again.  I meant to just make a toned-down pink but it feels like a fall color to me.

I bought some 300 lb. hot press watercolor paper on sale and I really like that ironing on the image transfers is less likely to warp it.  The other pieces usually came back to being pretty flat but this is even smoother.  And obviously it's less prone to buckling when it's wet since I don't like to have to stretch the paper.

mad scientist-ing!

Hey there!  I've been busy since I last posted - did some art walks at a couple places and I did my first outdoor art fair.  And then I picked up something new and was just doing test pieces and experiments but at long last I have something done that I'm happy with.

I've wanted to try encaustic for ages but I was always concerned about how fragile the finished pieces are.  I happened to pick up a book on a 50% off table at the local craft store and it reminded me how much I love the look of it.  So sheer yearning won out over practicality and I got the book.  I had to get a few supplies like an electric griddle and so on but it's not too terribly difficult to get started.

It took a while to figure out how to incorporate the collage bits and the image transfers.  I came up with a few things I liked - there's lines drawn straight onto the panel in colored pencil because regular pencil smudged when I put the first layer of wax on.  Guess how I found out...  You can see a bit of the smudges still on the top piece.  I picked up all the graphite on the second one and redrew in colored pencil and it stayed put.

There's watercolored and colored-penciled pieces of cut paper and then obviously image transfers.  Surprisingly I can use the same transfer paper as before - just burnish it on and then apply heat once it's down.  It's iron-on for everything else but it comes off without heat onto the wax and then smooths out nicely under the heat gun.

The triangles are graphite pencil transfers onto the top of the wax.  They burnish on nicely and then set with a little zap from the heat gun.  The top piece is 8x10" and the bottom is 8x8".

It's super fun and so far I'm pretty excited about having collages that are flat but with lots of depth.  And I'm glad to have something finished finally that I can post here!  I definitely feel like a mad scientist :)