Did you know I was trendy?

 

http://www.style.com/fashionshows/complete/slideshow/S2012RTW-MKORS?iphoto=10#slide=10

No, neither did I. [I'm sure no one says ‘trendy’ any more, proving irrefutable that I‘m not.] Can’t work out if it’s a wrap, a top or a dress, but I like it – although I would undoubtedly wear rather more underneath.

Coincidentally, I tacked up the hems on this lot yesterday – though as I was watching a bike race at the time, I was a bit distracted. Well – a lot distracted at the end.

250 metres out I was sure he was going to lose.

But he didn’t. And by the end my heart was going nearly as fast as his must have been. [Well, perhaps not quite.]

Several good things have come out of Copenhagen this year.

That was the highlight of my week. College was catching up and finding out what we’re doing this term [‘student directed learning’ mostly]. However next week is ‘print and stitch’ which meant that most of my free time has been spent assembling this lot.

I want to experiment with printing on collaged backgrounds – which meant collaging some backgrounds, both fabric and paper. Then getting things to print with – paint, gesso, gels, Inkaid, stencils, leaves, feathers, collagraph plates, plastic bags, crisp packets – yes, that is a Guinness can  on top.

Then things to stitch with sewing kit, threads – that bit was easy. Plus the stuff I’ve worked on over the summer for a tutorial.

Getting it all out took far longer than the lesson will – and then it will have to be put back.

I took this in to do during lulls in college, and got so much done I was inspired to finish it – though it still needs blocking. I like it, and I enjoyed doing it, but I’m not sure it says anything about litter. So it’s into the box for the tutorial.

 

Tomorrow I need to go through all the other UFOs and decide what to work on next. The partly embroidered photo? The disgusting plastic bag that never got finished? Some more fake cans? Or the adaptation of a Japanese basket using a plastic bottle and plastic bag cord? Decisions, decisions…

Things to do with a photograph.

 

1. Stitch into it –the black line].
2. Set fire to it.
3. Like it.
4. Consider doing the same to 20+ photographs and stitching them together into a hanging, inspired by Bonnie Epstein. The current plan for the hanging is use litter photographs where the litter becomes more and more dominant as your eye moves from the top to the bottom

I had a long discussion with W. about my concerns about originality/derivation/plagiarism. His view was:

1. All artists are influenced by someone.
2. Were the [few] people who tried Pointillism copying/plagiarising Seurat?

To which my answers were:

1. True
2. Possibly – but at least at first, with his knowledge and encouragement.

I find it a difficult issue – working like Seurat [if you’ve got the patience] seems less derivative than working like Warhol. Where does one draw the line? And using a specific technique, like sewing bit of paper together like Epstein,  seems more derivative than using found paper, as she does.

Of course I’m using my own photos rather than found paper, and I’m feeling a bit happier about it since I did the stitching & burning bits, which also seem more developed from the original.

Curiously, I’m not worried about plagiarising people who stitch into photographs – partly because there are several of them, [most recent discoveries here and here] which maybe makes it a movement, like Pointillism – and partly because none of the people I've discovered are using stitched outlines.

Need to get back to college and ask for a tutorial – because as you can see I'm enthused by this.

Probably won’t last.

Sometimes one thing leads to another…

and you suddenly realise the whole day has disappeared.

I meant to spend some time on this – the latest litter beast, known as Mark because it’s green.

But before that I was going to try some ideas from Gina Ferrari's sketchbook ideas on her blog.

Her second suggestion [after you’ve coloured your pages with watercolour and cling film] was to make a mask [or six], colour round the edges on a painted page with white oil pastel, and add more watercolour.

We’ll get back to that one in a minute.

Her third suggestion was potato printing. 

Slight logistical problem here.

No potatoes.

But I did have fun foam – and long term readers will know that I love fun foam stamps: they are a bit like Pringles – you can’t stop at one.

[Sorry about the colours]

 

 

 

 

While I was making stamps, I thought I’d try some eraser stamps on the litter theme.

Dedication or what, drinking all that Guinness in pursuit of my art?

 

Then I remembered an article in a recent ‘Quilting Arts’ about using eraser stamps to make little figures.

After I’d made the first set of body parts I noticed that the erasers I was using had little logos impressed on them, which I didn’t want on my figures, so I had to remake the body, head and feet using non-logoed erasers. Fun results though.

Then I remembered that I wanted to recolour the nasty coloured felt, because, as I expected, the spray paint had washed out. So I mixed up some acrylic and sprayed it with that.

Believe me, this photo flatters it. Do you it looks sufficiently like the rotting contents of a plastic bag you’d rather not speculate about?

When the external examiner told me that ‘It doesn’t have to be beautiful’, I wonder if she knew what she was letting herself in for. And will she live to regret saying it?

But I digress.

As I had paint left over, I decided to try out some of the fun foam stamps.  The green was really too runny, but I like the patterns it made, and the Guinness cans over pre-painted pages worked really well.

Then I tried the masks.

Oh, well, can’t win them all.

I think the technique is great, but it needs:

1. better quality oil pastels
2. a more interesting shape
3. better quality oil pastels
4. more contrast between the underpainting and the overpainting 

And better quality oil pastels.

So, without meaning to, I’ve done quite a lot for the PMS  - on top of the drawing I’ve done for Sian Martin’s Summer Sketchbook Project. 

All litter, apart from the shell. The one on the left is a stripy plastic bag, top right is some crumpled metal. The shell crept in because none of my litter has the right sort of texture.

Oh, and the black felt did shrink. And really interesting things happened to the iridescent plastic when I zapped it.

I’m not sure how that effect fits into my litter theme but I’m going to have a really good try to find something.

An insomniac night…

and an interesting day.

For once I put the insomnia to good use.

First, another variation on the accordion spine with holes in the pages – mostly made from envelopes. And interesting shadows, again.

 

 

Second, a copy of something I saw on a website – and apologies if it was yours, because once again I’ve forgotten where I found it. A tiny Japanese bound book in a matchbox – cover and pages made from collagraphed newspaper.

Interesting that something that small needs lots more stitches to look right, than I would put in a much bigger book.

And finally – a quick alteration of one of my altered photographs, and its inspiration – a postcard I found in a second hand book, of windows in Glasgow Cathedral.

I got lazy and punched the holes in the top, rather than cutting them out – the black marks are my doodling. An idea which needs work, I think - perhaps printing on acetate and mounting in black card windows?

College was interesting today, because, despite having been married for nearly 40 years, and having two sons, I can safely say I have never looked so long or so intensively at a man with no clothes on.

Yes. Life drawing. And I enjoyed it. Even the last hour when I was drawing the gentleman in a pose where he was lying down on his back with his feet closest to me and his head all but hidden.

Like I said – interesting. [Never have we been so quiet. We were concentrating, of course.]

No pictures, though, I don’t want this blog X-rated.

I can show you some of the photos I took in the lunch break, though.

Bluebells 

 

 

 

 

and litter. Do you think this is becoming something of a fixation?

I found them!

The lost prints of my manipulated photos, that is. They were in the drawer where I keep the collaged paper ready to be printed on. [I also found my new bus pass, the absence of which meant I had to pay for the bus yesterday. Not in the drawer this time, but in a safe place…] But I digress.

 

This 

 

 

 

 

 

got ‘Pink Powdered’ in PostworkShop, then printed on Lutradur, and ended up like this.

Not very exciting. I'm tempted to take my soldering iron to it.

 

 

 

This is the same image ‘Collaged’ in PWP. Printing it on collaged paper did nothing for it, as the colours are so strong you can’t see the paper. Drawing on it with a black marker didn’t improve things much

 

 

 

– but the negative scan is more interesting. The white marks are the black marker – if you see what I mean.

 

 

 

This

 

 

 

 

 

 

met the ‘In the Dark’ filter in PWP and went all moody.

 

 

 

 

 

Printing it on newspaper made it even moodier – colour scan at the top, greyscale in the middle, inverted colours at the bottom. Who would think a photo of litter would turn out so well?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And Wensleydale like this one so much, after I’d printed it on newspaper, he took it away and put it in a frame.  This is the Sketchy Marker filter in PWP,

 

 

applied to this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unfortunately for a newly created litter-photographing fanatic, when we went to the seaside yesterday to celebrate Babybel's mummy’s birthday late [Happy Birthday L!] and Mother’s Day early [Happy Mother’s Day all mothers] – there was no litter to be seen. [Well done, whoever clears up the litter in Barton-on-Sea.]

There were other things to photograph though. 

Someone who had an inadvertent swim and had to be changed and wrapped in her daddy’s sweater to get warm.