So what do I do now?

The PMS’s and PCs were handed in yesterday, and then we had an interesting talk from Pauline Thomas – altered books, work about the passage of time – what’s not to like? She even inspired me to think about videoing some of my pieces – yes, me, the technophobe, who has never videoed anything in her life except by accident when she pressed the wrong button on her camera. Need to get a tripod though…

Then we had our usual college Christmas do and came home.

Since when Wensleydale has got fed up of me whining ‘I’ve got nothing to do. I'm bored.’ Not completely true, I had presents to wrap and cards to write [Christmas, 2 birthdays and a wedding anniversary – it’s an expensive time of year.]

Then I remembered that college may be over but POT goes on, so he had to be added to and photographed.

He’s getting to be quite a big boy, just over 2 metres/ 6 foot 6.

That reminded me to go out into the cold and photograph the others.

Remember ‘Plastic’?  Last week he looked like this.

 

 

 

 

Today he looked like this.  I’m not sure when he came down, but we’ve had some pretty stormy weather recently, and his strings had broken.

 

 

Good job I didn’t spot him earlier or I'd have been panicking about changing the photos I was handing in. [I suppose I could e-mail a copy? – no, that way madness lies.]

Mmm – what to do? Leave him there or restore him? Time for what I have learned from Pauline Thomas is called an intervention.

 

 

 

 

 

This pathetic object, on the other hand, is staying just as it is.

though when it has completely disintegrated I may collect the tubes and see if I can do anything with them – I have vague thoughts of a piano hinge book of these photographs…

[Why are some of my pieces gendered [always male] and some not?]

The other pieces are coming on well, too - ‘Country Gardener 1’ is disintegrating nicely -

 

 

 

 

 

and interesting things are happening to ‘Storm Cones’.

And then I decided it was time for something completely different

and completely purposeless – a gold book.  [The cover – recycled wrapping paper - is a uniform colour, that’s my shadow!]

It was late by then, I was tired, I rushed it and it shows – but it was good to make something which has no connection with college at all! Perhaps some small bits of gold embroidery now to go in it?

I should keep my mouth shut…

After my last post everything went pear shaped.

1. I woke up the next morning with a painful right arm – pulled muscle? RSI/arthritis? Who knows? By moving the laptop onto my lap, mousing left handed and rationing my computer time, I’ve managed to get everything done, and the arm is less painful than it was – but doctor’s again if it doesn’t get better soon.
2. Both computers developed problems, and as W. knows even less about them than I do, guess who ended up clicking and cursing? I got everything sorted without having to phone India, one of several drawbacks to getting your broadband from BT, but I do wish people wouldn't update things – updated versions are rarely an improvement. And I have no idea why the new mouse will work on W’s laptop and not mine…
3. Yesterday afternoon, timetabled for a gentle sorting out of my on-line course diary, turned into sitting in ENT waiting to have a silent hearing aid sorted out. The annoying thing was that when I realised what the problem was [a blockage in the tube after I ‘cleaned’ it] I could have sorted out myself in 5 minutes. Still – I learned that the best time to go to the drop-in clinic is 3 pm – and it wasn’t last Friday, when things at our hospital got a bit dramatic. [According to this, it could have been interesting there yesterday too.]

Despite all these little interruptions, Modules 10 & 12 are now finished, boxed up, and ready to be handed in tomorrow – and Wensleydale  has been informed that the Penderyn he bought for Christmas will be opened a little early.

I am always surprised…

by how much I can achieve on a day when I have a good night, get up at a reasonable time, and don’t have to go out. As I’ve been sorting out college stuff,  I don’t have much to show to show for it – one box with Module 12 stuff - the Personal Cloths and associated paperwork - which is more or less complete – and one box for Module 10, the sketchbooks, which isn’t – but I feel much more confident I can get everything assembled in time.

I still have to write the evaluation - I intend to do that tonight - a final round up of the scraps of paper with notes on which are scattered round the house, and the diary, which I'll do when I’ve finished everything else

I even ventured out into the wind to take some photographs – nowhere as bad here as it is in Scotland, but still pretty windy. ‘Country Gardener 1’ is beginning to decay quite nicely, but photographing the deterioration was impossible.

 

 

I did manage clearer images of ‘Cellophane’ than this one – but this is the one I like best!

 

 

 

Not surprising that it has shed some components.

 

I also managed a bit of cooking.

Well, back to the grindstone.

So now it’s Tuesday…

and I meant to post sooner – although I’ve nothing very exciting to show.

Saturday was the first free day we’d had for ages – so I had a good chance to get cracking on all the paperwork for college. It was sunny [part of the time] and windy [all of the time] which meant I could get a bit of movement - so I took a few more photos – and then spent the rest of the day playing around with them.

Guess who’s worked out how to use the ‘burst’ setting on her camera?

I’ve resurrected the Tumblr account I started months ago, and will try to upload the images there, so as not to bore you if you are not interested – but don’t rush over there if you are interested, I’ve only got one two up so far…

On Sunday we VHC sat while his mum, dad and big sister went to the panto. The normal pattern with the VC is that he consumes all that his mum has left for him, plays for a bit, sleeps for a bit, wakes up and demands more, before his mum gets home, when we are unable to provide it.

As it was sunny we decided to take one boy and his dog for a walk – during which he fell asleep – here’s the proof.

And he slept, and slept, and slept – and when we left his mum and dad were dissuading big sis from waking him up. ‘Let sleeping babies lie.’

He missed some stunning skies – after it stopped being sunny.

Yesterday we went to Mottisfont, which has two art exhibitions on at the moment.  It was wet and getting dark so we skipped the angels in the garden and went to look at ‘Cutting Edge – Contemporary Paper Art’. Bet you’re surprised…

You are probably familiar with the work of Rob Ryan – I've bought several of his cards, but it’s well worth going to see his bigger pieces, and marvel at the man’s patience. I had come across John Dilnot’s work on line - but the others were new to  me. I was especially struck by Eileen White’s piece in the downstairs corridor – an installation+paper+shadows = magic. and now I’ve Googled her I remember admiring that piece in the Cathedral last year.

Today I have actually done some work – I’ve wrestled with Office/Picasa to print out some images for contextualisation. I keep coming across new artists whose work is relevant – like Barbara De Pirro, [whose name I have misspelled in my documentation – knickers].

If you look at the second group here you’ll know why I had to include her.

After that I wrestled with PagePlus 5/Photoshop/the Epson wide printer to print out some of my photographic experiments for the sketchbook. I can’t get PagePlus to ‘see’ Photoshop documents, and I can’t get the printer and PagePlus to co-operate on where the printable area is on a sheet of A3 – which meant converting all the Photoshopped images to JPEGs, a bit of trial and error, a few notes and lots of frustration.

Right now I should be using that hard won knowledge on some more images, but I’m procrastinating by writing this – and waiting to see what emerges from the small printer, which Quality Control has just set going by walking over it.

It’s a test sheet. How boring.

Where did that week go?

In order of preference, family activities, paperwork and dentist’s visits, that’s where – in addition to the usual routine, of course.

I did finish two things – Wrap and L&F – well, sort of. I’m glad to see the back of L&F, it is completely uninspired and uninspiring.

Wrap is a bit more interesting, and all I need to do now is to work out where and how to hang it. I’ve decided I don’t want to put it outside, as originally planned – so when I’ve worked out how to support it, I’ll have to find a space big enough, at least for long enough for it to be photographed.

I decided that I will present most of my cloths as photographs – which means having decent photographs to present. And although I've been snapping the things weekly for up to two months – the weather has been so drab that most of the photos are a bit dull – and POT has grown so long it is difficult to photograph it full length any more.

Cue a bit of lateral thinking – and the way this collage ended up is down to Picasa, not design…I’ve spent some time pondering on the legitimacy of manipulating the photos, before deciding that, as I could argue that the photos are the cloths as well as the cloths, if you see what I mean, [bit of land art thinking there] it was acceptable to do so. [Bet you’re surprised!]

Hence the desaturated background on this photo of ‘Cellophane’ – which took a good part of the afternoon to do.

I am resisting the temptation to play around with the photos of all 11 cloths. ‘No, Cheshire, you haven’t got time!’

Of course I now have the problem of how to present the photographs. [Did I mention that presentation is one of the marking criteria?] I am trying to resist the feeling that I need to make a book.

Then there is the contextualisation, making sure the diary, planning sheets, and workbook are up to date, putting something vaguely relevant in the sketchbooks, and writing an evaluation – you can see why I decided to start a fortnight before it’s all due in.

In between all this, I fitted in  some gallery visits – the exhausting college trip to the Courtauld Gallery [my new favourite gallery – Manet! Monet! Van Gogh! Gauguin!Cezanne! Matisse!– the Degas’s were presumably on loan to the RA]. Less tiring was a visit to the Hepworth inspired exhibition at the Discovery Centre – mostly less famous names, but some lovely work none the less.

I’m looking forward to a rest at Christmas.

Bad nights…

early mornings and busy days makes Cheshire a dull woman, who doesn’t achieve much apart from rushing around and whinging about being tired.

I did finish this. I found a pattern on Ravelry [sorry, too lazy to finds the link] which used 2 and a bit balls of Cashmerino.As I had 2 and a bit balls of Cashmerino and it was simple enough even for me in my current mood, I cast on. You can see how much I had left.

It will be delivered to the VHC on Sunday when we VHC and Babybel sit, while his mum and dad run a race dressed as Santas. Of course, although it's a three month size, he could have grown out of it by then…

I have also managed to keep  get back up to date with L&F and POT.

A’s green contribution has been joined by an orange one from Babybel. I haven’t measured either of them but I’m having to stand on a stool to photograph both.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And I finally got round to buying some more white floss to assemble the final cloth. Tomorrow I will work out how I want to hang it and, more difficult, where – I am running out of space in the garden.

Then it’s head down, writing up the paperwork for PCs and PMS before handing them in at the end of term – which is all too close!

Today started off well…

but went rapidly downhill in the afternoon.

Printed off my spam messages, rolled them and added them to L&F?  √

Finished another PC? [More details later.]  √

Had an enjoyable lunch with W.?  √

Successfully experimented with inkjet transfer techniques? XXXXXX

A week or so ago, when I was having a procrastinating tidy-up, I came across some of the litter photos [remember those?] which I had printed off for some reason I can no longer remember. So I decided to do nasty things to them, in a spirit of enquiry and filling up space in to make a meaningful contribution to my Personally Managed Sketchbook.

So I glued tissue paper on and drew on top – although it doesn’t show much.

or I scratched and sanded and painted them with watercolour

 

 

 

 

 

 

or painted them with gesso and coloured them with Graphitints

or – most dramatic of all – resisted parts of the image with crayon and then added bleach.

So today I thought I’d try image transfer.

I tried 2 sorts of acrylic gel and plain water.

I tried leaving the image for seconds or minutes.

I tried 2 different sorts of paper, and acetates which turned out to be not the ones you use in ink jet printers [which worked well if you didn’t want a recognisable image]

I looked for the hand sanitizer I once used successfully and couldn’t find it.

And an entire afternoon, much cursing and several cups of tea later I had nothing to show for my efforts apart from a bin full of paper..

Then, in a fruitless search for the right sort of acetates, I came across something called ‘Studio Paper’, which I had bought heaven knows where, and which, though remarkably lacking in anything like instructions for use, implied that you could use it to make transfers just by printing on it and rubbing.

And you know what? You can. Even on to brown paper.

 

 

I also found some sheets of labels I never managed to work out how to print addresses on, and got a rather nice window pane effect, although the labels are a bit reluctant to stay stuck down…

 

 

 

 

So it wasn’t a complete disaster.

Plus I am pleased with these – which I expected to end up looking like lampshades, but which W. has christened storm cones. [He used to live in Whitby – it leads to him coming over all nautical at times.]

Mind you, after I researched storm cones, I can tell you that this signal means there are storms coming from both the north and the south at the same time.

Perhaps I ought to stop whingeing and look on the bright side of life. After all, I have learned that, in the unlikely eventuality that I ever do want to make inkjet transfers again – if I get out the Studio Paper I’ll have no problems. [You can wash off the remnants of your image and, apparently,  reuse it.]