trip back in time

...to December 2010 and the December diptych. The crazy hazy time of the holiday season has kept me from planned posts, but the art did get finished within the time frame. As usual I started with an inspiration from the December 2009 sketch journal. Which oddly enough was the last sketch in the book.I decided to experiment with abandon for this last diptych of the year. First step was taking out two pieces of silk prepared for printing and painting on them a la water color with Tsukineko ink. Here are several in progress shots and a close up. Then I went to play with Photoshop and created a stamp image of the original sketch. Which I then printed on the painted silk. I layered the printed silk on two pieces of silk dupioni that happened to work perfectly with the color scheme. You'll see the dupioni peeking through in later pictures. My base all usual is canvas board which for the fun of it I painted in large happy circles. I free hand machine stitched a few of the circles with variegated rayon thread and then hand stitched the printed silk on to the dupioni silk with different variegated embroidery floss. I outlined some circles and gathered two of the edges. Then I trimmed away the excess. And added a bit more embroidery floss stitches. I used matte medium to adhere the fabric to the canvas boards and to darken the edges and keep them from fraying. Then I used Pebeo gloss puff paint to draw circles around the edges, emphasize other circles and add some fun. Here's a detail. And the final (literally) December 2010 diptych.

addendum

Kristin's comment on my previous post resulted in a slap on the forehead for me.

She said - Nice interpretation. I miss the big white dots from the original though.

Of course! I completely forgot that I totally intended to add those big white dots! Just spaced out I guess, or more likely too busy thinking of the next project in queue.Back down to the studio I went and rummaged through my rarely used button stash. And voila! here is the better (in my humble opinion) November diptych and detail.

november diptych

Skidding in to the end of the year! This is the 2009 journal sketch that I chose to interpret for the November diptych. This is when I was going crazy with shredding magazines, fingers covered in matte medium and loving every messy moment. I didn't want to get as messy this year, but did want capture the feeling of this collage which was one of my favorites. First I dove into my scrap basket and selected the materials. Then I lightly sponge-painted the canvas boards with a silvery gray and a cadmium red acrylic paints, and started laying out the rectangular swatches. Here's a further progression of my design. This about where, all of a sudden, I realized that I had not thought things through far enough and had no idea how I would adhere the swatches to the surface. (I'll blame that on being frazzled by the start of the holiday season...) Soooo....I cut four pieces of light light pink netting and very carefully transferred all the little pieces on the netting and trapped with another piece of netting. grumble.....Then I put the netting sandwich onto a piece of stabilizer and pinned. Took it to my machine and stitched parallel free motion lines to secure all the tiny pieces and keep the brick like feel. Here they are all stitched and still on the stabilizer. Then the messy part of the project started, ripping away the stabilizer.... my vacuum loves me! Here's a detail. And the final diptych. Now off to start on December....

october diptych

I know it's November, it sneaked up on me...but technically I have been working on this diptych all of October. I chose the sketch to interpret in October and it has percolating in my head since then, just did not have the opportunity to get into the physical till this morning. So glad it happened this morning though, because it turned out exactly as I wanted it to despite the fact that I wasn't sure how I was going to proceed when I started. By now some of you might know that I work intuitively and this diptych is the perfect example of it.I started off like I always do by sizing and cropping my sketch in Photoshop. This eventually goes on the back of my diptych as a handy reference of what the inspiration was, but it is also handy to look at it in the correct scale as I plan my approach. Usually the next step is painting my canvases with a base color. But I could not decide what it should be, so I left them blank. I knew I wanted to thread sketch my figure and it occurred to me that I could print it on the stabilizer sheets to use as a guide. I decided to pin them on top of my white cotton sheeting and picked out thread to machine sketch with and thread to embroider with later. Here's the thread sketching with black cotton thread and gray rayon thread. I then tore away most of the stabilizer. I decided not to torture myself with removing all the stabilizer, especially since I liked how the small pieces left over were giving a shadow effect. At this point I also decided to change my approach entirely... I flipped the two quilt sandwiches over and trimmed away most of the batting. Then I trimmed away the excess white fabric and that's when the diptych told me what color I needed to paint the canvas boards.I sponge painted the edges with silver metallic and black acrylic paint, trying to achieve a charcoal look. I was not worried about the center as I knew it would get covered up entirely. I decided not to wait for the paint to dry, added matte medium to the back of my sketches and glued them on the canvases. Then I dug into my recyclables stash and came up with a black plastic mesh bag and black tulle. I tore and ripped and glued little pieces to my hearts content. This part was way more fun then I thought it would be. I really liked the brush stroke like effect that the pieces produced and that I was able to keep the look of the spontaneity and the quickness of the initial sketch. I must admit I did work pretty quick on the whole thing! The longest and most painful part was waiting for the matte medium to dry so I can scan the diptych in for the final jpeg. Tell me what you think!

finally caught up to september!

Yes. I know it's October. But I'm caught up now and that's what counts! This is the inspiration for my September diptych, the simple sketch from 2009. I started off by painting my canvas boards with three (yes three) different shades of red. Why? Because I wanted achieve a slightly mottled background color. Naphthol crimson, cadmium red medium hue and cadmium red deep. I love paint names...Then I started cutting strips of painted dryer sheets (painted a while back just for the sake of painting and knowing they'll come in handy one day), stacking the different lengths and widths and then hand stitching them together with a cotton variegated thread. That's when I decided that I needed something a bit more substantial with the dryer sheets. White spongy packing material fit the bill perfectly. Here it is freshly glued down. And layered with dryer sheet strips. And with more packing strips added on top. Then I found a very light yellow plastic shopping bag, cut out small squares and glued them on in several layers. Here a textural close up for your pleasure! and tah-dah! The September diptych.
I'm starting on October tomorrow so I can be done before November...ahem...

catching up with myself

Catching up with my own expectations and promises... Remember my journals for this year? Or rather journal diptychs? Haven't posted about them for a while, because I haven't done them since June. Life got in the way... But I have caught up, almost, with July and August anyway. Here is the journal sketch from July 2009 that I chose to interpret for the July 2010 diptych. It was a negative space drawing of my aunt's vases in St. Petersburg. The ornate vase is a lovely example of Russian art deco that used to belong to my grandmother. For the back ground on the 8x10 canvas boards I chose newsprint that was a test print for another project that I was working on, it seemed appropriate as the subject matter was poetry about St. Petersburg.Here it is wrapped around the canvas boards, adhered with matte gel medium and the outline of my shapes sketched with pencil. I went over my pencil lines with a brush tipped Pigma pen and pulled out various sheers that I thought would work for my purposes. I cut the sheers into strips of different lengths and widths and layered them on to the surface.Here's a close up of several layers. This a progress shot of several layers. I adhered the sheers with dabs of matte gel medium. Then comes a point in my work where I get so involved in the process that I forget to document it. I added several more layers of sheer strips and added a few lines of delicate cotton thread. This is the final July 2010 diptych. For August I chose this sketch. And decided on a light blue back ground. I mixed my blue and white acrylic paint right on the canvases. It was fun to be messy! Here are the canvases in pale blue. Then I found some light green organza in my stash, layered it with green felt strips and started machine stitching away. Added some more stitching in my doodly style. And as above got carried away and forgot to take more progress shots... I added more stitching, cut away the organza and adhered the pieces to the canvas. And then I added some white paint...So here is the August 2010 diptych.
...off to work on September....