For another art adventure we broke out the Setacolor paints and fabric for some sun painting. It was good, sloppy, messy fun… outside . First we painted, then we let the sun do it’s thing. The dog was very interested in all of this. I also managed to sun paint a perfect square on the grass. That part wasn’t planned. I’ll aim for the driveway next time. We also finished the project with lots of painted fingers. So I had the kids wash with Reduran and the texture freaked them out a bit, it was kind of funny.

After the sun painting was done I was left with a little bit of paint left over. So I stuck several used dryer sheets into the containers and soaked up the leftovers. Here they are drying on the fence.

Then a few days later I did some screen prints of grape leaves and tried it on some dryer sheets. Came out pretty interesting. The images print on the sheets and the fabric. I found that the sheet could easily be removed for twice the printed images or you can leave the sheets to dry on the fabric and they will be very stuck. Also did one regular print. I used the Golden Silk Screen Gel and Neocolor Crayons for these.

There were a few weeks of very exciting weather around here. Lots of thunder and wind to keep everyone on their toes. But after one afternoon of rather harsh weather we were left with a lovely rainbow. I don’t recall ever seeing one with such vibrant colors.

For that reason I ironed the screened images outside. Yes, there was a bit of a funky odor. Nothing awful. But open a window or turn on an exhaust fan when you do this. So here’s the ironing outside on the picnic table.

Here’s the images. Really just tests of the mediums. The images were made out of things I just threw together.I like the stuff. It leaves the fabric looking and feeling like fabric.

With these, I screened once with plain gel then again with tinted gel, all while wet. It does take a few hours to dry before you can iron. But it’s been rather humid so that could vary.

Then this morning I got curious about if this stuff could be used in an image transfer and leave the same fabric feel behind. So I found an old image and tried it. It worked.

I think you may need to use a larger amount of the stuff. This came out a little faded. But I slapped it on pretty quick and unevenly. And I had to leave it for at least an hour before I had a decent transfer. So interesting to say the least.

Much of my time has been tangled with family activities, photographing vintage artwork, and graphic design jobs. I really want to do some fabric dyeing with this ghastly hot weather going on right now. So I keep doing little bits of prep work when I get spare moments. I did finish this piece, finally. It came out pretty well.

It’s size (22 x 28) made it a bit of a challenge. I know I usually like to work large, but this just seemed a little to big, even for me.

The garden(s) are doing really well this year. I actually have produce growing successfully! The potato plants are taller than the four year old and are flowering. Even found a rogue tomato plant growing outside the raised bed. It doesn’t take much to impress me sometimes.

Here’s the latest journal page I did for the round robin journal book I’m doing with the art group.

And we did celebrate Independence Day in the traditional manner. Food and fire.

Where’s the artwork, you ask? Collecting dust at the moment. I’ve been buried under several graphic design jobs with big deadlines for the past few weeks. All very good for business, but I’m rather tired out by the days end and not feeling creative. I’ve been feeling guilty about this but there just isn’t a whole lot I can do about it. But I may have a very welcome break this weekend. I’m hoping to dive into several projects and make some sort of progress.

I did work on a little fun thing Lynn asked me do last week. She is working on selling thermofax screens and she asked me (along with a few other artists) to make some designs. So here’s the only new photo I have at the moment.

My little laptop (before the new computer) set up on my work table, drawing tablet attached, a glass of wine, surrounded by neglected art tools. I have some other ideas for thermofax designs stuck in my head, the plan is to get those worked out very soon.

Oh! West Winds Studios Flickr page is up and running. I have lots more things to add to it but there is a lot there to look at now. I’ve been reading letters and articles from Irene’s papers for a few weeks now. She was quite a character and she had an amazing life. She took a life study drawing class (yes, naked people) taught by an old man who was an artist in Paris with the original Impressionist artists. Seriously! How cool is that! We still have all of her drawings from that class. They are on my list to photograph, but that list is pretty long at the moment. So be patient.

Hopefully by Monday I’ll have photos of some of  my artwork for you.

Here’s the garden spaces all planted up for the season:

Also have lots of flowers in full bloom around the house:

Since I’ve been outside so much there hasn’t been as much of creative juice for the artwork as there usually is. But I’ve managed to get a few things in here and there. Still been messing around with the deconstructed screen printing. This one below has been printing twice. I want to incorporate stitching and whatever else comes to mind, when I get the itch to work on it again.

Then I made my first Flip Journal. Thanks to Kate in my art group for showing us all how to do it in a great demo!

Here’s the pages I did for the round robin journal exchange. This is Lynn’s poetry themed journal. One poem is by William Blake and the other my son. He was really excited to see me make something out of one of his poems.

Then I finally got to reinforcing my fabric box. I was given some old welding rods by my next door neighbor. So I metal embossed them, cut then glued then stitched them into the interior of the box. The box is now looking much more box like. Then I stitched my box top hinges into place, because gluing them never really worked. I may or may not do more, it’s kind of a mood thing at this point.

Still working on photographing Irene’s artwork. The flickr page should be public soon. I’ll keep you posted.

So I am trying really hard to stay out of trouble. Still photographing artwork at the in-laws and working a couple graphic design jobs. Everyone in the house is sick in one form or another. I have a Spring cold from hell right now. We have all these beautiful Spring days that I should be out enjoying, but no, I’m inside snuggling up to a box of tissues instead. The artwork producing for the last week or so has slowed to a trickle, if not stopped completely.

For the time being, I think I’ll just get the rest of my work shipped out and enjoy the fact that I’ve managed to get some good stuff done so far. I’ll get back to the blogging in the next few days, but right now I need a tissue.

I spent longer than I did before on refining the drawing on the screen than I had in the past. I think this really paid off. I also went back after I did this initial rubbings and used watercolor pencils to work more definition into some of the lines. The use of white was also new for me.  It put in a nice contrast with the mass of dark colors. So here you can see the screen and the print for the first print called Impromptu.

That one came out so darn well I had to try it again with a slightly different design but similar to the first one. I called this one Reverberation. The second one is a photo of it drying, hanging on it’s side.

In the midst of this creation (over several days), my friend Lynn invited me to a Golden Paint Demo. I’ve been using their products since my art school days and I love them. I learned so much and gathered oodles of information in just that little session, my head was buzzing for hours afterwords. I really wanted to try and screen print with some the Open paints. They take longer to dry, hence they could make a cool screen print. Victor happily took a quick break from work one day and ventured over to the Dick Blick store in Dearborn to pick up some of these for me:

Aren’t they pretty!? Deep, rich earthy tones just waiting for messy printing fun.

So here was my idea. Every time I do a print I will usually do two or three pieces from each screen because I can’t stand to let any leftover crayon still on the screen go to waste. Problem was that only the first print was really usable and the second and thirds were pretty washed out. Hence I pretty much just wasting fabric and matte medium. So last night I mixed up some Open paints with fabric medium, did some quick designs on the screens and overprinted the washed out second and third prints with the paint mixtures. I tried to match my crayon colors to the paint colors I was going to use, with some variations. Are you following me so far? Maybe the photos will help.

Here’s the screen ready for printing. I’m using faded prints from the Impromptu design mentioned earlier.

Here’s the paint mixed and ready to go. I didn’t mix as much as a would for first time print. This stuff ain’t that cheap, but the colors are very strong, so I didn’t want to over do it. I used a brush to add in one other color, just to see what would happen.

Here’s the first one: (yes, it’s upside down)

It came out really cool. But I realized (duh) that the surface isn’t going to be soaking up the paint like it does with a first print so I got some globby type marks when I pulled the screen up. But it kinda looked good, so I left it for the first one.

For the second one, I got a similar type glob but I decided to take a paint brush to it. That was fun too. Got a totally different effect that was just as interesting. Sorry about the glare here.

So all-in-all a pretty successful experiment. I’m hooked. Onto the next print!

Here’s some photos of my organizing and the Christmas card box.

And here are just a couple more of Irene’s paintings. You can see them all on the Flickr site. This is Marionettes in Rehearsal and The Prophet.

But with all that I have been visiting my in-laws once a week to photograph paintings. Irene’s story continues to unfold for me and I am loving it. Her story would make a great novel. Maybe someday it will. Her self portrait was pulled out of a second ‘Paintings Closet’ and I could stare at this for hours and still not see all the symbolism. Silent Shrine was in memory of the bombing of Hiroshima and it is an amazing piece of work.  The Mystic creeped me out, but so far that is the only one.

I head back this week again with both the boys in tow. The older one is off for the week. So they get to have some quality fun time with Grandpa which will probably involve some water balloons and/or water guns. I’ll be sure to pack a change of clothes for them.

At some point this week, I hope to reassemble my work area and get back to work on something creative.