Yo Dawg...

Almost every time I run errands, I pass a framing shop. They have a rotating stock of framed art in the windows, and this one caught my eye more than anything else they've had there in the last 18 months or so. I peeped it every time I walked by for more than a month before I realized, hey, I could just BUY that. And look at it at home... it is like magic. This is a print -- I believe it is etched.

It's about 18"x16" or so.

Legit!!

Hey, I just realized that my e-mails from here have been getting dumped into the Spam folder. Sorry if I missed your comment, I don't even know how long that has been going on. Hopefully fixed now.

After Prisk

From the Bamboo Forests of the Night

From the Bamboo Forests of the Night
Originally uploaded by Patrick Gannon

I know I've said it before, but it (obviously) bears repeating: Patrick Gannon's cut paper artwork is The Bomb. If you haven't, go check out his Flickr stream. If you already have, go look at it again. He posts new stuff pretty regularly, and it never hurts to go back and see the older stuff again.

i dunno lol

I picked up some colored foil last week, and this is what happened to a bit of it today. Dunno what to do with it, but it was fun and looks kinda neat.

Wait for it....

OK, then. This is nearly done. There is one patch of blue that needs to be finished, and one patch of red. (I was working on this on my trip to Vienna, and ran out of those 2 colors.)

I kind of hate the green blobs on the right side, and they were NOT part of the original outline. See what I get for my troubles? I may well pick them out, too. The red net is better than I thought, but still not ideal. Etc, etc. Always a critic.

... and then what? I don't know. Stretch & frame? Sew it on to something else, applique style? See if I can get one of my friends who's done textile art to incorporate it into something grander?

There are a few things I would do differently, now that I've done them this way (thanks, learning experiences!), but that's OK. There will be a next time, and I am definitely getting the hang of some of the techniques. As soon as I finish those last two little bits of missing colors, and probably pick out the green blobs, I'm going to (a) get a color-correct photo of this, and (b) put it to bed. Maybe I'll just start a big collection of smallish, irrational embroidery pieces, which will be of great interest to archaeologists and psychologists in some long-distant future.

In other news, when I was in Vienna (Austria, the rest of this paragraph won't make sense if you think I'm talking about some other Vienna), I stopped by the Museum für Angewandte Kunst (Museum of Applied Art) and lucked out: They had a huge exhibit in their textiles ward on Ottoman embroidered textiles. Clothing, furniture ornamentation, bath towels, and so on.

Last time it was fashions made from recycled materials, and although a ball gown made of grocery bags is certainly Something To See, it has a little less immediacy to my own projects. Although I *do* like to reuse common materials, especially if they are meant to be trash. Nevermind, I think you get the point.

Not only did I see a tremendous collection of inspiring designs and workmanship, but learned a few nifty things. I now know where the term "bath sheet" comes from! It was a great exhibit. My only regret is that old fibers can be very delicate in many ways, so the pieces were behind glass in a dimly lit room. But that's OK, it was worth every minute of squinting.

Here is a link to the museum page for this exhibit. I'll update this later if I can find their English language version. There are a couple of pictures there, and a bit of descriptive text. Also, the MAK is awesome for being free to the public on Saturdays. MAK really is one of my favorite museums, both in focus and operation. [eta: in English]

The Slow March of Progress.

Or, Slowgress, for short.

And then you threw an octopus at my window

And here is the current work in progress. What is it? I don't know. I drew the design out, in a fit of responsibility/optimism. I started stitching in the middle, and plan to work my way out. I have an idea how the colors will go, and maybe the textures.

I'm sure there is too much to this design, and I might cut back on my plan to fill it all in (as I am doing with the bit that's already been sewn on), but who knows. The odds are pretty good that I'll get fed up with this and abandon it before it is done, as well. But for now I am quite hopeful, and some day would like to think of some more rewarding application and design for this stuff. Until then, I will be happily picking away at this hoop.

By the way, when I say I've been fixated with this, I mean just that. I've done almost nothing else for the past 3 weeks. Obviously this is a time consuming activity, and I'm probably slower than a person with more experience would be. Or, maybe the problem is that I go too fast and end up with mistakes and so on. I've never been one to let a little thing like that slow me down.

The Little Gloves That Couldn't

The thing about perfunctory research is that sometimes you begin the project and realize you're screwed. So it was with the gloves. Not only was my design for the gloves faulty in oh-so-many ways, but also, I kind of got carried away with the decoration on the gloves. The left on in particular. Also, the right glove. Oh well, it was fun anyway.

3rd Time, not the charm

The lower/right was totally freehand, as was the black bit on the left. The green marks at the top (with blue stitching over some of it) are the design I thought I wanted, but after doing some with the blue, I realized the lines were far too close together, and I let it go as a waste of time and thread.

Also, I got the crazy idea that I would make a pair of gloves to wear while I work (on paper stuff) because I hate the feeling of paper on my hands.

... so this was left behind, and the gloves were started. After a truly perfunctory amount of research into the manufacture of gloves.

2nd Go

After that first set of stitches, I decided to do something a little more cohesive--a general design picked out in white thread, and then filled with a variety of colors and techniques. I drew a little bit of this with a pencil, which got graphite all over my white thread. After that, I just went totally freehand, sewing the design directly on the unmarked linen.

But then after many, many, many hours of poking away at this, I decide it might be a little too ambitious. Especially as my skills with certain more complicated stitch patterns were lacking non-existent.

This was abandoned in favor of a few smaller practice bits. Sometimes I get too excited about a new thing, and forget that I'm new to it, and don't need to shoot the moon the first time.

By the way, if you click through to the larger size of this picture, you should be able to enlarge it even more from there. Possibly to the point of too much detail. The yellow sort of diamond-shaped bit shows particularly well my lack of awesomeness at this point.

Latest Fixation: Embroidery

Sometime in the past few months, I got hooked on the idea that embroidery and other sewing-related activities might be fun and visually entertaining.

(In case you ever wondered, my Big Artistic Mission is "make stuff that is interesting to look at"...)

So, I picked up one book about embroidery, and was handed the book from a starter kit. Between the two, and an 8 hour transatlantic flight, I was able to pick out a few tentative designs. At the very top (12 o'clock position) are the very first stitches I made. It pretty much had to get better from there...

squidsies

I hope the boy doesn't outgrow them before I get them into the mail...

Tote Bag, hand decorated

This was a fun project. My mother has been asking for a tote bag with a design from me on it, so I made her one.

Today's Drawing Exercise

This one was a bit more fun for me. The assignment was to make some ink (or coffee, or tea, or whatever) blobs on a page, and when it was dry, look for things for the shapes and spaces to become. I'm probably not done with this, I didn't do much with the negative spaces, mostly worked with the positive shapes. I'm amused by it, and will probably do it again. Just for fun. Ever do your homework twice, just for fun? :)

the death march of progress

I had to take it off the easel and put it back on the wall to start liking it again. There is something about staring at a painting very close up that ruins it. Unless it's a Persian miniature watercolor, which this categorically is not.

On the other hand...

Actually... the same hand. Hopefully no more hand drawing for a while. By which I mean, oh, ever.

Baby Squid Baby Shirt

Forgot to say, by request, I worked up a larger version of the Squidly design that's better suited to larger printing. Probably there will be an even larger one later on, but if you know someone whose baby has some kind of Lovecraftian flair, this might be the perfect gift item.

It is a SKILL, not a TALENT.

I can't tell you how many times I've heard that life drawing is a fantastic talent to have. I agree, it would be a fantastic talent to have.... if it were a talent. Which it is not. It's a skill. It can be taught, and frankly, it's not that hard to learn. I suppose it's possible that talent could make it a little easier or faster to learn... but it's also possible that talent makes it MORE difficult to learn, because it seems like it should be easier for an artistically talented person.

For me.... it's more difficult.

Here's why: For a lot of what I like to do artistically, practice isn't a big part of success. Yes, I get better as I do things more often, but in essence, I like the first try, too. This is not the case for life drawing. I get very frustrated with my life drawing skills, and I know it is because I don't practice. I've taken classes, I've read really excellent books about this. I've done a ton of professionally designed exercises. And yet.... I still suck if I don't have step by step guidance. And it's because I don't practice enough.

What you are looking at up above is (left) a drawing of my own hand I made 3 weeks ago, and (right) a drawing of my hand I made this morning, following the explicit instructions in a book by Betty Edwards called Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain: Workbook. If you want to learn to draw, check out her books. They are excellent. The workbook is a really good hand-holder for those of us who are unbelievable slackasses about the practice part of it.

and so it goes

The big painting has reached a phase where, although daily changes can be seen, they are increasingly subtle. So today I am posting one of my favorite bits, something I just started blocking in yesterday: The Upper Left Corner.

It's not much to look at now, but someday it will be a real highpoint of this painting.

... or so I hope.