doodling – Daily Fiber

Last Saturday, I was wanting to just mess around with mark-making in my sketchbook. As I opened my pen case, I spied a dip pen that I had purchased, but never really used. Grabbing a bottle of Sumi ink, I got busy. It was fun! After I had marked up the paper quite a bit, I added some watercolor crayon for color, and spritzed water on sections.

That exercise left me warmed up and wanting to do more. I turned to this photograph of Mogadore reservoir that I had taken while visiting Ohio in November of 2020.

After blocking the scene in pencil, I used watercolors to paint the background. The dip pen and ink came into use for the foreground branches.

This little 4 x 6 painting will be a nice postcard to send home.

For the past three days I have been irresolute about making new fiber objects. I haven’t been idle – not a chance of that! But I felt more internal about my efforts than external, that is, not ready to show or talk about them.

Consolidate: (verb) 1. to join together into one whole. 2. to make firm or secure.

Gestate: (verb) to conceive and gradually develop in the mind.

Internalize: (verb) to incorporate within the self as conscious or subconscious guiding principles through learning.

If you ever start to feel you are stuck creatively, I suggest you reframe your status with the verbs above. It could be that you are not stuck at all but are internalizing.

A week ago, I agreed to offer fiber arts lessons again to the local homeschool association. To keep from being overwhelmed, I suggested that I teach project or workshop-type lessons. So part of my time has been spent on writing syllabi for these workshops. The first topic is crochet. I propose to teach crochet in the round.

**View of my worktable with two crocheted baskets in use.**

I finished the syllabus for this workshop and made this sample.

It has been a while since I’ve created with yarn. It felt good to get back to it.

Secondly, I have been fooling around with pattern and paint on my color washed fabrics. Using foam, felt, cotton yarn and cardboard, I made these stamps.

I then proceeded to use them on this sample as well as a dark gray sample. My paint selection included Jacquard Textile paints, which are semi-transparent, Pebeo Setacolor opaque white, and some metallic acrylic paint I had laying around. Here are my doodles.