Posted in drawing, painting

100-Day Project: Days 6 through 12

For this week, I worked with a very nice selection of Bill’s photographs.

I was drawn to this one by its lines, texture and geometry. To bring those characteristics to the fore, I used pen and ink to render the cross.

DAY 6:

Day 7: Adding Sumi ink wash.

Photograph Two

In looking at this photograph of waterlilies, I got the impression that the leaves and blooms rising above the water line looked like actors on a stage, with the flat lily pads as the audience. To emphasize this impression, I used mostly pencil, and a cool wash to the background; warm, bright paint to the subjects.

Days 8 and 9:

Photograph Three.

Bill’s close up of a wood duck was begging for another paint swatch study. So that what I did on Day 10.

First, I brightened up the image using photo editing software. Using my watercolors, I discovered that it took eleven different pigments to match all the different colors of this bird. And after I finished the swatches, I was in love with wood ducks. So, I proceeded to paint him.

Days 11 and 12:

That finished out my week. Looking back at what I had done, I noticed that most of the work was realism. I’d like to challenge myself to try for more abstract images in the next week.

Posted in drawing, sewing

Newsflash – It’s Paper Week!

Newspapers, and nearly all sorts of other papers, are made from fiber. So it is fair game for the Daily Fiber manipulations. The invention of paper can be described as one of the great technologic leaps forward for humankind. As far as I can tell, it was invented multiple times independently around the world. The ancient Egyptians made a sort of paper out of the sedge plant Cyperus papyrus. The type of wood-pulp paper we use today was invented by the Chinese around 2nd century BCE.

Thanks to fellow WordPress writer Jill Kuhn https://artjillkuhn.wordpress.com/ for encouraging me to explore stitching on paper. In no particular order, here are the objects out of paper I propose to make this week.

  1. Paper weaving of portraits
  2. Paper beads
  3. Rice paper Bento Box collage
  4. Collage with sheet music and old maps
  5. Quilling with paper
  6. Origami art installation

As a warm-up, I machine-stitched on some Sumi ink drawings that I did many years ago, when I had an interest in painting Chinese characters. The first is a bamboo image done on newsprint. I stitched the central veins on the leaves.

Wishy-washy looking.

It worked okay. The paper is quite brittle, and the beginnings and endings of the stitch lines tend to pull out of the paper. I’m considering reinforcing them with clear tape on the back of the paper. The next image is painted on rice paper. While this paper is quite thin, it seems a little more resilient than the newsprint paper.

This piece is better than the bamboo, but still a little tentative.

I have high hopes that the rest of the week will bring interesting results using paper.