Autumn leaves

It may be 1st December and officially the start of winter but there are still some lovely colours in the autumn leaves around.

Another birthday card

Another cut paper Birthday card. I used images of flower stems from a garden magazine as inspiration.

Paper cutting

Paper cut card for my daughter's birthday this week. Think it looked better before I cut detail on the flowers. Live & learn!

Finished!

The first two pieces of work based on the Bath curse tablets are finished! The first one is 'Rolled and Folded' to represent how the prices of lead were when they were cast into the water. The second piece doesn't have a title yet but is of lettering from one of the tablets.

Paper cutting workshop

I spent the weekend at a paper cutting workshop with Sarah Morpeth at Sue Brown's yard studio in Cheltenham. First we practised cutting random shapes then we made simple book structures to cut into. (I did one on white paper with a watery theme & the other on black paper of a night flying owl). On Sunday we created more complicated paper cut books. They had multiple pages and we were able to incorporate flying birds, bees or butterflies on wires. Mine is 'Cat among the pigeons' - it's a bit hard to photograph. Other people did flowers, flames, canna lilies etc that were coloured with gouache or air brushed. One person made her book out of an old map.

Still life

At the drawing class the other day we were doing a still life, looking in particular at the ellipses of the crockery. We had to set up construction lines to help us get more even shapes and draw all the object outlines one over the other. After doing several pencil drawings I decided to try it in fabric & stitch using the scraps that I'd taken with me that day. I did the construction lines in a thin sewing thread & the outlines of the objects in a thicker thread. Each object had its own scrap of fabric & these were layered up.
Whilst with a pencil drawing you can go over & over the rounded shapes and then thicken up on the line you want it's much harder in hand stitch. To just cast yourself off out into the expanse of cloth is quite daunting! Yes, I know I could have unpicked lines & restitched them but I didn't want to do that. It was an interesting exercise.

Printing

I've just finished cutting a Lino block of text from one of the Bath curse tablets to print onto fabric and use in one of my proposed pieces. It's been a real struggle to cut on a small scale.

More dyeing

The other day I found these pieces of cloth and some papers still tied into bundles in the steamer in our shed. They've been steamed again, soaked in vinegar and then washed in the machine. They were bundles I wrapped in August 2015 according to the labels! Just hadn't got round to steaming them. The plant material like golden rod, bramble etc were rather dried out but I thought I'd give them a go but then forgot about them again. So, in places the rusty objects have eaten through the cloth. But I think they may be just what I need for next months SAB book as the theme is Boro - a Japanese term for patched and layered, mended and recycled textiles. Mostly they are blue from indigo dyeing but I think we saw brown ones in the London exhibition a few years ago.

Dyeing

A range of fabrics dyed in various shades of grey for working on this week to make a piece based on the lead curse tablets from the Roman baths at Bath.

Leaf books

Printing done. All slightly different. Covers next then pack up and take to SAB tomorrow ready to go to Baltic.

Finished!

The set of 20 leaves as rubber printing blocks are finished. Now to make some little books to print them in.

Postcards

New batch of altered postcards ready to go out to the other BB members. We're altering postcards from our last exhibition then sending them round to be altered again several times. They will all be shown at our next exhibition in September this year, some of which will be available to visitors to take away and alter themselves which in turn will go into the exhibition next year.

New project

All excited today at the thought of a new project! Not much time to complete it. Stroud Artist Books are taking part in the SVA Open Studios shortly and we are all making some printing blocks out of ordinary rubbers. The idea being that each visitor to the open studios will be given a little pass book that they can fill with stamped images as they go round. The rubber stamps have to be made by next week. So this morning on the walk I collected a selection of tiny new spring leaves from bushes and trees. They seemed really small but I've struggled to find rubbers large enough. I thought I'd print them and make those into little books for the SAB stand at the Baltic that is also coming up.