More colour with silk, latex and felt

Wanted to try some silk painting, bought a meter of silk €10 and then some silk paints also around €10

You have to stretch the material over a frame and off you go. It was nice to let the paint just flow along the silk, it lightly blends into the material didn't paint anything in particular just went with the flow

Added some rock salt to the material but it would have been more effective if I had done it when the material was wetter

Next I tried latex with colour, very interesting I filled a few small containers with latex then added a different colour ink to each container, poured them along a piece of acetate in a swirling motion the pattern of floating dandelion seeds. At first the colours looked very light I didn't know how much ink to add, next morning when the latex had dried it was much darker but when I held it up to the window it looked good.

After doing this I thought about my latex trees and reused them to make some more patterns

I did some weaving with the latex and when it was held up against the light I liked the translucent effect

Next I tried to do some felting had never seen it done but one of my tutors showed me how to do it

Break off small pieces of wool fibre and wrap around a ball

Wet the ball with hot soapy water and manipulate until the wool becomes firm and tight and shrinks against the ball

Next I wanted to do a bigger ball

This is hard work, you would want big hands!!!

After much manipulation this is what I ended up with until it was put into the washing machine for 30 mins.

I got this interesting little felt hat

Just did this felt picture here during the holls

More Paint

Hung this up threw some paint on it and the falling drops made this

Some close ups which look interesting especially the drop which looks like an eye!

All the above were poster paint

The two below are water colour done on acetate

These next two are done with ink and a few grains of salt

Painting

Only started to experment with paint late last week. I tried everything else first as painting would be my favorate, (leave the best wine till last)! I hope I still like it. One of my tutors took me around to the other classes to see what a variety of paint work was being done, very interesting especially one where paint was dripping down from tiered square platforms, very impressive.

Even this looks nice and that's the sink in our room as I washed my pallette.

My first experiment was to hang up one of my paper pods of old and squirt some paint on it and see what happens, while my back was turned it collapsed!  Then hung up a bottle and tried the same. The paint was too thick poured a little oil over it to hurry it along but the oil made a bit of a mess. Anyway this was ok because I took it down rolled it on paper and it looked like a tyre track  

These last two are a result of pressing my paint covered paper pod into paper and acitate. Dare I say I enjoyed this.

Print

Tried printing only last week for the first time should have tried it earlier but it was clashing with other things. Anyway brought my little mat thing and my cutting tools. The mat thing I bought was some newish product supposed to be easier than lino to cut into. It was fine but both sides looked the same so wasn't sure which side to cut on.

It does look better than the photo, on the glass rolled out brown colour half way and the same brown mixed with transparent, that gave it the fading out appearance

Zoomed in photo had an interesting textural appearance

I liked this one, it reminded me of an aboriginal drawing



Forest No 2

After doing the latex forest wanted to try another one but a little differently, after a crit last week another tutor who knew I had plans for a forest gave me another idea.

      

Took some forest photos in Cratloe Woods

Got a semi circular box and lined it with reflective paper to give the impression of more trees and different lights would be reflected from within at different times.  

At first I was going to make my own trees bought a long pole and some pipe insulation (like a foam pole) they were about the right size for my trees. I then printed out some old parchment and started sticking them around my trees I had a few done but thought they didn't look or feel right, I had some bits of trees in my back garden  and I also went out for a walk to collect some more. When I got home and put in these bits I thought they looked much better but I felt thet I was cheating, then I said feck it! does one always have to do things the hard way?other artists use natural materials when they can, American artist Meg Webster for example and english sculptur Anthony James.

The light can make it look different at different times, and in different places because of the mirrowed background

Latex

As suggested by one of my tutors I took some photos of trees and another tutor suggested I could paint latex, so I thought I would put the two together and do some latex trees.

Some experments with latex

Applied three layers of latex to a smooth surface (which was first sprinkled with some talcum powder to prevent sticking) when this was dry I painted it with a pallet knife

I had to do a lot of these as I wanted a little forest I did 16 and these are about 5ft tall but the stink of the latex was nauseous did some at home as well, nearly asphyxiated everyone

Well, I hung up my latex trees on two circular supports I liked the way the light shines through the latex showing the bark like paint effect

               Used some silver tin foil to make leaves/stagalactites used spotlights and a fan to blow

These trees were 5ft tall, I just thought (when it was too late) I should have gotten a small girl dressed like a wood nymph to walk in and around them , I also thought about getting a dry ice machine but the cheepest one I could find was in Maplin and that was €50 

Back Again

Glad to have my History of Art essay finished but still hatching the CCS one it's been a few decades since I have had to do one of them. In the meantime I have been doing some ceramics classes which I really enjoyed and also life drawing (should do more of this if so many things were not clashing)

This is my idea of blowing through a dandelion and the seeds dispirsing, the piece has just to be glazed

Did another piece along the same design but it was to be a flowing motion this time .

I was  going to do this in white with a blue stream flowing through the furrow in it but when I went to the kiln to get it, it had blown up, it wasn't the only thing that blew up that day! but that is the nature of ceramics.

I had seen some fantastic pieces on display that morning such hard work and such perfection, here are two of my favorite pieces

I love these two rogues

Beautiful