Three freebies

Drawing day fifty-eight

Drawing day fifty-nine

I love a freebie, and today I scored not one, not two, but THREE freebies!

Number one was winning two passes to the Stitches and Craft show ($15 entry fee each) so spent a pleasant couple of hours with the Bloke perusing all the lovely craft books, fabric, beads, and associated accessories. I found, to my surprise, that while I enjoyed looking, the only things I was tempted to buy were a couple of sewing books and a dressmaking pattern or two, and I resisted their siren call. The fabric is still lovely but I guess my focus has changed.

Freebie number two came from the supermarket. Their policy is that if an item scans incorrectly at checkout, it's free. I found a 1.3kg packet of chicken drumsticks mislabeled at $4.99 - should have been $3.79 according to the label on the cabinet - and when it scanned at the incorrect price, got it for free. I did have to remind the operator, but she just shrugged and shoved it into the bag.

Freebie number three was a chair on the nature strip on the way home from the supermarket, leftover from a garage sale we passed earlier in the day and, along with a couch (too small for my purposes) and some other chairs, labelled free for the taking. So we took. It's a bit stinky, smells like a smoker has loved it well, so it's outside in the heat airing. The joints need a little attention as it's a little wobbly but that won't be hard to fix. I plan to make it a lovely arty cover, perhaps a monster of some description.

School, drawing, hothotHOT!

Drawing day fifty-six

Drawing day fifty-seven

Still drawing, still busy at school, and now March has decided to revert from autumn to simmering summer - 38 degrees C today, a predicted 40 degrees C tommorrow, and high
30s over the weekend. Urgh :)

I'm loving printmaking at the moment (painting, not so much!). I've been working on a silkscreen print from one of my drawings (I suspect I doodled the sketch it's based on during a meeting at my ex-employment), playing with the medium and seeing how far I can stretch it before I get tired of it. After several incarnations, I washed out the screen yesterday, so bye-bye Green Man. I did an edition of ten over an existing print/poster a friend gifted me, several in fabric paint on tank tops (which I'll list on Ebay/Etsy over the upcoming term break), three in fabric paint over embroidered doilies sourced from the op shop (still working on mounting them - I'm going to try starch and iron-on interfacing, then depending how firm they are use velcro dots to hang them, or if that fails put them on some foam core), several more on various fabrics (red, white, black/white stripe - the optical illusion that creates really does the eyes in!, and a black/white print) which I'll incorporate into either clothing or other prints, then five on black and five on white paper for which I have a cunning plan (if it comes off, I'll show it to you). I'm burning along in printmaking, with several editions of work already and so many more I'll never fit them all into the year.

Painting, hmm. We're working on "Diaries and Collections". I had an "AHA!" moment last week and I'm "collecting my thoughts". I've painted three canvases a kind of parchment colour, and on the first I wrote a list (in Indian ink) of things that shit me (not a complete list, mind, that would take a LOT more than one smallish canvas!) and then knocked it back a bit with a wash of watered down white acrylic paint (the ink was a little too black for my liking). Over the words, I've transferred a photocopied line drawing of a brain (using eucalyptus oil, a really cool technique) with branches erupting out of it to represent my thoughts, in graphite first then went over it with grey Indian ink. At least that was the initial plan, but now I prefer it upside down to the way I originally planned it, so that the writing is upside down and now the brain has a network of roots representing all the incoming knowledge feeding my rabid thoughts. On the second canvas, I've eucalyptus transferred photocopies of random pages from the travel journals I keep while on holiday, so the writing is backwards. I'll put an image over the top of that, too, but haven't quite decided what yet. The third canvas is still in the ideas stage.

More drawings, less writing

Drawing day fifty-three

Drawing day fifty-four

Drawing day fifty-five

Drawing day fifty-two

Drawing day fifty-two

Drawing day fifty-one

Drawing day fifty-one

Flat out like a lizard drinking :)

Drawing day forty-seven

Drawing day forty-eight

Drawing day forty-nine (perhaps that should be "image day forty-nine"!)

Drawing day fifty

Woohoo, made it to drawing fifty! Given that I anticipated this might last no longer than a week, I'm pleased that I'm still going and, what's even better, still enjoying drawing-a-day. The image for day forty-nine is another found poem - my drawing mojo was on hiatus that day and words were simpler. I kinda like the blacked out page with the white rectangles :)

Busy, busy, busy. Two excursions this week. One into the city centre for printmaking to view several galleries plus a paper-buying opportunity - oh, how I agonised over all the gorgeous papers but good paper is pricy! I settled for four large sheets of 350g Dutch Etching paper. I want to re-use an image from last year that I silkscreened from an x-ray of my wrist, using it multiple times over the large sheets and inking something else over the top, maybe in several layers. Dutch etching paper is made from cotton and feels soooo lovely.

We also went to (and this both amuses me and makes me squirm) to my ex-employer: the library where I used to work, to the Rare Books department to view their collection of artist's books. Felt a bit wierd having the libarian know me, plus he dragged out their copy of the book one of my short stories appeared in and had me sign it - even stranger! The artist's books were fascinating and often beautiful. I coveted one in particular, called "The Art of the Cake", which was fashioned as a concertina with gorgeous hand coloured and gilded drawings, presented in a patisserie box with a lace edged pair of white gloves, all contained in a gold etched clear plastic carry bag. I could go on and on about the books...

Hiatus

Drawing day forty-four

Drawing day forty-five

Drawing day forty-six

Spent ten or eleven days battling a gastro-intestinal bug, including a five hour trip to Emergency for rehydration, and didn't have the energy to draw until yesterday - hence the big gap between postings. We now return you to your regularly scheduled program...