Fun Car Is Fun!

And Highly Prized, which just happens to be the theme for this month's Sketchbook Challenge.

This is my zippy little two-seater Altima.

She just got paid off last October and after our three-year companionship, I think she and I understand each other brilliantly. She'll be with me for as long as she can roll down the road. Her name is Fun Car because... well... because she really, really is.

This is my zippy little stacked journaling sketch of my Highly Prized Fun Car.

I lightly sketched in the outline and added the blunt details with pencil. Then I stacked journaling inside the details with Steadler Triplus Fineliner pens. 

This week also sees me preparing for a week-long independent study group I'll be attending this month with my masteries instructor, Jane Dunnewold.  I've been doing a little 'old fashioned' fabric dyeing- using my washing machine to dye yardage of pale-value solids in several different primaries. 

I spent a lot of time making sure that my machine would be appropriate for dying a good solid color. I measured the water temperatures before and after each agitation cycle, and then timed the cycles themselves. Turns out that all necessary factors were in perfect balance for full immersion dyeing, so I launched into it.

The first two pieces came out of the machine with a soft, even color across the length of the fabric. I have no reason to think the other two I do today won't be just as beautiful. I wish I'd known how easy it would be to achieve a true solid just by using my machine- I'd probably have done bolts of fabric this way by now! My hope is to continue to layer color, imagery and text onto these pieces throughout the indy study week.

I hope your new year is filled with fun, creativity and laughter!

Home Again and Studio Doings

After countless cities, airplanes and hotel rooms jammed into one five-week period, we're finally home again. I'd tell you all about it, but a vacation is usually only interesting to the people taking it. But if you're really dying to know, here are some of the photos I took on my various travels, knock yourselves out!

Monday saw me back in the studio and I have to admit, after being out of it for so long, it felt a little foreign to me, like it was someone else's space. To get back into the groove, I charged more screens with thickened black dye.

These guys were done simply enough... I thickened my dye by adding Jet Black dye powder to clear print paste, putting it into a syringe with a very narrow tip, and drawing it onto the screens. Then they sat in the driveway all afternoon to bake in the sun.

Can I admit that I always, always, always seem to make far more thickened black dye than I can use in one session? As a result, I find myself scrambling to prepare more fabric to use it on, rather than put the excess down the drain.

Because I had so danged much left over, I tried a technique written about by Leslie Tucker Jenison in the Oct/Nov 2010 issue of Quilting Arts.

In the article, Leslie uses tiny scraps of paper, MX dyes and silk screens to create interesting textures on fabric. I only slightly modified this technique by using scraps of cotton fabric, which I cut with a pinking blade in my rotary cutter.

I used long, narrow scraps of Pimatex to print on and then, as Leslie demonstrated, scattered the scraps across the unprinted fabric, wet out the screen with my thickened dye and continued to print down the length of the cloth.

The two on the right were printed using Leslie's method and the piece on the left is a monoprint taken from the paper that had been placed under the fabric before printing.  Pretty neat results, and instead of washing all that great dye and texture out of the screen, I left the bits of fabric stuck to it, left it with the others to dry in the sun, peeled away the scraps, and will use it later in the week to do some deconstructed screen printing.

And lastly, there are only two days left to sign up for my Dharma-sponsored give-away. On Saturday, October 9, two names will be chosen by a random number generator to receive one of these fantastic dye kits. All you have to do to be eligible for the drawing is to comment on this post.

Until Saturday, happy creating!

Amazing News, and Surface Design

I hope you all really like surface design (a lot, a lot, a lot) because starting in October and lasting for the next two and a half years, it'll possibly be about the only thing you'll see on this blog! That's because I've been accepted to Jane Dunnewold's Art Cloth Masteries Program for 2011!! The program will cover all aspects of surface design and fabric dyeing. It's a huge honor to have been accepted and I am thrilled beyond words. I can't wait to get started!!

I have no idea how taking this class will effect either my work or my blogging, nor how much of what I'm learning I will be able to blog about. I know that the work load will probably kick my tush, but I am highly motivated and up for the challenge.

So while I nervously waited this week to hear news of whom had been accepted, I puttered with fabric, deconstructed screen printing, Thermofax screen printing and some overdyeing.

A couple of weeks ago, I showed you how this 100% cotton Primatex started as an only partly-successful deconstructed screen print to which I added several layers of traditional screening with textile inks and paints.

Interesting start, but the original DSP wasn't making me happy. I charged a few more screens with dyes, let them dry, and tried again.

(45" x 45")

MUCH happier! It still needs work, it's a little muddled in the middle and the bottom half is still fading away, but it's got some really fabulous bits happening in it.

(detail)

(detail)

A few other pieces are in various stages of preparations.

This is the second layer of a somewhat familiar theme for me (I did a similar piece that sold at QSDS earlier this year), so to keep it from becoming a repeat, I'll have to run it off the rails in some other direction and watch what happens.

This is the third layer for this piece of cotton muslin. It was hand-dyed, and then screened with black dye and then screened again with white textile ink. No idea where it will end up.

This one is feeling almost complete to me. It needs a little more attention and then some serious trimming with the rotary cutter!

I never would have thought I'd like this motley thing. It started as a deconstructed screen printing on white cotton that just never really "took", in my mind. One day I had some leftover kelly green dye that was already activated with soda ash (and therefore needed to be used right away), so I tossed the remains into a container with this. Bleck, it was seriously awful. I sent it to the discharge bucket and then sat on it for a few more weeks, hating it and not knowing how to fix it. Finally, I just started screening the heck out of it until it began to look better.

(detail)

This opportunity to study for two and a half years with an artist the caliber of Jane Dunnewold is mind-boggling to me. Two years ago, I shifted my focus from painting to fabrics and surface design, and a whole new world of art opened up for me. This weekend, even more of it unfolded when I read the email welcoming me to the next class. I intend to suck up every moment of education and wisdom I can.

Wish me luck! Happy creating!