So I was meant to be working my documentary today but I was a bit too distractible. I finished off my plans for this instead…
collage
Work in progress – from start to finish
This is a post I have been thinking about for a while, but I haven’t quite had the time to pull everything together. It’s a kind of start to finish look at a single piece of work. So here goes….
First there is a sketch, which in the case looked like this:
The majority of my art work then basically involves me sitting for some time with sketches and and a pair of scissors. I normally end up with a kind of white silhouette in reverse of the original sketch. I really like these, I think they are really elegant in their own right and am thinking about doing some work based on these alone. Let’s see.
After this stage I use these white bits of paper as stencils for working with different kinds of coloured paper to build the final image. This results in a series of movable pieces coloured paper that I can start to place together in different ways to form the final image. With the magpies in this case I used pritt-stick just to lightly glue them together as the whole magpies were much easier to move about than the individual bits. Here is the skeleton of the magpie image.
Then I will probably add some paper flowers, which are becoming a bit of a signature feature. I have stockpiles of these. I have cut so many of these now that I can cut them free hand, without really paying too much attention, in front of the telly.
I like to back most of my images up on different kinds of cloth. This image below is backed with a white Kashmir silk scarf that I bought while on holiday with my sister in Dubia. Most of my work involves physical materials, things that I can feel and manipulate directly with my fingers. I am becoming increasingly aware of how excited I can get about different textures in my work – in this image I particularly like the contracts of the smoothness of the paper against the very delicate pattern woven into the silk. Now I take a digital photo.
Finally, just at the end I will jump into photoshop and do a few tweaks. For this one I very slightly brightened the photo and increased the contrast. I then added on a sepia filter to warm it up slightly, and I finally added in some text. The final image looks like this.
Available on a range of things here at Redbubble.
Some more news: Redbubble
After doing a little digging I have decided to try out Redbubble as a route for selling my designs alongside Threadless. I am really new to selling art online and I am not sure which option will be best for me so I am going to experiment with both sites for the moment. Both sites allow for a similar service, but have a slightly different range of products and different arrangements for paying UK artists. I will be blogging a bit about how I get on with both sites, but for now I will leave it at introducing my Redbubble portfolio (which happens to look a lot like my Threadless portfolio).
I have been using paper cut and mixed media techniques at the moment and have been pretty pleased with the results. Both sites seem to be handling the digital photos of my work well, which is important as my style is relatively delicate and the details are important to making the aesthetic work.
So here is is, my Redbubble portfolio.
A little bit of news – I opened a threadless shop!
Over the last few months I have been working on ideas which would enable me to earn a bit of side income from my art and interests in creativity. I have been looking at different options and have been particularly inspired by the prolific Sableyes and his Little Fears project.
Having looked through various options I’ve decided to follow his example and dip my toe in the water with a Threadless Artist Shop. I’m a bit excited about this as it feels like I have been able to come to the end of a project with an actual product out there in the ‘real world’. I have picked a small selection of products including high quality prints and a few bags – please go over and have a look if you are inclined to do so.
So, drum roll…. here is the Magpie at Midnight artist shop, where you can buy my stuff.
Working with new materials
I’ve been working with some new materials recently with I’ve been enjoying. Alongside working with cut paper I have been experimenting with cutting cotton. The problem I had was that cutting cotton was that the edges fray, and I particularly like the strong lines and silhouettes produced by paper cut.
I have managed to fix this problem! I have been coating the cloth with a PVA style glue (I am using this Modge Podge but I don’t think it matters which brand you pick). Apply with a paint brush and make sure you use a plastic sheet to protect your furniture. This then needs to dry for a good 24 hours before you can cut with scissors. It’s rather satisfying to peel the cloth from the plastic. One side will be shiny while the other will retain the cloth texture. I’ve been using a paper stencil and pencil on the shiny side to trace out the shape I wanted. Then I can cut using scissors as I do with paper.
I like the effect produced – I think the combination of textures works really well.
A limited collection of prints of my are are now available here at threadless.
Lolling about and playing with photoshop
I’ve not been very well so instead of doing a bunch of important things including working out some of my tax bits and pieces I’ve been lolling about on the sofa watching the telly and playing with glue, and teaching myself how to make a gif on photoshop. Here’s my efforts (it works! Yey to ill me) – it’s the underside of a magpie wing I’ve been making for Christmas decorations (if you are interested, I’ve put together a materials list here of the stuff I’ve been using lately).
Making and mental health: slowing down
A few weeks ago I posted a piece about my making and mindfulness. I’ve had the day off work today and have been thinking a bit more about why making things seem to work so well for me in bringing my stress levels down. I think in part it’s because I’m experimenting at the moment with collage, paper and glue. I’m in the process of working on a few designs for decorative pieces and because I’m a bit of a scanner obviously I seem to feel the need to work a bit in all of them at once. It may sound hectic, but moving between projects seems to ensure that I give each stage on each project a little time to mentally marinade.
I’ve been trying techniques that enforce a slowing down. Even given a good run it can take days to get from an idea in my head to something that looks like an actual piece of work. I’ve been soaking card to mould it into various shapes and building up works through layers of paper of different thickness and texture. At each stage things have to be left to dry out and set before I can move onto the next thing, which removes the need for urgency. Indeed rushing around on these projects tends to ruin them, so slow craft is definitely the best approach here. I think as a consequence my mind also moves a bit slower, but is still very much occupied with the design details, which reduces the likelihood of anxiety creeping up on me.
The Magpie at Midnight 