Last time I wrote, I was about to start my botanical drawing workshop. 3 weeks in and we’ve covered drawing in graphite, stippling in pen, and last week, watercolour. Graphite was cool, stippling was a struggle at first, but the watercolour killed me. SO precise. I just don’t think it suits this organic girl, lover of serendipity. However, I have gained quite a bit out of the experience, mainly about ‘seeing’, and processing the information that I see. It has related well to my painting experience too. This reached a point last week where I just wasn’t happy with what I was able to do with my el cheapo acrylics, and decided to upgrade to Golden Open Acrylics, which purported to offer more working time before drying for better blending. I was concerned that this might be a case of a poor workwoman blaming her tools, but am pleased to say that they have made a difference, and I will approach the painting this week with a little less fear and loathing.
My spirits have been far lighter lately, and work in StudioSvenja has been progressing. So much so that the engineering department (Matt) this weekend made 10 more frames for me! This should enable me to get most of the completed works together, and this week I started another triptych. Based largely on the colour and texture of rocks at Naracoopa on King Island interpreted through silk dyeing, these probably won’t have feature pieces on them as others do, but will celebrate the rocks themselves. Still a lot of machine embroidery to go. The offcuts were enough to make a rather lovely textured background for a feature work.
The pre-felted, needle-felted and wet felted piece was finished and dyed, with now little air bladders to make to attach. The colour turned out perfectly – a mixture of the Landscape Dyes ‘Lichen’ green and ‘Wallaby’ brown.
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| It was scary starting to wet felt all these fronds! |
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