Colour Study in Fibre

You can take the girl away from colour, but you can’t take colour away from the girl.

A little hiatus painting-wise over the busy, dark, virus-infested winter months left me in need of some colour in my life and needing to keep fingers busy whilst paintbrushes were idle, I turned to fibre play instead.

Some of you will know that I spin yarn straight from the sheep’s back to my knitting needles.  I did used to weave, but I no longer have time for that, or the space.

Fleece from the sheep though, comes in natural cream (or brown or even black) which doesn’t really satisfy my colour lust.  What is a colour whore to do?  Well, she must dye of course.  Do or Dye.

Here are some rovings (carded wool) that I hand-painted with dye  – it is great fun to spin!

Another way to spin with colour is to blend commercially dyed fibres into interesting colour-ways.  Here are some that I carded.  The first two were from small sections of calendar images, where I tried to match the colour combinations, tone and proportions:

The image is on the left and a knitted sample is on the right.

This one is a favourite – it took me a couple of goes to get it how I liked it and I love the resulting rolag (I shall be needle-felting it in a couple of days).

And this one is already a pair of socks:

See the photo, the original source of spring crocus, to fibre and finally, to fabric.

So, that is my winter of colour and what  a lot of fun it has been too.  Mind you, the watercolours are out and new freshly inspired paintings are being experimented with.  I will post those over the next few days.

Still Creating

Well, it has been a busy winter and not much painting has got done, just some sketchbook work (heck no, I am not showing those!) and photography.

Working a little with textiles has reawakened my joy of handspinning and designing colour combinations has proved much fun and I shall be showing some pictures of those in future posts.

And in my spare time, I have been doing some voluntary work for the Scottish Church Heritage Research project ( http://www.scottishchurches.org.uk/ ) which is an organisation that is working on recording all religious places in Scotland, beginning in Fife for the time-being, but hoping to cover all of Scotland eventually.  It is fascinating work and I am thoroughly enjoying it.

Where Has She Gone?

Hmmm, Paintinglady has been absent from this blog for far too long – where can she be?  Out fishing? Nope. Out gallivanting? Nope (well, only a little bit).  Out robbing banks? Nope.

Ahhh, here she is, wasting the very short daylight hours in an office, earning some well-needed cash!

But that doesn’t mean all creative activity has come to a halt, a very large watercolour is underway (recent gallery sales have depleted any of the remaining paintings so a bit of re-stocking is in order) and a bit of printmaking has been done.  Neither of these are interesting enough to show here.

What else can this lax blogger be up to?  Well, I have been spending the dark, cold evenings in front of my spinning wheel enjoying some recent dyepot experimentation (a girl has got to have colour). 

See?  You always thought I was rather woolly-minded, didn’t you?

The Aftermath

The exhibition was quite successful overall, the two days were long and hard, there were moments when it was incredibly quiet (especially when the road to my venue was closed by the police due to a serious road accident!) and then I had moments when lots of people showed up at once.

Enough sales were made to make it worthwhile and above all I enjoyed meeting new people, as well as some old friends who popped by. I made some great contacts too, with a view to future exhibitions.

Here is a picture taken when David Cornelius came to visit, all the way from East Kilbride, which was very nice of him – It is always great to meet our blogging friends and his wife Jacqueline is just lovely!

I will definitely do it again next year, with a few changes, such as a more central location and a show with one or more other artists to help ease the “on duty” burden.

Once I have caught up with all the things that have been neglected over the last few weeks and caught up with some sleep, I shall have a think about what to paint next, there are one or two projects that have been nagging at me for a while now and I am excited to get going with those.

Thanks everyone for your support and for encouraging me along the way.

Too Exhausted to Blog

 

No pretty pictures of the show to post here yet, so I am putting up some photos I took a week or two ago at Dundee Botanic Gardens.  The gardens are owned by the university and are a lovely asset to the town, but mismanagement by the university financial department are putting them under threat.  This lovely stonework is a recent addition and makes for great photographic opportunities, it is also a joy to walk round because there are lots of hidden surprises to find.  The gazebo has been there a while and I have photographed it many times.

On the art front, It has been a busy few days, working on my own open studio signs, organising my display equipment as well as a lot of invigilation at the art festival has meant I have little to report.

The opening ceremony was too wet and dark for any photography, but it was well attended with lots of people wandering about the town looking at all the venues.  I get a feeling from the buzz in the air that it is being well received and must say how great what I have seen looks.

Just days to my open studions now and I am getting rather nervous!

 

Show Preparations

I have not posted much these last few days as my energies have been put into all the preparation and pulicity for the Cupar Art Festival and my own Open Studios.

There has been a lot of work going on in the background here and I have finished my books, worked in some owed altered books and made posters, but really no good pictures just yet.

Today has been a busy day in Cupar in preparation for the Opening Ceremony, I will try and take photos, but have a hunch the fading light will cause problems.  Having seen the artwork going up around the town, I have a feeling this event is going to be a huge success. 

Preparations are nearly all done for my own Open Studio exhibition (next weekend) and here are the pictures that are going in.  I wanted them to be all related and along a theme, so have stuck with the Still Life genre and concentrated on the bowls and jug series:

Don’t I use a lot of red?

While I was assessing the pieces en masse like this, I also put together a contact sheet of the other pieces I have completed so far this year, but won’t have on show at the exhibition as they don’t fit in.

They may be in a browser box though.

I had thought I hadn’t done very much this year, I have been struggling with health issues and had felt I wasn’t putting the hours in.  Just goes to show how a little bit here and there, does mount up when you stand back and look at it.  Working as often as you can, as much as you can does pay off eventually.

Will try and post more pictures tomorrow (but I may have a bit of a hangover, lol)!

Public Art Project

Here is my current Work In Progress: three books destined for the Cupar Art Festival public art display, due to be installed on Friday in three locations around the town. 

The theme for the whole festival is “Play” so the three books are based on that, the hand-shaped one has clapping game rhymes in it, the foot-shaped one has dance steps and the round one has instructions on how to juggle. 

I will photograph them more fully when I install them in situ on Friday!

Landscape Finished

Yippee, thanks everyone who posted to encourage me with my first-in-a-long-while landscape attempt and I am happy to say that I have finished it and am most pleased that I managed it, after all!

Well as you can see, I heavily cropped it, despite thinking the composition would be OK, it must have been troubling the back of my mind as I painted, because although the gate came out lovely, the bit of wall on the right of it looked awful (so bad I just am not going to show you)!

And look, surprise, surprise, it’s a square again.  I keep working in the square format just lately, once your eye is attuned to square compositions, it is hard to stop.

It is 12 x 12″ watercolour on paper, as usual.  I hope the recipient is pleased with it.

In My Letterbox

Just as I was having one of those moments when I was getting quite frightened about  the Open Studio exhibition and feeling quite daunted about the whole thing, something arrived in the post to remind me that life is an adventure and if we don’t try things, if we don’t force ourselves outside our comfort zones, we will limit our lives to unsatisfactory nothingness.

Lovely Catherine Witherell, of Happy Day Art had a special draw in her blog for all of the people who posted to it and I was delighted to learn that I had won a prize.  I chose the adorable “adventure” pin to remind me to be adventurous in life – and it arrived just at my moment of terror!  I plan to attach it to my coat so it will be with me wherever I go and I am sure everyone will be commenting on it.

Not only was the pin so amazingly beautiful – I am impressed by the workmanship as well as the detail – but the packaging was gorgeous and included some of Catherine’s own artstamps – woohoo!  Looky, looky!

I feel so very fortunate and so grateful to Catherine for including me, even though I was so far away, and will wear the pin for luck as I venture forth into my next adventure!

Landscape Painting – Work in Progress

Just to show you that I am still creating every day.  This is another piece outside my comfort zone, a landscape!  I hardly ever do landscape, although I do enjoy them when I do, I just sometimes feel so daunted when I look at a view and it is so BIG and my piece of paper is so SMALL in comparison!

This is a gift for someone and is going to be about 18″ x 12″ or thereabouts when I crop it.  I am working from a photograph I took this summer of the view towards Catsgill in the Lake District.  Not easy, but I like a challenge and I am looking forward to painting the dry stone wall which leads the eye into the centre of interest.  Oh pooh, just realised the wall also leads the eye out of the painting too, must figure out a way to solve that problem before I get any further – any suggestions how to do that, please tell!

As well as all the painting I have been doing (mostly for the Cupar Open Studios on the 18/19th Oct), I am also working on some urban art which is for the Whole Cupar Arts Festival which begins on the 10th.

 The festival includes visual arts, music, poetry, performance and film.  It is going to be a fantastic couple of weeks for the town!