Delia and Kittens

This is a new artwork I made over the weekend and it is an ink/fineliner drawing and collage. Whenever I have made collages involving people I often try and use the collage to creating clothing and it never works. I cut the paper too quickly hoping it will look like clothing and it always looks silly. This time I decided to just use the shapes to create something that I thought looked good and not think about it as clothing. I had some beautiful paper, including some lace paper from Chapel Street and some Japanese print paper. I also used a page from an old altas and a Russian novel. I think using this combination of paper also helped with the results, although that being said I have ruined my fair share of "good" things in the past.



This little puffy was made a few months ago but I have not listed it yet. It is one of the cutest things I have ever made and is tiny but puffy. It is available on Mintd.com.

Moon Map

This is a scan of a new artwork I created this weekend. I had kind of forgotten about my artworks and had not created any for a while, but I recently sold a few and had some fantastic feedback on them.

So this weekend I am going to try and get a few made up. Yesterday I took a drive around the eastern suburbs looking for possible stockists. It was rather tiring but I found a fantastic shop selling beautiful papers so I have some things to inspire me. I might also get some more Dyson dyes because they work wonderfully on paper. My "normal" inks often bleed into the paper but these ones don't do that, and they work out to be a lot cheaper. I'm just worried they might go mouldy.

The ink in this artwork is called Mexican Red and I think I mentioned it before. I've also been using a quill pen with the ink and that is working out well, although it leaks onto my fingers and I look like I am bleeding.

A Rose By Any Other Name

This is another of my new badges I made with more detail and it is part of a special range I have created. This was one of my favourites and I love how the rose in the hair ended up, particularly with the two tones of pink. I will be giving out more details about when and where the badges will be available soon!

After a super busy week at work I am looking forward to the weekend and getting some things done. I still seem to have a list of things I needed to do in the holidays and didn't get started so hopefully I can have a productive weekend. It is starting with football so I don't know if that is a good or bad sign.

Hannah

I drove home tonight in the dark with a crazy driver behind me. It went from tailgating to tailgating with the high beams on. Then to flashing the lights to honking the horn over and over. The road I drive along is steep with lots of winds in a rural area, so it was all a little horror filmish.

I wasn't able to concentrate on my talking book (which is garbage anyway) so I missed about 10 minutes. However when I arrived home I was able to collect my Mix Tape Zine which was a great, particularly Green Olives article!

Lastly, this is a new little lady in the shop. Her name is Hannah and she has a little smirk on her face and lovely lashes!

Small Details

This is a close up of the new badge range I made recently. I incorporated tiny beads into the hair to add a touch of glamour the the ladies. This one had lots of beads and I liked the green/pink combination. I have noticed that doing fine stitch work creates havoc for my fingers. I know I should get a thimble, but I think I have about 4 fingers I need them for. My left index finger takes a lot of hits and my nail is all scratched up from the needle. On my right hand I sometimes have needles which need a lot of pushing to get through the felt and interfacing. This ends up putting a lot of pressure on my nail and sometimes I worry it will give way and I will have a nasty mishap. Then there is the accidental "stabs" which can sometimes hurt for a few days. However when you get a row of perfect stitches, all the right size and length it makes up for it.

Is there more below the neck?

This is a new badge design I created last week. I decided to add a little more to the head and give one a neck and shoulders. I was quite happy with the results after worrying that the neck would be too thin and not strong enough.

I spend most of the weekend sewing badges and doing monoprints. I did some small ones on atlas paper to put in the packages I send off when people purchase items from me. I also tried doing some collagraphs but the paper I used was too thick so it didn't work out how I wanted. I also get impatient waiting for the PVA to dry and didn't end up printing one.

It is great to sit down and do lots of little artworks and have a functioning studio. I went through a massive void of doing no artwork for a few years. At one stage (when I worked in a call centre) I was so scared by my lack of art making that I was scared to go into Galleries.

The year before I had worked in a call centre in outgoing sales and somehow managed to draw while on the phone and covered my "pod" with little artworks and origami creatures. A coworker, Bec, would make the origami animals and I would decorate them. She once brought me in a pack of markers to help get the job done. I also got tagged as the "arty" one, along with another guy who worked there, so got to spend a week of the phones painting a mural. It wasn't that great as the theme was "telemarketing" but a week off the phones to paint was a dream come true. Unfortunately the latter call centre was incoming calls in customer service and I had no time to do anything but tell people that I had no control over the phone getting cut off when the bill was 60 days overdue. Aaah memories.

How long have you been a red man?

I was making some new cards for my badges and I got ink over all of them. I decided to do some drawings on the card rather than waste it. I started this drawing by putting drops of ink on the paper then smudging it. The shape that came out what a man shape so I added to him so he had a few more features.

I have been making lots of new badges this weekend. I have a new range of badges coming out but I will post more about that when they become available. It is interesting looking at some of my older badges that are from early on and they are quite different now. It is nice to look at your own work and see the improvements.

Lady Map

I've been doing some more monoprints today with the aim to give one to a friend going overseas. Before I did the "good" one I like to do some tests to make sure the ink is at perfect levels. This is was one I did after the main event. It was a lady over a page of an old atlas. I likes how her eyes turned out with the softer shading for the eye lid. I coloured her top in with a variety of red inks left over from the main artwork I did.

Sweet!

All Australian home page!

Mono Prints

I did some mono-prints this weekend. I did these ones on fabric and I made up some super strong dyson dyes to colour them in. This red was called Mexican Red and is a little darker than the other reds I have been using. I think I might get some more dyes because they have a great range of colours. I played it safe and got the primary colours.

This is one of the artworks I did, I plan on doing some machine stitching on it, although I don't know what colours to use. White will not stand out enough, black with compete with the black ink and for some reason blue, green and purple just wont work. I was thinking of orange and yellows and just using simple lines that follow what is already there, that was all I could think of as I drove onto the Eastern Freeway today, worried I would end up in the wrong lane. The fabric I used has thermo stuff on the back and I interfaced so it was stronger than normal. It is interesting using fabric but treating it like paper.

This is some of the detail. Like the paper it gets that super fine dotty texture around the line which I really like. You can feel the tiny bumps and it looks like a strange photocopy. Once I have made a print, the plastic I have rolled the ink onto looks really beautiful as the reverse of the image is still there. I might try taking some photos of them against the window.

I took some new stock into Meet Me At Mikes and Kids In Berlin. There is some great stuff in both of those shops and it was nice to touch and feel Stacey's knitted beanies. Her colour combo's are spot on, have a look at her most recent post, the pink and white scarf looks stunning.