Back to work

I have been focusing on other things (baby!) for a couple of months now, and taking a break from art making for the most part. My Twelve by Twelve pieces were an exception. But for the past couple of days I have been back in my studio and it is good to be back at it.

I am still working on rubbing plates for mark-making on fabric. Here is the one I made this week.

The thing that I have been thinking about these plates I am making is that you don't need to rub the entire design, so some of these can have multiple purposes. This one, by the way, is another scrap of mat board with hemp cord glued to it. I like the hemp because it is pretty firm and smooth and has only a slight texture of its own. It also has a bit of variety in its size, but not too much for my purposes. I glued it down with white tacky glue and when it had dried I brushed a mix of tacky glue, diluted with some water over the whole thing. Once dry it is pretty solid.

Here's what I was rubbing—just sections of the plate. See how that works?

I think I could use this plate to get patterning for feathers, or pine branches, but today I was making leaves.

After I determined that this was going to work I made a bunch more of these leaves and I have been fusing them all day today, along with other elements, for a small piece. I spent several hours this afternoon doing rubbings and painting on fabric to use for a background and it turned out just sad. Back to the drawing board and I think I have found a better solution for the background. More to come.

By the way, I'm glad so many of you got a laugh out of my altered "lorikeet" quilt picture. Much more fun to find the humor than to worry about a negative comment . And really, the comment didn't bother me. I don't think the commenter quite understood that the purpose of our Twelve by Twelve challenges is not so much to confirm as exactly as possible to the proposed color theme as it is to find an inspiration in the theme and use it to express our own take on it.