Art and Not Art

 

Late in posting about my week of Flower Flow because of an annoying computer glitch taking hours of research and trial & errors to fix the problem. I am nothing if not stubborn and determined when this happens, and I am happy to say I appear to have found the fix and the old computer is speeding along doing everything it should. So that's the Not Art part, along with my return to knitting. After the bumps making that pair of socks, I found myself hesitant to dive into a sweater project, so I eased into it by swatching the three stitch patterns for the sweater. In all my previous years of knitting, I don't think I've ever knitted up a test piece to check gauge, just trusting that if I used the type of yarn and size of needles required, everything would turn out the right size. That may be why one of the sweaters I knitted for my tall husband with the long arms was so oversized that it could have fitted a linebacker over all his gear! I was pleased that this swatch showed I was right on gauge and the stitch patterns easy and providing a little interest. I've started the actual sweater now with the recently purchased mill end wool and am enjoying having my hands busy in the evenings while watching TV.

Now for the free workshop,, Flower Flow. This is the first section of the full class Laly Mille teaches, what they are now calling a "taster" with the idea that it might entice you to buy the course. I promised myself that this time I would not let any stage upset me, that I would stay open minded and not worry about my results. I allowed myself to have fun, and up until the very last step, it was fun. It started with "doodling" flower shapes with your non-dominant hand on papers that had been gessoed. I used some pages out of an old book and some blank receipts. I've never liked sketching exercises having you use your non-dominant hand but Laly demonstrated the difference in look when compared to ones made with your dominant hand. Not going for realistic here, not looking at reference photos, and using water soluble pencil and charcoal pencil that would be activated with gel medium to smudge and seal them. This was much more fun than I anticipated and the activation was magic!

Next step was to cut or tear out the individual flowers and pick favorites to gather into 4 groups of posies which you could then audition on whatever you were using for a substrate. Rather than cut 4 pieces of 5 x 5 watercolor paper as I did for the last class I took from Laly, I decided to work in the big art journal sketchbook, taping off 5 x 5 inch areas to work in. Later you will see my arrangements changed a bit when gluing them down and I wish I'd checked this photo at that point.

Now to add some color to the bouquets with pieces torn from magazines. You can see I have a bit of a pink hangover yet from the color challenge with Laly. Can I help it if the first things I ran into as I sorted through the bin of papers were the pink leftovers from that challenge? I wanted to use the big rose but at this point didn't know which group to add it to.

Finally, we get to do some collaging, the thing I want to get better at. I heeded Laly when she said this was just to add a little something to the page and some texture, so I didn't go hog wild covering every inch. Besides, I had that feeling that little of this would show in the end. I just repurposed some of the scraps torn off the doodle flowers.

Laly always adds paint to soften and blend this stage of the collage. I just can't get the hang of this even after watching her do it several times. Again, I told myself not to worry because I was pretty sure this layer would be covered up. (I was right.) Still, good practice. And if you look closely, I used a neutral color of paint all around the edges like a frame which did still show in the end (although I wished I'd used the other color I was considering which was more like the dark yellowish papers).

Time to make the final arrangements of the bouquets and adhere them with gel medium. I could feel myself tensing up as I'm not comfortable with my arrangements not going down exactly as I've carefully put them together but I had to shake that off and be happy with the outcome. After all, this is supposed to be play, not some masterpiece. And this arrives me at the awkward teenage stage, the place where you look at what you've done and either think it is a hot mess (not what I was thinking) or you know it needs more but may not be sure what (exactly what I was thinking). Laly gave instructions of what to be looking for to change and improve, contrasts in value and shape to add, even permission to paint out what we didn't like, add in more collage elements, pencil in stems and leaves we might have collaged over. I started with those small strips of pink to balance out the strong pink collage elements. A good start and followed Laly's suggestion of adding some straight elements to contrast all the curves of the flowers.

At this point, I knew I had to walk away from it for a bit. Had a lot of racing to watch over the weekend anyway. When I looked at it again on Monday I thought, not so bad after all. And I'd had some time to think about what I might do to improve it. Most of my flowers were pretty smudgy grey and Laly says she almost always adds some white or black as a final touch, so I whitened up some of the darker flowers with white gesso (the white gel pen and the white Maribu art crayon were too translucent). Then I wanted to "pink up" some of the other blooms and add green too which I did with my Inktense pencils, so inspired was I with what happened with the water soluble pencil. Really rewarding seeing the dull color come to life when a wet brush is added. Finally I used a black micron pen to clean up some of the smudged or covered up with paint outlines of the flowers and leaves, penciled in one small bud on a stem, inked the words "bloom, blossom, flourish and grow" on the pink horizontal strips and spattered a little green ink over each. I'm really quite pleased with the outcome. Click on the photo for a bigger view of details - I've left that photo larger than usual.

My worktable looks a lot like it does after a quilting project is complete, only it's scraps of paper, glues and paint that needs picking up and putting away. Several people taking the class commented that now they know the value of saving every scrap of paper while I was thinking this is just like quilting where I can't throw out a single scrap of fabric. There are leftover doodle flowers too, two that I really like but are too big for the 5 x 5 format, some that could go into another arrangement, a couple I really should just toss, and Laly mentioned that the too large ones could just go on larger paper while the other leftovers could make yet another smaller piece or on the front of a card. I think my too big ones may go on another page of this sketchbook with background collage that is not hidden from view and the others into a posie that could go on a small book cover. We shall see. For now, I should move on to the baby quilt.