Surface Design Experiments

I've been playing with more surface design techniques today. The piece above is a rubbing onto hand dyed cotton. I used Shiva paint sticks over packaging, a commercial stencil, and hand cut rubbing plates. It needs to dry now for a few days before I work into it more.

The pieces below were old fabric collage quilts that I gave an aged look by rolling them with white acrylic paint.

Mono-print Tracings

Today I had a got at DMTVs mono-print tracing lesson. The images above and below are based on royalty free images available at Graphics Fairy. The bottles were traced from a photograph taken in my kitchen. They are all mono-printed onto cotton, the beetles piece was hand dyed first. I'll work into these a bit more later. Check back soon and see what happens.

Poppies Art Quilt

I took my mono-printed screen prints and combined them with some commercial fabrics to make this mini art quilt. The stitching was done free motion with variegated rayon threads. The process is similar to that shown on DMTV. I like how my tension was a bit off and some black bobbin thread showed on the top - it has the same texture as the mono print. Here are some close ups:

Colour Exchange Dyeing

Today I tried some colour exchange dyeing. The idea is to take 2 complementary colours and mix them together in various proportions to make graduations between the two.

Here I used Magenta and green.

These are made with orange and blue.

I used low water immersion technique which gives a lovely mottled effect.

Putting Together Sketchbooks

I haven't had much time lately to work on my sketchbook. I've managed to add in some collage elements and a few drawings though. To give interest some of the pages have been cut out or extended outside the book.

Mono Prints

I've been trying some simple mono prints on top of screen prints on fabric and paper. The bright colours look great with the graphic black lines.

I've also tried some on paper and then added oil pastel and washes of watercolour.

Not wanting to waste anything I used up plain scraps of fabrics and the last of the printing ink.

MORE Deconstructed Screen Prints

I had some leftover thickened dye from a workshop so, waste not - want not, I used it up on even more deconstructed screen prints on fabric and paper. I even tried a couple directly onto a stretched canvas which worked well.