Dancing Crow Designs

three days and a stamp pad

I mentioned I made my own stamp pad (and spilled green ink all over). I wanted some new colors, so I made a purple and pink pad, and did not spill any ink. One of my Flickr contacts wanted to know what I used, so I show you the tiny adorable bottles of Tsukineko inks and blank stamp pads from Dharma Trading.

Over the weekend I took Alice and Red Kate, and we took my mother too and went to the Peabody Essex Museum. A friend had acquired timed tickets for us to hang out with about 40 tiny adorable zebra finches and their musical stylings on a half dozen electric guitars and basses. They looked like this - the picture is courtesy of PEM,  because my sketches of the birds were not successful.

 

snow and more snow

Sunday the snow from the night before was still stuck on the branches and telephone wires - it didn't start to fall off until the wind picked up. Or until the squirrel galloped across the phone wire, that brought a lump of snow onto my head when I was not expecting it. This is white paint pen (from Sharpie) sketching in the snow on the trees.

 

This one is an attempt to show how the weather came in from the west, high and fine at first, and then lower and gray.

A friend and I clipped some of the winter coat off the red mare, so she wouldn't get so hot exercising. One of the other women in the barn asked what kind of meany clipped a horse before the temperature plummetted? While we were working, the wind picked up and the snow started. I left her wearing her thick blanket, and I probably have to go find a midweight one so she doesn't get too cold...

whether the weather

Honestly, there are days I feel like this book is nothing more than a weather report: today it snowed, it was pretty.

I took the simplest of Margaret's suggestions (I know the toothpaste was a joke, but I did think about it for a minute, because Aerin's is blue with sparkles, and Alice's is faintly pink and I wondered what that would look like) and used gesso with a toothbrush to spatter snowflaky speckles on silk organza. What is harder to see is the white pen indicating snow on the branches of the tree underneath, which I was quite pleased with.

moooon

The rising moon was all fuzzy behind some thin clouds, so I tried to portray it in fabric. this is a silk moon on cootton sky, with organza clouds over the whole page. I added some branches to hold the silk down and frame the moon better, and painted on some silk dye to make the clouds blacker away form the moon.

Since it is not quite a full moon tonight (not until Wednesday) this isn't quite correct (it is, in fact, a waxing gibbous moon) but I'm pleased.

all the weather

All the winter's weather is happening right now, all at the same time. I woke up to bucketing rain, drove to the barn in fog, and freezing fog (a whole new level of dreadful driving) and while I was there it warmed up 1o degrees to simply mist, alternating with stair rods of rain. A very impressive display.

I spent most of the drive up and back composing doggerel regarding the things in the other seasons I wish for when I'm in this one, and the drawbacks I forget about the other season.

This piece is everything, all at once. The underlying image transfer and a layer of silk organza, stitched in long vertical lines to indicate rain, with a layer of plastic bag with drawing on it, topped with a last layer of silk organza. I like the way the plastic glimmers through the organza.

cold and blowy

As every knows who watches any weather on TV, or probably listens to it on the radio, we are in a Polar Vortex (that you know the Weather channel is pronouncing POLAR!! VOOOORTEX!!!!!!) and it is pretty cold around here. I mean, New England gets real winter every year, with snow and nasty driving; not the way Chicago or Minnesota or Michigan's Upper Penninsula get winter, but we're a pretty hardy bunch. But still, this feels epic.

I was trying to show, with twisty thread and experiments on saturaing the color in the transfer image, how cold and blowy it was. Also if it looks like a migraine aura, there is that involved as well.

To get the darker image, I used a transparent transfer on silk organza, and then used the same image on an opaque transfer on the dark page. I lined them up, and stitched the top and bottom to keep them from shifting too much, and then free stitched the blowing wind.

I am delighted with the way the gray thread blends into the sky, giving it motion without too much extra color, but still stands out as it crosses the dark branches. That is something I can pursue further.

comparisons are illuminating

At least, I hope they are illuminating. Because I wanted to clarify for myself how differently the light-fabric and dark-fabric transfers worked, I printed the same image on each kind of transfer sheet. And then I realized I had failed to reverse the printing on the light-fabric sheet, so it would be backwards. (* headdesk *) This is the side by side comparison, on light and dark fabric, of the two different transfer sheets:

 

Okay - from here on I am calling them opaque and transparent transfer sheets. On the left page, the left side is opaque, the right side transparent. You can see how the white fabric shows through the snowy parts of the image (it is mirrored around the center line) so it looks snowy. On the right page, the left side is transparent, and you can see how the image is nearly invisible against the dark purple page, while the opaque side still shows lights and darks, although they are muted a bit because the opaque sheets kind of melt into the fabric when you iron them.

My experience with this experiment seems to be that all transfers work better on light colored or white fabric. I imagine printing things onto tea or coffee stained fabric would yield interesting aged looks.

In other news, I rode two horses today, the first was the red mare, and we went out in the woods with a friend and had a great time. This is a picture of us afterwards, taken by Elaine who obviously loves us both:

And then I rode Brooks' beloved, ancient gray horse Nuada. We went out in the field, because it is lovely now, but the rain is supposed to come tonight and make the lovely snow vile and wet and then freeze solid so that walking becomes deeply hazardous and un-fun. So: canter cincles in snow = deep happiness.

tech specs

the specs;

7 pieces of purple fabric 5x10" stacked and stitched down the center to give fourteen pages 5x5" (two weeks)

The transfers happen two different ways - transfer-to-dark fabrics and transfer-to-light fabrics. To transfer to dark fabrics, the image is printed right side up (text reads correctly) onto the sheet. The thin white plastic that carries the image is peeled off the backing paper, and ironed, right side up, onto the fabric. In this image, I drew onto the transfer sheet, peeled that off and ironed it down - this is a freehand sketch.

To transfer images to light fabric, the image is reversed, and printed onto the transfer sheet. The sheet is ironed face down onto the fabric, and then the backing is peeled off, so the image is right way around.

The distinction between light fabric and dark exists because of the idea of background. For the reversed transfers, "background color" is the color of the fabric because the image carrying medium is transparent. When the image carrying medium is white, it forms an opaque layer between the image and the fabric, and allows for white and light colors in the image to show against darker fabric.

all kinds of blue

via www.flickr.com

The indigo experiment for the day above. Below, because I am getting to work on some commissions, I needed some sky and some ocean (Hi Jenny!).

Rather than submit to the vagaries of indigo, I used Inkodye, requiring heat or UV light to develop color. It is a different kind of magic:  the fabric is soaked in a gray, muddy looking mixture of dye and water, then removed and set in the sun. As the fabric warms in the sun, the color develops, going from muddy to pinkish and purpleish and finally to deepening shades of blue.Parts of the fabric that are shaded do not develop, so it can be used for sunprinting, or with transparencies for very detailed prints.

I find Inkodye (along with almost everything else) at Dharma Trading. It comes in many colors, but I was most interested in the blues and greens.

maple moon (wings)

via www.flickr.com

Still experimenting with gelatin printing.

I used a biscuit cutter to cut nice round circles out of the sheet of gelatin, and experimented using those as block for printing. Since my biscuit cutter is smaller than my circle-a-day circles, there is an unprinted edge that I wanted to accentuate.

I realized I have not yet posted links to my sources for gelatin printing.

My favorite, and primary source, is Linda Germain, and her blog Printmaking Without a Press. Linda does lovely, delicate work. She has answers to frequently asked questions, and videos on YouTube for those who want to see what she's talking about.

The Sketchbook Challenge blog also has a tutorial, and some pictures of the process.

I have really enjoyed having the gelatin block around to experiment with this month. It has been a lovely cool way to spend time working with fabric and color. I found it easy to get started. The gelatin block was fun to make and fun to hold (and fun to make wiggle! think industrail strength Jello Wigglers...) The materials I used were things I had on hand (white fabric, fabric paint) so the project scrimmage was small. 

It took me a lot of experimenting to come up with truly lovely things, making me uneasy until I hit my groove. I am also not entirely sure what to do with the pieces I don't love. I finally decided I'd hold them as potential blocks for stitching together into a lightweight coverlet or unfilled quilt. Or maybe I'll just give them away. It is a good year for it!