Circles Sketchbook All Filled Up

Posted on April 18, 2014 by ruthlane under mixed media, Sketching

I have been adding a few more pages to my circles sketchbook over the last month or so. The notebook is completely filled up so I guess it’s finished. I’m sure I will keep using the circle in designing as I have really enjoyed working in the sketchbook.

These three pages were some of the pages that I printed with breakdown screen printing. I just added a bit of silver with a silver Sharpie pen.

This one is done with various sized black pens.

I doodled on the rainbow-colored paper and then cut it into a variety of sizes of circles. Then I glued it down to the yellow page.

This one was cutting the circle up into wedges and then filling the wedges with Zentangles. I added the black lines on top to add a little interest to the page.

These circles are done with white, black and grey. All of the designs don’t really seem to go together but I like the individual designs.

This one was an experiment with wet paper that I pushed on to a textured rolling pin. Then I painted it to go with the page. I’m not sure how I got the yellow “explosion” on the right side of the page but I didn’t do it on purpose.

Here’s a spiraling star done in ink on a painted page.

This is another of my screen printed pages. I glued down the trilobite that was screen printed on paper towel and then added walnut ink. It’s not really a circle but I put it in anyways.

And this is the cover. It is done with metallic Sharpie pens on black paper. I had never tried the metallic Sharpies and I really like them. They come in a set of three with silver, bronze and gold. It’s amazing how many different designs you can develop just starting with the concept of a circle.

More Mixed Media Painting

Posted on March 28, 2014 by ruthlane under mixed media

We woke up this morning to a couple of inches of snow. Spring in Montana.

So I stayed inside and worked on my mixed media paintings.

This is the purple one. I added some gold Pearl Ex Pigments mixed in gel medium. Then I tore up a dyed paper towel and pasted those pieces down with more gel medium.

I thought it needed darker values so I added some purple paint.

And then I printed with a crocheted doily using gesso. Now I have to decide where to go from here. I’m not quite sure.

I had finished painting my amorphous circle last week. But I thought the background needed a little more.

So I added a little white gesso in places and then covered other areas with dark blue metallic oil paint stick. This might be finished. I will leave it for a while and decide later.

I wasn’t really happy with this one so I printed a photo of birch trees and red twig dogwood bushes on to silk and pasted it on with gel medium. But then what to do?

I noticed the tea bags that I had taken apart quite a while ago. I wanted to cover the straight edges of the photo. This took several layers and it’s still drying. Not sure I like it any better but I haven’t given up yet.

This one is supposed to resemble bark. I added a bit more dark sepia acrylic ink to give it a bit more depth.

Then I stitched a sample of orange lichen on water-soluble fabric.

Here it is on the bark. I haven’t glued it down because I wasn’t sure I really like it much. Maybe I should just use a painting method to add the orange?

I have been wanting to use my soy wax batik fabrics so I decided to make some book covers. This is to make two book covers and it’s put together like a quilt with batting and now I’m doing free motion quilting on it. I’ll show you the book covers when they are finished. Lyric Art has an excellent video tutorial on making book covers. That is how I will stitch the book covers together. Thanks for stopping by and I hope you have a great weekend.

Playing in the Studio

Posted on March 21, 2014 by ruthlane under mixed media

I haven’t been able to play in the studio for several weeks now so it was good to get back to a more routine Friday. The only problem was that we are in the process of starting to update the store website and sell off the site. Dennis is supposed to be doing it but he hasn’t ever used WordPress before. So I am teaching him and today we uploaded the e-commerce plug in and started uploading products. This is going to take a while! But back to what I did on the creative side today.

I recently posted on the Felting and Fiber Studio site about finishing and framing. But I hadn’t actually finished the back of Ice Flowers. I had originally thought that I would glue black felt to the back and then add a hanging device. But I hate gluing and wasn’t sure how I would hold it in place while it dried. So I decided to fuse it on. So I added the fusible to my black felt backing.

Pulled off the paper backing.

And ironed it down. I didn’t show the ironing since I needed both hands. This photo shows the finished back.

You can see from the side view that I left about a quarter inch around the entire edge. I thought I had hardware for the hanging device but it was too big. So I need to get some from the hardware store this weekend. I want to put this in the store to sell so I need to get it done.

I also made a sleeve for my Jackson Pollock challenge piece and I’ll stitch that on by hand watching TV tonight.

All week I have been spending a few minutes here and there working on this plaster piece that I started last week. I used a nail to draw the pattern on.

Then I used a rotary tool to carve out inside the lines.

Here’s part of the design finished.

Once I got it carved out, I did some painting today. Didn’t get it finished yet though. You can see the original design in my sketchbook in the upper left corner.

I also started a small (5″ x 7″) landscape piece based on a winter photo from Big Mountain. I put the photo into Photoshop first and abstracted it slightly so I wouldn’t feel the need to make the felt piece just like the photo. I hand needle felted first.

And then I used my Janome needle felting machine to get the wool well adhered. The plan is to finish this piece with hand stitching. But I may start with machine stitching and add hand stitching afterwards. Haven’t quite decided yet.

Last but not least, here are the slippers I made last Sunday. This pair is mine made with white wool inside and green wool on the outer layers. I used the tutorial/template from Nada.

I wanted the slippers to be fairly plain so I just added hand dyed cheesecloth to the outer layer.

I made two pair and these are the ones I made for Dennis. They were made with navy blue wool and white inside. They look almost slate grey due to the mixing of the white and blue wool with felting.

I added the rest of the cheesecloth to these and Dennis really likes them. Now I just need to have a bit warmer weather so I can spray the Plasti-Dip stuff on the soles. It was cold and lightly snowing today and the stuff is so strong, you can’t spray it inside. You can see what it looks like here.

Mixed Media Paintings

Posted on March 15, 2014 by ruthlane under mixed media

I met with my local group yesterday and Louise showed us some techniques that she uses for mixed media paintings. We were in Louise’s basement so you’ll have to excuse the low quality photos as the light wasn’t good. Louise makes gorgeous jewelry, scarves and now she is moving into mixed media paintings. You can see a bit of her work here but none of her paintings are on the website yet.

This is a very bad photo of one of Louise’s pieces that she made with the screen printed fabric we made out my house in February. She stretched the fabric over a board frame and then covered it with a cold wax medium. Anyways, she had made up 4 different surfaces for each of use to try. The great thing is you can use old boards or ceiling tiles, cover them with plaster (the kind you use with dry wall and get cheaply at the hardware store), let it dry and build your layers from there. She also applied plaster to burlap, let it dry and then roll it up to crack the plaster to give really cool textures.

Here is one of my plaster ones that I have cracked and painted with sepia acrylic ink.

This is one of Carole’s pieces that she painted first and then screen printed with thickened walnut ink.

I’m not sure what I’m going to do with this purple one but I was thinking of peeling paint so there will be multiple layers and it won’t end up to be bright purple.

The blue one in the middle is plaster on a ceiling tile – it is drying. I thought I would try a gel medium transfer on this one.

I printed out one of my circle sketchbook drawings and painted it with gel medium. But I was too impatient to let it dry completely. Plus it is done on an inkjet printer and should have been printed with a laser printer.

So after it was dry to the touch (not long enough), I put it in water and rubbed the paper off the back surface. So it really faded and I tore it in several places. I didn’t end up using it on my blue plaster piece. Instead, I am using a nail to incise the pattern in the plaster and then I’m going to paint the design. I’ll show you that one later.

Here is Louise’s “bark piece”. She sanded it down in the middle to get the white and then is contemplating adding the fabric and string to it. It will be finished with a layer of wax.

I sanded my brown crackled piece and then added more color back in with oil paint sticks.

This one, I painted and then silk screened. I should have stopped there and though through what I wanted to do but instead –

I plunged ahead and added more color on top with a stencil. It looked very leopard like so I added more color. And now I don’t think much of it. But I brought it home and added some walnut ink layers. It looks a little better but I’m not sure where it’s going. You can add layers of sheer fabric, organic matter or whatever you like.

This is one of Louise’s with a leaf added. The only problem is that now I have 4 pieces started with only the base layers. I now have 4 projects to finish and little idea of where I’m going with the designs. I am really going to have to just allow myself to “play” with these and not stress over what the end result is. We’ll see how that goes – I’ll show you my progression as I go along.

Soy Wax Batik

Posted on January 11, 2014 by ruthlane under mixed media, surface design

My local surface design group met yesterday and we played with soy wax. I took fabrics that were previously dyed either naturally or with Procion dyes. I did have some white fabric but didn’t use much of it.

Here’s our wax set up and we used stamps, brushes and stencils to apply the wax. You can use almost anything to apply the wax so cardboard tubes, plastic bits from packaging, foam tubes and kitchen utensils were also used to apply the wax to the fabric.

Here’s Bunny using a stamp to apply wax to her fabric.

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These are a few of my fabrics after they were stamped with wax. You can see that the fabrics are not very exciting. Most were ones that I had dyed naturally and weren’t very exciting. After the wax hardens, then you paint fabric paint over the surface. I used Dye-na-Flow paint. I did try walnut ink but it didn’t hold after washing so that piece didn’t work out.

This is a shot of some of our work drying. Carole”s pieces are on the left. I also tried a few sketchbook pages which are on the far right.

This is a piece that Bunny did on silk. It reacted quite strangely to the wax so it will be interesting to see what the end result may be.

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This slide show is of my finished pieces. After the paint is dry, I ironed the pieces between pieces of newspaper to melt most of the soy was away. Then I put them all in the washing machine with a hot water wash and laundry detergent. I then ironed the pieces again. This process is easier than traditional batik because the soy wax melts at a lower temperature and comes out of the fabric more easily. It was a fun afternoon and now I just need to decide what to do with my new batik fabric.

Ruth Lane Art

Experimenting with Arts Endless Possibilities

Category Archives: mixed media