Thursday 17 May 2012

Blending old and new

Work is progressing steadily on the illustrations for my children's book. Most mornings, as soon as it is light, I head up to my studio and immerse myself in the story, surrounded by reference sketches and notes, and work on the tilt of a head, the detail in the clothing, the lay of the land.


I have published newsletters and magazines in the past, in the 'olden days' when cut and paste meant, literally, scissors and glue! In publishing poetry books for myself and others I relied on desktop publishing and much of the work was done on the computer, although for layout I still reverted to hardcopy for corrections, and always trusted my eye far more than what any program attempted to dictate.

And now I find myself, in this as in so much else, blending and weaving the old and the new, hand and eye coordination primarily, a little tweaking on a scanned image to see what may work better, then back to the drawing board for touch up.

A lot of work. Solid steady work. One image at a time. One page at a time. And always the ocean and the shoreline to remind me of where my story takes place, and the magic that is found there.

Tuesday 1 May 2012

Felting Flowers

As part of the Gabriola Arts Council amazing Isle of the Arts Festival last weekend I took part in a wonderful felting workshop given by an inspiring instructor and fibre artist Siki Mc Ivor. I was not familiar with either (wet) felting or needle felting so it was a fascinating process.
Wonderful colours of dyed roving and other fibres were provided
to create a felted flower.




We began by layering pieces of roving, and filling in the gaps to create the flower itself.

 Then used soapy hot water and friction to felt the fibres together, adding patches as necessary.
 
                          

The colour combinations people came up with were simply amazing.



A similar technique was used to make the stem.

And the stamen.


The flower, stem and stamen were then assembled and felted all together, first by needle felting...

 and then by (wet) felting, again using hot, soapy water and friction.

The flowers were absolutely stunning!







 The group was totally delighted.

... and so was I -
not to mention severely obsessed with yet another art form...