Lace Picture Frames

Next week is the opening of the Senior Art Exhibition at my college.  Every student majoring in Art or Art Education prepares a body of work to display in a large gallery show at the end of their senior year.  For my pieces in the senior show I chose five digital photographs and a large necklace created specifically for the show.  To spice up the presentation of my photography, I spray painted the frames using lace as a stencil.  I got the idea from Lee Meredith's do stuff! blog and the photo frames she painted for her wedding.

I started with a colorful base coat to coordinate with the photo going into the frame.  For example, my photos with blue sky belong in the frames painted with a blue base coat.  After the colored base coat dried, I sprayed some thrift store lace with spray adhesive.  Then I pressed the lace onto the frames and painted them black.  After peeling off the lace, a colorful lace pattern was left on a mostly black frame.

 These are a few preview shots of my portion of the gallery show.  Myself and the rest of the seniors have been in and out of the gallery this week hanging paintings and photographs.  More photos to come next week after the opening reception!

Painting Alla Prima

For the first week of my Intermediate Painting class, we worked from a still life to create an "alla prima" painting. Alla Prima is an Italian term meaning an initial painting, or painting done all at once. Essentially, the painting is worked all in one sitting, or in multiple sittings while the paint is still wet. The method of painting encourages a looser, more expressive style with an emphasis on interesting brushwork. The alternative method of painting includes multiple layers of paint and thin glazes to enhance colors and add details.The still life I chose to work from included a piece of red cloth, an animal skull, and purple foliage. The painting was completed in roughly 2-3 hours and not reworked. I consider this painting to be more of a "sketch" using paint as opposed to a piece I would hang on the wall. It had also been nearly a year since my last painting class, so this exercise was great for reaquainting myself with the materials.
Stay tuned for more posts about painting. Photos of my first painted self portrait are coming soon!

Making Valentines

Last week my college closed down for a rare snowday. Instead of braving the ice and snow, I stayed inside all day and made valentines! I bought a small pad of Martha Stewart valentine's themed paper, and a heart border punch at Pat Catan's a couple weeks ago and decided to put them to good use.
The border punch is neat because it lets you punch a section of border, line up the already punched section, and continue the border along an entire sheet of paper. I also decided to make some envelopes using brown craft paper that had been stuffed in boxes as packing material.

Monotypes Week 2

My second week of printing monotypes was an experiment with dark field monotypes. A dark field monotype starts with a plate coated in black ink with a sheet of dry printing paper on top. An image is then drawn onto the back of the sheet of paper. Pressure from the drawing utensil (pen, pencil, stick, cotton swab, fingertip, etc...) transfers ink onto the paper, leaving a white area on the plate. After the drawing is transferred, the front of the paper will have dark lines on a white background. Running the plate through the press will create a print with white lines on a dark background.
For my prints I used a drawing I made while in Rome this past spring. The drawing is of the obelisk in St. Peter's square in the Vatican. As with most prints, the image turns out backwards from the original drawing. Next time I will probably reverse my image on tracing paper before using it for a print.

Monotypes Week 1

One of the classes I am taking this semester is all about Printmaking. The first few weeks are focused on creating monotypes, and then moving on to the various methods of intaglio printing. The first week of class focused on light field monotypes.
A monotype is a printing technique that produces unique prints that, unlike most forms of printing, cannot be exactly duplicated. Light field monotypes are created by painting printing ink onto a non-porous surface, and pressing paper onto the plate. After the initial print, the artist can add or subtract ink from the plate and create an additional image. This process of reworking and printing is what makes monotypes so unique.
I created two prints of waterlilies. The first print had a dark background with lighter lily pads. For the second print I added more ink to the lily pads, and splattered some solvent on the background for some texture.

WIP: Owl Hat

My current Work In Progress (or WIP) is a knit hat with an owl cable pattern. Whenever I find an interesting pattern or project idea I file it away to pull out later. I found the pattern on the Penguin Purls blog in December... and it didn't stay stashed away for very long! I needed to make myself a new hat because I walk everywhere and my crocheted hat was letting in too much cold air.
I'm using a Stitch Nation by Debbie Stoller yarn called Full O' Sheep. It is a gorgeous single ply Peruvian Wool in a color called Thyme. This happens to be my absolute favorite shade of green (my winter coat is even this color), so when I saw this yarn at the store I just had to have it! Stay tuned for photos of the finished hat.

Kool-Aid Yarn

A couple weeks ago I spent the day dyeing yarn in my crock pot with Kool-Aid. I have used this technique before, and wanted to share! I started my experiments last year after seeing this tutorial from the do stuff! blog. The idea is to use a crock pot as the dye vessel instead of a pot of boiling water on the stove. Dyeing yarn this way is easy, but it takes some patience... and is highly addicting!
For this skein I used pink lemonade, black cherry, ice blue raspberry lemonade, orange, and two packets of lemonade.
This was my first attempt from a year ago. I followed the article's instructions closely, down to the color/flavor choices (although I might have used cherry instead of strawberry.)
My next dyed skein used strawberry, grape, and orange. Blending colors closer together in the color wheel produced a more subtle variegated yarn. The orange and grape worked well to create a less intense color. I used this yarn to knit a slip stitch lace scarf.