2012 Goals Recap

This is going to be a quick rundown of the goals I set for myself at the beginning of the year. I have had so many changes over the past year; going from a full time college student to unexpectedly having to work full time instead, working way too many hours a week, to finally finding a good balance.

The original post is here, if you are curious to read more detail.

1. Buy less fabric.

This was achieved mainly because I starting knitting more than sewing and bought yarn instead. Heh.

2. Experiment with dyeing and printing.

So-so. I wanted to get into this more over the summer but time got away from me. I did paint fabric and turn that into sewn items, however. I am counting this one as a half victory (for now).


3. Dive into art quilting.

Another one that I just dipped my toes into. I took advantage of my upper level art classes to try out some of these goals. This is my favorite mixed media piece (fabric and paper).


4. Expand knitting techniques.

This was so vague that I'm surprised I managed it. Concrete goals from now on! As it is, I did accomplish this. I knit a toy, lace, basic colorwork, used a provisional cast on and kitchener stitch. I also learned short row shaping and completed a project with the yarn held double. I really have Camp Loopy to thank for the push because before the summer, I only knit casually. I wasn't pushing myself on my own and having a challenge really helped launch my learning and bring my knitting to another level.


5. Transfer photographs to fabric and combine it with sewing.

I did this a little bit in my advanced photography class. I want to revisit this again in the future.


6. Make more clothing.

I sewed two tops this year. More than before, yes, but not what I was thinking. It's a start though.


7. Sketch daily.

FAIL. (And a little unrealistic with my schedule.)

8. Start selling pattern or things I have made.

Didn't happen and I am really ok with it. This would have added another level of craziness to my life. Maybe in the future.

9. Start weaving.

I've touched my basic loom only to move it around my creative space.

10. Learn leather tooling (nope!), spinning (nope!), paper cutting (one time), enameling (nope!), and felting (nope!).`


Tomorrow I will share my goals for 2013. Here's to a great new year for us all!

Studio Saturday on a Monday: Photography Final and First Week of Drawing

I have no idea where my weekend went. I had plans to do many things and didn't get to most of them. That includes this post (which was going to be split, but now is all in one). This post is going to be photo heavy so I will try not to ramble on as well.

First up is my final project for photography. We were to create five pieces using the techniques learned during the semester. They were to show who we are right now and did not have to be related. I decided I'm only going to share two of them here because I really don't like the other three.

This one is about my renewed love of where I live. I finally realized why I always hated living here and since those circumstances have changed, I do like this area. Not to say that I want to live in town for much longer as there are too many people and not enough space for me. Here's my piece dedicated to my love for the Red River Valley.

There was a lot that went into making this. I started by painting the canvas yellow and adding blue along the edges to make a green. Then I transferred maps of Minnesota and North Dakota to the canvas. I whitewashed those to fade them a little and then added the gel lift of the satelitte view. (If you look really closely, you can see my house! Ha!)

I painted the stereotypical heart before tranferring an image of an anatomical heart. Then I embroidered the river, connecting it to the heart. Finally, I added the texture around the edges and painted the sides black. Oh, and I stamped around the piece to add more texture.

The second piece I am showing you is my pocket full of dreams. My inspiration for this piece came from the book Personal Geographies by Jill K Berry. In the book, she made this to show items on a bucket list. Mine is more lifestyle based.

I gathered images that I have taken over my lifetime. Most are more recent (the past couple years), but there are two that I took as a child while visiting the Badlands in North and South Dakota (a must see if you ever get the chance). To pull them together visually, I exposed them as cyanotypes. I forgot how much fun I had with that in the beginning of the semester and am glad I picked that route here.

That wraps up the semester finally!

Now onto my first week of drawing class. I'm in level two, so I got to submit a proposal of what I want to work on during this four week class. I had already decided that this summer was going to be about play, so this is carrying over into class. I proposed to work with mixed media, as well as my sewing machine, and to explore how the mediums interact with each other. My inspiration is going to come from my day-to-day life and environment.

To start off, we had to create out best drawing. This instructor always does this and it is nice to have a benchmark to work from. It's been awhile since I have drawn anything other than sketches. I warmed up and did a few drawings before deciding on the one I was going to show in class. I just sat out on the deck and started drawing.

Here's part of one. I tried drawing Jameson and Angus, but they just wouldn't sit still.

Then I honed in on the danelions that are taking over our yard (and everyone else's). The one I brought to class is on the left. After our informal critique, he wanted us to draw the same thing again, taking into account the comments from critique.

I spent the rest of the first day playing around with a few things. First was this ink drawing, which I didn't finish before class ended. I also did another piece, but realize right now that I forgot to take a photo of it. If I remember on Saturday I will.

Our first project for the week was to draw the same object three times: one photo realistic, one abstract, and one non-objective. I played around with more of my materials working with my object: this beautiful, old dress form. You may remember that I painted one in painting class as well.

I worked with layering and textures here.

Then decided that I needed to get my go-to drawing style out of the way before digging into this further.

The next day, we spent working on these and also starting another project. This new one is to use the computer and projector to create a series of drawings. I had to wait on this one until the weekend when I could get transparencies made up.

So instead, I worked on my abstract and non-objective pieces. The non-objective is pretty straight forward. I picked out the basic shapes of the dress form and used a variety of materials to create this.

For my abstract piece, I started out by collaging a background of various cardstock and tissue paper. I covered this with a layer of vellum to dull down the colors of the papers. Then I painted the vellum a golden yellow, using a translucent paint. I put some pastel on the surface in the same color of the dress form and then added the charcoal outline. The final addition was the string. After seeing this photographed, I may go in and add more of the pastel.

Both of these projects are due for critique tomorrow. I did finish the projects today in class, but may make some tweeks before I go to class.

For the rest of this week, we have a few drawings to do as well as play around with making a kite. The kite will be a challenge and is basically a pass (it flies) or fail (it doesn't fly) project.

That's enough for today. I hope your weekend was a good one!

Studio Saturday

I don't have much to update this week. I worked long hours both Thursday and Friday nights, so that ate up my free time on Friday and for today. All I managed really was to run errands and visit one of the art museums so I can write a couple papers for next week.

I did start one of my two projects for painting. It is going to be a large (about 5' x 4') painting. I only got the gesso on the paper as I forgot the actual paint at home, but I think that's a good thing. I popped in to the studio today to check on it and the paper has not flattened out. For my second project, I still need to prewash my fabrics before I start painting. I also want to pick up a plastic tablecloth to work on, so I'm hoping to get on that tomorrow.

No updates on sculpture. Unfortunately.

And in photography, I'm still deciding what I'm going to do with the images I've printed.

I have these three on muslin. I was going to use all three in one piece but stitching them down to a large piece of canvas, but my instructor wasn't fond of that direction. She told me I could still do it, but she didn't think all three were needed to "tell the story". I have an idea, which I really need to get to soon in case it doesn't turn out the way I see it in my head.

And this one on a plastic sheet. I was thinking about adhering this to a saw blade, but looking at this, I really like the wood coming through. I may have to pay a visit to the secondhand building materials/salvage place...

I really need to get busy on these projects. Final critiques for painting and sculpture are in a little over a week, with photography coming the following week. For now, though, it is time to get to bed to try to reset my sleep schedule.

Studio Saturday

As I briefly mentioned in my FAL post earlier, I'm feeling a little down. I don't want to go into details because it's mostly work related, but it affecting my mood and motivation. That includes the projects I have to do this weekend for school, so I will be working on them all day Sunday.

First up is my photography project. Portraits is the theme and she wanted us to print them onto a material other than paper/photo paper. I chose to do self portraits that included Jameson and Angus, and then printed them onto fabric.

This is what they look like now. I have some finishing to do with them, obviously. I will be sewing them to a duck cloth backing and then edging them with eyelet trim that I tea dyed today. I also need to go pick up some grommets so that I can link them together.

The photos aren't as exact in lining up as I would have liked, but it still works. Someone in my class thought I took one photograph and then just split it in two on the computer. It is actually two seperate images though.

In sculpture, we are still working on sculpting the nothing. I honestly haven't even started creating my sculpture, though I do know what I am going to do finally. I was having a hard time taking my idea from something literal to beyond that. Nothing to show here though, so look for it next week. This is due on Wednesday so I will be starting it asap.

In painting, we painted a self-portrait and then worked on painting the figure. I don't like the paintings I did at all, and most are still at school, so I'm not going to show those. We are supposed to paint another portrait painting, using the painting studio at school. I prefer to work at home though, so I have been putting this off. Tomorrow I need to go there to recover a large frame for our next painting, so I will be taking my camera with so I can shoot photographs of myself in the room and then use those to paint from. I'm toying with taking painting away from actual paint and instead, thread painting with my sewing machine.

The large canvas is going to be used to create a painting about a current issue. We had to go around the group naming current issues as ideas, but I was a little stumped and didn't even know what most people were talking about. Due to my schedule, I don't pay attention to the news at all and if I know what is going on, it's because I hear something on the radio or at work, or Chad tells me about it.

The issue I named in class was with the oil boom going on in North Dakota. Thinking about it though, I'm not sure how to paint that, so luckily the lottery was a topic that has been brought up a lot lately by people around me. Mostly in the sense of, "This is going to be the last time you talk to me because I have the winning ticket". I just laughed because everyone at work was saying the same thing. I told one person that we (ie Chad) buy lottery tickets, but that's our Plan B. They responded, dumbfounded, wondering what our Plan A was. Of course, for us, Plan A is to work, earn money to pay our bills and move towards our dream, living below our means. Plan B would get us there faster, but Plan A will do the same eventually. That person laughed at me and said the lottery was their Plan A. Thus sprung up imagery for me to use. I was a little worried I would show up to class on Tuesday without an idea, and then spend the entire class time overthinking or forcing something that wasn't there for me.

So, that's all I have to sum up this week. I'm going to get to work on this list, and then spend some down time catching up with my blog reading and email. Hope your weekend is treating you well!

Studio Saturday

This post is going to have a lot of photographs, so be prepared. I did talk about some of this and what is coming up on Thursday, so excuse the repetition.

First up is photography. I turned in my project that used photo transfers and lifts. We learned how to do this both digitally and using gel medium. I didn't really care for the digital process, so I only used gel medium for these. We had to choose something we felt strongly about and create three propaganda collages. My subject is on how technology and social media is taking over our lives. (Please note: I am not really proud of how these turned out and while I do feel strongly about this, I don't really care to create work about these sorts of things. At least at this time in my life. Oh, and she is trying to find a place where we can sell these, which I'm not really keen on, but what can you do?)

This first one was my initial idea and one I like the least. We were to find images online and alter them in some way before putting the collages together. I altered the girl in front of the computer too much that it's hard to make her out. Her expression in the original image is of unhappiness and the text is supposed to imply that people spend more time with their "friends" on Facebook than face-to-face.

This second one is kind of a spin off of a drawing I did in another class. I notice in all of my classes that the students are usually texting on their phones or on the internet on their laptops. They do this instead of listening to the lecture or participating in class. One time a student even answered a phone call in the middle of someone else's critique! He didn't leave the room first or even to talk to whomever it was. I routinely do leave my phone at home or forget it's with me. Maybe it's that I'm of a different generation. I saw a girl yesterday who was maybe 7 and had her own phone. She was complaining to her mother that her friend wasn't answering. Most days, I would love to give up my cell phone for a landline again.

The third piece is kind of hard to make out because of the doodling I did in the background. The couple in the photo are both engrossed in their phones instead of paying attention to each other. The caption of "Everlasting Love" is supposed to leave the viewer wondering if the love is between the two of them or with their phones.

Our next project is on portraits and printing onto alternative surfaces. We are to prep them over our break so we're ready to go on the Tuesday we return. I want to pick up some handmade papers, wood veneer, plastic sheeting, and thin sheet metal. I will also be using some fabrics and have to select samples to use. I'm still brainstorming the final project as well.

In sculpture we finished up our mold projects. They aren't entirely done as the clay still needs to dry and then be fired, so you will be seeing all them again once they are really done. On Wednesday we had our critique and also put underglazes on our pieces. I took these photos with my cell phone, so the quality isn't the best, but it shows the mold I used and some of the final pieces. This is before critique and I had not finished the third. We made two-part molds and the hole at the ends is for pouring wax or epoxy in. If wax is poured in, that can be used to cast it in bronze. Bronze casting is something I would love to learn but isn't covered until Sculpture II (I'm in Scuplture I). I will be taking it if it fits into my schedule before I graduate next spring.

One of the pieces is a solid lemon that I sliced into wedges. After letting the clay sit for awhile, I went back in and carved a little so they looked more like real lemons.

The second one is a pile of lemons. Here's one of them and there are six more that I attached together. (I don't know why this photo is so small...)

The third piece is a play on words. I thought of first aid when thinking of lemonade, so I attached a cross to the surface of one lemon and underglazed that in red. The rest of the lemon will be white. I'm pretty sure I was the only one amused at this and no one else thought it was as clever, but I don't care.

During critique my instructor said I should have made one of the lemons into a car, implying the cliche about bad cars. I'm kicking myself for not thinking of that one as it's another clever idea. Oh well.

Our next project is on sculpting the nothing. This is very vague and I pondered it for weeks before pressing him for more insight on Wednesday. He gave me a philosophy book to read dealing with this idea and a lightbulb went off for me. I may even start working on it during break even though we don't have to. He does want us to firm up an idea and make a small model of it. I bought some thing for the final sculpture though and just want to sit on the idea for a few days before diving in. I'm pretty excited and will reveal more about it as I start working on it.

In painting, we moved on to working in oils. I used to love oil painting but am finding I am not so fond of it anymore. I've moved on to loving watercolors too much that anything else is just not what I want to do. I will keep it up and maybe come back to liking them again, but I doubt I would pick up them up to work with at home. Oil sticks, though, I do like using.

Anyway, we had to paint a single object three ways: realistic, abstract, and nonobjective (just shapes and colors/you shouldn't be able to pick out what it is). My object is the common tomato pincushion.

I don't like nonobjective work so much and really do struggle doing it myself. Though without seeing this with the other two, a viewer may not know what it is, I just don't like it. I already painted over it, so this photograph is the only evidence it ever existed.

Here's my abstract version. I may hang this in my sewing room after it dries.

And my realistic version. I don't do realism too well, but am pretty proud of this one. It could use more work but I'm going to leave it as is. The large brush stroke that curves around the tomato bugs me too.

After critique on these, he asked each of us what we would like to work on. Little did we know that whatever we said would be what we were to work on in class and also show on Thursday. Mine was that I wanted to work on using tools other than a brush to paint with, like using a palette knife only. I had a lot of fun with it and may even buy different types of palette knifes to keep doing this.

Here's the one I did in class. This is the canvas I painted over and so I painting on a layer of white and let it dry a little before smearing paint on with the palette knife. I just wanted to get a feel for using it and then looked at what the colors were telling me. There seemed to be some flowers there, so I worked on defining them and putting together a scene. This photo doesn't do the texture on this painting justice at all.

He likes us to look at something when working, so to see if I could do this same way of applying paint, I did one at home and looked at a little owl I have at home. This one needs work for sure, but it was fun to try out.

Finally, in class on Thursday we were to paint the uglist painting we could. I knew this was a trick of sorts, because it's hard to do ugly intentionally, so I tried not to think about making it so too much. I started out by painting a base of acrylics onto a piece of paper. I let the colors blend and become whatever they wanted to become. It turned out pretty dark and almost forest like. Once that was dry, I took out a marker and doodled a creature on top of the paint. I wasn't going for perfection and just went with whatever my hand did. On top of that, I used glazes (thinned down oils) to paint in the creature and the background. I wanted the base layer and my outlines to show through, so the glazes were perfect. When I was finished, I actually started to think he was cute, even though he's not that pretty.

Our assignment for over break is to complete our master copy. I still haven't decided which Rene Magritte painting I'm going to do and won't be starting it until Monday. I also have to finish my sketchbook pages and find an object to paint ten times. Oh, and make a postcard to mail to him over the break. Mine will be fabric and I'm probably going to work on it tomorrow. I just need to decide what I'm going to do.

That's all for this week. Hopefully I will have something to show next Saturday, depending on how productive I am. For all my plans to spend yesterday sewing, I actually spent it sleeping and then running errands for Chad. My body just decided it needed rest more than anything and Chad has some things that he needed done that he can't because of his work schedule. I am going to work on something tonight though and am hoping to finish it before a deadline tomorrow. If I finish, I will share it here as well.

Studio Saturday

I've been working on Chad's vests and cooking most of the day I almost forget to post this today! I'll make it quick because I need to go to bed shortly.

I have nothing to share from my sculpture class. I missed Monday and on Wednesday our instructor was gone. He had the opportunity to carve snow in Winnipeg, Manitoba for their annual Festival du Voyageur. If you ever get the chance to go to it, do it! I went many times growing up and always had fun. Chad doesn't have a passport (yet!), otherwise I would rope him into driving up there for a day. Anyway. We don't have class on Monday due to President's Day either.

In photography we are working with gel medium and digital lifts and transfers. I have a lot left to do for next week, but it's mostly prep work.

I do have these two examples to share. The one on the left is a gel medium lift (it feels like a plastic skin and can be applied anywhere) and the one on the left is a digital transfer.

Our final project for this section is supposed to be propaganda for an issue we feel strongly about. My issue is how people should be cooking at home instead of eating out.

I have quite a few paintings to share this week. These were done in class and supposed to be painted with reckless abandon.

Then we had the assignment to do that at home. I chose to do mine quickly and spontaneously, so I just picked out my neighbor's house to paint during sunrise.

The other outside assignment was to paint a Valentine's Day painting, but it couldn't be typical. I don't feel that February 14th should be anything out of the ordinary in a relationship, so instead I painted what love was. In our case, Chad and I offer support for each other and to show that, I painted a welding helmet (his creative outlet) and my sewing machine.

The most interesting day in class was when our instructor hypnotized us. Not in the bark like a dog, make a fool of yourself way, but to get into a deep state of relaxation. I've had this done by him before in a drawing class so I knew what to expect.

First he had us paint a still life prior to entering a relaxed state. We had 15 minutes for each of these. I didn't get very far on the first because I am a slow painter.

Then we were hypnotized and told to paint it a second time. I got a little bit further into getting it down, but it's still not finished.

For the third, he put us into a deeper state and told us to think about painting as a child and how free it was. I actually finished this prior to the time limit being up and managed to get all sorts of details in.

Over the weekend we are to use this exercise to paint more freely. We also start painting with oils next week, which I am so happy about.

Until next Saturday with my artwork. Hopefully I will have something to share on Monday. When making my list yesterday I forget to include my Mouthy Stitches pouch, which is what I will be doing after finishing one of the vests.

Have a great Sunday!

Studio Saturday

Here we are at Saturday again. My classes this week were pretty light as far as work goes, but here is what I created for them.

Firstly, in sculpture we are working on making two part molds. So far, I just have one half of it done. I'm making a mold of a plastic lemon; nothing exciting.

In painting this week we worked on making mixed media collages, concentrating on color and shape. The first one I made in class looking out one of the windows. I used a little paint, marker and oil sticks to add to the color already on the collaged paper.

This second one was done at home. I glued torn up sheet music to a large sheet of paper and painted over it. We were to use something 3D on the collage as well and that is represented by the waxed thread I used as strings. Marker was used as well to define. I think I managed to wreck it though by drawing over slightly wet paint.

Our final cyanotype project was due on Tuesday. We had our critique and then our instructor surprised us by telling us that our pieces were going on display in the gallery. We had until Thursday to tweek them, taking into account the comments made during critique.

My piece is dealing with my family and growing up. Before my sister was born, when I was still an only child, my parents would read Goldilocks and the Three Bears to me, substituting Katie Bear for Baby Bear. When she was born, this stopped. That is part of the story here. The other part is how I seperated myself from my family due to long term mental abuse. You can read a little more about that here, where I talked about it. If you have more questions though, feel free to ask. (Like I stated in the first post, any suggestions that I have done the wrong thing are unwelcome. Abuse is unacceptable, period, and considering it continued into my adult years made it horrendous for me.) I found photos that would help portray that idea that my story can be parallel to the fairy tale and traced various illustrations to get the top layer. I used a Japanese book binding technique to put it together. This piece is very interactive and hard to photograph. For obvious reasons, it is hard to portray mental abuse and the photo "showing" that is of my crying as I'm receiving a gift. My parents seemed to think that by buying me things or giving me money that it would erase what they did to me. At one point, I was even bribed to talk to my father again. A pretty hefty $10,000 was on offer... Tempting but not worth it to me.

It was kind of funny to me because I had been thinking how this was a great way to work through feelings but nothing I would want to put on display. Well, it is now hanging up at school and I'm trying to be ok with it. If she had told us we would be displaying the projects from this assignment, I would have made something else, honestly.

That's all that I had to do last week. My only assignment right now is to paint a Valentine's Day themed painting, but it has to not be the expected or use any sort of cliche. I have an idea of what I'm going to do and just need to do it. Good thing it isn't due until Tuesday.

I spent the day doing some sewing, which I will show you tomorrow. Hope your weekend is going well!