My Creative Process: Decisions, Decisions


A few blocks of digitally printed silk organza layered over the digital image.


Medium value of indigo dyed silk organza net.


A very light value of indigo dyed silk organza net. 

I haven't made a final decision yet on the ove rall directioni of the piece.  I have, however, toyed with the idea of playing off the Queen Anne's Lace that's part of the digital collage.


My Creative Process Part 3 of 4

The more I think about my creative process, the more I don't want to think about the it!  While I'm a process oriented artist, I'd rather be "doing" the process than simply writing about it.  So today, in pictures, this part of the process of writing about my creative process is all about auditioning a piece in progress.  And I'll probably post more photos in the next day or so as I work towards completing this piece.

Digital printed cotton fabric, printed from one of my photo collages, layered atop a piece of painted timtex.

I've been having a very hard time bringing myself to cut up, stitch, or otherwise use this piece of fabric.  And that is odd.  Odd in that I could easily print a hundred more of this collage onto fabric, paper, or whatever, so why not???

A digital piece of fabric that I printed from one of my photo collages, layered atop a piece of painted timtex.

And now with a digtially printed sheer silk organza fabric layed atop the other two layers.

And now with a layer of osage orange dyed silk organza layerd atop the previous two layers.

This piece will go through many auditions, layers, etc. before the first stitches take place, and once I start stitching I will then start auditioning more layers once again.

My Creative Process Part 2 of 4

Stage 2 of my creative process is to take notes, if I haven’t been doing so already, and to start auditioning my materials for the new work/series.   

My drawing desk on which I keep a piece of white butcher paper.  I like the white paper as it allows me to draw on it, take notes, and audition darkers objects such as these letter press blocks.

For those of you following my blogs you know that I have a large inventory of supplies to work with: these supplies range from naturally dyed fabrics, to handmade papers (many I made myself), inks, paint, threads, beads, shells, rocks, etc.  Actually, what I have are collections.  Collections that I have been creating and adding too since I was about nine years of age.

Some natural dye materials for dyeing fabric and fibers.

Rusty objects for dyeing fabrics and papers as well as for inspiration.

 
Shell bits and rocks from one of my collections, these live on my desk.

As part of the creative process I audition many of the objects in my collections, and image library, sometimes it's a series of phrases I've read in a book that inspire a piece.

WIP - Big Blue Stem

Here it is hanging vertically, I started this piece many moons ago, as in like sometime around 1999 many moons ago! 


This piece has always bothered me, there's a thread over on the Quilt Art list about cutting up a piece.  Well I've been tempted to cut the dark side of this quilt off for some 12 years now!  Now that I have Adobe CS 6 I've started experimenting with this piece
Here it is without the marks, I'm thinking some additional stitching and or embellishment is needed to make this piece really sing.

My Creative Process Part 1 of 4

I recieved an email from a follower earlier in the week asking me about my creative process, how do I get started, etc.  The email contained all sorts of questions, images of her very lovely work, etc., but the gist of the story is how to start the creative process for a piece.  The more I thought about it, and wrote to her, the more I realized that I there was a blog post(s) in the anwser.

For my latest series of stitched stories, Corn, I started out by looking at images in my photo library.


And I start thinking about the theme, what in the photos captures my eye design wise?


I also spend thousands of hours staring at fields, ditches, corn plants, grain bins, silos, etc., in varying light and seasons studying how the light moves and bounces across the objects, studying how they change shape and form in different lighting.

The next thing I do, and this can be days, weeks, months, or even years later, is decide if I want to work in fabric/fiber, encaustic, or with paint.  I admit sometimes I work in all of those mediums just to see how it'll turn out in the end, what I thought might be a great idea for fabric bombs and turns out to be exquisite when worked up in wax!

 More tomorrow!