our creative space

i've taken over the kitchen table this week! given that winter seems to have started already here, i'm hoarding sunlight and sitting as close to the heater as possible {with my scarf on!}. the urge to make 100 patterns is very strong, but so is the need to slow down with some paint at the table {a little away from the computer}.

thanks for the encouraging comments re the pattern/fabric making :)

happy creative space day! to see more visit our creative space.

my creative space

working on some drawings that i make into patterns for fabric . . . {kind of short on words today!}.

happy creative space day! to see more pop in to kirsty's.

work in progress

here are a few of the new pieces i've been working on lately. i'm a bit excited about the top one! i cut some pieces out of a photo i printed and stitched around them to make some of the collage elements. i wasn't sure how i was going to use them or if they'd look too out of place. it's acrylic, marker, cotton thread and collage on paper, with pinholes. {clicking takes you to flickr}.

i'm playing with a looser kind of painting with the others! and some chunkier leaves {2nd last pic/sketch}.

happy march + happy autumn {in melbourne at least}! it felt almost like winter today, which i guess is what autumn is about. don't think i'm ready for the cold just yet . . .

by my 3 year old

love this 'drawing' by my 3 year old!
happy creative space day ~ even tho we are on a break :)

my creative space

i'm working on small drawings with embroidery thread this week.
still feel like i am hopping from one project to another! i guess the goal is to catch the ideas while they are building instead of letting them slowly fizzle.

happy creative space day!
visit kirsty for more creative goings on.

my creative space

still going on the digital colouring . . . this is an older drawing i decided to work on. i spent hours and hours cleaning up the paper reflection/glare/yellowing around the lines of the drawing! i still haven't found a quick way of doing this! playing with the levels seems to jeopardise the soft quality of the pencil lines, which i want to keep. so, i ummed and ahhhed as to whether or not i really want to spend that long making these and thought i'd re-evaluated after finishing one. the possible colour combinations are endless!
i also tried drawing with pens on smooth paper ~ much easier to get rid of the background. but the lines are flat/mostly solid colour ~ see second pic {a quickly made example}.

some feedback from our art-teacher friend who was holding the original drawings and standing near the computer: 'i don't want to look at that' {the computer}!!

i'll keep weighing up the options :)
to see more creative spaces or play along, visit kirsty here.

:: a shop called Milton is having the official opening tonight from 6-9pm at 153 greville street, prahran. come along if you feel like it. i'm hoping to get there by 7 :)

new work

these are the pieces i've been working on over the holidays. i took lots of photos but the shiny embroidery thread is very tricky! the shine of the thread {which i love} seems to look tacky when i brighten the shots in photoshop {a necessary step}!
the stitching has been fun and the thread has turned out to be just the kind of addition of colour that i was after. i didn't want to cover up the drawing with paint ~ i wanted to keep the simplicity of the drawing . . . and the paper is 100% cotton . . .
i took these photos in the kids' room against the an old map. i'm hoping to get some better photos soon.

thanks so much for all the comments on my last work post :)

my creative space . production

there was a bit of a production line happening in my space this morning as i finally got 20 large sheets of paper cut into pieces. it got tricky on the 2nd lot as i realised that my beautiful hot pressed cotton paper sheets from france were actually big parallelograms rather than rectangles! a little wrangling with the long metal ruler and the cutting mat required to get some straight lines to work from . . .
i started on some drawings ~ i thought i'd do some lights on paper . . .
and, the most ambitious idea: i'm going to make a calendar for 2010 with these small collages! {i know most people who are doing calendars already have them done, but it seems that i want to go full steam ahead a little late anyway!} i hope to have the collage parts finished tomorrow and to work on the clean up and layout over the next week.

i hope you've had a lovely time in your creative space today! pop into kootoyoo for more spaces or to show yours :)

my creative space . light on with tea

today i have been collaging, taking photos and sketching some new designs for pendants and brooches.
the 'light on' series and the 'life with tea*' series . . .
* for lovers of tea {i may have mentioned that i am not really a lover of tea, but when not drinking coffee i am often at the kettle making a very plain hot drink: boiled water on it's own!}.

hope you are getting some creative time and space today :)
visit kootoyoo for more creative spaces.

masculine/feminine work

when i did my creative writing/editing course years ago i had to read out my own writing in front of the class {the horror!} and a couple of people commented that my writing style was masculine. they had visualised the narrator as being male {even tho they could see me reading!}. this thought/memory popped into my head when i was making these collages!

1. yellow light 2. cement

hope your week has started nicely :)

brandi strickland/paper whistle

when i first started gretchenmist on etsy last march i was incredibly inspired by brandi strickland's collages and drawings. to me her work is fresh and unpretentious/raw. i completely get her collages – i feel satisfaction and post-production wonder {that i imagine to be the case for brandi} when i look at them! her mixedmedia paintings are great too.
1. cell wall 2. fox 3. you know 4. yellow 5. break your heart
images sourced from her website and blog, flickr, and etsy shop
: go see )

opposite oceans

the top one: mostly drawing and a little painting and collage. the bottom: sunny :) pencil with block print and painting and collage. will be listed soon . . .

original ocean

these are original block prints with painting and collage added! they are so much brighter in real life . . . one of the greens is almost fluro and the orange is also light and almost fluro {well not fluro but bright and rich}! it's tricky when things are 'out of gammet' and rgb! there are 2 more which i will put in a separate post cos it will look better that way :)
happy start to the week.

snowed in

i finished this yesterday. not sure why i'm thinking about snow and pale landscape colours in summer . . . i guess melbourne is still throwing in the odd freezing day.
it's a bit sketchier than usual in the hills. i put a layer of semi-transparent acrylic over the background in the bottom part which gives the texture more depth. off to get some more work done.
enjoy the weekend.

crash, bang, it's all ok, sale!

last week i posted a note in the etsy forums about joining in this weekend's huge sale {buy an original and receive a free print} then on wednesday, just after i had a sale come from madeit in the minutes before i had to leave the house to pick up my 4yr old from kinder} my computer froze and started to make a noise like a vacuum cleaner. i tried to restart etc but no luck. i left the house in a state of mild panic . . . i had not made any backups in the whole 2yrs, 7 months of owning this computer! . . . all the photos of the kids, all my work . . .

when i returned the situation hadn't fixed itself! so the last few days has been filled with dread, panic and STRESS. for more than 24 hours i didn't know if i had lost all of the above and/or the computer. in the mean time a friend came around with an external hard drive {an early christmas present} and saved everything, and my husband took the sick mac to get looked at and it turns out that it's just a case of memory loss - and luckily with computers we can buy them new memory! it's still getting fixed {hence my clumsy post via my husband's pc laptop} and i'm pretty sure it'll all be ok next week - i will get my limbs back!! and i promise i will backup from now on . . .

life, sales and thankfully the weekend must go on!

happy saturday :)

modish feature

a big thanku to jena for this feature on modish – a blog i really enjoy, especially the tours through studios and workspaces. {the articles on marketing are also extremely helpful and a great support to the creative online community}. it's very exciting to see my work here!

weekend's work

a new digital print for the shop. the waves are made with a rubber block on a pencil background and the sun and moon are done in photoshop. so a mixed media print print . . . tags get confusing here. i like the simplicity of the rubber block. i've used oil paint to make images like this in the past with semi-transparent white layers. the focus there was on the texture and overlapping of layers where here it's about the lines and simplicity.



here are some more block prints i did on saturday. i made some of the combi too but the lines need more work, they filled in a bit too much. with these ones i experimented with the background layer – the grey one is pencil. i like the colour but it's not so perfect as a print! the green ones have an acrylic paint layer which helps the print. in the bottom image i've added the 'leaves' in photoshop. i'm getting a little closer to the image i had in mind at the start but would like to use a hand-made layer for the leaves. i might try sponge stamping . . . maybe next weenkend.
happy monday, or mumday as we call it :)