Characters

Like many of you, I'm drawn to creating characters. They usually originate from paper or fabric cuttings. Most aren't intricate or refined but seem to find themselves during the scissor snipping. That was the case with the girl above and with the characters in the studio header. The difference between them is the girls layers were done in cloth and the figures above were cut from medium weight black paper or vintage pages of music or salvaged un-repairable books. Those aging pages aren't always the best way to go for stability reasons. A full version of Stargirl (above) can be found on my website. This was a piece done a few years ago. Find time for something you love to do.

Painting Bubbles

This was one of the small paintings I wrote about doing all those years ago while ill. I discovered painting bubbles makes you feel lighter. I've been playing with it a bit in Photoshop Elements. Hope you are feeling light tonight!

Fibers Rank High

On my list of fun things to play with, fibers rank high and have since I was a little girl learning to sew by hand and machine. But today... today there are almost no comparisons to the types and quality of fibers available to me in the 50's. Now its like going to the candy store when you go in search of supplies and the quality of them is amazing. Believe me, there were no stores where I grew up selling weaving/spinning, yarn or fabric dyeing supplies. Or vintage fabrics, hah, not likely! It would take the 60's to begin to shake things up, in many ways and many places.

These days one of the things I would play with more often, given the room to spread out, is wet felting. Not until my first workshop with Mary Stanley did I really have a chance to enjoy wet felting as we worked in the nuno felting process, in 2008 at Artfiberfest. A sample of that piece is above. A class with Mary is a treat you won't forget or regret. Needle felting is another enjoyment. Many of the supplies work in both dry and wet felting types. Nuno felting is more of a fiber marriage with, in this case, a chiffon scarf as the base and a mixture of wool roving's for the top. You really have to work the fibers together resulting in the same kind of gratification that comes with a day of digging in the garden. Your dragging but happy. Give it a try!

Pattern Compulsions

I guess I should begin with a confession. Specifically, a pattern compulsion confession. It started ten or twelve years ago with acrylics, though the mediums have shifted around in that time and my patterns tend to be less rigid these days.

The January it began I was pretty sick. To keep from loosing my mind during the endless coughing, I painted. (Yes, I wore a mask.) It gave me something else to focus on and pattern-ing required less concentration. I used brushes, torn foam shapes and anything else I could find to make paint impressions. When the health cloud lifted some weeks later I had quite a collection of small patterns on 5x7 watercolor paper. They weren't incredible but some turned out pretty fun. It was then that I developed a kinship with Kinko's. Those color copiers, with their wonderful range of enlarging and reducing options, supplied me with a good deal of layered and collage fun. My friends would likely tell you my eyes would glisten when I talked about the copy shop.

Time moved on, jet printers got better, cheaper and inks became stable. Enter the digital camera and what ever I created could be photographed, moved to my Mac, back to paper or fabric and layered again. Over and over. (It is only now that I have a printer with a scanner or I could have been doing some of that much earlier. I still don't use the scanner much, as the files are so big.) Of course the process can be reversed as well with a photo as the starting point, playing with it, printing it, painting on it, photographing that and on it goes.

What you see above began with a cropped photo of two pink heirloom roses, shot in the Port Townsend Rose Park about eight years ago. It has been a few things in that time but recently it transitioned into what you see here. Who knows what the future of those old roses holds. You have to admit, it's a GREAT time to be alive!

Monet I'm Not

Welcome to Sea Mist Studio! If you are a reader of my Sea Mist and Sunsets blog or found your way here through other means, as my Grandma used to say, come on in and sit a spell. If you have been following my other blog you are probably asking yourself, what in the world is she doing? She can't possibly have MORE to say?

Well, when Sea Mist and Sunsets kicked off last October I wasn't sure how often I would manage to post, but wanted a place to share photos, remembrances, thoughts on things that matter to me and hear your thoughts. We are all about footprints these days, so maybe I wanted to leave a few of those as well. Turns out I really enjoy creating the posts. And I love this wonderful opportunity to know folks from all around the world. Amazing, that. Anyway, the things I'm going to post here don't really fit over there. Though some of it would have gone to my website in days-gone-by, this takes far less time.

In my dreams I have a studio where I keep my crazy range of supplies. It has open walls to hang projects, light from windows and overheads, endless workspace, LOTS of storage, music, along with a place for friends to come play. The supplies are as real as the little bitty (read no Studio) house I live in. Sea Mist Studio seems to be the perfect trade off. There will be no formalities here so if you want to kick off your shoes and dance, go for it. While here you may find completed, half done or never-to-be-finished projects, things and people I find inspiring and who knows what else. It's a play room. Just remember, Monet or any number of other experts in their various crafts I'm not. This is about the fun of the process. Join me?

Things should start in the next week or so, once I've finished setting the blog up.