Art Experiments Challenge or what I'm going to be doing in January

As I explained yesterday in the 2015 wrap up, I am going to be blogging daily about my studio experiments.  Today, since my studio currently looks like this:

Today's work: clearing room for experiments!

I'm going to talk about what I want to achieve and how I'm going to approach it.

Primarily, I want a faster, less physically challenging way to create work.  Part of figuring out what that means was re-reading How to Get Focused and Create What Matters by Dan James.  This is one of those books that I need to reread periodically as this is an issue I struggle with.  (My friend Lisa says I suffer from project interruptus.  I say I have a low saving roll against shiny.)  And I like his approach to pricing it.  What could be better than picking what you pay for an ebook?  See his page about the book here.

What did I re-learn from the book?  I have to focus on one project at a time.  This does not mean I can't have more than one project in progress, but that I need to put all of my attention on one while I'm working on it.  Go into that flow state.  For me, this means only 2 projects at once and different spaces for them.  I definitely need to declutter the studio to start!  And I need to trust that my most important ideas will insist on getting done so I don't need to spend time dithering about which idea I should work on now.

Given those, I then started my list of experiments which will undoubtedly change as I go.  That is the way the whole experimental process works after all.  So this is essentially a place to start.  I learned from my chicken project that I wanted to head more toward making my own fabrics.  And I need to reduce the number of steps in my process which also probably means reducing the number of techniques I use.  My first step will be experimenting with silkscreening.  Can I use silkscreening to create my own fabrics with textures I like?  How about doing some batik style patterning?  And combining the silkscreens with painting so that I use silkscreens as outlines, kind of like a coloring book.  And what about dye painting?  I have a formula for making a soy wax cream with dye in it and it works well with silkscreens.  Definitely want to play with that.  And finally, I have 2 household projects I want to work on that I will use as a focus for the topic.

To put it in list form, experimental starting points:

1. silkscreening and over painting
2. silkscreening with soy wax cream
3. Textures on fabric
4. soy wax silk screening and dye painting combined
5. faux batik (with discharge?)
6. Dragons & birds, especially using my photos of local birds as a starting point

Here's a t-shirt from my drawer of not quite right things that I will be using as a starting point for experiments.  And yes, it's not dragons or birds but this is all experimental so I'm starting with what I have.

Tiedyed tshirt with silkscreened dragonflies

Tomorrow, I'll be overpainting the dragonflies on the t-shirt.  And probably creating more dragonflies to try out different paints and different techniques.