Remembering birding in So Cal

 My back is keeping me out of the studio for now and I've been catching up on some of those computer things that wait until I have time for them.  This has meant organizing my ebook backup directory by author and sorting through some bird photos.  Which led to my discovery of a report of a birding trip in 2005 when I went to San Diego and then the Salton Sea for birding.  I went with a birding friend, Tina, who took this picture of a cactus wren.

I used this photo, printed on silk with some color changes, to try out some various ideas about using bird photos to make art.  These 2 pieces are in the finished but not happy with them drawer for 2 reasons.  First, I wasn't happy with the pieces themselves and second, the stitching required to do this was just too difficult.  

So, as part of going through and cleaning stuff up, I'm looking at these older unsatisfactory pieces and wondering if they would work better as collage rather than piecing.  I keep coming back to this idea for 2 reasons.  One, I'd like to use my bird photographs in my work.  Second, I really liked this bushtit piece which was done using piecing and some silkscreening.  Also Inktense pencils.  

Looking at the piece I like in comparison to the 2 I don't like, I can see a couple of major differences.  The contrast between the photo colors and the other fabric is one.  The second is the thinner pieces of fabric work better in the bushtit piece.  So while I work on getting my back happy again, I'll be contemplating these pieces.

Murphy's Law in the Marbling studio

 Last week, I attempted to do a whole lot of marbling.  I did actually do a bunch but everything that could go wrong, did.  Hence Murphy's Law.

I was using the palette from a NASA photo of the earth from space: blues, white for clouds, green for continents with a dash of orange for not green land.  And these colors worked well together but the first thing that went wrong was I tried using a white paint that I've never used before without testing it for spreading on the thickened water.  Lots of it fell to the bottom so the first thing on my list of things to fix is to check all the paints I'm planning on using for proper spreading on the medium.  The blues were mostly okay but the greens and the whites, not so much.

  Then the medium was a bit thick. I hadn't checked that either, using my tried and true formula for mixing it but apparently age of the powder and humidity do indeed affect the consistency.  This is not a fatal error since all it means is I have to rinse the fabric more thoroughly after marbling to get all the goo off, but again, something to fix.

I couldn't find my marbling notebook with all my notes of things I learned from experience so I had to rediscover some things.  Like the first color put on the medium is not as noticeable in the overall design as the last color.  In this example, the orange was last following the green.  Way more of those colors than I wanted altho I think it's still pretty fabric.

After that day of surprises, I switched to the shaving foam to try out some blue and white ideas.  I got the white swirls I was looking for but also learned I can't do a thinner layer of foam just because I'm running out.  It just won't allow the manipulations I want to do.

I like the bottom one better as it has more of the swirling look I was after.  The top one suffered from my not remembering the correct patting technique for making sure paint transfers completely.  

And to end off a frustrating week, I managed to mess up my back on Friday.  I spent the weekend resting, did lots of studio stuff on Monday but woke yesterday with yet more back pain.  So, it will be next week before I get back in the marbling studio.  I can only be thankful I have a massage appointment in a couple of days.  

My favorite Marbling tools

This last week was supposed to have me back in the studio doing some marbling inspired by one of the earth from space photos from NASA.  Alas, I was unable to sleep through the night at all this week so I was only able to get some marbling prep done.  So, here's my current state:  marbling gel made, fabric treated, cut and pressed, ready to go, and colors selected.  I'm hoping some of you are looking at that picture and asking what's that thing? cuz that's what I'm going to talk about: my favorite marbling tools.

I learned to marble from books and an artist friend who took a weekend workshop.  I didn't have a ready source of tools and I wasn't sure how much I'd enjoy it so I decided to diy most of the things I needed.  This meant re-purposing plastic pans and shoe boxes for marbling trays.  The rakes used to create tight patterns come in different sizes for different trays so I also needed to make my own of those.  In general, the only thing here that's recognizable as a commercially available marbling tool is the pile of black whisks which my artist friend gave me.  Everything else was improv.

Going left to right, we start with a cardboard tube which I use to wrap the fabric around so I can unroll it on top of the marbling gel after I apply the paint with the whisks and manipulate it.  Using the tube as a roller makes fabric much easier to marble and allows me precise placement without much worry about errors at all.  To the right of the tube are all the paints I've selected for this palette.  I spent one summer trying out different paints I had and buying some samples of new ones for colors that my current paints didn't do well.  (Once applied to the marbling gel, the paints spreads quite a bit.  In particular, all the reds I had turned pink because the pigment was in too thin a layer.  One of many reasons why starting marbling is a steep learning curve.)  

Now we get to the real tools.  I made a few rakes/combs to fit the size of the trays I had available.  My first attempts used foamcore as the handle and various sizes of pins for the comb part.  Foamcore doesn't stand up well to wet so I used some trimmings from sheets of honeycomb plastic.  And I ended up using T-pins because they worked so well being inserted into the white plastic strip.  Waterproof, not going to shift around and easy to adjust the spacing if needed.  These turned out to be my second favorite tools. 

I've already mentioned the black whisks which are used to apply the paint to the gel surface.  I also use them to do the marbling strokes by flipping them over and using the solid end as a one pin comb.  This is easier than making really tiny rakes to use with small trays.  And my favorite tool is last.  The ceramic chopstick rests that I repurposed because the glossy glaze means the acrylic paint can be easily scraped off.  

So there we are.  I made 2 gallons of gel, have my 11x14 tray set up and all my paints and tools ready to go.  Monday I start throwing paint around.