Long time since we had a giveaway, as a thank you for your faithful following and commenting and emailing and tweeting and chatting in person.
So here it is:
Watercolor, wet in wet, on Arches cold press paper, 8 x 5 inches, painting of my friend Helen's currently blooming orchid, her pride and joy!
To take part, please comment here, or in person, or by email, I'm open to all, and I'll put the names on slips of paper, and let kitty Duncan do his thing and pick one out. He's pretty good at it, and I think it's more fun than software doing random choices..
I'll give it a few days to let you have the chance at it. Please make sure I can reach you by email, so that I can notify you if you're the winner, and get an address from you to mail to. If you're on Twitter, a dm will work, too.
Recently I made a couple of great finds, via radio, and I really want you to know about them in case you didn't.
One is a wonderful documentary, A Change of World, Poetry and the Women's Movement, narrated by Meryl Streep
Do go and listen. I remember so much of this from the time, though I was not at all in the poetry world in any sense, but it was clearly a big wave of change, and very heartening.
Go here
And the other adventure originated with Wisconsin Public Radio, which pretty much saved my sanity in that first long winter when we came here and were finding our feet. This is a great one, part of TBOOK, To The Best of Our Knowledge, from Lynda Barry, yes, that one, the cartoonist, on making art even when you don't think you can, and why it's important.
This was a great adventure even for an ancient artist like moi, and I would love you to give it a try. Her ideas are great.
Go here
I tried a few of her prompts, and had a wonderful time. Here are a couple of drawings I did with eyes closed, yes, really.
And here's one I did eyes open
You can see that it's more coherent, but look at the difference in energy and life in the eyes shut ones. There's a lot more going on there. It's a great thing to try. And listen to Lynda when she explains why you need to avoid dismissing your efforts within two seconds of seeing them, this is important. Drawing is not about copying something to look like something. She understands this profoundly.
Anyway, there, a couple of gifts for you for Earth Day! it's about celebrating all sorts of human energy.
What with one thing and another, the transparency of some of the antique quilts at a recent display for the embroiderers' guild, thanks, Lyna, and the transparent images I made a while ago from my own artwork printed on fine silk, and then some recent views of goldwork, thanks Evie...
It all came together in a rush, and here's my new stitching, set up and ready to work with.
I have here a backing of a satiny sort of fabric with a sparkly fleck in it, with two transparent layers, one a photograph I printed on silk, the other a line drawing of a tree from the same trees in the photograph, but at a different season.
So I need to put in stay stitches first, to stabilize it for work. Then I might rehoop it in a smaller hoop, I'll see. My stitching will go through all three layers, so they need to lie well together.
I already did a choice of threads to use, maybe not all of them, but this range anyway. Silk, and some actual gold thread for goldwork, and other metallic threads. Starting it at stitch-in this evening.
