The most recent stitching adventure at the embroiderers' guild was an introduction to shashiko, the Japanese art form, a running stitch which can be elaborated to the extent of the stitcher's expertise and design ability.
What I wanted to do, was a bit different, why are you not so surprised to hear this...and I did a white on indigo stitching, a kind of wave formation, pre-stamped on the fabric I was given. I left parts of it unstitched. And Ginny, the member-instructor, gave us brocade already folded into the form of a frame for the stitching.
You'll notice these are different ways up, part of the deciding process. Then I photographed it on silk as one layer of a new transparency artwork.
Meanwhile, I had noticed when I parked at the library, a very interesting tree with variegated and peeling bark, right in front of my car. So I jumped out, took a couple of close ups, with the idea of seeing how they worked with the stitching idea.
And after a lot of fun, printing out the images onto silk chiffon, and layering them in different ways, I came out with a couple of artworks I'm okay with.
They are now matted, and presented portfolio style, that's with a mat and a backing, protected by a transparent envelope, and will go with me to the stitch in this evening to show the people. I am hoping Ginny will be there, since she will be interested to see what I ended up doing.
If you're interested in this process, and several people who've been to the house and taken a look, and played with the layers, have got really interested, you can get the silk from Dharma Trading. It' s paper with the silk sort of bonded onto it. You put it through an inkjet printer (not a laser, that would probably melt the silk terminally inside your printer), and then peel off the silk layer. The image also goes through to the backing paper, which you can use in another transparency setup, anyway, I do.
One of the great things about this is that you keep the images, and can reuse on other pieces of silk, with new and different layers. And your original art is unchanged, if you photograph your own work, so that is still available to you.
While I was at the plein air session yesterday, I got a lot of thinking in, including some design ideas. And today I realized that I could print out the pix of the wildflowers and of the lichen on the tree, onto fine silk, to create a transparent image.
You can get this silk, mounted on paper, to run through your inkjet printer, from Dharma Trading, my go-to place, and I had a couple of six packs of assorted silks. So I used the very finest ones, for maximum see through. Silk charmeuse, chiffon, crepe de chine and organza.
After I did the two natural images I realized this could also be applied to other artwork, so I did a couple of the daylily paper works the same way. They may end up being framed on top of the original paper, don't know yet. But it was fun doing this. Talk about one extreme to the other! handmade paper from natural fibers, to comparatively high tech printing.
Here are all four sheets taped to the window, to show you the degree of transparency.
And here are, upper, the lichen image, and lower, the wildflower image. As you see, in my attempt to show you the transparency, I've created a new image of them plus their background. I love this confused and dreamy effect.
This is still raw material, the ultimate destination not yet decided. But in the course of doing this, I realized that the double images can be printed out in their turn. And then the transformation continues. Just shows why it's a good idea to do plein air once in a while. Being out of doors really gets your ideas moving. And why it's good to let the ideas lead the way.
This is great fun, and you can easily do it, if you get the paper- -mounted silk, which comes in 8x11 usual printing paper size, and remember to insert it the right way up in the printer...
