FOG TUESDAY

This month’s collage exercise was based on the first of the Design Principles – FOCAL POINT.

A focal point in an art piece can be created in a number of ways:

Warm Up Collages - Design Principle - FOCAL POINT

• By the use of a textural contrast to the rest of the surrounding elements
• By creating open space in the midst of clutter
• By inserting a realistic element in the middle of abstract objects
• By providing a vertical element amidst horizontal lines
• By placing a large element in the midst of several small elements
• By using colour to draw the eye, for example complimentary colours, an area of red with lots of surrounding green, will create a focal point
• By changing the style of pattern

It’s interesting to note that most fine art, collage or mixed media pieces have a focal point, but many traditional and modern style quilts do not. Quilts (unless art or landscape quilts, or patterns such as Medallion and Lone Star) are based on a repeat of same style blocks in regular settings.

FOG Tuesday – The Thrill of the Thermofax™

“Well Maggie Muggins, you’ve had quite a day!”

You might have to be a Canuck (Canadian) and of a certain age to remember this line, but at FOG Tuesday I think that we all had “a Maggie Muggins Day!” Tra la …

Lynda and "The Machine"

The magic of this process is the machine itself – once a constant in every staff room, in every school in the country – the Thermofax™. Lynda generously brought her thermofax machine and the Riso™ screen required to burn the screens for screen-printing.

We all made at least 10 screens at a fraction of the cost of purchasing ready-made ones or sending away to have one custom made. The limit in size is the width of the screening, just under 12”, but you could make them as long as you want as it comes on a roll.

A "Lynda W. original"
Hand drawn

We learned a lot about “just the right” amount of carbon required from either a toner based laser printer or toner based copiers (ink jet prints do not work), the types of thickened dyes or screen printing inks to use and the best tools to get a great print. 

One neat thing that we all discovered is that newspaper text works quite well, especially the headlines.

I certainly learned a lot about my laser printer, my copier, Picasa™ and Photostudio™ while I was tweaking images to print. I was very pleased with the results of my photo below.

A "Meredith H. original"
Photo manipulation

Karen brought along her Gocco™, a similar process developed in the 1970’s.

Karen’s was the smaller version, and she made multi-screened cards back in the day.

"The Masterpiece"

Lynda brought a huge board covered in canvas and we each did test prints as soon as our screens were burned and were quite giddy when they turned out or made faces when they didn’t.

A Karen B. original in progress

Left to Right: 
Jan S,          Siri D,         Leslie B.
All hand drawn originals

A "Chris T" original
Hand drawn

All of these images were printed with thickened dyes.

Now we just need to get printing!

As with any images you use, be mindful of copyright, especially if you plan to sell your work.

Stitch Your Way Around the World: Turkish Embroidery

Yesterday was the second in the series of embroidery sessions being offered by Jan and me through the Calgary Public Library where we featured the basics of Turkish embroidery.

Stitching

We had a full house, including our first two men in the many sessions we have taught. In some cultures stitching by men is not unusual and one of our participants yesterday commented that in India boys as well as girls, are taught to sew when they are young.

Couched gold thread

Turkish embroidery is defined by a number of features: gold thread work, couching of threads onto the surface of the work, animal and floral motifs and the recurrence of reds and greens in the colour palette.

Sarma is a type of satin stitch that may be done over a bed of other stitches or over a piece of felt giving the embroidery a raised look.

Gozeme (outlining) stitch

As our time is limited in these sessions we opted to use just the felt and not complete the satin stitch, though some of the stitchers were going to do that at home.

Sarma may be completed with or without the use of the gozeme stitch, which is used for outlining. A common colour for this stitch is a rich dark brown.

Gozeme is a type of running stitch with one thread of the fabric between the stitches not evenly spaced as we are used to seeing a running stitch.

Ready to be frayed

Neatness counts!

The final step was to fuse a piece of iron on interfacing to the back and fray the edges.

Thanks to all of our stitchers and hand models!

Thank You!

Arts Club at the Library

For each of their program sessions the Calgary Public Library has a theme to the programs they offer and the theme for this session was Around the World. So for this session we offered Travel Journals and Stitch Your Way Around the World and we started out February with one session of each.

Arts Club – Travel Journals

The idea of mixed media journaling is to mix decorated backgrounds, hand lettering, photos and ephemera from your trip and of course the actual journaling about your trip. With a limited amount of time we raced through the preamble and the participants had a great time using the items we brought along to colour, stamp and stencil backgrounds into the journal given to each participant from the library.

Each participant brought photos of their trips and other paper ephemera and started right in on a few pages. One gal had been given a bicycle and her journal was a photographic journal of the sights she sees on her adventures along the great bike path system here in Calgary.

If you’re thinking about starting a travel journal as a tourist in another country, a staycation right here at home, or as an armchair traveler from your barcalounger here are a few tips you might find helpful:

• If you are actually going to start your journal on your trip and do your entries while on your trip, but don’t have any photos to include, decorate your pages before you leave, journal on your pages and use yellow Post It Notes™ as place holders for your photos.

• If you are going to leave the assemblage of your journal for when you get home and are sending emails home to family members, remember to copy yourself on the emails then you'll have a chronological diary of your trip and you won’t have to write all the journal entries from memory.

•  Send yourself the journaling entries on postcards from the countries you visit so when you return home you have pictures of places you have visited, postage from that country and journal entries you can use for your journal.

 “A traveler without observation is a bird without wings.” – Moslih Eddin Saadi

Stitch Your Way Around the World: Ukrainian Cross Stitch

In the afternoon we joined a group of ladies at another library branch to give an introduction to cross stitch while they made a bookmark based on Ukrainian patterns.

Some were accomplished stitchers but were interested in the ethnic background of the pattern styles and thread colours used in different regions in the Ukraine, while others were new to cross stitching and discovered great tips on starting and ending threads “with NO knots” making for a clean and flat back to the project.

Thanks to Mona S. for sending us a photo of her completed
cross stitch which was used as the background in this photo.

We still have several sessions in March and April and will cover several more embroidery techniques from other cultures as we Stitch Our Way Around the World.

We hope you can join us on our journey.

Jan and Meredith

Image Transfers

We played with Image Transfers earlier in 2013 but our session last Tuesday took our exploits to a frenetic level. There are so many interesting techniques available to fibre and mixed media artists today and I think that we tried them all.

To the uninitiated, try one technique at a time – you’re less likely to feel faint by the end of your session J Generally speaking Image Transfers can be categorized under a few headings:

• those that require images printed from an ink jet printer
• those that require images printed from a toner based laser printer or copier (coloured or black and white)
• images that need to be reversed prior to transferring the image to a substrate (especially if words are involved)
• images that require a medium of some sort to complete the transfer, for example a gel medium, acrylic paint, packing tape or solvent

The burning question for some of these techniques is “Why wouldn’t you just transfer the image directly to the fabric using the inkjet printer?” Our findings would conclude that, “It’s an effect that you are going for, i.e. vintage, distressed, ethereal etc.”

Top Left - Citrasolv™ onto crinoline
Top Right - TAP™ onto crinoline
Bottom Left - packing tape
Bottom Right - TAP™ onto distressed dryer sheet

For example, you could print that photo of Great Aunt Doll directly onto cotton muslin using your ink jet printer, sizing it the way you want and not have to reverse the photo before printing. Fabric is OK, but what if you could manipulate the photo digitally, reverse the photo and print the image on to Transfer Artist Paper™ (TAP), distress the TAP and then transfer the image to metal, wood or glass? The possibilities may leave you gob smacked!

CitraSolv™ Toner Based
Transfer to Linen

Image Transfer Techniques that we tried: Citrasolv™ (solvent based transfer with toner copies), packing tape or contact paper using magazine photos, ink jet printed transparencies, either direct to your surface fresh and wet from the printer OR onto the rough side of a transparency and let to dry. This transfer is then completed with spray hand sanitizer. We also tried, or had demonstrated, gel medium transfers to Textiva™, fabric and travertine tiles.

TAP™ onto painted Lutradur™

TAP™ – transfer artist paper is somewhat in a league of its own. Images can be put onto TAP™ with an ink jet printer, rubber stamps, Crayola™ wax crayons, Portfolio Water Soluble Oil Pastels™, pencil etc. 

Images are transferred using an iron and can be transferred to many substrates: fabric, paper, glass, wood, metal, mica, distressed dryer sheets, crinoline…just remember that you must reverse images or text.

Imagine the possibilities with a kid’s art class! 

Gel Medium transfer to Textiva™

One final word on any of these processes – make certain that you use your own images or ones that are guaranteed to be copy right or royalty free, especially if you are planning to sell your masterpieces!

TAP™ - Image drawn with Crayola Wax
Crayons™  and transferred to white cotton.

TAP™ - Image drawn with Portfolio Water Soluble
Oil Pastels™ and transferred to canvas.

FOG Tuesday

This month's collage exercise was based on the final design element of VALUE.

How light or dark a colour appears is called Value.  A lighter colour has a higher value than a dark colour.  In order to see lines, shapes, different colours or textures, there needs to be value contrast. A highly contrasting art piece tends to create excitement and be more dramatic and attracts our eye to it. A low value contrast is more subtle and understated.

A variation in value can create a focal point and can be used to emphasize something in particular. To create the illusion of depth, use a gradation of value. Thus, changes in value create three dimensions in a work, such as shading the sides of a square to give it depth and appear to be a cube.

 

Warm Up Collages - Design Element VALUE.

Some colours have a generally low value, such as violet. By adding white to violet, you can create a range of values. Yellow always has a high value as adding black to it soon changes it from yellow to a different colour. Mixing white to a colour is called a tint and mixing black to a colour is called a shade.

The value of a colour depends on the the colours around it. Using a red coloured piece of plastic will help you to see the value of the colours you are using, without the colour interfering. (In the quilting world they have a tool called a Ruby Beholder for this purpose.)

The FIVE Design Elements are: Colour, Line, Texture, Shape and Value.