bee creative

practice or play?

It's both.

This is three different drawings that I layered on top of each other, keeping the parts I liked the best. 

quiet...mostly

Playing with pigments again. 

Two new inks are steeping...Douglas Fir cones and rose hips. 

following up

Did the baby vat work?

Yes it did.

The silk worked the best but the cotton picked up color as well. The darkest of the strips is four dips.  It's still a little wet so some of that darkness might not stay.  Still...home grown indigo used to dye cotton!  As much as I love silk, it just isn't very practical for me so I am very excited by these results. 

I roughly followed the directions from Maiwa for making a fruit vat. For the fruit I used the core and peelings from one pear and about a cup of water. 

To recap, the vat is a mixture of the fruit water, a tablespoon or so of the indigo pigment and the water the indigo leaves were fermented in that had calx added to it.  Like everything else I do it isn't very exact and I only did one measurement...the PH was around 11. 

I am also still enjoying playing with the transparent papers for the Carla Sonheim/Aris Moore class.  This is a photocopy of a couple of the pages layered. It looks like I am needing to refill one of the ink cartridges but I love the way this copied as well as the little bird I drew. 

Glad that I have more time to play this weekend...

 

 

I wanted an x-ray for x

I love the idea of x-rays. 

The ability to see inside of something.

But I don't have one to share.

So...some things that are not an x-ray, but another way of seeing.

1. Breaking things apart.

This is a collection on things from my last beach walk.  I thought the clump of gray was a rock but it crumbled easily. 

It's a piece of clay from the bank.

It was easy to grind into a pigment.

2. Looking out the car window on Monday. 

Atmospheric rivers.

The rain was streaming off the windshield.

Looking into the weather?  

3. Layering, vellum doodles over ink doodles. 

I am taking a class from Aris Moore hosted by Carla Sonheim.  It's giving me some ideas...

Not an x-ray, but another way of seeing.  

Another way of understanding.

r,s,t... I have to go backwards to go forward

Rest and release...I suppose I have been indulging in some.  I've been going through days either so involved in what I am doing that there hasn't been room for anything else or so full of thoughts that I can't find the words I want. 

Story ... Something I've been thinking about. About a month ago Nancy wrote a post about the things we save and why. 

I've been thinking about how story adds value to what we choose to have in our lives. It's not just about sentimentality or usefulness. 

I've realized that I am always layering story into and onto what I make and what I choose to save.  The deeper I can go, the more connections there are, the more story there is.

The more story there is, the happier I am.*

For example:

Transform...from brick to pigment.  I love brick as a pigment because it is a building material.  The brick for the pinkish pigment below came from the waterfront; a fragment of location and the history of where I live.

The black is a charcoal ink.  Made from plants (blackberry, rose, hazelnut, quince) from my garden or my parent's.

The brown is an ink made from coffee beans.  Thinking about how they are seeds.  How they came from very far away from here.

And do you see the human figure, making and thinking so hard there is steam coming out of her ears?  I didn't see this until I covered the bottom paper with another layer while I was playing.

Thinking about how it is our nature, human nature, to create meaning and story. 

*I just finished listening to This is Happiness by Niall Williams.  I've also listened to History of the Rain and loved them both.  They might not be for everyone as there isn't a linear story line that is plot driven. The story is built up through layers of character development and descriptions of location. Williams writing is beautiful. 

 

d...delights

Yesterday I had the day off...

Some of it was spent at the beach day dreaming. 

Thinking about deep things...and maybe not so deep.

Last weekend I bought flowers...

The dahlia to the left is one of my favorites, Cafe Au Lait.  When I got home I realized it's pretty much the color that I painted the bottom of the house. 

I've realized recently how consistent I am with colors, how often I am drawn to the same colors when I choose things. 

A recent drawing, or really more accurately, a doodle. 

And one last delight...dots.

 

June arrives

While standing on the porch one minute before a sunrise that was too cloudy to see, I notice that the paths around and in and out of my garden form a nine patch as they intersect.

It makes me think of Jude.

Still playing with the pansy ink.  The purple on the left is where I squished the flowers into the paper. 

The ink is dry; I think the color is different because of the paper.  It also gave me purple fingers for a day.

This morning's mark making.  Flower moon and charcoal ink along with the pansy ink.

And then digital layers, more charcoal.

June is when everything grows so fast here; along with the typical rain, it is warm and the days are long. 

It's also when the roses bloom...

heart's ease

Yesterday it rained and rained and rained some more. 

By late afternoon the sun came out.

I wandered the garden pulling bindweed (which is determined to strangle everything).

And then I picked the darkest of pansies,  which I am guessing, because of it's tiny size, is probably related to the Johnny Jump up version of pansy; also known as Viola tricolor or Heart's ease. 

The marks on the lower right were made by pounding one of the dark pansies.  The pansies above are another type.  There are a few lobelia too, broken off as I was untangling the bindweed. 

And then I made two kinds of ink, one with water and a bit of vinegar (there is a sample too of just the water and pansy) and the other with vinegar and salt.

 

This morning both had changed...

The pansy + water + vinegar is a greenish gray and the vinegar based ink is blue!

The purple/pink dot is what the ink looks like this morning.  I am guessing by afternoon it will be blue too.

This ink isn't supposed to last long.

Like wandering in the garden, it sure eases the heart.

For anyone who is interested, Jason Logan's Substack newsletter is a wonderful exploration of color. I've followed some of his advice making these inks.

possibilities

A coffee ink dot that when turned just right made me think it might contain something, hold something. 

A dot that had the potential of something else (like a stone or an egg?) even though I liked it just the way it was.

Like this.

Or this.

Everything holds the potential to be something else.

pruning

It seemed that the lilac started turing brown overnight but the high bush cranberry (a native viburnum) is glorious at the moment.  At the edges of the day it glows outside my window. 

Two or three years ago I had to cut it back to it's base because it had an illness of some sort. 

Last year I pruned the plum trees heavily, this year I have more baby prune plums than I've ever had. 

I think there is a lesson in this.

From the little blue book I am assembling:

Blue watercolor samples.

And a boat inspired by Hazel...mostly drawn with my eyes closed. 

The front sail was drawn after I opened my eyes. 

The boat needed some balance.