Weekly Challenge #92 - stripes

Wow .. I've been busy :-) which is great because I really dont like having nothing to do. Blogging has been neglected in favour of making stuff and collecting stuff for making more stuff! Great Fun.

This week I finally found a place that sells Rit liquid dye, as my inktense blocks are taking a serious hammering from colouring large blocks of fabric and as I'm not actually that keen on playing with dye powder, the liquid is the way forward. Add to that that is stable because it is already in solution.  Dylon will keep for 2-3 weeks in solution but I probably wont be doing that much with it.

Then last night I was organising my music while having a well deserved beer, when I bumped the beer and it tipped all over my laptop keyboard.. after mopping up and holding the keyboard upside down for several minutes I thought all was good.. But then this morning when I was looking for info on the liquid dye, I discovered that my keyboard had a bit of a hang over from the beer it suck up last night and was doing some very random and creative things.. luckily the rest of the computer seems to be unscathed at this point.
So a quick trip to office works for a $10 keyboard with no plans to buy anything else I came out with artline pastel coloured markers, a metal ruler and another set of brushes (I am so weak in the face of art supplies....)

I also bought myself a sewing machine, which will come in handy for making cushions and things from all this material I've been banging out.

Here are this weeks pieces:



Guinea Pigs and Rabbits cushion fronts

Cat fabric after printing

Cat fabric during painting

Fluer D'Lis Fabric - hand coloured and printed.

All these pieces are made with hand cut stencils from my original drawing and then hand coloured etc.  The base colours are also hand painted.  It time consuming but I love it :-).

 

 

Weekly Challenge #92-

 

 

Here is is without further ado and waffle:

 

Oh and while I was fluffing around in Masters (a very cool harware store) waiting for my other half to buy his gear for a car restoration project I found this wall paper .. how tangly is that????

 



 

Have  an Awesome and Creative week every one!!!



 

Completely Distracted...

Has anyone ever noticed how easy it is to get distracted?  I openned a store on Zazzle yesterday and have spent all of today making a banner so I could pretty it up a little.  And I had such great plans to go blob hunting and do some painting and that sort of thing today.. didnt happen. By the time I had found and downloaded appropriate programs, mucked around with colours, fonts, cutting, pasting etc I had lost six or maybe seven hours of my day. 

Here is the banner that took me all day... :-P

Beads of Courage - Weekly Challenge #91

Well here it is.. this is the third challenge I have completed but the first one I've actually had the courage to post.  It was inspired by thinking about Nana's sewing whatnot and some of the random cast off things that live in stash boxes.

 

Also seeing as I'm here and posting I have included a couple of (not great) photos of my first inktense batik t-shirt. I am quite happy with it, its subtle as I expected, The design wraps around the bottom right side to the back.
 I choose this shirt as I bought it when we went home to New Zealand last month and for some reason I bought periwinkle blue, god knows why as I am very unlikely to actually wear it but there you go really.

This afternoon I am going to attack an old white singlet before I set up a new shiny white t-shirt :-) Also another layer onto the Beach Banner.

Front

Back

Grateful-ness

Today was pretty unproductive in a creativity sense,  going to a job interview created "artis interruptus"  aka it all started well and then I had to go this job interview.
I did finish the t-shirt that I waxed yesterday and finished waxing my day at the beach banner, completed this weeks zentangle challenge and posted away my first Etsy sale.

Ok so maybe it wasnt that unproductive at all :-P

I have to say that since I started zentangling my creativity is finding new form and meaning and direction.  I am losing my "It has to be right first time" semi-perfectionist" mentality which is a good thing.

So grateful... to all the wonderful people out there zentangling and having tutorials on their blogs so an I can learn new tricks.

Thank you to Karen Adler for the workshop on the weekend that reminded me that scribbling is valid.

I am also thankful for Carla Sonheim, Marisa Anne and Sandy Steen Bartholomew for showing me that what you are passionate about can be your job, that play is valid and for being inspirational to me at this point.

I am also incredibly, unbelievably grateful for my wonderful partner - BombGuy for encouraging me, believing in me and thinking that everything I do is bloody fantastic.

So the job.. well if I get offered it I will take it because I have to fund the madness somehow, but it doesnt have to be all or nothing.



This an Intro to Marissa Anne's new book which looks wonderful!

Art Laiden Weekend

Wow, a busy (ish) weekend.. All started with the art and depression workshop held at Maitland Art Gallery and facilitated by Karen Adler who is a flamboyant art therapist and councellor. I learned that it doesn't always have to be perfect and that we can learn a lot about who we are and where we are at by what we put on paper.  I also learned that I am not really a story teller :-)  I suppose I can't be good at everything.. shame, because I would so like to be!

A lady at the workshop gave me a great idea, which I am going to test out and see how I go. This means I will have to man up and go out and do some markets (oh heck) to test the waters for this idea.

Actually I had a couple of big ideas on the weekend which means that I will have to get a job so that I can fund them and also that I will have to stop being a hermit if I want them to work.. It means going out and finding like minded people and risking being told i'm nuts and all that stuff that we all fear.. but hey, why not?

Here is a photo of some "scribble drawings"  that I have started this weekend.. yeah the fun non-perfection!

 

 

Also my house is starting to look like an artist lives here.. there are parts of work every where and not to mention the scattered supplies!

No place for warm coffee

A wee trip down to Newcastle today for a visit to Hunter Valley Chicken and Game to buy fancy wild meat sausages also included a trip to Spotlight who are definately not my favourite place this week, due to unhelpful staff with attitude issues and a lack of actual stock that I wanted. Any way we ended up at Eckersleys in Hamilton looking for the item (a pebeo porcelain 150 broad tip in black)  to discover that they didnt have them either BUT the service was astounding and they did have the pentel gel roller pen for fabric and plain calico bags..Sweet!

We stopped at Eurobar on Beaumont St for a takeaway coffee and then rediscovered a major flaw with my less than spotless aged camry.. no coffee cup holder.  So plan was hatched to create one out of ... drum roll please... CHICKEN WIRE!!!  Yep yep yep.. I duly came home and created the cup holder.. then decided to use buttons and beads to jazz it up a little then wove some white (recycled) packing strapping through the floor of it.. It looks kinda cool - as an egg basket! But when I put it in the car in a convenient location for placing coffee cups the effect can only be described as truly revolting hahahaha!  Oh well it'll do for now :-P

Guinea Pigs and a Carp

Is it possible that Guinea Pigs are carbohydrate addicts?  I have 6 free range guinea pigs that live under my house, well, they belong to the neighbour if every one had their own. These furry fellows have chosen to live here however and they love bread, bananas, parnips (in that order) followed by carrots, strawberries, apples and grapes.
I am trying to get them used to me so have been feeding them by hand for the last couple of weeks, but they are so skittery its an exercise in patience, or frustration depending on the day.
 I have managed to pat one of them, Cousin of Sack Barrow, a floppy eared black and tan fellow. Very cute and not quite as scaredy as the others.. is it sad that I have named guinea pig that aren't even my own?

Here is todays feeding:

 

This is Lassie, Cousin of Sack Barrow, Zombie and Mr Pigglesworth on the right

 

Cousin of Sack Barrow and Zombie (the red eye)

 

Anyway enough about the small furry ones.. what have I been up to, apart from feeding the GP's? Well I spent all day on Saturday working on a poster for the Olive Tree Market Christmas poster comp and then I decided that it was tripe..dont you hate that? spend all day on some thing (well two if count drawing) and it turns out utter bollocks, Hmm never mind I felt a little better one I had done this:

its a carp and I'm bloody happy with it... I had never been able to draw fish before but I woke up on saturday morning just knowing how to do this .. weird but hey I'll take it :-) thanks very much to Zentangle for this really.. it has really helped me unstick in a lot of ways.

Zendala no 1

I went out and bought myself a printer today... Its frustrating flicking back and forwards through web pages all the time when you want info and refreshers, and since I found out about Zentangles I seem to spend half my day flicking around on the net finding new patterns that appeal, especially when my brain runs dry, which is reasonable often it seems!
Also the plus of this is that I can now scan my drawings and stuff instead of having to find the camera, take the photos, edit the photos, blah blah blah.

So here is the first zendala that I have created which is a template from the Zendala Dare Blog and this is Dare no 1

Its a wee bit rough around the edges but hey its my first one of these

Here are some other things I've done in the last couple of weeks.

Job Interveiws

I've had three job interveiws in two days.. the result of sending out about 6 applications, I have been offered two jobs out of three at this stage and I have another interview this afternoon which I think I will cancel as it doesnt really interest me. Its been really hectic and its not easy to find a job that isn't going to take away masses of creative energy.

Easy to find a job, "easy" to make art not so easy to find a good balance and stilll have a  life outside of both.

Today I am working on a poster for the Olive Tree Markets Christmas poster cometition,  I have some prayer flags to finish and some "doodlemugs" to make.. I'll tell you about my doodlemugs later on, Oh and then theres the sign that Im going to do a mock up off for the market gardening guy down the road. just a few things to be getting on with :-)

Stash hunting

Today I am off down to East Maitland and Im going to stop at spotlight and a few op shops in hope of some really good stash finds, Spotlight for the new stuff and the op shops for things that I can upcycle or recycle.
Im really not into buying everything new if I can get away with it.  People throw away some perfectly good stuff and I think that we should take every opportunity to repurpose it it we can.

Introduction

Hi and welcome.

My name is Jay and I am an artist.. wow that sound like I'm a member of AA, didn't it?
carrying on  though, I have tried to blog in the past and its gone with a hiss and a roar and well, fallen flat on its face the moment I get distracted (which is quite often).

Recently I became unemployed (mostly by choice) and decided that I was going to go back to what I love - ART. All kinds of art, concrete sculpture, weaving, textiles, painting, drawing, photography.... it goes on.

 I intend this blog to be a journal of this revisited journey.
To give you an idea of what I do here are some photos of my recent work..