Friday Fragments

Ok as you can see the tree bodies are the stained paper and then the image of the trees and the fence you can see were drawn on with black ink pen and then white gesso applied over the background of the trees which brings the trees forward. What I love is the white of the paper acts like the light that shines on the trees in the woods. I love that! The above image is about 4 x 5 inches  the below image is like 2 x 3.5 inches.

This is a sun print that I did with first dying the fabric with walnut ink concoction and then applying leaves to the fabric while it is still wet this is the result after the fabric has dried. This piece was then washed and ironed.

This was created with a cotton napkin that I found at a thrift store and then folded and wrapped around a rectangular shape of wood that was about 1/4 inch thick and then tied with a cotton yarn. This is one of my favorite pieces and love the look when the fabric has been dried and then ironed. It seems to bring out the details and subtle variations of color. It's like treasure hunting.

I have been inspired by so many people that I have discovered on the blogs. Soon I will learn how to link to them.

Thursday Thriving on Walnut Ink

This post is inspired by Gilly's question about how I did the Painted Tree. This is an example of the paper that I used to create it but this just has alot more going on visually. It's mostly Walnut Ink but there are also some clearly red markings which come from some rust that I created first. This will make a lovely background for my paintings. Next I will draw some trees on it which I have been doing while sitting in a chair outside.. because the weather has been just wonderful!!! Suddenly hit with sleepiness .. i will retire and return in the a.m.

Walnut Ink Tree Painting

This is a painting I did today while sitting outside. The weather has been so nice all week that I have spent nearly every day outside either dyeing fabric or hunting for walnuts, experimenting with sun prints and walnut dye. I am amazed every day with all the possibilities. I  will probably continue to experiment with the brown walnut dye as I would love to have the brown a bit more reddish. But I love the rich color of this brown. And I was pleased with how this painting came out. It's always fun to create art on both fabric and paper. I will try to post some more photos of my sun prints. I have a lot of ideas rolling around in my head with that process. Sometimes I wonder if it's good to create so many different things.

Walnut Ink

I have been reading a lot of blogs about natural dyeing and found myself continuing the experimentation. I was walking around my backyard yesterday and found what I discovered were black walnuts. I've seen some things written about how to make walnut ink and how some people even buy it. So I mixed up my own concoction of walnut, fall leaves, rust and such together in a pot and boiled it up and then strained it. I decided to bottle it. I found this great old gin bottle in the backyard junk pile and decided since the lid came off so well that I would use it. In raised letters of glass on the bottle it says: Federal Law Forbids Sale or Re-use of This Bottle (in three lines, next) FULL 1/2 PINT then in cursive writing angled from the lower left side of the bottle to the upper right front it says; HJA Gilley ltd. and then on the botton right of the front in cursive is the word Gin. Pretty bottle and it's a clear bottle but as you can see in the photo it is pretty black from the walnut ink inside. I even held this in front of a strong light and couldn't even see through it. Which surprised me and makes me think that this ink is pretty strong. The tree painting that is in the photo is all stained with the walnut ink the darker lines are black ink pen and white gesso for the white. I was very pleased with the result. It's a rich brown that I will be using for a long while. I have alot more waiting to be bottled. Probably another two or three pints. Fun!!!!