FRESCOING THE KOLO JOURNAL

Expecting to see frescoed paintings in Florence, I thought I would gesso on paper bags to give the blank Kolo Journal a frescoed look. 

photos: gessoing process & working on the first gessoed page in Lucca.

PREPARING TO COLLAGE IN ITALY

In May I went to Florence, Siena & Lucca, Italy with my friend, Marcia Carole. We both were excited about the possibility of creating on the trip. Before leaving home, I prepared journal pages for collaging, painted papers, and collected glue sticks, children's pair of round tipped scissors, small ruler & fine tip black markers.  

Little Boats Paris: KITTYKEE ON BOARD

from today: pages 2-3 Kittykee enters the story

Still working on pg. 3, but yes, Kittykee gets on a boat, named Marimekko.

Little Boats Paris: TACKING A NEW DIRECTION

We used to sail.  In our boat we'd sail against the wind, tacking our way across the lake. I feel like I have to sail into the wind making these collages and not settle design-wise.

I tore out the second collage! It was just not right. The sails on the little boats are not that shape. It would have been easy to leave it but no! I scraped the collage off the page!  Tacking a new direction, I took one of the photos and extended parts of the image with fabrics and painted paper.

Little Boats Paris: ABANDONING SHIP!

When I'm posting the process you are going to see what does not work. I was pretty unhappy with what was happening here-it went from loose to tight. Not what I had in mind. 

I decided to abandon ship and sail on. 

Be minimal, simplify and play!

So the small quilt went into the closet and moved the fabric scraps to the side.  

Out came the painted paper scraps onto the side table. I have given so many painted papers away, the assortment is way down. They're in France and Turkey and currently on their way to Greece! 

I brought out a Kolo journal and started. First little boat below. It's a process. The design shape will morph and change over the pages.

Little Boats Paris: SCRAPS AND HIGH CONTRAST

What is with the dark back ground you might wonder?  I was asking myself the same thing!  All I  can say is that I had to get the black and purple out of my creative system on this 1st one.  

Working off this pile of scraps, I started pulling out the black and purple fabrics.  What can I say. I like high contrast of black/purple against  hot colors.  

I stitched the dark fabric background down 'as is' - raw edges. Worked on first sail this afternoon. 

I'll probably use sky painted fabric background in the next one.

Little Boats Paris: BEGINNING THE LITTLE BOATS

process

• beginning to play 
• printed photos
• collaging boat

My Studio: READY FOR CREATING

Reorganized and ready for creating.  

My Studio: ART QUILT AND SKETCH BOOKS

Continuing to reorganize the art studio. (5th of 5 posts)
Moving around the perimeter of the studio...I came to the last shelving unit with a collage book on the top shelf AND all my sketchbooks below! 

Groan. How come I never stopped to date them!? I should really go through them all. But that would take a lot of time!  So I paged through some. Hmmm...some good ideas never brought to fruition...maybe I should go through them all! 

Moving down 2 shelves - an Oaxacan animal sculpture and a stack of art quilt books.  I spent 10 years in the quilt world - speaking, teaching and exhibiting.  I was in some pretty prestigious shows those years. My quilts did the traveling and not me - all over the US and Japan!  Art quilts I created are in each of those books on the shelf. (below)

After 10 yrs. in the art quilt world, I moved into missions - my quilts and I off to Russia in 1994.  

I continue to design story-telling quilts to use over seas - having found that the soft quilt is the most engaging - effective medium for me to use with women. 

God used 10 yrs. in the quilt world to prepare me for these last 20 yrs. in missions. 

artist statement on my website

LOOKING OVER THE SCARY TRACKS

Our book, 
The Scary Tracks, arrived! 

Here the artists and author are looking over the latest finished book. 

Cover and title page pictured below.

 

My Studio: SHELVES AND A DRAWER OF COLOR!

Putting one more post up before I have to drop the reorganizing for a bit. 

I continued to move around the room reorganizing. Today I reorganized these shelves with plastic containers holding my postcards, painted papers and  colored pictures for collage projects, white felt and yards of unpainted canvas, paper cutter and at the top, 2 art books, GEE'S BEND The Architecture of the Quilt and Calder at Home Alexander Calder.  

A look back in the drawer I reorganized yesterday. 

COLOR !

click for posts so far on: Reorganizing My Studio

MY STUDIO: SHELVES AND DRAWERS

The studio organization continued today. Click for all 'Reorganizing My Studio' posts.

I sorted through shelves loaded with fabric scraps; threads; buttons-beads-sequins; quilts; pins and needles; sewing machine parts; and rolled up quilts. 

Then there were the drawers filled with collaged journals, accordion books and flat art that I went through. 

It is starting to be organized. 

Two photos: partway through the reorganizing process.  (dry brush filter)

MY STUDIO: SORTING AND STACKING BY COLOR

I have great IKEA cabinets in my studio. They have a Scandinavian look. 

There are 6 - 2 with doors and drawers and 4 with open adjustable shelves. 


The 6 cabinets rim the walls at one end of the studio and hold books, small sculptures, my post cards, sewing notions, fabrics, paints and brushes, papers, sketchbooks, small quilts, small artworks on paper, baskets, on and on. 

Today I finished sorting through piles of fabric and repositioned it all back into the cabinet as the 3 pictures show.

Click on the photos to enlarge. 
All posts: reorganizing my studio

MY STUDIO: NEAT REORGANIZED SPACES

We received word that our latest children's book, The Scary Tracks, has been published and shipped. We'll see it next week. 

Now it's time for the big clean-out: closets, drawers and shelves.  All activity leading to neat reorganized spaces and a fresh creative environment. Worked on shelves in my studio yesterday - now neatly refilled with books and memories.  all posts: reorganizing my studio

THE SCARY TRACKS - OFF TO THE PUBLISHER

Yesterday Nelson & I did one final edit of The Scary Tracks before sending it on to the publisher.  Though I thought I found all the changes that needed to be made, it was good to have 2 sets of eyes editing.

We took a close look through the 'book preview' (top) feature of the BookSmart program - where there are no editing features (bottom photo-editing mode). 

We flipped from 'book preview' to 'book editing'-making corrections. 

Then with a click, we ordered 2 copies from Blurb,  one for ourselves and one for our grandkids-the 3 artists.

(middle photo - 1 of 5 art pages I made, facilitating storyline flow.)

ART ON SPECIAL PAGES

Only one of our 3 grandkid's work could be on the cover but there are 2 other pages in the front of the book to give the other young 2 artists an important place. 

Here they are - the title page (above) and the intro page (at right).

Hoping to send it off for publishing over the weekend.

9 BACK PAGES

Almost ready for publication - the latest Kittykee adventure: The Scary Tracks.  

There are 9 extra pages in the back of the book that I'm using to show the art by each of the 4 illustrators (my grandchildren and myself), photos of the creative process and other shots.  

Below is a 2 page photo spread about Nelson and I putting the book together and the illustrations that I did to fill in the story gaps. (click on cover at right to enlarge) 

BACK IN PREP MODE

Martha came for the weekend. There we both are - working in the studio, Martha cutting squares for collage surfaces and me diving in a big box, looking for interesting glossy pictures to be cut up and collaged onto the squares. Last time she came, we painted papers. Martha will be going to Greece next month, where she'll be using the materials we've been gathering for teaching storytelling collage processes to teens at a conference. She'll teaching cross collages and story tags. Fun in the Aegean sun ahead! 

COVER OF OUR NEW BOOK

Here's the cover of our new children's picture book. This one is a joint effort as you see on the cover. 

'Captured' cover image from editing page.

Well on our way to getting it published. 

CHOOSING ART FOR THE COVER

Today I spread our grandkids artwork out on the dining room table. Time to choose which pictures to use for front and back covers, title page, and additional pages not part of the story.

I wanted the cover design to wrap around the book edges and a picture that had space for the title. These design requirements narrowed the options of which pictures would work. 

Nelson helped move the process along - photoshopping and uploading selected pictures into the program.  

PUTTING IN THE STORY

After Nelson loaded the snow pages into the BookSmart program, I put in the story text. 

Pondering changing some of the story's wording as I work. (dry brush filter) 

Keying in text across from our grandson's picture page.

GETTING THE SNOW PAGES READY

Moving toward publishing our 13th children's picture book,  I put the fourteen dummy spreads on the dining room table. Snow art pages are scanned into the laptop. click on photo to enlarge

All 14 snow pages, made by the grandkids and myself, need to be tweaked and sized before they are put into the BookSmart program. Nelson is brilliant at photoshop - which he uses at this step.  With great finesse he 'cuts and pastes' the snow image parts to get them just right, before loading them into the BookSmart program. 
Nelson at work this morning in the 'book-making' studio - now on the dining room table.