Lake District holiday journal – first piece

The starting point for this holiday’s journal was my middle one, who is doing ‘A’ level Art and is creating some very interesting and effective work stitching into photos and paper. I’ve been really inspired by this and to go along with the paper theme, I decided to alter a book as the journal. Here is the first spread,

I used the top of the image on the left which I transferred to a piece of indigo dyed cotton with gel medium. The medium dried quite opaque, giving the image a very evocative, misty feel.

Then I used a single strand of Caron Waterlilies variegated silk thread in a very loose stem stitch to pick out some of the detail.

Really enjoyed my experimenting.

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Playing: roses and rose windows

More of the altered book.

A Latin quote caught my eye…

…and sent me off creating a scrap of rose text with Stewart Gill Byzantium paints on tea stained paper.

Without border:

With border:

I cut all the window spaces out of this image of a York Minster Rose Window and stuck it over a page which I’d collaged with some rainbow coloured scraps of hand made paper and then used water soluble oil pastels to continue the colours over the bits of page left.

In place on the spread:

And joined by a layered transfer of a lamb boss.

I had two images of this boss, one closer than the other. I used the gel transfer medium to transfer them to the page, rotating the second so the ribs of the vaulting (accidentally) almost line up. I like the different layers of translucency.

Another Rose Window to come.

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More of my altered book

This has been ticking away slowly and quietly in the madness of early January.

I printed out some colour pictures to transfer – this one is a restored boss with a dragon spouting flame – and found a diagram of English medieval dioceses which I coloured in with water colours.

York Minster was badly damaged by a fire started by lightning several years ago, so I added scraps of textured hand made paper to the bottom of the page and turned them into flames licking the boss.

I also found a great photo taken looking up through the Minster so it framed a section of the sky and transferred that. I’m getting the hang of the transfer process now –  three layers of gel medium will keep the image stable while you’re removing the paper backing. Sky added with water soluble oil pastels

I wanted to create a found poem from random words on a double page, so I circled some that appealed to me and then roughly blocked out the rest of the page with gesso.

I covered the gesso with shimmering watercolours in lilacs and blues borrowed from my middle one. (More of the amazing art bargains we got back in October), added a moon and stars card topper thing that I’d had for ages and divided the pages with a piece of printed acetate which was wrapping around a gift from a very posh shop.

Just a bit of finishing to do here,  making the words link more clearly and thinking about what my subconscious was doing with the words I chose.

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