Surface Treatment Workshop - week 9

For week 9 of the Surface Treatment Workshop my sister Evelyn and I explored the properties of

Golden Medium Fiber Paste.  Fiber Paste is a runny white paste with a grainy texture which can be applied to paper to make it flexible like a fabric and, once dried, has many uses and applications.

I used a palette knife to apply some of the paste to a few sheets of A4 paper and left to dry.

For my first few samples I tried printing some vintage images on the fibrous paper by loading

the fiber paste paper into the paper tray of my inkjet printer.

You can see that the fiber paste paper has an intense grain and a lot of the detail was lost compared

to regular printing (below) so, personally, I'm not really keen on the effect and the “grain" is a

negative thing for me.  Evelyn printed a couple of her photos in colour and hers were lovely.

below ... just playing with the depth of field

and giving the woman big feet and long legs

The next few samples are about embedding.  "Snippets" can be embedded in wet fiber paste and, when dry, it can be painted too.  I decided to check out these qualities by making a collage using up snippets of fabric and cutting up pieces of art work.

I spread fiber paste over an A4 sheet of paper (100gsm) with a palette knife, then quickly added snippets of fabric and bits of artwork into the wet paste ... then left to dry.  The paste was like glue and the snippets were very well embedded in the paste.

Then I painted around the snippets using watered down acrylics and blending the colours with more water.  Next I ironed on gold foil which picked up and highlighted the texture

some details …

[brown/gold textures]

then I cut up into six pieces and re-arranged

Now a lovely positive thing about fiber paste on paper is that it's very flexible.  It gives a sheet of paper the quality of a fabric which means that I'm able to sew into my little samples if I wish and now I'm beginning to like fiber paste ...

I also used the fiber paste through a stencil.  When the fiber paste was dry I painted with acrylics and h2o paints and later I ironed on some gold to enhance.

and ... finally it's possible to rust fiber paste paper ...

samples below are ...

left - rusting in wet fiber paste

right - rusting after the fiber paste has dried

In conclusion, I doubt I will use the rest of my pot of fiber paste so I'm going to hand it over to my sister who loved it and will actually use it with her lovely photography.

next up - drawing grounds

colours of the season and the tides of the sea

a fab day on Friday visiting some of my favourite places locally ...

at Godrevy ... the light is always amazing

this gorgeous rugged coastline and beautiful white sand beach
(owned by The National Trust) is one of my most favourite places ever

for quite a while I just sat on the headland to breathe in the salty sea breeze

I want more of these peaceful moments this year

the colours of the season in the winter landscape are very calming ...

I visited Sharon McSwiney's exhibition

at St. Ives Arts Club

"Colours of the Season"

11 - 17 February 2017

Sharon was exhibiting her gorgeous metallic wall hangings, pictures and jewellery

with her friend Alison Dupernex, a textile designer who creates beautiful knitwear

their work complements each other beautifully

and a lot of thought goes into ensuring their pieces reflect their chosen theme

"Colours of the Season"

these gorgeous seaweed pieces were my favourites
in particular the shapes, textures and colours in the patinas

Sharon offers workshops at her Garden Studio to make a wall hanging
like these or smaller pieces of jewellery / art cards
so I'd really like to try and do a workshop with her this year

(I've thrown a photo in here that I took the same day on Long Rock beach

the colours complement very well, I think)

below are some of Alison Dupernex's textiles

I adore the tones and textures

Alison's work picks out the colour palette I associate with the beach and the winter season

(my photo centre of pebbles taken the same day at Long Rock beach)

all of the work at the show was gorgeous and very inspiring

but sadly the exhibition is finished now

if you would like to see more of Sharon's and Alison's work you can visit their websites

and Sharon has a shop at The Drill Hall in St. Ives with a good selection of all that she produces

as well as her private Garden Studio where she offers one to one workshops

for another chance to see their work at St. Ives Arts Club

Sharon and Alison will be exhibiting again in October 2017

following the show, and some lunch at Porthmeor beach,

I headed over to Long Rock beach in search of more beach inspiration

(looking for interesting pebbles and tangles of seaweed / beach string)

to work with for the "Cornwall" theme for St. Ives Textiles

I'm spreading out my collections and sketchbook samples at home

trying to narrow down my focus a bit as I've been feeling
rather overwhelmed by the amount of inspiration all around me

Cornwall is a very large theme ... but I must decide very soon and knuckle down

meanwhile ...

I'm just enjoying time to walk on the winter beaches and breathe ...

St. Michael's Mount through seaweed

Sharon's lovely sketchbooks

colours of the season ... on a winter beach

lichen at Long Rock

St. Michael's Mount ... always visible on the horizon
and beautiful winter colours ...

finally ... here are my stencil prints from week 2 of The Surface Texture Workshop

following the prompts ...

"redux"

layering newspaper and taped text and stencilling over the top
(will probably work more into this one before sticking in my sketchbook)

New York London Paris

"drama"

combining colours that "pop"
layering stencil prints over newspaper and taped text
the "pop" is gold metallic paint, heated to create texture, then gilded

"regular"

stencilling with gold leaf

might try cutting this one up

"enhance"

seaweed and mussel shells
printed using a hand made stencil with metallic paints heated and gilded
painting and filling in around the edges of the print

a negative taken from the earlier print ... on tissue paper

"smear"

dragging a ruler across the wet print for effect

"mark making"

scribing with a tool in white paint before layering with more stencil prints

"bling"

"texture and bling"

stencilling, burnishing with a spoon, then stencilling again with texture paste
enhancing with metallic paint then gilding for extra bling

"soft"

soft watery metallics in silver and gold with extra "bling"

well that's it for today
thank you for visiting and for all your very kind comments

I will be posting The Surface Treatment Workshop each Wednesday from now on
with textiles, catch ups and general updates on Saturdays

with love x