Lino cutting altered

I cut away most of the previous green coloured lino to make it more interesting.

Teaservice collage

A while back I made this cover for a friend's birthday. Inside are pages with High Tea recipes (done by me and other friends).

eco dyeing

 

I've been ecodyeing a bit lately. With eucalypt and poppy. I used the steaming method with some vinegar in the water and a piece of metal scouring pad in the steam basket. At first I tried it with pieces of cotton and flannel but it turned out that silk worked the best.

 

Here you see some bundles with the eucalypt leaves after they've been cooked for an hour.

And this is one of the silks after it has been left to dry (in the bundle) for 24 hours. I find it amazing that those greyish leaves can make such a bright orange colour. (The poppies give a very dark purple/aubergine colour.)

the last assessment

The photos are made at the art academy on the evening of the assessment. It was already dark, so the lighting isn't that great.

My projects were very diverse. I wanted to work with different materials and had some inspirational sentences and a photo to work with.
The jury gave me a 7+ (out of 10). They kind of liked it, but they missed the experiment, I think. (I don't know if it matters that they were painters.)

I call this 'the monks' because they are inspired by a photo of Tibetan monks sitting in semi circles. They have burgundy coloured cloaks and mustard yellow hats on. For the base I dyed flannel and made bags out of it, filled with grit. In the background you see an enlarged photo of leftover dye.

For this one I felted around sticks.

This is more collage work. It is called: (translated) Therefore I'm telling it to you now. A sentence I once overheard somebody saying while passing.

This is called: A crazy collection of my thoughts. It's a sentence from a song that stuck to me. I made the three frames and filled them with different things, representing the crazy, the light and the dark things that go around in my mind.

 

 This is a mobile, made of polystyrene circles and wooden (satay and tapas) sticks, secured to a small plank. It was inspired by the things I made for the first assessment in January. I wanted to do something with (semi)circles and overlapping.

 While I was painting hundreds of sticks I used magazine paper to protect my table. And guess what: the paper got stained so interestingly that I played some more with it and it resulted in these five small pieces.

lady in the garden

Here she is. Started out in clay, after a life model, now in aluminium-cement.

The clay was covered in silicone sealant. It was the cheapest sealant I could find and it smelled very toxic.

  

The dried sealant was covered in plaster, to give strength to the silicone mould.
Here you see the bottom of it all, when the plaster was dry.

Clay model and silicone sealant were 'shaken' out of the plaster mould together (like a cake). The sealant had to be removed after that. You can see that the sealant worked on the clay because it got these strange scales.

The empty sealant mould was now filled with the aluminium-cement. First a thin layer to cover the whole mould and when it dried a bit it had to be filled to the brim.
After the drying period the silicone sealant was peeled off carefully and there it was: my first (and last probably) garden figurine (with scales).

Charcoal drawings

In the art academy there are also a few lessons in portrait and model drawing. Drawing with charcoal is really something I love, I discovered. Working with lighter and darker surfaces, using the eraser regularly, you can work more freely than by only drawing lines. These  attempts I consider my best ones.

Loose leaf book

 The simple case I made for the 'book'.

I wanted to make something in subdued colours so I painted two big sheets of paper in greens, rusts and browns. Then I cut them up. Some pages weren't that interesting, but others were worked on with black pen or got small pieces of paper or fabric stitched on. Lately I have a big love for turquoise, so the pieces got a bit more lively. I also made a small stand of foam board so you can display one piece.

hotel for insects

 

My friend Afineke is into clay and she learnt me how to make a little home for insects.

Here it is in my small winter garden after it has been baked. I wonder if insects will visit it this summer. Nowadays it is surrounded by a lot of foliage so it's much more attractive.

My new phonecase

I've been dyeing a lot of flanel lately for one of my projects for the Art Academy. From a leftover piece I made myself a phonecase. On the front I sewed a copy on bookbinding linen from an old collage.

first evaluation

The photos above are details from the first three works I put in for evaluation in January. I wrestled enormously with the assignment for this first evaluation.The objective was perspective and 3D in 2D. It was a bit vague to me, I didn't know what to do for a long time and tried different things. In December at last  I came up with these works. I made several copies from my own photos from a felt scarf and copies from a 1960's book about Canada. I liked these photos because of the typical dated colours.
I also copied on clear sheets and placed them over each other in a pattern I thought interesting. Then I glued them on foam board.
One time I copied on the wrong kind of sheet and it came out the machine as if it was a watercolour. It took ages to dry but I liked the effect very much. You see a detail in the third photo.
My idea was that what you saw on first sight wasn't really what it was.


Here you see the works hanging on the wall in the building of the art academy.
The judges thought them interesting but had liked to see more works, a greater variety  and more of the road I had travelled to get to this end result.
They gave me a score of 6,5. OK, I could live with that judgement. I was happy that I had come up with works I myself liked, although it were only three.