Re-inventing the page

Karen Ruane, the guru of neat things to do with stitch and sometimes paper, has an online course called Reinventing the Page. (http://karenannruane.typepad.com/karen_ruane/newreinventing-the-page-online-learning.html)

We started by looking through previous design sheets or inspirational sources. I love 1950's textiles and drew a few motifs and settled on these.

Then I fooled around with some placement ideas.

Hmmm. Not so much.

This is better. I don't love the final design as a piece to concentrate on, but it will work nicely as a spring board for the coursework.

I'm on a small mauve kick. Acrylic ink on acrylic paper. The mauve rectangle is meant to be a place-holder for future techniques, such as collage, inserting textiles or pinpricking.

We traced the master template and then fooled around with background options. I've used an enlarged line of the leaf.

As you can see, the master becomes lost. This background might work as a stitch map for quilting or maybe as a placement block for changes in background colour. I abandoned it.

I like this background motif better, but don't think it brings anything new to the master.

I was getting tired and settled on the ever useful wavy line. Steve thinks it diminishes the tension between a fully drawn element and an element that is unresolved. I agree. However, the leaf and rectangle look plonked on, and plonking must be avoided.

Another option is to enlarge a single motif and see how it might interact. This might work if it was a really, really pale tone on tone behind the leaf, but...time....interest...life....

Here I'm fooling around with acrylic ink on muslin. A lot of the ink sinks into the fibres. That means a few coats of ink are needed and I'm not too skilled at either estimating enough ink to cover everything, nor at replicating colours.  Luckily, these are both small.

That line of bubbles became pretty intriguing after a good night's sleep. I spent a lot of Sunday afternoon messing about with them.

I listened to several episodes of Poirot mysteries as I painted. It was time for some bright colours.

And that's where I'm at. There have been more instructions this week and there are at least two videos to watch later today. I'll keep you informed. I won't be here next week. I'm off to celebrate my Mom's 80'th birthday with cake. Then some more cake. Hopefully, there will be a piece to enjoy while I'm flying home.  See you in two weeks.