Exploring Enameling at the Delaware Art Museum

4 Replies

I’m enjoying another session of Enameling at the Delaware Art Museum. This session I am working on class projects simultaneously with a larger piece I have designed on my own. I wanted to stay with the class work as well as try something a little bigger.

I’ll show pictures of the larger piece as I go along with it – I’ve only just prepared the metal (4″ x 4″, which doesn’t sound that large but is pretty big for enamel work) and put down a first coat of enamel on both sides. That took some doing – I had to set up a special area to handle the hot enamel after it came out of the kiln. I then traced my design onto the surface. Next step – wet-packing.

Like I said, more later. But here are photos of my class work – we were to make a creature. I came up with a sort of paper bag guy. Or maybe he is a pillow. Anyway, take a look. He is 2″ in diameter.

Here are some studio views – my workbench. I am also showing you the materials I used to make the bag guy. You see my palette of enamel colors; the bottle of clear liquid we use to wet the enamel powder in the palette; the sifter (for enamel powder), the red bottle cap (to set the piece on as you work, it’s easier to handle); my Blackwing pencil and my white gel pen I use to draw on the enamel; and… a toothpick used to poke tiny bits of wet-packed enamel around.

I’m proud to say I have contributed several of these last to the studio – they use them at a restaurant I go to to stick sandwiches together. (I put them through the dishwasher first, just saying).

Well, that’s where we are these days. More coming later…

Small Artist Sketchbook 2024: Pages 20 and 21

They just keep on coming –
here is Small Artist Sketchbook 2024.

This book’s pictures were done between February 2022 and April 2024. Some of them have already been posted as part of whatever project or class I might have been doing during that time, so you might see something familiar along the way. I like to show the pages and pictures in their book form, though, so here they are. I think that having a companion page adds to the experience of looking at the individual images.

The book is landscape style, 5 1/2″ x 8″. It doesn’t have decorated covers since the book itself has a nice pebbly-textured black surface – I left it alone. And as you know, I don’t necessarily do the pages in order, so there’s no planned narrative or story in this book.

If you have any questions about the techniques or methods I used, please ask! I love to answer questions about how I do my work.

Here is the page spread.

And here are the individual images.

Fabric framed up

I wanted to find a way to display these small (6″ x 6″) fabric pieces I made some time ago. After some research, I got some (very cheap) 8″ square canvases.

I sewed the artwork on coordinating fabric backgrounds. Since the raw edge look was important to these pieces, I laid the art on top of the background and sewed a quick seam around. If you wanted a different look, you could have sewed strips around the art, right sides together, and turned it back for a neat seam.

Then I wrapped the whole thing around a canvas and stapled it on the back. Add a hanging wire and now these little guys can go on display!

Small Artist Sketchbook 2024: Pages 18 and 19

They just keep on coming –
here is Small Artist Sketchbook 2024.

This book’s pictures were done between February 2022 and April 2024. Some of them have already been posted as part of whatever project or class I might have been doing during that time, so you might see something familiar along the way. I like to show the pages and pictures in their book form, though, so here they are. I think that having a companion page adds to the experience of looking at the individual images.

The book is landscape style, 5 1/2″ x 8″. It doesn’t have decorated covers since the book itself has a nice pebbly-textured black surface – I left it alone. And as you know, I don’t necessarily do the pages in order, so there’s no planned narrative or story in this book.

If you have any questions about the techniques or methods I used, please ask! I love to answer questions about how I do my work.

Here is the page spread.

And here are the individual images.

Notes:

The first image contains paste paper I made as part of an online lesson at the Kalamazoo Book Arts Center. Look here for a post I wrote containing a description of the process of making paste papers as I learned in this class.

And – Look here for the post describing the sketching process for the second image. I took some of the animals we drew in this online sketch group, cut them out, and gave them a new environment, as I did for the cow you see here.

In Which I Make a Kitty Rug

Some decades ago my in-laws gave us a tiny sample Oriental rug they got from a carpet store, I guess the store was getting rid of the old samples? Anyway, it was about 10 or 12″ square. They said it was for our cat to sit on, and yes, he did. I always enjoy thinking about this story, first, because I don’t know what prompted my in-laws (no cat lovers) to think of a gift for our cat, and also, how perfect it was for the cat – he looked quite regal curled up on it.

Ever since that time we’ve referred to tiny rugs as kitty rugs. (Recent examples are the name rugs I have made using punch needle.)

All right. In the present day, a local fabric shop offered a class in locker hooking. I’m not going to describe the craft, since you can find plenty of info on the internet, other than to say it’s a method of making rugs using fabric strips, mesh, and a special tool called a locker hook.

I wasn’t able to attend the class but the idea stuck in my head to try it sometime. Recently I did and completed a 12″ x 12″ kitty rug. Take a look:

Here are the essentials of doing this kind of work.

Mesh:

Locker hook and yarn needle:

Fabric strips to make the loops. I used 1″ strips sewed together and folded in half. I chose to sew the strips together because it is neater but other methods include various kinds of knotting.

And fabric cut on the bias, 1/2″ wide, to use as the “locking” fabric. As I ran out of one strip I hand-sewed the next one to it. I used a dark fabric – it’s not intended to show and if it happened to, I thought dark would blend in better.

Essentially, to make the rug, the initial step is to prepare the mesh by folding over the raw edge, just a couple of squares. I sewed mine down to keep the little mesh boxes straight.

Then, you take the yarn needle and do a whip stitch with a 1/2″ wide strip of fabric around the whole thing to make an edge. (Here, mine is pink).

Next, to make the rug itself, you set up the fabrics. The bias strip is threaded through the eye of the locker hook and is used from the top of the rug. The loop fabrics are pulled through the mesh from the back with the crochet hook end of the looker hook. You pull up 5-8 loops and then run the tool through them, which pulls the locker fabric through the loops above the mesh, thus locking them in place.

That’s a nice feature, that the loops will not pull out or move around once they are locked in place.

Here’s the rug again:

The edging is done in pink. I used two main colors, blue and green, and I worked in a spiral, ending up in the middle.

Here is the back. I always like to show what a project looks from backstage!

Well, now I have a kitty rug, if I let the cat actually get near it!

Would I do this kind of work again? Yes. There is a good amount of prep work, setting up the mesh and the fabrics, but I found that relaxing work.

Once I got going on the rug, I found it difficult to get the project started since the double layer of mesh in the first couple of rows is harder going, but once past that, things moved quickly and I loved seeing the patterns the fabrics made as they looped along. It’s a great project for watching TV or chatting or listening to music or an audio book.

Oh, I forgot to say, I used only batik and plain fabrics, as both sides are the same (there is no ugly “wrong” side) so the loops are all true to the look of the fabric. I could have used other fabrics as long as the pattern showed on both sides. I would recommend keeping this in mind if you ever try locker hooking.

Well, soon, I will prepare another mesh canvas! And figure out another color scheme and get started on a new kitty rug.

Artist Book: Nineteen – Page 4

Pages from my ongoing artist book Nineteen. For more info on this project look here.

Why is this book is called Nineteen? Because 19 is my birthday number. Why not?

I’ll post the pages as I consider them complete. To identify them I am sticking with the page numbers from the original book. When two facing pages are finished I’ll post the page spread, too.

This page shared a common color scheme and overall look with its opposite page, which had been finished some months ago. I’ll show you the pair of them later in the post.

So, this page sat and waited a while because I didn’t want to disrupt the harmony with the other page, and yet I did not know what to do. That changed when I glued the “OFF” to the page (this piece is from a paint brochure, and my drawing of “OFF” comes from the paint name, which was Off White).

Suddenly I saw a hand in the amorphous colors and shapes, and I drew it in right away. And that was it. What it means, who knows?

Here’s the page spread. Remember, I did not (consciously, anyway) reference the existing page in making the later page, beyond wanting to retain the color and style similarity.

There is a story here all right. But, what is it? One thing I see emerging about this artist book, that I really love, is how the pages influence the viewer to make sense of them together and separately.

Study the two and examine the details, and I bet you will have constructed a story before you know it.

I used acrylic paints, India ink, markers, gel pen, and collage in making these pages.

Small Artist Sketchbook 2024: Pages 16 and 17

They just keep on coming –
here is Small Artist Sketchbook 2024.

This book’s pictures were done between February 2022 and April 2024. Some of them have already been posted as part of whatever project or class I might have been doing during that time, so you might see something familiar along the way. I like to show the pages and pictures in their book form, though, so here they are. I think that having a companion page adds to the experience of looking at the individual images.

The book is landscape style, 5 1/2″ x 8″. It doesn’t have decorated covers since the book itself has a nice pebbly-textured black surface – I left it alone. And as you know, I don’t necessarily do the pages in order, so there’s no planned narrative or story in this book.

If you have any questions about the techniques or methods I used, please ask! I love to answer questions about how I do my work.

Here is the page spread.

And here are the individual images.

Notes:

Look here for the post describing the sketching process for the first image. I took some of the animals we drew, cut them out, and gave them a new environment, as I did for the cow you see here.

The second image is a piece of paste paper I made as part of an online lesson at the Kalamazoo Book Arts Center. I love the look of paste papers; they can be beautiful on their own or as material for collage. Look here for a post I wrote containing a description of the process of making paste papers as I learned in this class.