Paper making adventure!

A very special week in Artlandia! I learned how to make paper! ( :D!!) Thanks to a scholarship from Women's Studio Workshop :), I learned how to make translucent paper from the awesome Sarah Bertrand-Hamel (check out the description: http://www.wsworkshop.org/event/color-in-paper-sarah-bertrand-hamel/ ).

I heart stained glass (throwback all the way to my student days with this faux stained glass piece that I made in 2009 and blogged about in 2014  - funny how my interests haven't changed that much - unicorn, bird, figure, patterns, and a red - blue - green color scheme.) I enjoyed these, but they weren't super stable, and I was drawing on engravers ornament and woodcuts for the patterns and designs without knowing much about them. I didn't forget, but it's been a long path learning about each element. If I were to make something similar now, I like to think I'd do it better...

I felt like a witch stirring brew while mixing
these big vats of color pulp

Learning how to make translucent paper was very exciting and a step in the right direction. While I have experience with techniques for modifying paper, through marbling and making paste paper, I'd never made paper from scratch before.  We started at the beginning beating and mixing pulp.

I wanted to embed black tracery like elements in the paper, so I cut out shapes (like black paper snowflakes), then placed them in the pulp with some methyl cellulose on them to be extra sure they'd bond with the pulp

cutouts on the interfacing

cutouts with wet pulp over them

paper with cutouts drying

After testing it on small sheets, I went for a big sheet and added
 color pulp in select areas with a syringe

:D !

 I also made lots and lots of plain color sheets. I haven't decided exactly how to use them yet, but I'm excited to work them into collages [thumbs up!]

 

I also continued work on the life-scale fox.  I scanned the small fox from last week and transferred it onto polyester plates.  I could have printed these onto paper and called it a day, but instead I transferred them onto an MDF block to carve at scale (the tail will be a separate block, like the head). I want to try this because if I were to attempts, say, a horse, I'm trying to figure out how best to go about it...

Polyester plates on top of the block with Jr. helpfully establishing scale.

polyester plates printed on the block - the photos also show how the head could be printed in mirror image to have a fox turning in addition to looking forward.

Garden update:

blackberry harvest

favorite flowers of the week!

and a particularly good and colorful batch of rainbow cookies this week
(inspired by the flowers and rainbow color pulp :) ).