Silver Minnow

Three Views of Spring

Kit — Tue, 01 May 2012 17:46:39 +0000

Here is some new work using my new Spring stencil (see here). First I created the background water pattern, using the water stencil featured in this post. I pasted my Spring stencil over that background.

One of the challenges for me was getting the values dark enough in contrast to the background. This was in part due to my tendency to be tentative with use of pigments. Also, the work looks darker when it is wet; nevertheless I still had trouble getting dark enough values. I painted probably 4-5 layers of pigments and soy. In the top image, the darkest values in the branches and buds were painted on after washing off the paste – a method of fixing it when you wash the paste off too soon!

Another general challenge in katazome, which I really felt while working on this piece, is that the yellowish rice paste resist covers the lightest values in the work, so what you see is not really what you get. This adds to the excitement (and/or disappointment!) when you do finally wash off the paste! I’ve posted more photos of the work in progress in this photo album on my Facebook page.

Spring | 28" x 16" (artwork only) Natural pigments on silk | © Kit Eastman

I stitched the piece to a sheet of handmade Japanese moriki kozo paper from Wet Paint Art, treated with konnyaku starch (to give it texture and strengthen it for stitching).

Spring with Cardinal | 28" x 16" | Natural pigments on silk © Kit Eastman

In the example above I added an image of a cardinal before pasting the Spring stencil. The cardinal was dyed and covered with paste before adding the primary Spring layer.

cardinal in flight

A cardinal takes flight from a rain garden near my house – a surprising flash of red that always makes my heart skip a beat!

Thinking through a stencil design

Kit — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 03:28:35 +0000

There are generally four ways to approach the design of katazome stencil – negative (dyed background), positive (dyed foreground), outline (resist lines on a dyed background) and string (dyed lines on a resisted background). Here’s a simple design illustrating these four approaches. I’ve added bridges where necessary so the structure of the stencil holds together.

1. negative 2. positive 3. outline 4. string

Oftentimes a single stencil will contain more than one of these approaches.

I am working on a stencil I call “Spring” – some trees with branches and buds. I want to shift the shapes from negative on the bottom to positive on the top. The problem is how to navigate this transition gradually – I don’t want an abrupt break. I added a area of grass-like lines in the middle area of the composition. After attaching my cartoon to the surface of the shibugami (stencil paper), I sketched in some lines to clarify where I want to make my cuts. I made black marker lines to represent the positive leaves of grass – these I cut between - and red marker lines to represent the negative leaves of grass. These I cut away.

transition area; cartoon adhered to stencil paper

Here’s the middle section after cutting.

after cutting the transition area

It’s now ready to reinforce. (See the two “V” bridges at the top edge – these will be cut away.)

Spring stencil © Kit Eastman

Ice, sky, water

Kit — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 15:35:55 +0000

The ice started to go out of the little lake about a week ago.

shoreline ice

Have you ever noticed how the wind etches a large scale water-like pattern on the icy surface of a pond? You can see this when the winter is short on snow, as this one has been.

wind etched pattern on ice

I’m seeing water everywhere.

clouds as water

For several years now I’ve wanted to make a naturalistic repeating water pattern. I finally got down to it. This will repeat horizontally. It was very tricky to register. I had so much trouble so rather than drive myself crazy I decided to allow the pattern to drift about 1/4″ upwards to the right with each “print,” which will make it look more naturalistic anyway. To accommodate my imprecision, I made sure the shapes at top and bottom of stencil have no straight edges.

Grackles and the Moon

Kit — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 15:10:37 +0000

The annual spring exhibit at at the Grand Marais Art Colony is called Rhythms of Darkness and Light, and will be on display March 23-April 1st. Each artist responds to the theme with a new work. Here’s my contribution, followed by the short statement I wrote to go along with the work. I really look forward to seeing this show!

From a distance, the winter landscape can seem drab and monochrome. But up close, the variety of color in the bare branches is astonishing. When I look deeply I can see that each moment contains evidence, as well as memory, of summer and autumn, and the anticipation of spring. The idea for this image came from a photograph I took at midsummer. Walking on a path near the shore of Como Lake in St. Paul, I glanced up and saw grackles ascending a tree limb with the moon directly above them.

Exploring katazome on silk; work in progress

Kit — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 03:05:33 +0000

I continue to work on the katazome piece I wrote about in my previous 2 posts. After making the ecoprinted under layer, I pasted the moon, a few branches and some leaf forms in the foreground. Then I painted the background with 3 layers of natural pigments in gradation. After curing the work for 5 days I rinsed it out. I like how the leaf prints still show through.

work in progress; pigments on silk

Next I pasted my 2 large stencils. I’m working on five of these pieces simultaneously. I guess you might think of them as mono-prints - the print part is the rice paste spread through the stencil. It resists, or masks, the background from the next layer of color, which will be hand-painted with natural pigments in multiple layers. Below you see the work pasted and stretched, ready for the brush.

rice paste resist on silk

Here is the palette I have started working with. I usually adjust colors after seeing what hue and value each layer yields. These are transparent like watercolor, so the layers below will influence the layers above.

natural pigments in soy milk