word as pattern

Exploring a technique called stacked word, I've been enjoying going back through a few of the previous blog posts on the The Sketchbook Challenge and stumbled across a posting by artist Judi Hurwitt called Stacked Journaling I was drawn to the patterns and shapes that developed simply by working with one word and re-writing it onto it's self in several directions.

I started with the black pen onto white paper and the word "encourage" and then moved onto several pen colors and the word "spirit". Finally playing with the top mixed media piece using charcoal, acrylic paint and pen on paper with the words "happy, joy and change"

Inspired by opposites

With the floods, work and stuff it certainly has been an eventful start to the year. My sewing machine has finally been brought down off the top of the cupboard, it had been placed there back in January as the flood water was a rising through the parkland into our yard. I enjoyed some time over the weekend in the studio working on a quilt top inspired by the sketchbook challenge - February theme - "Opposites" - a couple of weeks ago when out and about, the colors and textures of fallen leaves caught my eye and I grabbed a couple. I later sealed each side of the leaves with gel medium. My thought response to these fallen leaves was around "Opposites" or alternatively living and fallen.

Leaves have a certain beauty in both the living and fallen format, in fact fallen leaves draw crowds if you think about how people travel across the world to experience Autumn with all those beautiful reds, browns and golds in climates that have a greater change between seasons than I experience in the sub-tropics. Even in the sub-tropics our leaves experience change and beauty. I have quite a few images of leaves in my digital library and couple of these I've had printed onto fabric. The quilt top so far is a combination of digital images, acrylic painted fabric and quilting fabric. The top is currently in the audition stage, I will let it sit there a couple of days adjusting the lay-out and adding or removing fabrics, before piecing it all together in readiness to quilt.